It was quieter in this part of the library, and Alex could hear every scuffle of their shoes on the carpeted floor.
“Darlington thinks he’s not coming back,” Dawes said. Alex could feel her eyes on her back.
“I won’t let that happen.”
They stopped in front of the original entrance to the courtyard emblazoned with Selin’s name in gold letters.
“What about you?” Dawes asked. “Who’s looking out for you, Alex?”
“I’ll be fine,” Alex said, surprised by the wobble in her voice. She’d known Dawes couldn’t bear the thought of losing Darlington again, but it hadn’t occurred to her that Dawes might give a damn if Alex came back too.
“I’m not leaving you down there,” Dawes said fiercely.
Alex had said the same thing to Darlington. Promises were easy in this world. So why not make another? “We’re all coming back,” she vowed.
Alex slapped her bloody palm on the archway, and Dawes daubed her blood over it. The door dissolved, and the gold letters of Selin’s name unraveled, replaced by that mysterious alphabet.
“I…” Dawes was staring at the writing. “I can read it now.”
The scholar. What knowledge had Dawes brought with her from the first descent? What new horrors might she learn when they walked the road to hell this time around?
“What does it say?” asked Alex.
Dawes pressed her lips together, her face pale. “None go free.”
Alex tried to ignore the tremor that passed through her at those words.
She had heard them before, during the first descent when she’d seen Darlington’s demon half, the torturer in his element.
Alex hesitated. “Dawes … if this doesn’t go the way we planned …
thanks for taking care of me.”
“I’m fairly sure you’ve almost died several times since we met.”
“It’s the almost that counts.”
“I don’t like this,” Dawes said, her eyes darting again to those golden letters. “It feels like goodbye.”
Was I ever here? Alex wondered. Had she died alongside Hellie? Had she ever been more than a ghost passing through this place?
“Don’t drown,” she said and made herself walk on, back down the nave where she studiously avoided looking at the Alma Mater mural, then to the right where the circuit had begun. It was time to close the loop.
She studied the stained glass image of Daniel in the lions’ den. Was she the martyr this time? Or the wounded beast with a thorn in its paw? Or just a soldier after all. She couldn’t get her cut to well, so she slashed her arm again and smeared blood onto the glass. It vanished, as if the library was happy to be fed. She was staring into the empty.
She waited, and in the silence, Alex felt as if she could sense something racing toward them. A moment later, she heard the soft hum of the pitch pipe.
She took her first step into the courtyard.
This time she was ready for the way the building shook, the shuddering of the stones beneath her feet, the hiss and bubble of the water overflowing the basin, the stink of sulfur. Straight ahead she could see Turner marching toward her, Dawes to her right, Darlington to her left.
They met at the courtyard’s center and Dawes held up her hand for them to stop. But they didn’t grasp the basin. Instead Darlington nodded at Mercy and she came forward, holding up a slender silver spindle. Pierre the Weaver.
She pricked her finger on the tip, like a girl in a fairy tale, ready to fall into a hundred years of dreaming. Instead the silver cracked, revealing a sticky white mass inside. An egg sac.
“Have I ever mentioned how much I hate spiders?” Turner asked.
A slender leg poked through the cocoon of webbing, then another, so tiny they almost looked like hairs. Alex heard a soft snuffling sound, and then Mercy gasped as the egg sac gave way, a wave of tiny baby spiders cascading over her hands. She shrieked and dropped the spindle.
“Get in there,” Darlington said, crouching down. He sounded calm, but it took all of Alex’s will to stay still as the spiders flowed over the ground like a spreading stain. Darlington placed his palm on the paving stone and let them course over his fingers. “Let them bite you.”
Turner cast his eyes skyward and muttered something under his breath.
He dropped into a crouch and dipped his hand in, Dawes followed, and Alex forced herself to do the same.
She wanted to scream at the feel of all those slender legs whispering over her skin. The bites didn’t hurt, but she could see her skin swelling in places.
Thankfully the spiders moved on quickly, pouring up the trunks of the trees, casting silk strands into the air, letting them catch on the wind.
The previous night they’d all taken turns weaving with the spindle, the skein of spider silk falling in a lumpen mass. It wasn’t beautiful, but it was the act of the weave that mattered, pouring their focus into it, a single phrase again and again: Make a trap. Make a trap of sorrow. In the past, the spindle had been used to create charisma and love spells to bind groups together, to make them loyal, to steal their will. This was a different kind of bond.
High above them, the spiders had begun to weave, seemingly in rhythm with the metronome. It was like watching mist form, a soft, soundless blur spreading from the gutters and corners atop the roof, until they stood beneath a wide canopy of spider silk, the web like spangled frost, turning the night sky into a kind of mosaic. Alex could feel sadness radiating from it, as if the strands were weighted with it, making the web bow at the center. A sense of hopelessness filled her.
“Just ride it out,” said Turner. But he had his hands pressed to the sides of his head, as if he could squeeze the misery out of it.
Somewhere in the library, Alex heard glass breaking. Mercy drew her salt sword.
“They’re coming,” said Dawes. “They wouldn’t—” She
