Chapter 47
Darlington told Penny he’d be happy to meet her at Scroll and Key, but she insisted on coming by Il Bastone.
She had always loved the house, and they could walk over to the tomb together—wouldn’t it be nice to catch up?
It wouldn’t, but the reality was he felt guilty.
He and Penelope had dated for almost a year when he was a junior and she was a senior.
They’d broken up when she graduated, and they’d agreed to stay friends.
He had certainly meant to keep in touch, but then he’d been swallowed by a hellbeast.
When the doorbell rang, he hurried out of the parlor to find Dawes and Alex perched on the sunflower staircase like a couple of gargoyles.
“Are you my chaperones?” he asked.
“One foot on the floor,” said Alex. “And don’t get handsy.”
Dawes looked a little too pleased with herself. She’d never liked Penny.
When he reached for the doorknob, it wouldn’t turn.
“Oh come on,” he said. “This is all for the cause. Alex, would you please get your pet house to stand down?”
Alex patted the banister and the knob turned in Darlington’s hand.
“Danny!” Penny exclaimed, throwing her arms open for a hug.
She was impeccably dressed in a belted wool trench and boots, her brown hair arranged in an artfully disheveled braid.
He embraced her, and a wave of nostalgia struck as he inhaled her perfume: tuberose and all the easy happiness and hopeful ambition of his junior year.
Penny had been only a year older, but she spent every summer in the Hamptons and every winter in Prague.
She seemed to know everything and everyone, and he’d been flattered and thrilled by her interest in him.
“How was Spain?” she asked.
“An education.”
“I’m stunned Lethe was willing to part with you. Did you end up getting stuck with the charity case?”
He tried not to cringe. “I did.”
“Was it more or less of a catastrophe than you thought?”
“More,” he said and glanced over his shoulder, wishing Alex couldn’t hear all this. “But it turns out I needed a little catastrophe.”
“Oh gosh,” Penny said as she realized they had company. “I feel like a complete ass.”
Alex stuck her hand through the spokes of the banister. “Alms for the poor?”
“Shall we?” said Darlington, casting a baleful look back as he shut the door and Alex and Dawes doubled over in laughter.
The air was cool and moist as they walked toward campus.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch,” he said. “Last year was more challenging than expected.”
“I was surprised,” she admitted with a smile. “I thought I made more of an impression.”
She had, but that wasn’t a path he wanted to go down. “How was the dig?”
“We’ve found a lot of gold, so the government is happy, but not much else, so our sponsors will probably pull funding.”
Penny had been working at an archaeological site at Teatro Cressoni in the hopes of discovering a secret temple connected to the symbols above the Porta Alchemica in Rome, but apparently it had been a bust. She talked about her plans for the next year, and he asked after her parents.
He talked about improvements for Black Elm that he was no longer sure he wanted to make.
He was relieved when they finally arrived at Scroll and Key.
Darlington had always loved this tomb. It was whimsical in a way that none of the others were, solid without being funereal, graceful in its proportions.
It looked as if it had been lifted from some secret hilltop in Andalusia, and that had always appealed to his sense of symmetry with their magic.
Here was a way to travel even without a portal, a little piece of another world plunked down onto the university campus.
It didn’t hurt that it sat across from the Music School, another of his favorites, a tiny palace of ornamentation better suited to a Venetian canal.
“Darlington,” Penny said as they climbed the stairs and she took out her key, “I just want to say how nice it was to see you and … I hope you understand that once you graduate … things are different.”
He had no idea how to reply to that. Did Penny think he’d made this request to see the Scroll and Key treasure room as a pretext for trying to get back together? If that notion hid his true purpose, his ego could handle the hit.
“I’m sure it is,” he said noncommittally.
“There’s no net. You really have to take opportunities where you find them.”
He had been to Penny’s family home on Meadow Lane, a sprawling beachfront property in Southampton worth roughly fifty million dollars.
He wasn’t sure what other safety net she might need, but this was one of the conventions of Yale and places like it: the elaborate pantomime of pretending that the roommate whose parents rented him an apartment in Lenox Hill for the summer so that he could take a poorly paid internship at the Frick weathered the same indignities as the student working at the laundry who had to stay in the dorms over spring break.
