“What am I looking for?”
“A black Suburban in the driveway.”
“I would have gotten an alert if anyone was there.”
“Okay. Just keep an eye out.”
“Who are you expecting?”
Alex hesitated. The full moon was only two nights away, but that felt like a distance she didn’t know how to cross. “I’m just being careful,” she said.
“Since you mentioned Black Elm,” Dawes began, “I need—” “Late for the Praetor,” Alex said hurriedly and hung up.
She didn’t feel good about it, but Dawes was going to ask if she could go to Black Elm to check on Darlington, feed Cosmo, pick up the mail. She should. It was her turn and Dawes had done plenty. But right now she couldn’t think about that. She needed to meet with the Praetor, to deal with Eitan. She needed to find her escape hatch. Her failures were stacking up too high, and the thought of facing Darlington behind that golden circle, still trapped between worlds, still not whole, made her feel hopeless all over again.
She texted the group chat with a warning: Keep your mood up. They know when we’re low.
“You think that’s true?” Tripp asked when he returned with two bowls of chili and a chocolate chip muffin.
“I do.”
Tripp took a bite of chili and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “I don’t know if I can take much more of this. Spenser—”
“It’s not Spenser.”
“You keep saying that, but what difference does it make?”
“We have to remember what they are. They’re not the people we loved or hated. They’re just … hungry.”
Tripp took another bite, then pushed the bowl away. “It’s Spenser. I can’t explain it. I know what you’re saying, but it’s not just the shit he says. It’s that he’s enjoying it.”
Alex thought of what she’d read in Kittscher’s Daemonologie. If Rudolph Kittscher was right, then demons had been getting by on the emotions of the dead for a very long time, and that was nothing compared to feasting on the pain and pleasure of the living. Why wouldn’t they be enjoying themselves now that they were in the mortal realm? The buffet was open.
“Listen, Tripp … I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“I totally get it. You were just doing your job.”
Alex hesitated. “You … you know this wasn’t sanctioned by Lethe, right?
We were never going to make trouble for you with Skull and Bones.”
“Oh, I know.”
“And you helped us anyway?”
“Well, yeah. I needed the cash and … I don’t really know where I am, y’know? My friends are all working in the city. I still don’t have my degree.
I don’t even know if I want it anymore. I like Darlington and … I don’t know.
I like being one of the good guys.”
Is that who we are? There was no greater good here, no fight for a better world. But what had Mercy said? You rescue me. I rescue you. That’s how this works. To pay your debts, you had to know who you owed. You had to decide who you were willing to go to war for and who you trusted to jump into the fray for you. That was all there was in this world. No heroes or villains, just the people you’d brave the waves for, and the ones you’d let drown.
Alex and Tripp said their goodbyes at the green. She felt better than she had an hour before, but the double nightmare of Eitan and Not Hellie had left her roughed up. She wasn’t in any condition to meet with the Praetor, but there was no way around it.
“My God,” he said when she tapped on his office door. “You look terrible.”
“It’s been a rough few days.”
“Come in. Sit down. Can I offer you tea?”
Alex shook her head. She wanted to get this over with, but she felt so rotten she let herself slouch in the chair as he set an electric kettle to boil. She just didn’t have it in her to put on a performance, and there was no reason to anymore.
“Well,” said the Praetor as he sorted through a selection of teas. “Where shall we start?”
“The fire last night…”
He gave a dismissive wave. “New Haven.”
So Walsh-Whiteley had believed Turner’s claims of vandalism. Maybe he hadn’t gone inside. Maybe after being summoned from his warm bed, he’d been only too happy to go home.
“It was far worse in the eighties,” the Praetor continued. “New Haven was quite the punch line. Biscuit?” He held out a blue tin to her.
Alex was baffled, but she didn’t say no to food. She took two.
“There was an upside, of course. We threw some marvelous parties at the old clock factory and there was simply no one around to care. The murals are still there, you know. Some of the students from the architecture school painted them. Beautiful, really, in a crumbling-into-the-tarn kind of way.”
