Page 11 of Hell Bent

“No. We need the table at Scroll and Key. We need to open a portal.”

“To hell.”

“I can’t think of anything else.” Dawes sounded desperate.

They’d been trying all summer and had nothing to show for it. But had Alex really been trying? Or had she felt safe tucked away with her research at Il Bastone? Walking the streets of New Haven, searching for churches and sacred places, seeking out signs of the Gauntlet and finding nothing? Had she let herself forget that somewhere Darlington was lost and suffering?

“Good,” Alex said. “Then we open a portal.”

“How do we get into Scroll and Key?”

“I’ll get us in.”

Dawes chewed on her lower lip.

“I’m not going to hit anyone, Dawes.”

Dawes tugged at a strand of her red hair, gone curly in the heat.

Alex rolled her eyes. “Or threaten anyone. I’m going to be real polite.”

And she would be. She had to find a way back to the game of pretend she’d played last year, had to find a new sea level. They would bring Darlington back. They would make everything right again. As far as the Lethe board knew, she was just a student who’d had a very bad freshman year. They didn’t know about the grade bump Sandow had granted her, or the part she’d played in his death, or the kills she’d racked up one awful night in Van Nuys.

But Darlington did. And if he wanted to make a case against her, that would be the end of it. What would she do then? What she always did. Locate the exits. Get out before the real trouble sticks. Nab a few expensive artifacts on the way out. That litany had become a kind of comfort, a chant to keep her fear of the future at bay. But it was all more complicated now. Her options had been bleak before, but now they were downright ugly, and she was all out of places to run. Because of Eitan. Because whether Gauntlet or gate or bus to the beyond, there was always hell to pay.

4

Last Summer

She would have stayed in New Haven for the summer. If not for Eitan.

Alex told her mother she’d gotten a job on campus, and that was enough for Mira. She thought Los Angeles was temptation for Alex, that she’d step off a plane and fall back into her old life with her old friends.

There was no chance of that, but They’re all dead, Mama wasn’t going to put Mira’s mind at ease, and the truth was that Alex didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to sleep in her old bedroom with the sounds of the 101 like an angry ocean in the distance. She didn’t want to hear about her mother’s latest obsession—gemstone massage, aura cleansing, essential oils, an endless hunt for easy miracles. Leaving Yale felt perilous, a little too much like a fairy tale, a cruel one where once she left the enchanted castle, she’d have no way back.

She thought she’d spend the summer with Dawes and Michelle Alameddine, hatching a plan to rescue Darlington. But Dawes had to nanny for her sister in Westport, and Michelle had been difficult to reach, so Alex was mostly left alone at Il Bastone. She’d wondered if the house would reject her after all the bloodshed of the previous semester, the stained glass window that would never be quite as perfect as it had been, the floor still stained with Blake Keely’s blood and now hidden by a new carpet. What if she showed up at the front door and the knob simply wouldn’t turn for her?

But on that spring day, when Alex stowed their common room furniture in the basement of Jonathan Edwards, and said goodbye to Mercy and Lauren, Il Bastone’s doorknob had rattled happily beneath her hand, the door springing open like a pair of welcoming arms.

She really had meant to find a job for the summer, but business around campus had slowed too much. So eventually, she just stopped looking. She had a small summer stipend from Lethe, and she spent it on junk food, frozen egg rolls, and pigs-in-a-blanket she could heat up in the toaster oven. She hadn’t even asked if she could stay at Il Bastone. She just did. Who else had bled for this place?

Alex spent her days examining the course catalogue and talking to Mercy. They’d pieced together as much of Alex’s schedule as possible so that she could get ahead on the reading. She read paperbacks too, one after the next like she was chain-smoking—romance, science fiction, old pulp fantasy. All she wanted to do was sit, unbothered in a circle of lamplight, and live someone else’s life. But every evening was spent in the library. She’d write down Dawes’s suggestions in the Albemarle Book or come up with some of her own, then wait to see what the library would provide. One book had a spine of actual vertebrae, another released a cloud of soft mist every time she opened it, and another was so hot to the touch she’d had to scrounge around in the kitchen and return with oven mitts.

Only the armory was climate-controlled, to protect the artifacts, so when the weather got too hot, she took a heap of blankets and pillows from the Dante bedroom, and made a nest for herself at the bottom of Hiram’s Crucible. Darlington would have been scandalized, but the air-conditioning was worth it. Sometimes when she slept there, she dreamed of a mountaintop covered in green. She’d been there before, knew her way up staircases and through tight passages that smelled of damp stone. There was a room with three windows and a round basin in which to watch the stars. She saw her own face reflected in the water. But when she woke, she knew she’d never been to Peru, only seen it in books.

Alex was lying on her side on one of the velvet sofas in the parlor of Il Bastone, reading a beat-up copy of The Illustrated Man she’d found at the Young Men’s Institute library, when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number, so she hadn’t bothered to answer. She’d purged all of her old contacts when she’d left Los Angeles. But the second time the phone rang, she picked up.

She recognized Eitan’s voice instantly, that heavy accent. “Alex Stern. We need to have conversation. You understand?”

“No,” she said, her heart jackrabbiting in her chest. It had rained that day, and she’d pushed open all the curtains so she could watch the storm, bright gasps of lightning crackling across the gray sky. She sat up, marking her place in her book with a receipt. She had the uneasy sensation she’d never get to finish this particular story.

“I don’t want to discuss on the phone. You come see me at the house.”

He thought she was in LA. That’s good, Alex told herself. He didn’t know he couldn’t get hands on her easily. But why was he calling? Eitan had been Len’s supplier, an Israeli gangster who operated out of a sleek mansion that floated on an Encino hilltop above the 405. She’d thought he had long since forgotten about her.

“I’m not going up to Mulholland,” she said. “I don’t have a car.” Even if she had been in LA, there was no way she was driving into the hills to Eitan’s house just so he could put a bullet in her brain with no one there to watch.

“Your mother has car. Old Jetta. Not reliable.” Of course Eitan knew where to find her mom. Men like Eitan knew all about where to look for leverage. “Shlomo watches your house for so long, but only your mama comes and goes. Never you. Where are you, Alex?”