My last entry as Virgil. I thought I would never wish to leave this office,but instead I find myself counting the days until I can close the door ofIl Bastone behind me and never darken the doorstep of this house again.
I leave with my fortunes secured, but I know I will see hell again. HowNownes would laugh at me if he knew the extent of our folly. How hewould weep if he knew the extent of our crimes. But why do I write? Iwill hide this book and in it our sins. I wish only that I believed in God,so that I might beg for His mercy.
—Lethe Days Diary of Rudolph Kittscher(Jonathan Edwards
College ’33)
42
By 1 a.m., Alex and Darlington were back on campus, shivering with cold, their ears still ringing with howls. They waited for the others by the Women’s
Table. The shadows seemed too thick, as if they had weight and form. She was nearly faint with hunger, and the terrible possibilities of all she’d set in motion were gnawing at her thoughts.
Alex made sure her phone was on and sent a last text to her mom, just in case.
I love you. Stay safe.
Absurd, a ridiculous message from a girl who had crashed through life like she was charging through a series of plate glass windows. She’d cut herself to ribbons, then patched herself up, only to do it again and again and again.
You too, little star. The reply came fast, as if her mother had been waiting.
But Mira had been waiting by the phone a very long time. For a call from the hospital, the cops, the morgue.
Alex knew they needed to get started, but when Dawes let them into the library, she went to check on Mercy in the courtyard first.
The air seemed colder by the basin, as if they’d truly left a door open and a draft was blowing through. There were no stars visible in the gray November sky, but Alex found herself drinking in the feel of the weather, the winter chill on her skin, the dim yellow light from the library windows, the textured gray of the stone. Hell had been like a vacuum, dead and empty, all color and life leached away, as if some demon had fed on the world as much as the souls that inhabited it. If this was her last look at anything real, she wanted to remember it.
She helped Mercy into her salt armor and they talked through the plan.
They still didn’t know what might be waiting for them—in this world or below. Mercy was armed with death words, bone dust, and a salt sword, but Alex had retrieved another item from the armory. She handed the jar to Mercy.
“I wouldn’t open—”
But Mercy had already lifted the lid. She gagged and hastily shut the jar.
“Alex,” she coughed, “you have to be kidding me.”
“Afraid not.” Alex hesitated. “Vampires hate strong smells. It’s where the garlic myth came from. It’s not too late to back out of this.” She needed to offer this chance at escape, at safety. Mercy had walked this path without
hesitation, but did she really know what she was moving toward with such happy momentum?
“Pretty sure it is.”
“It’s never too late to make a run for it, Mercy. Trust me on that.”
“I know.” Mercy looked down at the sword in her hands. “But I like this life better.”
“Better than what?”
“Better than what I was living before. Better than a world without magic.
I think I’ve been waiting my whole life for the moment someone would see something in me that wasn’t ordinary.”
“We all are.” Alex couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. “That’s how they get you.”
Mercy’s eyes glinted. “Not if we get them first.”
Maybe because Mercy was so sweet, so smart, so kind—Alex forgot how much fight she had in her. She couldn’t help but think of Hellie, what it had cost her to fall into Alex’s orbit. What might it cost Mercy to be Alex’s friend? But it was too late for that calculation. She needed Mercy in this courtyard tonight.
“The phone is on,” she said, handing over her cell. “Leave it that way.”
Mercy gave a rapid nod. “Got it.”
“Stay close to the basin. Don’t forget the balm. And if this turns ugly, you run. Find a room in the library to lock yourself in and stay there until daylight.”
“Understood.” Now Mercy hesitated. “You’re coming back, right?” Alex made herself smile. “One way or another.”
Once the metronome had been set ticking in the courtyard, they waited for quiet on Cross Campus. Then, in front of the library’s main entrance, they made their cuts, each to the left arm. Alex looked at Darlington in his dark coat, at Dawes in her sweats, at Turner standing at attention, ready for battle, even if he wasn’t quite sure the war could be won.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go to hell.”
One by one they daubed their blood on the entry columns. Alex felt a sudden nausea, like a hook had lodged in her gut and was pulling her forward, like the force that had drawn her across the city on bare feet to Black Elm.
They entered, passing beneath the Egyptian scribe, and through that cold darkness, the door that was no longer a door.
All of them had taken on the same titles, in the same order. All but Tripp.
Alex entered first as the soldier, followed by Dawes as the scholar, then Turner as the priest, and finally Darlington—the prince. Alex couldn’t help thinking the title took on a different meaning with him in the role instead of Tripp, and that made her feel guilty. She wondered which part Lionel Reiter had taken when he’d made the descent nearly a century ago.
They continued in single file to Alma Mater, then on to the arches beneath the Tree of Knowledge that they once again marked with blood. Down the corridor, past the soldier’s door, past the stone student unaware of Death at his shoulder, and into the vestibule full of those odd windows that looked like they belonged in a country pub.
“Just a man,” Darlington murmured, and Alex knew he was remembering his fight to give them clues to the Gauntlet, his demon wiles at war with his human hope. But she saw delight in his face as they made their way through Sterling, wonder and bemusement. Despite all that had happened, he couldn’t help but thrill at the secrets lurking beneath the stone, left behind for them to discover. There was something reassuring in the way his eyes shone, the eager muttering over quotations and symbols. It’s still him. Lethe’s golden boy might not look quite the same to her, might have seen and done things no man should, but he was still Darlington. “Here,” Dawes said softly. “Your doorway.” Darlington nodded, then frowned.
“What’s wrong?” Alex asked.
He bobbed his head toward the stonework. “Lux et Veritas? Did they run out of ideas?”
Leave it to Darlington to be a snob about a hidden gateway to hell.
They anointed the stone with their blood and that black pit appeared. An icy wind ruffled Darlington’s dark hair. Alex wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to do this, that everything would be okay. But there were some lies even she couldn’t sell.
“I…” Dawes began. But sputtered out, a candle guttering.
“Do you know the story of the Phantom Ship?” Darlington asked in the quiet. “Back when the New Haven colony was struggling, the townspeople got together and packed a ship with their best wares, samples of all this brave new world had to offer, and their leading citizens set off to try to convince people back in England that it was worth investing in the colony and maybe coming over themselves.”
“Why do I think this story doesn’t have a happy ending?” Turner asked.
