Alex threw up her hands in annoyance. “You try putting together Team Murder on short notice.” She had left Tripp on the New Haven Green. She’d seen him set off toward downtown. Could he be late? Scared of returning to hell? He knew another descent was the only way to be rid of their demons.
They were the bait. Their misery. Their hopelessness.
“We never should have left him alone,” she said.
“He had the seabird,” Turner noted.
“But the salt spirits can only do so much. I don’t know about you, but I could tell Not Hellie was adapting. She was less scared of those snakes the last time I used them. She wasn’t frightened out on the sidewalk a minute ago.”
“You’re all forgetting he could just be a coward,” Mercy said as they settled around the table.
“That isn’t fair,” Dawes called from the kitchen.
“What?” Mercy demanded. “You saw how freaked out he was. He didn’t want to make the descent a second time.”
“None of us do,” said Turner. “And you wouldn’t either.”
“I’ll go,” Mercy said, her chin lifting. “You’re down a pilgrim. You need someone to fill the gap.”
“You’re not a killer,” said Alex.
“Yet. Maybe I’m a late bloomer.”
Dawes returned to the dining room with a big tureen of steaming soup.
“This isn’t a joke!”
“Let’s try to remember that not being a murderer is actually a good thing,”
Darlington said. “I’ll take Tripp’s place. I’ll be the fourth.”
Dawes set the tureen on the table with a loud, disapproving thud. “You will not.”
Alex didn’t like the idea either. The Gauntlet wasn’t meant to be used as a revolving door. “I’m not giving up on Tripp. We don’t know that Not Spenser got him. We don’t know anything yet.”
“We know the math,” said Turner. “Four pilgrims to open the door— four to make the journey, and four to close it all up at the end. The full moon is tomorrow night, and unless Tripp suddenly slinks out into the open, the prodigal demon is our only option.”
“We’ll find another way,” Dawes insisted, ladling soup into bowls aggressively.
“Sure,” Turner replied. “Should we just have Mercy stab someone?” “Of course not,” Dawes snapped, though Mercy looked scarily game.
“But…”
A faint, sad smile touched Darlington’s lips. “Go on.”
Now Dawes hesitated. “Look at you,” she said quietly. “You aren’t …
you aren’t completely human anymore. You’re bound to that place.” She glanced uneasily at Alex. “You both are.”
Alex crossed her arms. “What do I have to do with it?”
“You were on fire,” said Dawes. “The same way you were in the underworld.” Dawes dipped her spoon into her bowl, then set it down. “We can’t send Darlington back, and I … if Tripp’s demon … if something happened to him, it’s our fault.”
No one could disagree. Dawes had said that Alex and Darlington were tied to the underworld, but the truth was that they were all bound together now. They had seen the very worst of each other, felt every ugly, shameful, frightening thing. Four pilgrims. Four children trembling in the dark. Four fools who had attempted what should never be dared. Four shoddy heroes on a quest who were meant to survive this reckless endeavor together.
But Tripp wasn’t here.
“I’ll go back to his place tomorrow,” Turner said. “Reach out at his job.
But we agree right now, no matter what, we make the descent tomorrow night. We can’t let those things keep feeding on us. I have seen some shit in this life and been through it too. But I won’t make it to the next full moon.”
No one was going to argue with that either. Alex didn’t want Darlington back in hell, but they were out of options. If what he had just done to Not Hellie couldn’t stop these things, nothing in the mortal realm would.
“All right,” said Alex.
Dawes gave a short nod.
“How exactly did you get Darlington out?” Turner asked a little too casually.
Alex was tempted to ask if he wanted her to write up a statement. But Dawes and Mercy and Turner were owed an explanation, or whatever answers they could patch together.
So they ate, and they talked—about Anselm who was no longer Anselm, the bodies they’d left at Black Elm, the murders of Professor Stephen and Dean Beekman, and the third murder that would have been committed if Turner hadn’t arrested Andy Lambton.
When they were done, Turner pushed his empty bowl away and scrubbed his hands over his face. “You’re telling me Lambton is innocent?”
“He was there,” said Alex. “At least for Beekman. Maybe for Marjorie Stephen. I think Anselm enjoyed making him an accomplice.” “That’s not his name,” Darlington said.
“Well, whatever you want to call him. Golgarot, the demon king.”
