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“He thought Darlington was gone forever, that there was no way he could survive a trip to hell. He thought the casting would just prove Darlington was dead.”
Had she spread her tarot cards out in front of her in the living room? Was she reading something other than calamity?
“What do you mean, ‘okay’?” Alex asked. “Do you know what the Greeks called the Milky Way?” “You know I don’t.” “Galaxias.” Alex sat down on the edge of the couch, trying to ignore the sliver of cold in her gut. Galaxias. Galaxy. Was that the word the corpse had been spelling out again and again? “He was trying to reach you,” said Dawes. “To reach us.”
Was that what he was trying to do now? Warn her? Blame her? Or was he crying out to her from the other side of the Veil, begging for her help?
“No. We need the table at Scroll and Key. We need to open a portal.” “To hell.” “I can’t think of anything else.” Dawes sounded desperate.
Had she let herself forget that somewhere Darlington was lost and suffering?
But Darlington did. And if he wanted to make a case against her, that would be the end of it.
so Alex was mostly left alone at Il Bastone.
Il Bastone’s doorknob had rattled happily beneath her hand, the door springing open like a pair of welcoming arms.
She hadn’t even asked if she could stay at Il Bastone. She just did.
Who else had bled for this place?
The lights flickered, and she knew the house was picking up her fear.
Alex had survived, and so had Il Bastone.
But always she returned to the house on Orange, to Il Bastone.
The house always had something new to show her.
They owed her, and Dawes, and Darlington. Dawes wasn’t asking and Darlington sure as hell wasn’t going to collect, so it was up to Alex to clear the ledger.
“I’ll be back,” she murmured to the house as the front door locked behind her. She paused to listen to the soft whining of the jackals beneath the porch and she hoped it was true. Alex had made good on that promise.
the details too painful to draw into focus.
She’d dosed herself with basso belladonna. She’d told herself she was going to get through the year clean, but the year was being a dick, so she’d do what she had to.
She had expected Darlington to smirk when she’d told him how much she loved JE’s dining hall, but he’d only nodded and said, “It’s too grand to be the common room of a tavern or an inn, but that’s how it feels. As if you could put up your feet here and wait for any storm to pass.”
But the real Alex belonged in the storm, a lightning rod for trouble. That would change when Darlington returned. It wouldn’t just be her and Dawes trying to bar the door against the dark anymore.
“Best be careful,” Alex said with a grin. “Mercy will fuck you up.”
but Dawes only looked thoughtful. “What is it?” Alex asked as they headed down the hall to the sanctum.
“You sound like him.”
Had Alex been doing her Darlington act? She guessed she had. Every time she spoke with the authority of Lethe, it was with his voice really—assured, confident, knowledgeable. Everything she wasn’t.
since Alex had shared her theory that Darlington wasn’t dead but trapped somewhere in hell, the gentleman demon who had so terrified the dead and whatever monsters gathered beyond the Veil.
But that hadn’t stopped them from trying to piece together a way to reach him. Galaxias. Galaxy. A cry from the other side of the Veil. What would it mean to be an apprentice once more? To be Dante again?
They had no business stealing things that had been meant for Darlington, that were precious to him.
We’ll bring him back and he’ll forgive us, she told herself as she drew a small glass from her bag and filled it, the liquid warm and orange as late sun. He’ll forgive me. For all of it.
“Come on,” Alex said. “He’s waiting on the other side.”
Come home, Darlington.
Come on along. Come on along. Let me take you by the hand.
Then a voice echoed through the room—from somewhere below or somewhere above, it was impossible to tell.
But Alex knew that voice, and the word he spoke was clear and pleading. Wait.
“I heard him—” Tears filled her eyes.
A single word. Darlington’s voice. Desperate, demanding. Wait. They’d almost done it, almost reached him. They’d been so close. He would have gotten it right. He always did.
Nothing but a dark blur was visible, a faint light dancing at the edges.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Dawes.” “Of course not.” Of course not. But Dawes still had that startled look and Alex knew what she was thinking.
“It’s not an insult. If I wanted to insult you, I’d call you two pounds of shit in a one-pound bag. For example.”
That was Dawes’s job. Alex’s job was to be the cannonball once Dawes figured out where to point the cannon.
She crossed her arms. “We owe him.”
A faint light shone through the edges, soft, flickering amber.
Alex unlocked the kitchen door, and Dawes gasped as Cosmo sprang from behind the cupboards, screeching past them into the yard.
One side of Cosmo’s white fur looked like it had been singed black. Alex wanted to make some kind of excuse. Cosmo was always getting into trouble, showing up with a new scar or covered in brambles, jaws clamped around a poor murdered mouse. But she couldn’t force her mouth to make the words.
If Darlington were here, standing at this threshold, he wouldn’t hesitate. He’d be the knight. He’d be a lot better prepared, but he’d walk up those stairs. Protect your own. Pay your debts.
But Alex felt like she couldn’t stop herself. She was the cannonball. She was the bullet. And the gun had gone off when Dawes had told her there’d been some kind of disturbance at the house. You want to open a door that isn’t meant to be opened. There was nothing to do but keep going.
Daniel Tabor Arlington V sat cross-legged, naked as a baby in the bath. Two horns curled back from his forehead, their ridges gleaming as if shot through with molten gold, and his body was covered in bright markings. A wide golden collar ringed his neck, ornamented with rows of garnet and jade.
the place most distant from the sight of Darlington’s cock, which was very erect and shining like a supercharged, oversized glowstick.
“Darlington?” Alex choked out.
Darlington had been alive and trapped, maybe being tortured, in hell.