She unlocked the door and led him inside the stone entryway. The interior of the tomb didn’t make good on the promise of the exterior. There were no graceful columns or elaborate scrollwork walls. It was more like a cave punctuated by striped keyhole arches.
“Wait here,” Penny said at the door to the ritual room, a star-shaped chamber with stone knights in each corner and a round table at the center, said to be made from the wood of the very table around which Arthur’s knights had once gathered.
Darlington let his fingers brush over the inscription: Have power on this dark land to lighten it, and power on this dead world to make it live.
In his years at Lethe, he’d thought little of those words.
Now he remembered the moment when he’d glimpsed Alex and Dawes, heard their voices, and tried to follow them out of hell.
They’d used this table to open a portal and bring him home.
The door had closed too swiftly, but in that moment, briefly, he had known hope.
It had been beautiful and terrible, a winged serpent, soaring one moment, and in the next, a low and burrowing thing that would not let him rest.
He still couldn’t quite reconcile what he had become to survive Golgarot’s rule.
The demon had not just tortured him but made him a torturer as well, and the unpleasant truth was that he had come to see bringing pain to others as a respite from the endless march of his own misery.
He had been good at it too. Demons looked for the worst moments a soul could remember, the most desperate, the most shaming.
But he had gone seeking sparks of happiness, the bright scraps of joy he could twist into something both horrid and new.
Would a time have come when he forgot he had ever been human?
What would have happened if Alex hadn’t found a way to reclaim his soul?
Back when he had been ushered into Lethe by Sandow and Michelle Alameddine, he had tried to learn everything he could about the societies and their lore.
He had forced himself to wade through the entirety of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, and he knew the words on this table were not quite what they seemed because of the lines that preceded them:
But were I joined with her,
Then might we live together as one life,
And reigning with one will in everything
Have power on this dark land to lighten it,
And power on this dead world to make it live.
Arthur was speaking of Guinevere and his want for her, of the love he believed would help him change the world for the better, when really it would bring about the end of his rule.
“Do you think the nexus can be restored?”
Darlington startled. Alban Reed was standing in the doorway to the ritual room. He smiled and entered with his hand outstretched. Darlington had to fight the demon impulse to simply rip his arm off.
They shook and Reed said, “I hope you’ll forgive the subterfuge. Penny has done some work for my company and I asked if she could help set a meeting.”
More like an ambush. So this was what Penny had meant about taking opportunities where one found them.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Darlington said smoothly. His grandfather’s emphasis on manners made a ready substitute for diplomacy. “But why not just come to Il Bastone? We’d love to host you, and Oculus is a tremendous cook.”
“I wanted the opportunity to speak to you in private. I understand that your senior year didn’t go exactly as planned. A year in a pocket dimension must have been quite an ordeal.”
“Candidly?”
“Please,” said Reed.
“I know that Dean Sandow and my Dante were in a panic, but for me, it’s as if it never happened. I wish it had been more of an ordeal,” Darlington said with a laugh that he hoped sounded natural. “I could have gotten a good article on portal magic out of it at least.”
Reed smiled. “Sometimes a little adventure can be good for the soul.”
“Exactly.”
“You plan to reenroll for the fall semester?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’m glad. As much promise as Alex has shown, I think the board would be grateful for a steadying presence at Lethe as she heads into the next year. The Praetor tells me you’ve been staying at Il Bastone.”
“Just while I manage some repairs at home.”
“Black Elm?”
“That’s right.”
“I drove by it. I love old houses. But I couldn’t see much from the road.”
Darlington wondered just how much Reed knew. Did he actually buy the cover story they’d sold the Praetor about his whereabouts the previous year? Had he looked into the disappearance of Darlington’s parents? Did he know what had really brought him to Scroll and Key today?
“The house has potential,” Darlington said. “But she’s not at her best these days. We had a leak and one of the ceilings came down.”
“I imagine that will take quite a sum to fix.”
“It will. I’m glad Lethe can keep a roof over my head.”
“Have you given any thought to what you’ll do after graduation?”
No, he’d been too busy staving off demons, investigating murders, and attempting to close the door to hell.
“I’ve really just been trying to get reoriented,” Darlington said. “Even if I don’t remember it, I lost a year of my life.”
