His gaze snapped to hers, and in his rage she could see the echo of the demon. “No. Never. They turned the power off, after I inherited this place.
They thought they could freeze me out.” His shoulders lifted, dropped. His anger fell away from him like an ill-fitting garment. He looked so tired. “I don’t know how to not love them.”
How many times had Alex wished she could feel only resentment toward Mira? Or nothing at all? That was the problem with love. It was hard to unlearn, no matter how harsh the lesson.
“Is this real?” she asked.
But Darlington only smiled. “This isn’t the time for philosophy.”
“Tell me how to reach you.”
“Come closer, Stern. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
Was she afraid? Was this the real Darlington, or was he the monster waiting in the garden? Some part of her didn’t care. She stepped forward.
“Was it you that night?” She could see the circle of protection was fraying, dissolving into sparks. He is dangerous. He is not what you think.
“At Book and Snake? Did you use the corpse to spell my name?”
“Galaxy Stern,” Darlington said, his eyes flashing gold, “I have been crying out to you from the start.”
When Alex woke, the sheets were soaked with sweat, and the wound at her neck was leaking pale pink rivulets of blood.
It is interesting to contemplate which of Aesop’s fables were chosen forillustration in Bonawit’s very fine glasswork. Is there a lesson in thechoices? That may depend on how each fable is read. Take “The Wolfand the Crane”: In the course of eating too quickly, a greedy wolf gets abone stuck in his throat. To the crane he says, “Use your slender beak topull it out and I will give you a fine reward.” The crane obliges, placinghis head inside the wolf’s jaws and extracting the bone, but when thework is done, the wolf grants the crane no prize. Isn’t it enough that hehas let such a fool escape his bite? Traditionally, we are told the moral is
“There is no reward for serving the wicked.” But we might just as wellunderstand the story to posit this question: “Isn’t it a merry thing tocheat death?”
Less famous but also found in these same windows is the tale of
“The Kid and the Wolf.” Separated from his herd, a young goatencounters a wolf. “As I must be eaten,” he says, “will you not play mea tune that I may die dancing?” Happy to have music with his meal, thewolf obliges, but from across the pasture, the huntsman’s hounds hearhis playing. Chased through the woods, the wolf marvels at his ownfoolishness, for he was born a butcher, not a piper. The moral offeredin most readings is strange indeed: “Let nothing keep you from yourpurpose.” Then are we to understand ourselves as the wolf? Why is theclever goat not our model? Take then this lesson: “When faced withdeath, better to dance than to lie down for it.”
—A Reconsideration of the Decoration of Sterling Memorial Library, Rudolph
Kittscher (Jonathan Edwards ’33)
23
Alex waited until daylight to walk home to the dorms and change her clothes.
She borrowed a soft gray cashmere sweater from Lauren, and put on her least-shabby-looking pair of jeans. She wanted to seem responsible, like a good investment, but there was nothing she could do about her scuffed-up boots.
When she’d called Anselm to ask for a meeting, she had expected him to tell her to meet with the new Praetor instead. But he was coming up on the Metro-North that afternoon and agreed to squeeze her in.
“You’ll have to forgive the name of the place,” he’d said. “I have a meeting there before I head back to the city, but I can meet you for a late lunch.”
Shell and Bones. It was an oyster bar right on the water. Alex checked to make sure her salt collar wasn’t visible beneath her borrowed sweater, then nudged her bike out onto the street. She forgot sometimes that New Haven was so close to the sea, that it was truly a port town.
The ride down Howard was surprisingly pretty, past leaves turning colors and homes that got grander as they neared the waterfront. They were nothing like the mansions of Old Greenwich. There was something public about their big porches, their windows facing the road, as if they were meant to be seen and enjoyed instead of being hidden behind a wall.
Dawes hadn’t taken the news of the missing Mercedes well, because of course the car was not just a car.
“What do you mean you lost it?” she’d cried.
“I didn’t lose it. I know where it is.”
“Then tell me so I can go get it. I have a spare set of keys. We—”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
Because I’m afraid. Because it’s too dangerous. But Alex couldn’t explain it all. Linus Reiter. What she’d been doing in Old Greenwich. The
dream of Darlington restored to himself in the circle. I have been crying out to you from the start. It was too much.
“You lost him,” Dawes seethed. “And now this.”
“I didn’t lose Darlington,” Alex said, striving for patience. “He isn’t a shiny penny I dropped somewhere. Elliot Sandow sent a hellbeast to eat him, so go to the cemetery and bitch at his tombstone if you want to.”
“You should have—”
“What? I should have what? Known the right spell to speak, the right incantation? I should have grabbed him so we could go to hell together?”
“Yes,” Dawes said on a hiss. “Yes. You’re his Dante.”
“Is that what you’d have done?”
Dawes didn’t answer, and Alex knew she should let it lie, but she was too tired and bruised to be kind. “I’ll tell you what you would have done, Dawes.
