Chapter 30
A man stood in the porch light, the wet street like a dark river flowing behind him. His black hair was drawn back into a braid, and he wore a heavy denim jacket lined with what looked like sheepskin. Both were completely dry. High above him the owls clicked their beaks and screeched.
Darlington wanted to stand between Alex and this new catastrophe, but he knew he couldn’t.
She would have to choose whether or not to greet this stranger who was not quite a stranger.
Il Bastone wouldn’t bar him, not if he was human—and despite his sudden and dramatic appearance, Darlington suspected he was.
He muted Turner’s voice but kept the line open.
“Alex,” Darlington said softly. She was standing to his right, her black eyes locked on the man on the stoop.
He felt the brush of her knuckles against his, and then to his shock, she took his hand.
Nothing will harm you. He thought the words but didn’t speak them. He wouldn’t make a vow that might prove empty.
They stood in silence until at last the man said, “I’m here for Mira Stern.”
“She’s not here.”
“She must be.”
“Her daughter is here,” Alex said flatly.
The man didn’t seem surprised. How could he be? He and Alex looked like distorted reflections of each other, the same dark eyes, the same angular features, the same sheaf of black hair, parted down the center in a rigid line.
“Who tried to lift the prohibition?” he asked.
A short, angry laugh escaped Alex. “That’s what you want to know?”
The wind picked up again and the owls on the wire released a shrieking chorus that made Darlington want to cover his ears.
Alex’s father glanced over his shoulder. “We should go inside.”
“Up to you,” Darlington said to Alex. “Il Bastone will bar him if you ask it to.”
Her eyes were hard when she said, “But he came all this way.”
She released Darlington’s hand and stepped aside.
As her father crossed the threshold, the house trembled and the hall lights flickered.
It had always been sensitive to the moods of its occupants, but it was closer to Alex than any of them.
She had defended Il Bastone the night demons had tried to burn it down.
She had nearly died here. The dried remnants of her blood were still caked between its polished floorboards.
Alex gestured to the parlor.
Dawes stood in the doorway to the kitchen, clutching her laptop like a shield against her chest. The man peered into the room as if he expected to see Mira Stern tucked coyly away in a corner.
“You can sit,” Alex said.
“Is this the witch?” he asked, eyes on Dawes, who startled and took a step back.
“Or you can fucking stand,” Alex said. “She’s none of your business.”
Darlington stepped into the breach.
“Let’s start with names,” he said. “And maybe some tea?”
He didn’t particularly want to offer this man hospitality, but Dawes needed occupation. She shot him a grateful glance and disappeared into the kitchen.
Alex’s father looked around, taking in the shabby beauty of Il Bastone. Darlington had no idea what he might be thinking.
“This house is … wakeful.”
As if Il Bastone knew it had been caught, the lights stopped flickering.
When Dawes entered with the tea tray and a plate full of biscotti, Darlington gestured for Alex’s father to sit in one of the high-backed parlor chairs framed by the window. He closed the curtains. The owls remained on the wire, and whatever was about to happen, he didn’t want them watching.
“Would you be kind enough to pour, Dawes?”
He’d thought the routine would soothe her, but her hands were shaking.
Darlington took over, passing around cups of tea.
Alex refused, but her father accepted, balancing the saucer on the worn right knee of his corduroys.
He looked just as Darlington had imagined when Mira was describing him, like he taught yoga or ran an organic farm.
But it wasn’t just that. He recognized this man from Alex’s vision in hell, from the photograph on Mira’s shelf of a young, smiling man, a surfboard propped beside him.
He had the same pendant around his neck—an owl talon, Darlington realized.
But how had Alex’s mind created a photo that hadn’t existed of a man she’d never seen?
Darlington and Dawes bracketed Alex on the couch, as if they were interviewing this stranger in their parlor.
“Let’s begin with introductions,” Darlington said, relying on protocol and manners to see them through this bizarre moment. “I’m Daniel Arlington. This is Pamela Dawes.” He paused.
“Alex” was all she offered.
“Luis Huilca.”
Silence followed. Outwardly Alex looked at ease, but Darlington recognized the stillness in her.
This was how she reacted to the presence of danger as she readied for fight or flight.
