His clawed fingertips pierced the golden circle, and Alex stumbled backward, a high-pitched yelp emerging from her lips.
Darlington seemed to shift. He was taller, broader; his horns looked sharper. He had fangs. I feel a little less human.
Then he seemed to yank himself back to the center of the circle. He was sitting once more, hands on knees, as if he’d never moved. Maybe he really was meditating, trying to keep his demon self in check.
“Find the Gauntlet, make the descent. Come get me, Stern.” He paused then, and his golden eyes flashed open. “Please.”
That word, raw and human, was all she could bear. Alex ran, down the hall, down the steps. She slammed into Dawes at the foot of the stairs.
“Alex!” Dawes cried as they fought to keep their balance.
“Come on,” Alex said, dragging Dawes back through the house.
“What happened?” Dawes was saying as she let herself be pulled along.
“You shouldn’t have gone up there—”
“I know.”
“We can’t be sure what we’re dealing—”
“I know, Dawes. Just get me out of here and I’ll explain everything.” Alex threw open the kitchen door, grateful for the clean burst of cold air. She could hear Belbalm’s voice: All worlds are open to us. If we are bold enough to enter. Did that mean the underworld too? She had passed through the boundary unscathed, just like in the dream. What would happen if she entered the circle?
Alex grunted and stumbled when her feet hit the gravel.
Dawes caught her by the elbow.
“Alex, slow down. Here.” She held up soft white tube socks and a pair of Tevas. “I brought these for you. They’re too big, but better than going barefoot.”
Alex sat down on the doormat to pull on the socks and shoes. She wasn’t going back inside. Her head was buzzing. Her body felt alien.
“What were you doing up there?” Dawes asked.
Alex could hear the accusation in her voice and she didn’t quite know how to reply. She thought about lying, but there was too much to explain.
Like how she’d ended up at Black Elm in her pajamas.
“I woke up here,” she said, trembling in the cold now that her panic had eased. “I dreamed … I dreamed I was here and then I was.”
“You sleepwalked?”
“I guess so. And then it was like I was still sleepwalking. I don’t quite know how I ended up in the ballroom. But … he talked.” “He talked to you?”
Dawes’s voice was too loud.
“Yeah.”
“I see.” Dawes seemed to close in on herself, the concerned friend receding, the mother hen emerging. “Let’s get you warm.”
Alex let herself be helped to her feet and shepherded into the car, where Dawes cranked the heater up, the faint smell of brimstone emerging as it always had since the night of the new moon ritual. Dawes rested her hands on the wheel as if making a decision.
Then she put the car into gear and they were driving back toward campus.
The streets were nearly empty, and Alex wondered who had seen her walking, if anyone had stopped to ask if she needed help, a half-naked girl, barefoot and wandering in the dark, just like that night with Hellie.
It was only once they were back at Il Bastone, with Alex’s feet coated in healing balm and propped on a towel-covered cushion, a cup of tea by her side, that Dawes sat down, opened her notebook, and said, “Okay, tell me.”
Alex had expected more emotion, lip chewing, maybe tears. But Dawes was Oculus now, in research mode, ready to document and investigate, and Alex was grateful for it.
“He said he doesn’t have much time,” Alex began, then did her best to explain the rest, that he had nearly breached the circle, that he’d begged them to find the Gauntlet, but that he didn’t know where it was.
Dawes made a small humming noise.
“He’d have no reason not to tell us,” said Alex.
“He might not be able to. It depends … it depends how much demon he’s become. Demons love puzzles, remember? They never move in a straight line.”
“He talked about Sandow too. He saw him on the other side. He said his host had welcomed him.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Dawes. “He could have named his host, whatever god or demon or hellbeast he’s in service to, but he didn’t. What did he say about the host?”
“Nothing. Just that Sandow had killed for gain. He said greed was a sin in any language.”
“So Darlington may be bound to Mammon or Plutus or Gullveig or some other god of greed. That might help us if we can figure out where the Gauntlet is and how to reveal it. What else?”
“Nothing. He wanted books and I brought him books. He said he was bored.”
“That’s it?”
