Spring
Evening settled over Black Elm and Alex wondered if they had seen the last snow of winter.
The air felt different tonight, as if the cold had simply lost interest and was moving on.
They had spent the afternoon transporting Girard and Reed to a parking garage in New Jersey.
Turner had questioned the professor extensively about just how many people knew Alex’s secret; then Dawes had seen to a cursory healing of his wounds to make sure there would be no tricky questions about owl attacks.
And then at last they had handed him a water bottle and instructed him to drink.
“I don’t think it’s over,” Dawes had said on the drive back to New Haven. “Someone else at Lethe may have a connection to Reed and Huilca’s brotherhood.”
Or there could be somebody out there researching Wheelwalkers, someone who wanted a nexus or who wanted to prevent one.
There was nothing Alex could do about it.
One fight at a time. One disaster done and another brewing.
There was also the matter of the Bridegroom.
Alex hadn’t forgotten her debt to him or the cost it might carry.
But that was the way people had always gotten along: by owing each other something.
Now the candles had been lit, the symbols drawn.
Alex and Darlington and Dawes and Turner walked the circle as they had once walked the Gauntlet together, each taking their position at a compass point.
The nexus was open and once Dawes began the exorcism it would be Alex’s job to draw the old demon out of the walls and shove it back into hell. She doubted this monster would go easy.
In a way, she could sympathize. Once you’d found your place, you’d fight with everything you had to keep it. Alex had thought she was fighting to keep her spot at Yale; now she understood she had been seeking something more.
“Let me know when you’re in position,” Dawes said as she took up her spot and raised a rattle supposedly made from demon skin. “Don’t start until you hear the rhythm.”
Turner was next, his face stoic. “See you on the other side.”
There was a new ease in him, a kind of hopefulness she had trouble reconciling with the detective she knew.
It could just be that they had won and he was sleeping better.
But she understood victory meant something more to Turner.
He believed that good had triumphed—and that meant someone was watching over him and the city he fought so hard for.
Alex wasn’t sure what the other side might look like.
The steps she had taken could not be undone.
Reed’s death, the closing of the nexuses.
It was an experiment, maybe a mad one. Soon the societies would discover that something was very wrong, though they wouldn’t know who or what to blame.
Lethe would come to the rescue, just not the way they might hope.
She had no idea what story they would tell the Praetor, but at least the board would have to answer his emails now.
All she knew was that she couldn’t go back. She had missed too many classes, told too many lies. Her ties to Yale had always been tenuous, and now she’d slipped her moorings.
“Are you ready for this?” she asked Darlington as they rounded the northwest corner of the house and the hedge maze came into view. “There’s a good chance we’re about to see Black Elm come tumbling down.”
“You forget,” he said softly, “I’ve already seen this place turned to rubble. If I wasn’t ready to grieve it then, I am now.”
Alex wasn’t sure she believed him, but he’d made his choices. They all had.
“Stern,” Darlington said, the gravel crunching beneath his boots. “I got an inquiry from a professor I did some research for. She’s based out of the University of Turin. An artifact has gone missing from their collection, one connected to the haunted abbey at Lucedio.”
Alex stopped walking. “You’re leaving?”
“I’m not enrolled anymore. I thought it might be worth looking into.”
“Seems good.” What was she supposed to say? She had known she was a tourist here and he was just one of the beautiful sights she got to see before her visa ran out.
Darlington turned to her, no sign of the demon visible. In the soft spring light he looked both human and hesitant. “I … thought we might go together.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I’m saying it because it’s what I want. But if you—”
“You want me to go with you?”
“Yes.”
“To Italy.”
“Yes.”
“To investigate Grays in a haunted monastery?”
“Something like that.”
“Do you speak Italian?” Alex asked.
“Of course.”
Of course he did. A ridiculous question.
“And do we get paid?”
“Heathen.”
“It’s a reasonable question.”
“I told you I wanted to be with you all the time.” He reached for her hand. “I meant it.”
He always meant it. He always would. Alex had spent her life bracing for the worst and life had consistently obliged her. But with him, with this man who somehow believed in things like duty and honor and manners and saying what you meant, it might finally be safe to dream.
“I don’t know how to be normal,” she warned him.
“Alex, we’re going to visit a haunted monastery. I’m a demon hybrid that never should have existed and you can literally tear open the fabric of reality. Does that sound normal?”
“Dawes said I could purge you. No more horns. No more hellfire. You’re sure you don’t want that?”
“Not when I don’t know what comes next. The demon is useful and I’m not interested in the easy path if it leads me away from you.”
“Just admit it’s fun being scary.”
“Intoxicating. Truly.” He tugged on her hand. “I can no longer see normal in my rearview mirror and I’m not sorry.”
“I am,” Alex admitted. “Just a little.”
“I promise to keep things as dull as possible. Just think of all the obscure historical lore I’m going to bore you with, all the Latin I’m going to translate. You will be begging for excitement when I’m done with you.”
She could think of nothing better. She went up on her toes and kissed him.
“So you’ll come?” he pressed.
“Maybe,” she said and kissed him again.
Maybe good things happened to killers. Maybe power didn’t always stay in the hands of those who held it most tightly. And maybe there was another path to follow, one that might let a lost girl and a gentleman demon find their own way home.
Alex took her place at the entrance to the driveway, the hulking shape of Black Elm before her, a suffering animal, unable to tend to its own wounds. High above, she saw two owls circling silently.
They had gone hunting for Cosmo to make sure the cat wouldn’t be trapped in the house when the ritual began, and now he wended his way between her feet, his tail curling over her calf.
“Ready?” she whispered, looking down at his mismatched eyes. He didn’t answer, but his presence was enough. “Ready!” she shouted, and in the distance she heard the sound of a rattle as the ritual began.
Alex took up the rhythm. She didn’t know who she might become with no clear road before her, but she knew the others were out there, keeping their promises in the dark.
She knew that the walls might come down, but they would stay standing.
She knew that a new world might open to her, if only she was bold enough to enter.