Page 106 of Dead Beat

From Arlington rubber boots. The factory had employed hundreds until they were put out of business by better technology.

“Darlington,” she said carefully, “you’re down a rabbit hole here.”

“Do you remember what Kittscher’s demon said to me?”

“He said a lot of things.”

“Nice boots. The demon knew. As soon as it saw me.”

“Okay, let’s say it’s true. Let’s say your great-grandfather was one of the original pilgrims. It doesn’t change anything.” But even as she said it, she wasn’t sure that was so.

“Daniel Arlington II didn’t go to Penn. He didn’t finish college anywhere. He worked at the factory, then he ran the factory, and near as I can tell, he never left New Haven. But how? He went to hell. He came back. And then what? He lived a long life, had children, and died at a normal age. What happened to his demon? How did he best it when none of the others did?”

“We don’t know what happened to Hector.”

“Yes, we do. Dawes found him. Once we knew he was a football player and that he had to be Wolf’s Head, it wasn’t hard. Hec didn’t graduate either.”

“He left school?”

“He killed himself. He filled his pockets with rocks and drowned himself in the Sound.”

Alex didn’t want to imagine that. The dark and the cold. The loneliness of it. “That’s a shitty way to go.”

“But I get it,” said Darlington. “He didn’t want whatever demon he brought back from hell to claim him.”

Maybe. Or something else had driven Hector beneath the waves. She couldn’t say she was surprised, but some part of her had hoped he had found a way through.

She looked out at the passing dark, the pockets of light and warmth that vanished too quickly. “Why didn’t they take care of each other? Why didn’t Lethe and the other societies take care of them?”

“I don’t know. I … I’m not sure this is a place that tolerates mistakes.”

“I’ve made enough of them.”

“But you can do things no one else can. Yale loves the exceptional. Kittscher, Reiter, Hector, my great-grandfather—what was special about them?”

Hector had believed that Ned Harkness saw the potential for greatness in him. But the trait all the pilgrims had in common was just that they were willing to die. That was the truth of it. They were willing to sacrifice themselves to other men’s ambition. Except Alex wasn’t sure they had ever really believed they were in danger. They hadn’t known enough about the world to believe in their own mortality. They were the best and the brightest, certain of their own exceptionalism, confident that the people in charge saw them as something more than cannon fodder. She was nothing like long-dead Hector, but they were both soldiers, both brought to Yale for gifts that made them valuable—at least for a while. A talent for football. A view behind the Veil. And Hector had ended up walking into the waves.

“Honestly?” Alex said. “I’m amazed they didn’t try again.”

“A vampire, a nighteater, a suicide, and a dropout who became a shut-in?”

“I mean the donors, the men who recruited the pilgrims. If those people … those boys were so expendable, why not just order up another round?”

“We don’t know how many of the society alumni were in on this, but we know it wasn’t all of them. It’s possible the donors were found out and they had to shut the whole thing down. But I think it’s something simpler. I think those pilgrims ended up in hell and they had no way to get out. I think Golgarot extracted a promise from them. He’d keep the flow of magic through the nexuses open if the Gauntlet was left in place. I think those mysterious donors were afraid of what he might demand if they sent anyone else through.”

“Until we stumbled in.”

“That’s right. But if you hadn’t been a Wheelwalker, we all would have been trapped too. We all would have had to find a bargain to strike or we would have lost our souls.”

Golgarot had certainly tried. He’d wanted to place that yoke on Alex’s neck, to seat her leashed upon a throne, less queen than faithful hound.

“If I hadn’t been a Wheelwalker,” she noted, “Golgarot wouldn’t have been so determined to keep me there.”

“True,” Darlington said. “And if Sandow hadn’t sent a hellbeast after me, you never would have bothered to uncover the Gauntlet in the first place.”

“Sometimes I think Turner is right.”

“That this is a holy war?”