Reed clasped his hands behind his back, a pose that suggested the small talk was over.
“Daniel, you know I’ve made it my mission to get Lethe back on track.
I think both you and Alex Stern could be a part of the future I’m envisioning for the Ninth House.
How much do you know about her particular gifts? ”
Here it was: the opening gambit, and Darlington knew he was in tricky territory. There was no reason for him to be aware that Alex was a Wheelwalker, for him to even know what the word meant.
“She can see Grays without using Hiram’s elixir,” he said. “And I know Lethe hoped that talent could be cultivated in service of learning more about the world beyond the Veil. I certainly think we could be doing more to explore her potential.”
“As do I,” said Reed. “I believe her talent could be harnessed to create a new nexus.”
Darlington scoffed. “With all due respect, that seems like wishful thinking.”
“I assure you, it isn’t. People with Alex’s talents are rare, not only because the ability to see through the Veil is unusual, but the ability to stay alive and in one’s right mind while enduring the burden of that gift is even rarer.”
“What does that have to do with making a nexus?”
“Have you ever seen Alex use the dead?” asked Reed.
“Use them how?”
“Use their strength. Have you never wondered how she survived the violence that took the lives of her friends back in Los Angeles?”
Darlington hadn’t just wondered. He’d solved the mystery himself and at the worst possible moment. “I’ve done my best to forget Alex’s unsavory past, and I think she has too.”
“You care for her.”
Such a tepid word when standing here talking about Alex like a valuable vein of ore to be mined made him want to crack Reed’s skull against the wall. Mark’s way … and clove him thro’ the brain. More Tennyson. More blood turned to poetry. More pageant as pretense.
“I do,” Darlington said mildly. “She’s a good friend and she’s been a surprisingly capable Dante. I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t think she was a worthy candidate.”
“I did.” Reed couldn’t hide his pride, the treasure hunter marking his claim.
“I lobbied for her to be brought to Lethe. Not just because of her abilities, but because I knew what that potential might yield. Did you know there’s a new nexus beneath the Yale president’s home on Hillhouse?
It’s useless to us because of the location, but that is the very place that Elliot Sandow died, and Alex was one of the last people to see him alive. ”
Reed thought Alex had killed Sandow. He didn’t know another Wheelwalker had been there, that Belbalm had been responsible for all of New Haven’s nexuses. But Darlington wasn’t even supposed to know the mechanism by which a nexus was made.
“I don’t follow,” he said. “There’s a big leap between seeing Grays and creating a nexus.”
“I’ll need you to take my word on this, Daniel, and I’ll be honest with you in turn.
I believe Alex is in very serious danger.
Whether or not you think she can do what I believe she can, there are others who will see the possibility and that puts her at risk.
I can protect her. I can make sure those gifts are used thoughtfully, ethically, rather than being abused.
I want you to convince her to work with me. ”
Now Darlington did manage a real laugh. “You’re giving me a lot of credit. Alex has a mind of her own.”
“I’m well aware. But I can tell she likes you and respects you.
And if you can sway her to this purpose, it will serve not only her interests and mine but yours as well.
I have the resources to rebuild Black Elm and to support whatever endeavor you might be interested in pursuing after graduation.
My reach extends far beyond anything Lethe can offer. ”
A bribe, then. Promises of wealth and influence, no different from the ones the societies had always offered. Lethe is supposed to be better, he wanted to shout. We promised to be more.
“And if Alex can’t do what you think she can?” he asked.
Reed shrugged. “Then we’ll have been on adventure.
Good for the soul, remember?” He clapped a hand on Darlington’s shoulder.
“I think we both know that Alex Stern doesn’t have the best instincts when it comes to self-preservation.
You’re her Virgil. You want to protect her.
That’s admirable. But surely you understand that if she really does have this gift, you can’t keep her safe. ”
Was that a threat? What would Reed say if Darlington let the demon emerge? What would happen if he simply gutted the president of the Lethe board right here?
Reed must have seen something in his eyes because he drew back, hands raised in surrender. “Think on it. Please. You’re both young. You think you can conquer the world without any help. Don’t let your failure to understand your own limits get your Dante killed.”