All Alex could offer was, “I told you he was different.”

“Different is you lost a few pounds. You got a haircut. Not … this.”

At that moment Darlington’s eyes opened, bright and golden. “Where have you been?” Turner started at the sound of Darlington’s voice, human but for that cold echo. “You reek of death.”

Alex groaned. “You’re not helping.”

“Why did you bring me here?” Turner bit out. “I asked for help with a case. I thought I made it clear I don’t want any part of this crazy cult shit.”

“Let’s go downstairs,” said Dawes.

“Stay,” said Darlington, and Alex couldn’t tell if it was a plea or a command.

“I think Darlington can help you,” she said. “I think he’s the only one of us who can.”

“That thing? Listen, Stern, I don’t know how much of this is real and how much is … hocus-pocus bullshit, but I know a monster when I see one.”

“Do you?” Alex felt her anger rising. “Did you know Dean Sandow was a killer? Did you know Blake Keely was a rapist? I showed you what’s behind the door. You can’t just shut it and pretend you never saw.”

Turner rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I sure as hell wish I could.”

“Come on.”

Alex marched into the room and hoped he would follow. The air was lush with heat. That sweet scent was everywhere, that wildfire smell, the stink of disaster riding the wind, the kind that sends coyotes running from the hills and into suburban backyards to crouch and howl by swimming pools.

“Detective,” said the creature behind the golden wall.

Turner hovered in the doorway. “That really you?”

Darlington paused, considered. “I’m not entirely sure.”

“Goddamn it,” Turner muttered, because despite the horns and the glowing symbols, Darlington seemed nothing but human. “What happened to him? What is all this? Why the fuck is he naked?”

“He’s trapped,” Alex said, as simply as she could, “and we need your help to get him out.”

“You don’t mean filing a missing persons report, do you?”

“Afraid not.”

Turner gave himself a shake as if he still wondered, even hoped he might be dreaming. “No,” he said at last. “No. I don’t … This isn’t my job and I don’t want it to be. And don’t tell me this has anything to do with our bosses at Lethe because I know that squirrelly look on Dawes’s face. She’s afraid I’m going to tattle on you.”

“Your case—”

“Do not start with me, Stern. I like my job—no, I love my job—and whatever this is … It’s not worth all the money in the devil’s pocket. I’ll solve the case on my own with good old detective work. Hide the outcasts and all that shit—”

“Bewray not him that wandereth,” Darlington said, finishing the quote.

Alex almost expected thunder and lightning, some cosmic response to a half demon, or maybe more-than-half demon, reciting from the Bible.

“That’s the one,” Turner said uncomfortably.

“Told you,” whispered Alex.

“You came from the crime scene,” said Darlington. “It’s why you wear death like a shroud.”

Turner cast Alex a glance, and she wished Darlington would just talk like Darlington. But Turner was a detective and he couldn’t help himself.

“The quote is familiar to you?”

“Who was killed?”

“A professor and the dean of Morse College.”

“Two bodies,” mused Darlington; then a faint smile crossed his face, mischievous, almost hungry in its glee, nothing human about it. “There will be a third.”

“The hell does that mean?”

“Exactly.”

“Explain yourself,” Turner demanded.

“I always admired virtue,” Darlington murmured. “But I could never imitate it.”

Turner threw up his hands. “Has he completely lost his mind?”

Somewhere far below the doorbell rang at the same time that Dawes’s phone buzzed.

They all jumped, all but Darlington.

Dawes drew in a sharp breath. She was staring at her phone. “Oh God.

Oh God.”

“Who are they?” Alex asked, looking down at the screen, where a welldressed couple was trying to peer through the windows by the front door.

“They look like real estate agents,” said Turner.

But Dawes looked more terrified than when they’d opened a portal to hell.

“Those are Darlington’s parents.”

15

Turner shook his head. “You’re like kids who got caught raiding the liquor cabinet.”

Alex’s mind sped through possible strategies, excuses, elaborate lies.

“Both of you stay out of sight until I take care of them.”