“Pammie,” Darlington said gently, “she wanted to believe she could live forever, and that’s what he told her. Sometimes the story is what matters.”

“We aren’t putting her in the basement,” Alex said as she pushed to her feet. “Or in the ground.”

She wasn’t going to bury Michelle Alameddine the way that Reiter buried his other victims. The way he would have buried Alex if she hadn’t run far and fast enough that terrible night.

Alex forced herself to walk back to the trunk, to look at that body, at the puncture marks at her neck, the tattoo at her wrist. She hoped Michelle had found some kind of peace beyond the Veil, that her soul was safe and whole.

“He made a mistake,” Alex said. She could feel her fear changing shape, forming claws and teeth, becoming anger. A welcome alchemy. “If he’d been smart, he would have kept Michelle alive to spy for him.”

“Pride,” Darlington said. “Reiter was too eager to hurt us, to make us feel his power.”

“Cunning, not smart,” Alex said, and Dawes nodded, wiping the tears from her eyes.

Darlington gazed down at Michelle’s body. “You deserved better,” he said softly.

So had Mercy. And Hellie. And Tripp. So had Babbit Rabbit and every other sorry creature who had made the mistake of crossing Alex’s path. It hurt to know that Reiter hadn’t just fed on Michelle’s blood, but on her pain.

He would have sated himself on her desperation, her sorrow, her longing for a life that would never end.

I’m going to punish him, Alex promised as they laid Michelle between the elm trees, as Darlington spoke the words of an old poem over her body, as she called the fire once more. I’m going to hurt him the way he hurt you.

“This is the forest primeval,” Darlington recited. “The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic…”

She would teach Reiter what real pain tasted like. It was all she could offer this girl she’d barely known. Vengeance that came too late, and prayers spoken in fire.

47

It had taken Alex a few tries to remember exactly where Tripp’s apartment was. Turner could have helped, but he was back at work, trying to figure out where his conscience lay on the matter of a man who had helped to commit two murders under demonic influence.

“No more favors,” he’d warned her the last time she saw him at Il Bastone.

“They’re not really favors, are they?” Alex asked as they sat on the front steps in the cold, breath pluming in the air. The snow had melted away, a false start to true winter, and the sky above them looked hard and bright as blue enamel, as if you could reach up and knock on it. The leaves still clung to their branches in trembling clouds of red and orange. “Not anymore. You don’t get to go back to not returning my calls.”

“Why not?”

Because I think Mercy may have changed her mind about rooming withme next year. Because I don’t have many friends left and I need to knowyou’re one of them.

“Because you’re a part of this now. You’ve seen through the Veil, past it.

You can’t go back to pretending.”

Turner rested his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands. “I don’t want to be a part of it.”

“Bullshit. You like this fight.”

“Maybe I do. But I can’t be a part of Lethe, that fucking map, everything this place and these societies stand for.”

“You do realize you’re a cop, right?”

He shot her a glance. “Don’t start with that shit, Stern. I know who I am and I know who my people are. Do you?”

Turner was trying to rile her. He couldn’t help it. She was the same way, poking and prodding, looking for the angle. But nothing like a couple of trips to hell to get your priorities in order.

“My people are right here,” she said. “You. Dawes. Darlington. Mercy, if I didn’t scare her away. You’re the ones who fought for me. You’re the ones I want to fight for. Lethe has nothing to do with it.”

“It isn’t that simple.”

Probably not. But she’d been in Turner’s head. When the moment came to choose a path, he’d made his own—with a bullet. That was something she understood.

Turner rose and Alex did the same. No aches and pains thanks to the magic of Lethe.

“What do you want at the end of all of this, Alex?” he asked.

Freedom. Money. A weeklong nap. “I just want to be allowed to live.

Maybe … maybe I want to see this whole place undone. I don’t know yet.

But you can’t go back to the way things were. No matter how much you might want that. You can’t walk through hell unchanged.”

“We’ll see,” he said, heading down the steps. He paused on the walkway and looked back at her. “It changed you too, Stern. You may not care about good and evil, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. You stole a man out of hell. You beat a demon at his own game. You’d better think about what that means.”

“And what’s that?”

“The devil knows your name now, Galaxy Stern.”

Alex had expected Turner to try to vanish back into his own life, to put distance between himself and Lethe, but when they finally arrived at Tripp’s place, there he was, bundled up in an Armani overcoat, leaning against the Dodge. He was reading a newspaper that he folded neatly away when he saw Alex, Dawes, and Darlington.

“Surprised to see you,” Alex murmured as they headed into the lobby.

“Not as surprised as me.”

“Do you think he’s alive?” Dawes asked as they crowded into the elevator and Turner punched the button for the top floor.

“No,” she admitted.

Alex wanted to believe Tripp had simply been too scared to return to hell and that they’d find him watching TV and eating ice cream, but she didn’t really believe that and they were taking no chances.

Dawes and Darlington had laid down fresh barriers of blooded salt in knot patterns at the entry to the building, the elevator, and now the door to the stairs. Alex had Mercy’s salt sword. If Tripp’s demon was still here, they’d have to find a way to contain and destroy it. If it had fled, they’d have to find a way to hunt it. More work, more trouble, more enemies to fight. Why did that excite her? She should be spending her nights studying and writing papers. If only those things came as naturally as violence.

“Do you smell that?” Darlington asked as they approached Tripp’s door.

There was no mistaking it, the stink of something left to rot.

“That’s new,” Turner said. He rested his hand on his gun.

The door was unlocked. It creaked on its hinges as Alex gently pushed it open. The loft had a huge wall of windows that had been blacked out with blankets and duct tape.