Alex waited until Mercy was snoring, then slipped out of bed and padded upstairs to the third floor. The door to the Virgil bedroom was open, and there was a fire blazing in the hearth beneath the stained glass windows depicting a hemlock wood. Darlington was sprawled in a chair by the fire. He’d changed into Lethe House sweatpants and an old robe—or maybe it was called a dressing gown. She wasn’t sure. She just knew that she’d been looking at him without a stitch of clothes for weeks, but that something about seeing him this way—feet propped on the ottoman, robe open, bare chested, a book in his hand—made her feel like a Peeping Tom.
“Something you want, Stern?” he asked without glancing up from his reading.
That was a complicated question.
“You lied to Turner,” she said.
“I imagine you’ve done the same when necessary.” He looked up at last.
“Are you going to hover in that doorway all night or come in?”
Alex made herself enter. Why the hell was she so nervous? This was Darlington—scholar, snob, and pain in the ass. No mystery there. But she’d held his soul inside her. She could still taste him on her tongue.
“What are you drinking?” she asked, picking up the tiny glass of amber liquid from the table beside his chair.
“Armagnac. You’re welcome to try it.”
“But we—”
“I’m well aware my Armagnac was sacrificed for a worthy cause—
perhaps along with my grandfather’s Mercedes. This bottle is far cheaper and less rare.”
“But not actually cheap.”
“Of course not.”
She set down the glass and settled herself in the chair across from him, letting the fire warm her feet, acutely conscious of the hole forming in her right sock.
“You sure this is a good idea?” she asked. “Going back to hell?”
His eyes returned to the book he was reading. Michelle Alameddine’s Lethe Days Diary.
Was he wondering why she hadn’t been the one to stand sentinel? “Find anything interesting in there?”
“Yes, actually. A pattern I hadn’t seen before. But a demon loves a puzzle.”
“She did help,” Alex said. “She told us you believed the Gauntlet was on campus.”
“She doesn’t owe me anything. I told myself I would never look at her diary, that I wouldn’t go hunting for her opinions on her Dante and give in to that particular vanity. But here I am.”
“What did she say?”
His smile was rueful. “Very little. I am described as fastidious, thorough, and—no less than five times—eager. The overall portrait is vague in its details, but far from flattering.” He closed the book, setting it aside. “And to answer your question, returning to hell is an abominable idea, but I don’t have any others. In my more futile moments, I’m tempted to blame Sandow for all of this. It was his greed that put this series of tragedies in motion. He summoned the hellbeast to devour me. I suppose he thought it would be a quick death.”
“Or a clean one,” Alex said without thinking.
“Fair point. No body to dispose of. No questions to be asked.”
“You weren’t meant to survive.”
“No,” he mused. “I suppose you and I have that in common. Was that almost a smile, Stern?”
“Too early to tell.” She shifted in her seat, watching him. He had always been indecently appealing, the dark hair, the lean build, the air of some deposed royal who had wandered into their mundane world from a far-off castle. It was hard not to stare at him, to keep reminding herself that he was truly there, truly alive. And that somehow he seemed to have forgiven her.
But she couldn’t say any of that. “Tell me what you wouldn’t talk about in front of the others. Why do you still have horns—”
“Occasional horns.”
“Fine. Why did I light up like a blowtorch when you used them?”
Darlington was quiet for a long time. “There are no words for what we’ve done. For what we may yet do. Think of the Gauntlet as a series of doors, all meant to keep the unwary from strolling into hell. You don’t need those doors, Stern.”
“Belbalm … Before she died—”
“Before you killed her.”
“It was a group effort. She said that all worlds were open to Wheelwalkers. I saw a circle of blue fire around me.”
“I saw it too,” he said. “On Halloween. A year ago. The Wheel. I don’t think it was coincidence. And I don’t think this is either.”
He rose and crossed the room to his desk and removed a book of New York landmarks. He moved with the same easy confidence he always had, but now there was something sinister in those long strides. She saw the demon. She saw a predator.
He flipped through the book and held it open to her. “Atlas,” he said, “at Rockefeller Center.”
The black-and-white photo showed a muscular figure wrought in bronze and poised on one knee, bent beneath the weight of three interlocked rings resting on his colossal shoulders.
“The celestial spheres,” Darlington continued. “The heavens in their movements. Or…”
