“Did you do that?” she asked Il Bastone, staring up at the coffered ceiling and the pendant lamp that hung high above her from a brass chain. The bulb flickered softly behind its frosted glass globe. The house had known she needed rest. It was looking out for her. At least, that was what it felt like and maybe what Alex needed to believe.
Dawes had left a note on the coffee table: Going to Beinecke. Breakfast on the counter. Call me when you’re up. Bad news.
When wasn’t it bad news? When was Dawes going to leave her a note that said, All good. Go work on that paper so you don’t fall further behind.
Left you fresh scones and a couple of puppies?
Alex needed to get home, but she was famished and it would be a shame to waste a breakfast, so she shuffled into the kitchen in Dawes’s giant Tevas.
“Shit,” she said, when she saw the plates of pancakes, the vat of scrambled eggs strewn with chives, heaps of bacon, hollandaise warm in its flowered pitcher, and, yes, a pile of strawberry scones. There was enough food to feed an entire a cappella group if they would stop humming for a minute. Dawes cooked to soothe herself and that meant the news was very bad indeed.
Alex piled her plate with two of everything and called Dawes, but she didn’t answer. You’re freaking me out, she texted. And everything is fucking delicious.
When she was done, she filled a go-cup with coffee and tucked three chocolate chip pancakes into a plastic bag for later. She thought about making a detour to the Lethe library to see if the Albemarle Book could find anything on Turner’s Bible quote or poisons that aged their victims, but that would have to wait. She needed a hot shower and some real clothes. On her way out, she patted the door jamb and briefly wondered if she was making friends with a house or losing her mind.
She had crossed campus and was halfway up the stairs to her room at JE
when her phone finally buzzed.
Sterling at noon. We need four murderers.
Alex stared at Dawes’s message and replied, I’ll stop at the store.
Should I get half a dozen to be safe?
Her phone rang. “This isn’t a joke.”
“Why four, Dawes?”
“To get into hell. I think that’s why Darlington mentioned Sandow. He was giving us directions. It takes four people for the ritual once the Gauntlet is activated, four pilgrims for the four compass points.”
“Do we really have to—”
“You saw what happened when we tried to cut corners at Scroll and Key. I’m not going to blow up the library. And I think…” Dawes’s voice trailed off.
“And?” Alex prompted, all the optimism of the morning bleeding out of her.
“If we get this wrong, I don’t think we’re coming back.”
Alex leaned against the wall, listening to the echo of voices up and down the stone stairwell, the sounds of the college waking, the ancient pipes gurgling with water, someone singing an old song about Bette Davis’s eyes.
She couldn’t pretend to be surprised. Talk of Gauntlets and boys named Bunchy made it all feel like a game and that was the danger. Power could become too easy. There were too many opportunities to try just because you could.
“I get it, Dawes. But we’re in it now.” From the moment they’d met up in the cemetery and Alex had floated her wild theory of the gentleman demon, they’d known they couldn’t turn their backs on the chance that Darlington was still alive. But the stakes were different than they had been last spring.
She remembered her dream, Len saying, Some doors don’t stay locked. Well, they’d blown this door wide open when they’d botched that ritual at Scroll and Key, and now something half man, half monster was trapped in the ballroom at Black Elm. “We save him,” she said. “And if we can’t save him, we stop him.”
“What … what does that mean?” Dawes asked, her fear like a spotlight searching for answers.
It meant that if they couldn’t free Darlington, they couldn’t risk freeing the demon, and that might mean destroying them both. Whatever I am will be unleashed upon the world. But Dawes wasn’t ready to hear that.
“I’ll see you at Sterling,” Alex said, and hung up.
She trudged up the remaining stairs, feeling tired all over again. Maybe she could nap before she met Dawes at the library. She pushed open the door to their common room expecting to see Mercy curled up in the recliner with her laptop and a cup of tea. But Mercy was sitting upright on the couch, back straight, in her hyacinth robe—directly across from Michelle Alameddine.
Darlington’s mentor, his Virgil.
Alex hadn’t seen her since Michelle had practically fled their summer research session. She was wearing a plaid dress, a cardigan, and woven flats, her thick hair bound in a braid, a jaunty scarf tied at her neck. She looked quality. She looked like a grown-up.
“Hey,” Alex said, her surprise rendering her incapable of much more.
“I … How long have you been waiting?”
“Not long, but I have a train to make. What are you wearing?”
Alex had forgotten she was still in her pajama shorts, a Lethe sweatshirt, and Dawes’s bunchy socks and Tevas. “Let me change.”
Who is she? Mercy mouthed as Alex hurried into their bedroom. But that was not a conversation Alex intended to have in mime.
She shut the door behind her and shoved open the window, letting the crisp morning air clear her head. Just like that, summer had gone. She yanked on black jeans and a black Henley, traded the Tevas for her boots, and rubbed some toothpaste over her teeth.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Michelle asked when Alex emerged from the bedroom.
“I can give you guys privacy,” Mercy offered.
“No,” said Alex. She wasn’t going to kick Mercy out of their room.
“Come on.”
