Chapter 14
In the room at the end of the hall with only the narrowest view of the sea, Dawes sat beside Theo. Her freckles looked stark against her skin, and her eyes had a shine to them. She was struggling not to cry. Dawes wanted to offer comfort, but Alex wasn’t sure what comfort was left to this man.
“We found his coat,” Dawes said. “His things. His name is Theo Alonto. He’s twenty-six years old. He’s been here … He’s been here for almost two years.”
Kittscher had been draining him slowly. It’s important to enjoy your work.
“I don’t get it,” Tripp said softly. “Wouldn’t someone notice he went missing?”
“He didn’t go missing,” Alex said. “That was the trick Kittscher played, that he kept playing. He took Theo’s life, slid right into it, visited family and friends, answered texts.
When he finds a new victim, maybe another caregiver, or someone from the neighborhood, or just some dumb mark who came to check the gas meter, then he tells everyone he’s moving on or he landed a job in San Francisco or something. ”
Theo’s glassy eyes watched her, and he gave the faintest nod.
“I got him to take a few sips of water,” said Dawes.
“Has he spoken?”
“Only a couple of words. It’s painful, I think.”
Again, that faint nod.
A high shrieking wail reached them from the other room.
It was abruptly cut off, and Alex suspected Darlington had gagged Kittscher or found some other way to silence him.
They didn’t need neighbors calling the police.
She knew she was supposed to be horrified, disgusted, maybe frightened.
And maybe she was a little scared. Darlington’s demon was unpredictable.
But mostly she was grateful. This time someone else would do the hard thing.
Alex gestured to Dawes, who waved Tripp over.
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked, panicked.
“Hold his hand,” Dawes said sternly. “Tell him he’ll be okay. Think about what you’d want someone to say if you were injured and alone.”
“Sorry, yeah, okay, my bad.”
Tripp took her place and reached for Theo’s bony hand. It looked like a pale spider, less a hand than the sketch of a hand.
“Anything?” Dawes asked.
“I don’t think there’s a way to set this right. I tried to pull some of his soul back, but…”
Dawes pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “He had his life stolen. Even if we could somehow salvage parts of his soul, he won’t be what he was. I don’t know what to do. We owe him, Alex. Lethe owes him.”
Him and all the victims before him. But Alex had no idea how to pay this debt.
“I rooted around a little. Inside Kittscher.”
“And?”
“Sludge. Agony. The usual.” A glimpse of Golgarot but at a distance, as if the longer the demon had remained in the human realm, the weaker its connection to the other side had become.
“There were traces of Theo.” Golden and warm, human.
She’d smelled concrete after rain, freshly mowed grass, heard the steady rattle of a commuter train.
But it was all so dim and fragmented. “I could try to piece him together, but I don’t know what we’d be left with. ”
A moan drew their attention back to Theo and Tripp.
“I don’t think he wants that,” said Tripp.
“Kill.” The word was barely a breath.
“You want us to kill Kittscher?” Tripp asked.
Theo blinked twice. His eyes flicked to the water glass, and Dawes rushed forward to hold it to his lips.
He tried again. “Kill … me.”
Alex and Dawes exchanged a glance.
“I don’t think we can do that,” said Dawes.
“Afraid,” Theo managed.
“Kittscher can’t hurt you anymore,” Dawes said.
Again, the double blink.
“Hell,” he rasped.
“He’s afraid to die,” said Tripp. He looked close to tears himself.
“No,” said Alex. “He’s afraid of hell. That he’ll have to keep suffering.”
Alex understood his fear, maybe better than anyone.
But she didn’t know what promises she could make.
She didn’t know what sins he might have committed, or if that even mattered.
Sandow had gone to hell for his crimes, but Sandow was a murderer.
Theo might simply become a Gray and pass behind the Veil.
He might go someplace lovely and kind. Or he might end up tortured by demons no different from the one cuffed in the sunroom.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Alex said as gently as she could. “There are no guarantees.”
Tripp wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “That’s not true.”
“You’ve got a direct line to paradise or something?”
“You could do it,” he said. “You can fix it.”
“He’s right,” Dawes said quietly. “You could offer him oblivion. You can make sure it all ends here.”
Alex stared at her. “You want me to eat his soul?” Dawes winced, but Alex didn’t relent. “That’s what you’re saying, right, Dawes?”
Dawes tucked her chin. “I guess.”
So much for someone else doing the hard thing.
Alex didn’t want any of this. She had seen Marguerite Belbalm eat Sandow’s soul.
She had nearly had her own soul stolen away by that woman.
It had felt like unraveling, her memories snagging on Belbalm’s teeth, the good and the bad, everything that made her Galaxy Stern snatched away by Belbalm’s hunger.
And she could admit this too: When she had held Darlington’s soul cradled against hers, she had struggled to give it up.
She could still feel the crest of elation, the whole of his life carried within her, the bright reverberation of steel against steel.
For a moment, she had understood that she might capture eternity, that she might understand everything, that with this kind of power, she need never be afraid again.
She had never felt more free. Alex had forced herself to release him, but the temptation had been overwhelming.
There was no other high like that, and she didn’t want to feel it again, didn’t want to itch for it again.
“I can’t.”
Dawes laid a tentative hand on her shoulder. “You’re the only one who can.”
