Page 100 of Dead Beat

“But you can erase tonight?”

“Yes,” she said. “I can do that. Whatever prohibition he put on Mira was built to summon him if someone tried to lift it. I can just make the night vanish.”

“You wipe his memory and get the soup going,” Turner said. “Darlington and I will get him out of here and put him on a plane.”

Darlington turned to Alex. “Do you want to say goodbye?”

“I already did.”

There was nothing more to say. Some part of her wanted to look into his face again, to know who he was and where he came from, to hear about the half brother she’d never met. Another part of her wanted to stab him again and see the look of pain and fright in his eyes. She had his name now. She supposed that if she survived all this, she could find him again, stage a less bloody family reunion. She could be smarter about hiding the fact that she was a Wheelwalker. Her father could be one more person she lied to.

Or maybe he could just stay a stranger. He hadn’t been any kinder to her than the world had.

What did you do? he’d demanded. Every way she knew to survive seemed to be the wrong one. But she was going to keep doing it just the same.

35

Darlington booked Huilca on a 5:15 a.m. flight out of Logan. The airports in Connecticut and even New York felt too close to home. At some point before his flight, Alex’s father would regain his will, the compulsion easing and Dawes’s prohibition already implanted. He’d be in a strange city with no memory of how he’d gotten there. Taking him to Massachusetts made it less likely he could draw any kind of connection to New Haven.

Darlington hadn’t been sure how to keep the booking from being traced to them, but Turner had suggested a debit card in Huilca’s name. They had his driver’s license with a Portland address and Turner was able to locate his Social Security number.

“This feels uncomfortably like identity theft,” Darlington observed.

Turner was unimpressed. “You’re preparing to wipe a man’s memories and you’re worried about opening a credit card in his name?”

“I will just note that cops and criminals seem to have similar playbooks.”

“You don’t say. Be grateful you haven’t woken up with a string of bad car loans in your name.”

When they left Il Bastone, Alex was sleeping and the owls were still arrayed on the telephone wires. There had to be at least a dozen. Barn owls, Darlington could see now, their strange white faces glowing like a row of sinister moons in the streetlight.

“We might have to make a break for it,” Turner said.

But the owls showed no interest in Darlington or Turner or Huilca as they headed to the Dodge.

The prohibition Dawes had pulled from the library was actually called the Banks of Lethe and it would obliterate the last twenty to twenty-four hours of Huilca’s memory. It had a second iteration called the Waters of Lethe that would wipe out far more but could also lead to the subject forgetting vital information like how to tie his shoes or even his own name. Darlington had to wonder if that would have been the better choice.

Around Hartford, he handed Huilca a water bottle and instructed him to drink half of it.

“What’s in it?”

“Water.” Technically true, though it had been mixed with herbs and a nontoxic derivative of euphorbia sap in Hiram’s Crucible.

Huilca drank, but the fact that he had asked what was in the bottle meant that, despite their reinforcements, the effects of the coin of compulsion were already waning.

It was well after midnight and Darlington felt like he hadn’t slept in a week. Only a few hours had passed since they had tried to dislodge Mira’s prohibition, but it was as if reality had taken on an entirely different form. There had been too many revelations, and their weight exerted a new gravity, warping the old and familiar orbits, changing their paths. Alex had nearly been killed, and while they put their lives in danger with increasing regularity, seeing her blood on his hands, that knife in her shoulder, had brought something furious and unrecognizable to life in him.

Anger would do her no good. The demon had done his part. Now Darlington needed logic, the steady comfort of reason, the chance to make sense of everything they’d been through. Besides, he wasn’t ready to think too deeply on what he’d seen in the past or all its implications. Focusing on Huilca’s notes was a relief. He read by the light of his cell phone as Turner steered the car north to Boston.

“Dawes was right. Alban Reed is a member.” He turned to look at Huilca. “But you don’t know him?”

“No.”

“And you’ve never been in direct contact?”

“No.”

Turner cast Darlington a wary look. Those one-word answers were another sign the compulsion was wearing off. “Is there anything really useful in there?”