Now her father had spoken his name into the quiet: secret knowledge, long buried, revealed without ceremony over a cup of tea.
No thunderclap. No lightning strike. Just a man who had appeared out of nowhere, here as quickly as he had once vanished from Alex’s life.
“It’s a beautiful home,” Huilca said, blowing on his tea. “Where is Mira?”
“Safe,” Alex said, and Darlington knew there was more hope than certainty in that word. “Far from here.”
“But you tried to lift the prohibitions on her.”
“Wondering if we succeeded?” Alex asked. He said nothing. “Why did you mess with her memory in the first place?”
“For her own protection. For yours.”
Alex leaned back against the couch and crossed her arms. “This should be good.”
“How did you have that level of skill?” Darlington asked. “The prohibitions were rooted deep.”
“It’s old knowledge. If you’re aware of prohibitions, then I suppose you know…” He trailed off, unsure of how to proceed.
But Alex waved a disinterested hand through the air. “Yeah. Ghosts. Magic. Demons. We have the secret decoder ring.”
“Then I guess I don’t need to lie. I am part of a … community that studies magic and helps maintain the boundaries of our world.”
“I think you can do better than that.”
He looked back at Alex, as if weighing how much to tell her. “Each of us is descended from the priests and holy men who once held these sacred duties. My particular line is traced through Peru.”
None of them were stupid enough to look at each other, but Darlington felt a shift in the room. Almost directly above them, a golden artifact, the heart of Lethe’s access to the world beyond the Veil, sat in the armory, stolen away from Machu Picchu by Hiram Bingham III.
“I didn’t think much about it,” Huilca continued. “It was always an abstract thing, a story my father told. I’ve never been sick a day in my life. I knew my neighbor was going to die the morning before he did. Most things came easily to me—crafting, coding—”
“Surfing?” Alex asked.
“Yes,” he said, either ignoring or failing to observe the edge in her voice.
His gaze never left Alex. She wasn’t looking away. Darlington felt like he was watching a game of chicken.
“Must be nice.”
“It was. It is. In the past our order were guides to witches, protectors who helped them to open portals, so that shamans could walk through those doors in dreams and time. Our communities exist in most places of magic in the world. We share knowledge and ensure that our bloodlines continue uncorrupted.”
Alex crossed her legs. “Uncorrupted by what, exactly?”
But it was Dawes who answered. “There was a taboo, wasn’t there? A different type of prohibition.” It was the first time she’d spoken since Huilca had arrived. Their guest looked at her as if he’d forgotten she was there.
“Yes.”
“No children,” Dawes said, more statement than question. “Not with witches.”
“It was forbidden. The women we aided were to be protected. But we were not to partner them. We were not to fall in love.”
“And did you?” Alex asked. “Did you fall in love?”
Huilca sighed. He returned his cup to the tray. “Love wasn’t something Mira and I talked about. We were kids. We liked each other.”
“Enough to break a taboo?”
“I didn’t realize Mira came from magic. She didn’t have a speck of it in her.”
Alex’s wince was small, but Darlington caught it. Mira, with her crystals and her hope, who believed so powerfully in the unseen, in a kind fate, in everything happening for a reason, would have loved to have magic seen in her.
“Do you have other kids?” Alex asked. “Uncorrupted ones?”
Reluctantly, Huilca said, “A son.”
Dawes was studying him with narrow eyes. “From another priest bloodline. A safe one.”
“I never thought there would be a problem with Mira, until…”
“Until you met Estrea,” Alex finished.
He actually shivered. “That woman had power.”
“So you left,” she said.
“I had to.”
“It never occurred to you that she might be pregnant.”
“Of course it did. But I couldn’t risk knowing.”
“Why?” Alex asked, and the mask slid, the armor giving way to the child she’d been, alone in a world that didn’t believe in ghosts, with a gift no one around her understood.
Now Huilca looked down at his feet.
“Forgive me, Alejandra—”
“Alex.”
“You must understand. Any child we had would be considered an abomination, a threat to the very fabric of the world. I had a duty,” he said. When he looked up, his dark eyes were full of regret. “I have a duty.”
Before Darlington could react, Huilca was on his feet. A knife flashed in his hands.