The door is easy to miss because of the paneling, but my friend Camila showed it to me. We walked right through. It takes you to the Linonia and Brothers reading room.”
Dawes looked like she was going to jump out of her chair. “To Linonia.
Directly around the courtyard.”
Alex hadn’t followed much of their debate, but that she understood. A hidden door. A way to circle the courtyard that wasn’t on the blueprints.
“We can complete the circuit. We can finish the Gauntlet.”
“See?” said Mercy with a grin. “I’m helpful.”
Dawes leaned back in her chair and met Alex’s gaze. “You’re Virgil now.
It’s your call.”
Alex threw up her hands. “Fuck it. Mercy Zhao, welcome to Lethe.”
What must be understood is that demons are creatures of appetite. Sothough their powers are virtually without limit, their understanding isdecidedly more constrained. This is why they are so easily distracted bypuzzles and games: They are most engaged by what is immediatelybefore them. This is also why the creation of material objects out ofnothing proves so difficult. Gold out of thin air? Costly in terms of bloodsacrifice, but easy enough. An alloy? Slightly more difficult. A complexitem like a ship or an alarm clock? Well, you had best have a rigorousunderstanding of their workings because I can guarantee the demon willnot. An organism more complex than an amoeba? Nearly impossible.
The devil, my friends, is in the details.
—Kittscher’s Daemonologie, 1933
Knuckles of Shimshon, believed to be one of a set; gold, lead, andtungsten
Provenance: Unknown; date of origin unknown
Donor: Wolf’s Head, 1998
These “brass knuckles” endow the wearer with the strength of twentymen. They were acquired during one of the many Middle Eastern digssponsored by Wolf’s Head and its foundation. But whether they werediscovered at an architectural site or in a shop in some tourist quarter isunknown. Whether the hair forever trapped in gold belonged to thelegendary hero or was simply a part of the enchantment placed upon theobject is also unknown. But while the knuckles’ provenance is shaky, themagic is not, and this most useful gift was added to the armory in 1998,in celebration of Lethe’s centennial.
—from the Lethe Armory Catalogue as revised and edited by
Pamela Dawes, Oculus
20
Does it ever feel like none of this is real?” Mercy whispered. They were sitting in the common room with Lauren and another member of the field hockey team, making construction-paper flowers for Liquor Treat. They’d set the room up as a gloomy garden with chocolate soil pots they’d fill with gummy worms. “All I can think about is Friday night.”
They had a lot to accomplish before Halloween and only a few days to get it done. Alex had brought home recommended reading that Dawes had curated for her and Mercy, and they studied it in their room between classes and meals, then stashed it under their beds. She still didn’t know how to feel about Mercy putting herself in danger, but she was also grateful to not feel so alone, and Mercy’s excitement was a tonic to Dawes’s constant worrying.
“This is real life,” Alex reminded her, holding up a glue stick. “The stuff with Lethe … that’s the distraction.”
She was reminding herself as much as Mercy. The cool weather had shifted the feel of campus. There was something impermanent in the first months of the new semester, a warm softness that left it malleable in the waning days of what was no longer summer, but didn’t yet feel like fall. Now hats and scarves emerged, boots replaced sandals, a kind of seriousness took hold. Alex and Mercy still cracked their windows or sometimes opened them wide—the dorm heaters had embraced the new season with too much zeal.
But tucked away in the JE reading room or meeting with her philosophy TA at Bass, Alex felt a strange sensation creep over her, a dangerous comfort in routine. She wasn’t sailing through her classes, but she was passing, a steady stream of Cs and Bs, a cascade of hard-won mediocrity. All of this can be lost, she told herself as she bent her lips to another cup of tea, feeling the steam on her skin. This ease, this quiet. It was precious. It was impossible.
She was sticking googly eyes on a sunflower when her phone pinged.
Alex had almost forgotten about Eitan, or maybe hoped he’d forgotten about her now that Oddman had paid his nut, and the novelty of her as muscle had
worn off. The text was an address Alex didn’t recognize, and when she looked it up, she saw it was in Old Greenwich. How the hell was she supposed to get there?
“Do you want to take a theater class next semester?” Mercy asked.
“Sure.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Just my mom.” In a way it was true.
“My parents won’t like it,” Mercy went on. “But I can tell them it will help with public speaking. Shakespeare Acted is the only one open to non–
theater majors.”
“Shakespeare again?” Lauren asked, repulsed. She was an econ major and constantly complaining about anything that involved more reading.
Mercy laughed. “Yeah.”
I’ll beat thee, but I should infect my hands. Alex couldn’t remember what it was from, but she was tempted to text it to Eitan. Instead she texted Dawes and asked if the Mercedes was at Il Bastone.
Why? came the reply.
But Alex wasn’t in the mood for the mother hen protecting her boy’s precious car. She was putting everything on the line for dear Darlington and she needed transportation. She waited Dawes out and eventually her phone pinged again.
Yes. Don’t leave the tank empty.