For a long moment they stood in quiet, the sole sound Theo’s labored breathing. Then Alex gave the smallest nod. It was all she could manage. She let Dawes steer her back to the bed.
Tripp rose and she took his place.
“I don’t think I should do this.” What if I don’t want to stop with Theo? What if a taste makes me a glutton like Belbalm?
“Please,” Theo whispered.
“You’ll be gone,” she warned him. “Really gone. No afterlife, no nothing. Just … erased.” That wasn’t quite the right word. Subsumed. The soul couldn’t truly be extinguished, but all of his memories, all of his life force, at least everything Kittscher had left would become a part of Alex.
And what would that make her? Was a Wheelwalker really just another type of demon?
Stealing dead souls, using their strength for a while was one thing.
But a living being? Taking that life … It was a little too close to what Reiter and Kittscher and all the demons they had shoved into the box had done.
Alex had never wasted a moment of regret on Len or Betcha or Ariel or Eitan. She knew she would be sorry for this. “It’s oblivion … It’s…”
“It’s Lethe,” said Dawes. “The river that takes your memories.”
“Please,” Theo repeated.
Now Alex understood. Oblivion didn’t frighten him because he didn’t want to remember.
There had been too much pain. He wanted to be washed clean of knowing, and how many times had she dreamed of the same thing?
To be purged of every bad memory, every mistake, every scar, to be made new, even if that meant being made nothing?
She sat down beside him. Her throat ached and she wasn’t sure why she wanted to cry. She took his hand. His fingers felt like kindling, weightless against hers.
“I can’t undo it,” she said. “Once it’s done.”
He nodded.
“We could wait. We could try to contact—”
His grip tightened and she knew he was using every last bit of his strength.
“Now,” he managed.
She glanced at Dawes. “It might create a nexus.”
Dawes took Tripp’s hand. They looked like mourners at a graveside. “No one will know. We owe him.”
God, she was tired of paying other people’s debts.
Theo’s eyes darted to the corner of the desk and he blinked rapidly.
“This?” Tripp asked, holding up a key chain, some sort of California souvenir, a brown bear cradling the outline of the state.
Tripp set it in Theo’s other hand, and he gripped it like a rosary. The bear. Kittscher’s salt guardian. Had it tried to protect Theo too?
She looked into his eyes, searching for permission, maybe for absolution. “You’re sure?”
Again his fingers flexed against hers. One blink. Yes.
“Okay,” she said, though she didn’t want to. “Then come with me.”
Gently, so gently, she tugged. He didn’t fight. His soul flowed into her eagerly, without opposition.
It was slight, a gust, not a gale of power, the barest lapping of the tide, the last effort of the last wave, soft on the sand.
She was sad, sadder than she’d ever been, trapped and alone, helpless.
Every day she stared out at the sea, too weak to move, too weak to speak.
The thing that looked like him was always there, laughing at him, combing his hair, helping him to the bathroom, doing all the tasks Theo had taken pride in doing with kindness.
The thing that looked like him called his mother, put her on speakerphone. “Mamá, qué hubo?”
His mother’s voice, warm and easy on the other side of the line. Chattering on about work, about the last episode of Real Housewives, about his sister’s boyfriend and if he was ever going to propose.
Theo couldn’t speak, couldn’t cry out. He wept until he was too tired to weep.
He was standing outside the little white fence on his first day of work. He felt like he’d arrived. Maybe he could bring his mother and sister here on a summer day. They could sit on the sand, drink lemonade in the sun. This was going to be a good job, he could tell.
He was learning to draw blood and so damn scared he was going to embarrass himself.
He had dealt with all kinds of messes and trouble, wiped up shit, mopped away vomit, snot, drool, but he was bad with needles, always had been.
“You know my secret?” Susan asked. She had cropped gray hair and wore blue crocs with little white cloud charms on them.
Walking on air, she always said. Cloud nine only!
“I pretend I’m a mosquito.” Theo thought she was kidding, and he laughed, but she swore she was serious.
“Just don’t think of it as a needle, and it’s not a needle.
” Then she bumped his shoulder. “You’re good at this, and not many people are. Don’t let anything stop you.”
He was on the track, running laps, squinting at the sun.
Practice was over, but he kept running because when he stopped, he’d have to go home and his mother would be there, crying over his father, and Theo didn’t want to see his mother cry, because that would make him cry, and that would mean his dad was really dead.
But if he kept running, he didn’t have to walk home.
He ran until the sun sank low, until his legs gave out, trembling then shaking, his knees locking then collapsing, like an imitation of the Tin Man. He lay in the grass and wept.
He was sitting on a train, sweating through his denim jacket, heading home from the city.
He’d kissed Ariela for the first time. He’d bought her an iced coffee, and they’d sat by the water in the park.
When he’d worked up the courage to press his lips against hers, when she’d drawn his tongue into her mouth, she’d tasted like coffee and chocolate.
Just the thought made him hard, and he shifted in his seat, moving his book bag over his lap.
He was home sick from school and watching cartoons, a bowl of cereal perched on his knees, the milk so sweet. His mother was at work, and he had the whole apartment to himself. He wanted the day to last forever.
He was staring up at his mother, and she was all he had, all he needed, and he knew he’d never want for anything.
The world was safe and beautiful. The world was warm milk and roses.
The world was nothing but stars and the beat of her heart, his heart, the tether between them.
All is well, Alex thought and understood that she was crying.
He was with her. He was gone.