Page 175 of Hell Bent

“Thanks,” Mercy said as she passed through the gate.

“For what?”

“For not lying to me.”

Mercy had a conscience. She believed in a just God. She wouldn’t be able to walk away from death without it leaving a stain on her heart. But that hadn’t stopped Alex from using her. It never did.

And now Michelle Alameddine was dead.

Alex felt Darlington’s hand on her shoulder. “Put your head between your knees. Try to breathe.”

Alex pressed her palms against her eyes. “I brought him here.”

“Reiter was here already,” Darlington said. “Michelle was his familiar.”

“What?” Dawes exclaimed.

Alex stared up at him. “What are you talking about?”

“I think he recruited her while she was an undergraduate. I put it together when I was reading her Lethe Days Diary. There were probably others before her.”

“She knew where the Gauntlet was?” Dawes asked.

“I don’t know,” Darlington said. “I don’t know what he shared with her. Reiter knew about the societies. He’d stolen the life of a Bonesman. He knew about Lethe. But he couldn’t enter warded spaces, so he had to find someone to keep an eye on the Gauntlet.”

Alex thought of Michelle sitting in the parlor, always on her phone, keeping removed from their research but never stepping away completely. She remembered Michelle’s shock when Alex had told her they’d found the Gauntlet, her insistence that Alex shouldn’t use it. Had she been warning Alex or speaking for Reiter? Michelle, who had lied about why she was on campus, who had followed Alex and Mercy to class. Michelle with the jaunty scarf at her throat, the turtleneck sweater. Had he been feeding on her?

“She wouldn’t do that,” Dawes said. “She wouldn’t work for a demon.”

But she might. For the right price. Michelle had been to the other side when she’d tried to take her own life. She’d told Alex clearly enough: I am never going back.

Alex understood that kind of vow. “He promised her immortality.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Dawes was almost shouting now, tears on her cheeks. “He’s a demon. He would have to eat her soul. He—”

“Pammie,” Darlington said gently, “she wanted to believe she could live forever, and that’s what he told her. Sometimes the story is what matters.”

“We aren’t putting her in the basement,” Alex said as she pushed to her feet. “Or in the ground.”

She wasn’t going to bury Michelle Alameddine the way that Reiter buried his other victims. The way he would have buried Alex if she hadn’t run far and fast enough that terrible night.

Alex forced herself to walk back to the trunk, to look at that body, at the puncture marks at her neck, the tattoo at her wrist. She hoped Michelle had found some kind of peace beyond the Veil, that her soul was safe and whole.

“He made a mistake,” Alex said. She could feel her fear changing shape, forming claws and teeth, becoming anger. A welcome alchemy. “If he’d been smart, he would have kept Michelle alive to spy for him.”

“Pride,” Darlington said. “Reiter was too eager to hurt us, to make us feel his power.”

“Cunning, not smart,” Alex said, and Dawes nodded, wiping the tears from her eyes.

Darlington gazed down at Michelle’s body. “You deserved better,” he said softly.

So had Mercy. And Hellie. And Tripp. So had Babbit Rabbit and every other sorry creature who had made the mistake of crossing Alex’s path. It hurt to know that Reiter hadn’t just fed on Michelle’s blood, but on her pain. He would have sated himself on her desperation, her sorrow, her longing for a life that would never end.

I’m going to punish him, Alex promised as they laid Michelle between the elm trees, as Darlington spoke the words of an old poem over her body, as she called the fire once more. I’m going to hurt him the way he hurt you.

“This is the forest primeval,” Darlington recited. “The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic…”

She would teach Reiter what real pain tasted like. It was all she could offer this girl she’d barely known. Vengeance that came too late, and prayers spoken in fire.