Page 34 of Hell Bent

“You sleepwalked?”

“I guess so. And then it was like I was still sleepwalking. I don’t quite know how I ended up in the ballroom. But … he talked.”

“He talked to you?” Dawes’s voice was too loud.

“Yeah.”

“I see.” Dawes seemed to close in on herself, the concerned friend receding, the mother hen emerging. “Let’s get you warm.”

Alex let herself be helped to her feet and shepherded into the car, where Dawes cranked the heater up, the faint smell of brimstone emerging as it always had since the night of the new moon ritual. Dawes rested her hands on the wheel as if making a decision.

Then she put the car into gear and they were driving back toward campus. The streets were nearly empty, and Alex wondered who had seen her walking, if anyone had stopped to ask if she needed help, a half-naked girl, barefoot and wandering in the dark, just like that night with Hellie.

It was only once they were back at Il Bastone, with Alex’s feet coated in healing balm and propped on a towel-covered cushion, a cup of tea by her side, that Dawes sat down, opened her notebook, and said, “Okay, tell me.”

Alex had expected more emotion, lip chewing, maybe tears. But Dawes was Oculus now, in research mode, ready to document and investigate, and Alex was grateful for it.

“He said he doesn’t have much time,” Alex began, then did her best to explain the rest, that he had nearly breached the circle, that he’d begged them to find the Gauntlet, but that he didn’t know where it was.

Dawes made a small humming noise.

“He’d have no reason not to tell us,” said Alex.

“He might not be able to. It depends … it depends how much demon he’s become. Demons love puzzles, remember? They never move in a straight line.”

“He talked about Sandow too. He saw him on the other side. He said his host had welcomed him.”

“That’s what I mean,” said Dawes. “He could have named his host, whatever god or demon or hellbeast he’s in service to, but he didn’t. What did he say about the host?”

“Nothing. Just that Sandow had killed for gain. He said greed was a sin in any language.”

“So Darlington may be bound to Mammon or Plutus or Gullveig or some other god of greed. That might help us if we can figure out where the Gauntlet is and how to reveal it. What else?”

“Nothing. He wanted books and I brought him books. He said he was bored.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. He said something about loving books more than his mother.”

Dawes’s lips softened in a smile. “It’s an Egyptian proverb. Suits him well.”

Egyptian. Alex sat up straighter, her feet sliding from the pillow.

Dawes yelped. “Please don’t get that on the rug!”

“When the books didn’t burn, he said stories were immutable.”

“So?” Dawes asked, bustling into the kitchen for a towel.

Alex remembered walking beneath the entry to Sterling with Darlington. There were four stone scribes over the entrance. One of them was Egyptian.

“When was Sterling Library built?”

“1931, I think?” Dawes said from the kitchen. “People really hated it at the time. I think the term used was cathedral orgy. They said it looked too much like…” Dawes halted in the doorway, wet towel in her hands. “They said it looked like a church.”

“Hallowed ground.”

She and Dawes had taken what long-dead Bunchy said too literally. They’d been looking in the wrong places.