Chapter 40
It felt as if the house had swallowed him, as if its walls were bending as they breathed, its floorboards pulsing, suffused with blood.
How many times had he thought of this place as a living thing—a body that had lost circulation to its limbs, a master that needed to be served? It had been his hiding place, his salvation, the stone around his neck. It had been the instrument of his torture in hell.
Cosmo was sitting on the kitchen counter, perched beside the sink, occupied with the slow drip of the faucet.
I need to get that fixed, Darlington thought, then caught himself.
When was there something at Black Elm that didn’t require fixing, that didn’t tug at his time and his attention?
Briefly he’d been free, living in the dorms, a student like anyone else.
But of course he had returned. The house needed him. It always had.
His rational mind was pulling apart what Alex had said.
Was it even possible? If a place like Savin Rock could have a ghost, if a monument like the Thunderbolt could return as a Gray, then it must have some kind of soul.
Each of the pilgrims had returned with a demon in tow, even if the pilgrims’ salt guardians had altered the terms of their torment.
Kittscher had become a nighteater. Reiter had become a vampire.
Hector had killed himself before his demon could have its way.
And then there was Daniel Arlington II, his great-grandfather, who had been allowed to live but only under a curse, forced to feed his demon, forced to proffer up his young to be devoured.
Yet he had never given in completely. He had remained human. Because of Cosmo.
“You stayed to protect Daniel Arlington.”
Cosmo stared at him with his mismatched eyes, scarred and strange, a soldier if there ever was one.
This was his great-grandfather’s salt guardian and his as well.
Like Alex’s snakes, Tripp’s albatross, Turner’s oak.
The cat had been at war with the demon for nearly a century, standing guard over every Daniel Arlington since he had been called forth from Hiram’s Crucible.
Stop pretending this won’t sit heavy. His own great-grandfather’s words, spoken in the room of conquest. And what had been Kittscher’s reply? Sacrifice always does. Every generation had offered up a new Daniel Arlington for Black Elm to feed upon, a new acolyte.
Now he could see that Golgarot had been playing a little joke on him in hell, giving him a clue he couldn’t decipher as he’d lifted stone after stone.
“You could come with us,” Darlington said to the cat, not knowing if Cosmo understood.
“He won’t,” said Alex. “We’ve tried to rehome him with Dawes and at Il Bastone. He always finds his way back here.”
And he forever would. For as long as the demon had hold of this place.
“Come on,” Alex said, tugging him outside. “Let’s get out of here.”
A sudden flutter and whoosh from above made him startle. He moved to block Alex, his horns emerging. He’d forgotten about the owls.
“This seems bad,” said Alex, tracking their movements, eyes wide. “What are they doing?”
The birds circled silently, not hooting or screeching. They shouldn’t even be out during the day.
“I don’t know but we’re taking the Mercedes.” He still had the key on his fob.
“Why?”
“Because it’s my car and Linus Reiter can go fuck himself.”
Alex’s brows rose. “If you’re swearing, you must mean it.”
They backed slowly into the garage, the owls continuing in their slow spirals.
Alex looked back as they squealed down the drive. Only when they shot past the pillars and onto the road did she release a long breath. “I thought the house might try to keep us there.”
“It doesn’t have to.” It knows I’ll come back. I always come back.
Had his grandfather sensed the house was consuming him?
Had he tried to save his son? He’d sent Darlington’s father to boarding school.
Turned him into a pansy, his grandfather had later claimed.
But your grandmother insisted. Maybe she’d understood what this house was.
Maybe she’d been trying to buy her son a chance at a life that wasn’t bound to a thing that could never love him back.
He remembered his own mother sitting on the edge of his bed.
You don’t rule this place. It rules you.
Darlington’s father had gotten free, but only after Darlington had been born and his grandfather had insisted he live at Black Elm. He had demanded Danny’s fealty to the house, even as he passed from this world to the next.
Did people who were not Arlingtons understand somehow?
Even if they couldn’t name it. Even if they couldn’t explain it.
Harper had never let his father visit more than a few days and they always stayed at a hotel, never under Black Elm’s roof.
But she hadn’t demanded her son stay with them.
She’d left him behind. He had always wondered why his parents found it so easy to walk away from him, but maybe they’d been running.
Disloyal. That was the word his grandfather had used, and it had become Darlington’s as well. He had wanted to bring Alex to Black Elm, to bring her home. Had she been an offering too?
“Damn,” Alex barked. She was looking down at her phone.
“What now?”
“The chimes went off last night. Somewhere near East Rock. Turner is going to check it out before he goes to work.”
“Ask if he wants us there.”
“You know he’ll say no.”
“It’s polite. Let’s keep to the precepts of demon hunting etiquette while we can.”
“He says he’s fine,” she replied.
“That isn’t what he said.”
“No, he said he didn’t need a fucking babysitter. Maybe he doesn’t have the etiquette manual.”
Darlington felt better when the door closed behind them at Il Bastone. The house was quiet. Dawes must be at her apartment, Tripp tucked away in his nest across the street.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, but Alex was always hungry.
Dawes had left a Spanish omelet in the refrigerator and a pitcher of cider beside a bottle of calvados.
They heated the eggs and potatoes, then took it all up to the Virgil bedroom.
He made a fire in the grate and they ate in silence.
When they were done, Alex disappeared into the bathroom, and he heard the spigots of the big steam shower.
She hesitated in the doorway, and he could see she was nervous. Then she rocked back on her heels and pulled the sweater over her head.
“Come on,” she said. Her chin jutted out. “If you want to.”
“I want to,” he said. He had never wanted anything more in this life.
He followed her into the shower, glad for the heat of the water, for the censor of palo santo she’d lit.
Purification. He didn’t know if he could just wash Black Elm away, but in the slip of the water, in the great anonymous cloud of steam, and then at last, in the slick press of her body, the weight of her as he braced her against the tiles, he almost believed.
They slept curled into each other, their hair damp, the curtains drawn closed. Sometime in the night, he felt her reach for him, her hand guiding him inside her.
“Greedy,” he murmured against her neck.
“I don’t know how long I get to keep you.”
Forever if you like. “Tell me what you need.”
Hellfire bloomed over their bodies and a flood of images with it, Alex’s desire racing through the tether between them.
I want to be an offering. He saw obsidian walls, and Alex in a gown of silk, her wrists and ankles bound by chains, laid upon an altar for the beast at the center of the labyrinth, a sacrifice, helpless and treasured, venerated before she was destroyed.
I want to be innocent again. They were lying entwined in the bed of a truck, the stars above them, the warm night around them, the scent of jasmine and meadow grass like gold dust covering their bodies. I want to be overwhelmed.
They were all these things and none of them.
“I want to know you’re mine and no one else’s,” she said. “Even if it’s only true for now.”
Who were they to make promises when death was waiting? When time was short? When they would only ever be mortal?
“’Til the end of days,” he vowed. And after.
They woke to their phones pinging, sunlight cast in pale stripes against the floor.
Turner was in the group chat.
Come now. Bring the box. And anything else you’ve got.