Mercy smiled.

“Does anyone want to tell me and Turner who Pierre is and what he weaves?” asked Alex.

“The Weaver was acquired by Manuscript,” Dawes said. “It was used by a series of cult leaders and false gurus to lure followers. Pierre Bernard was the last, and the name stuck. The trick is making sure the Weaver spins the right emotional web.”

“And it will trap the demons?” Turner asked.

“Only for a short time,” said Dawes. “It’s all … very risky.”

“Not as risky as doing nothing.” Alex didn’t want to talk anymore. They couldn’t wait until the next full moon. “I’m not going to let those things chase us around and eat at our hearts until they pick us off one by one.”

“They’re only going to get stronger and more savvy,” Darlington said.

“Personally, I would prefer not to see you all eaten and then have to deal with a bunch of vampires wearing your faces.”

“Okay,” said Turner. “We use Pierre the Whatever. We trap them and drag them down with us. I still have a murder suspect who was …

encouraged, if not coerced, into helping to commit two horrific crimes and planning another. I can’t get them to ease up on his sentence because demons were involved.”

“He was driven mad,” Darlington said. “That’s how you’ll get him leniency. Whether his monsters were real or imagined, the result was the same.”

“Let’s say I let that slide,” Turner continued. “There are the remains of three missing persons in the Black Elm basement, and someone is going to come looking for those people eventually. I have to believe Anselm’s wife is wondering why he hasn’t come home, even if that demon was out and about, wearing his suits and using his credit card.”

Bag the bodies. Switch the plates on the rental to transport them. Cremate them in the crucible after hours at Il Bastone. Wipe the car. Dump it. Alex knew what they should do. So did Turner. But she also knew he wasn’t going to talk about it. He might have killed Carmichael in cold blood, but he was still police and he wasn’t going to be involved in covering up a crime.

“We’ll take care of it,” said Alex.

“I won’t clean up your mess.”

“You won’t have to.”

Turner didn’t look convinced. “I’m going to take you at your word. Now for all your talk, you haven’t explained what happened out there on the sidewalk in front of this house. I saw a demon tear another demon in half. I saw you covered in fire that shouldn’t exist in our realm and I saw you use it to keep him in check. Anyone want to explain all that?”

Darlington shrugged and reached for seconds of soup. “If we could, we would.”

Alex could tell from Turner’s look that he thought Darlington was lying.

Alex did too.

39

The house was big enough that there was room for everyone to sleep behind the wards. Darlington was back in the Virgil bedroom on the third floor.

Dawes would sleep on the couch in the parlor, and Turner had claimed the floor of the armory.

Alex and Mercy set up camp in the Dante bedroom. But before Alex turned out the light, she tried texting Tripp once more. It wasn’t safe to go looking for him at night, but she and Turner would try in the morning.

“I wasn’t very nice to him,” said Mercy.

“That’s not what got him in trouble. And you don’t owe everyone nice.”

She lay back on her pillow. “I need you to be ready tomorrow. Dawes said the descent could be different this time. I don’t know what that means for you on the surface, but there’s at least one vampire running around out there. I don’t like putting you in danger again.”

Mercy wriggled under the covers. “But we’re always in danger. Go to a party, meet up with the wrong person, walk down the wrong street. I think …

I think sometimes it’s easier if instead of waiting for trouble, you go to meet it.”

“Like a bad date.”

Mercy laughed. “Yeah. But if anything terrible happens to me—”

“It won’t.”

“But if it does—”

“Mercy, if anyone fucks with you, I will teach them a new word for violence.”

Mercy laughed, the sound brittle. “I know.” She sat up, punched her pillow, leaned back on it. Alex could practically see the wheels turning. “To be a pilgrim … you all killed someone?”

Alex had known this conversation was coming. “Yup.”

“I know … I know Dawes killed Blake. I’m not sure I want to know about everyone else, but…”

“Why am I qualified to be on Team Murder?”

“Yeah.”

Alex had told Mercy about Lethe, about magic, even about the Grays, and that she could see them and use them. But she’d left her past good and buried.

As far as Mercy knew, she was a kid from California with some gaps in her education.

There were plenty of lies Alex could tell now. It was self-defense. It was an accident. But the truth was that she’d contemplated killing Eitan that very morning, and if she’d been able to get away with it and find a place to stash the bodies, she would have done it and never looked back. And she’d promised she wasn’t going to lie to Mercy again.

“I killed a lot of people.”

Mercy rolled over on her side and looked at her. “How many?”

“Enough. For now.”

“Do you … How do you live with that?”

What truth was she supposed to offer up? Because it wasn’t the people she’d killed who haunted her. It was the people she’d let die, the ones she couldn’t save. Alex knew she should say something comforting. That she prayed or cried or ran laps to forget. She hadn’t had many friends and she didn’t want to lose this one. But she was tired of pretending.

“I’m just not made right, Mercy. I don’t know if it’s remorse or conscience that I’m missing or if the angel on my shoulder decided to take a long vacation. But I don’t lose sleep over the bodies on my scorecard. I guess that doesn’t make me a great roommate.”

“Maybe not,” Mercy said and turned off the light. “But I’m glad you’re on my side.”