“It was added later,” Dawes said. “After the library was built. Because something was seeping up through the stones.” Silence settled over the room.
Turner scrubbed a hand over his head. “Fine. We get to the middle. Then what happens?”
Now Dawes hesitated. “We descend. I don’t know what that entails. Some people describe hallucinations and an actual sensation of falling, others describe a complete disconnect from the body and a feeling of flight.”
“Sweet,” said Tripp.
“But that could be because of the datura.”
“That’s a poison,” said Turner. “Had a case where a woman was growing it in her backyard, putting it in lotions and ointments.”
“It does have medicinal uses,” said Dawes. “It just needs a steady hand.”
“Sure,” said Turner. “Are you going to tell them its other name?”
Dawes looked down at her notes and mumbled, “Devil’s trumpet. The pilgrims are anointed with it before they begin. It loosens the soul’s tether to this world. We can’t cross over without it.” “And then we die,” said Alex.
Tripp gave a nervous laugh. “Metaphorically, right?”
Slowly, Dawes shook her head. “From what I can tell, we’ll be buried alive.”
“Shit,” said Turner.
“The verb is unclear,” Dawes offered. “It might mean buried or submerged.”
Tripp pushed back from the table. “Are we sure … Is this a good idea?”
“We’re out of good ideas,” said Alex. “This is what we have left.”
But Turner wasn’t interested in Tripp’s nerves. “So we die,” he said as if he were asking for directions to the bank. “Then what?”
Dawes had bit so deeply into her lip a thin line of blood had appeared.
“At some point, we should encounter Darlington—or the part of him still stuck in hell. We secure his soul in a vessel, then we return to this plane and take it to Black Elm. That’s when we’ll be at our most vulnerable.”
“Vulnerable how?” Alex asked.
Turner tapped the open book in front of him. “If we don’t close off the Gauntlet, something can follow us.”
“Something?” Mercy finally sounded scared, and Alex was almost grateful for that. She needed to take this seriously.
“What we’re doing is considered theft,” said Dawes. “We have no reason to think hell will give up a soul easily.”
Tripp gave another nervous laugh. “Like a hell heist.”
“Well…” Dawes mused. “Yes, that’s accurate.”
“If it’s a heist, we should all have jobs,” said Tripp. “The thief, the hacker, the spy.”
“Your job is to survive,” Turner bit out. “And to make sure you don’t do anything stupid that gets the rest of us killed.”
Tripp held up his hands, agreeable as always. “No doubt.”
“We do need to move fast and stay on our guard,” said Dawes. “Until the two parts of Darlington’s soul are brought together, we’ll be targets.”
For any demons that pursued them. For creatures like Linus Reiter. What if he was watching? What if he knew what they meant to do? Again Alex felt that crawling paranoia, that sense of their enemies multiplying.
“Are you so sure we’re going to find his soul?” Turner asked.
Dawes dabbed at her lip with her sleeve. “His soul should want to find union with its other half, but that’s all about the vessel we choose. It needs to be something that will call to him. Like the deed to Black Elm or the Armagnac Michelle Alameddine left him.”
Except the deed had burned to ash months ago and the Armagnac had been blown to bits at Scroll and Key.
“Like a grail,” said Tripp. “That would be good.”
“Maybe a book?” suggested Mercy. “A first edition?”
“I know what it should be,” said Alex. “If I can find it.”
Dawes had somehow reopened the cut on her lip. “It has to be precious.
It has to have power over him.”
Alex’s memory was not her own—it belonged to the dead Daniel Tabor Arlington III watching his grandson mix an elixir over the sink in Black Elm, knowing the poison could kill him, unable to make him stop. She remembered what Danny—Darlington—had chosen to use as his cup in that moment of reckless desire: the little keepsake box from some long-ago, better time, the box he had once believed was magic and was determined to make magic again.
“It’s precious,” Alex said.
The dream of a world beyond ours, of magic made real. The way through the wardrobe, and maybe back again.
