Alex risked a glance back, trying to scan the crowds of students in their hats and coats. She paused to punch another number into her phone. She was running again before Dawes picked up.
“Are you still with Tripp?” Alex asked. Her voice was thready and breathless. “Get to Il Bastone.”
“We’re not allowed at Il Bastone.”
“Dawes, just get there. And get Turner and Tripp there too.”
“Alex—”
“Just fucking do it! I brought something back with me. Something bad.”
Alex looked over her shoulder again, but she wasn’t sure what she expected to see. Hellie? Len? Some other monster?
There was nothing to do but keep running.
30
As she raced down Orange Street, Alex could feel the little Gray clamoring to be released, rattling around her head like someone had given him too much sugar. But she wasn’t letting him go until she knew she could get inside Il Bastone.
Alex took the steps in a single, awkward leap. What would it mean if this door remained closed to her now? If the Lethe board had already banished her from this place of protection? From quiet and safety and plenty?
But the door flew open. Alex lurched inside, falling forward. She felt the little Gray’s ghost yanked free, the wards preventing him from entering, even hidden inside her body. He left in a sulky rush, taking his strength with him.
The door slammed behind her, hard enough that the windows shook.
Alex felt her thighs wobbling with fatigue. She used the banister to pull herself up, felt the cool wood beneath her palm, pressed her forehead against the finial, the ridges of the sunflower pattern hard against her skin. This was home. Not her dorm room. Not the wreckage she’d left behind in Los Angeles.
She drew a few long breaths and made herself peer through the window in the front parlor. Hellie—or the demon pretending to be Hellie—stood on the sidewalk across the street. How had Alex mistaken a monster for the real thing? Hellie had the confident grace of an athlete, easy in her beauty, even when their lives were fraying at the edges. But the thing across the street held itself taut, wary, its hunger barely leashed.
I was the one who was meant to bounce back. I was supposed to leaveyou behind.
“Shut up,” Alex muttered. But she couldn’t pretend those words were a demon lie. The wrong girl had died at Ground Zero.
Alex picked up her phone and texted the group. There’s a blonde outside of Il Bastone. Looks like a girl. IS NOT A GIRL. Use salt.
But her eye caught movement on the sidewalk. Dawes and Tripp. Had they seen her message?
Alex hesitated. She didn’t have time to raid the armory for salt and weapons. She had no salt pearls left. Fine. She couldn’t stand there and do nothing.
You stole my life. You stole my chance.
Alex shuddered and threw open the door. “Dawes!”
The demon leapt across the street, straight for Alex on the porch of Il Bastone, its gait wild, and loping, and inhuman. Alex braced for impact.
The demon lunged over the low black fence and then shrieked, falling to the ground in a heap, its flesh bubbling as Dawes and Tripp hurled fistfuls of salt at it.
She should have known Pamela Dawes would come prepared.
“Get inside!” Dawes shouted.
Alex didn’t need to be told twice. She stumbled up the stairs and back into the entry hall. Once Dawes and Tripp were inside, they locked the door, then nearly jumped when the bell at the back of the house rang.
Mercy and Turner were outside.
“We’re safe in here?” Turner asked, eyes scanning the hallway as they entered.
An unnerving thought entered Alex’s mind. “What did you see?”
Turner was moving from room to room closing curtains as if expecting sniper fire. “A dead man.”
“Oh God,” Mercy gasped. She was standing at the front window in the parlor staring out at the street.
Hellie was there, but she wasn’t alone now. Blake Keely was with her, his head whole and perfect and wedding cake handsome. A middle-aged man in a cheap-looking suit was there too—arms crossed, rocked back on his heels, as if he’d seen it all and wasn’t impressed—along with a tall, rangy guy who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.
“Spenser,” Tripp said. “You … you guys see him? I thought I was imagining things.”
Alex recognized them all. She’d seen them in hell. All of their victims.
All of their demons.
“We didn’t close the door,” Dawes said, her voice rough, frightened.
“We didn’t complete the ritual. We—”
“Don’t say it,” said Tripp. “Do not say it.”
