Page 134 of Dead Beat

Now Darlington did manage a real laugh. “You’re giving me a lot of credit. Alex has a mind of her own.”

“I’m well aware. But I can tell she likes you and respects you. And if you can sway her to this purpose, it will serve not only her interests and mine but yours as well. I have the resources to rebuild Black Elm and to support whatever endeavor you might be interested in pursuing after graduation. My reach extends far beyond anything Lethe can offer.”

A bribe, then. Promises of wealth and influence, no different from the ones the societies had always offered. Lethe is supposed to be better, he wanted to shout. We promised to be more.

“And if Alex can’t do what you think she can?” he asked.

Reed shrugged. “Then we’ll have been on adventure. Good for the soul, remember?” He clapped a hand on Darlington’s shoulder. “I think we both know that Alex Stern doesn’t have the best instincts when it comes to self-preservation. You’re her Virgil. You want to protect her. That’s admirable. But surely you understand that if she really does have this gift, you can’t keep her safe.”

Was that a threat? What would Reed say if Darlington let the demon emerge? What would happen if he simply gutted the president of the Lethe board right here?

Reed must have seen something in his eyes because he drew back, hands raised in surrender. “Think on it. Please. You’re both young. You think you can conquer the world without any help. Don’t let your failure to understand your own limits get your Dante killed.”

48

After Reed left, Darlington took the stairs down to the treasure room.

Penny was waiting at the iron doors. “Sorry about the ambush,” she said. “Reed loves a little cloak-and-dagger.”

“He really does,” Darlington replied easily, trying to hide his worry and his anger.

He wanted to be done with this errand and back at Il Bastone. He wasn’t sure if Reed had been issuing a warning or merely making an offer, but Darlington knew he hadn’t come out the victor in their exchange. To Alban Reed, he was a tool, an ambitious college kid unsure of what might come next, another Penny who needed his favor. He supposed that was all true. But right now he was playing for higher stakes.

Penny unlocked the heavy door and pushed it open. “What are you looking for?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” he lied. “But I’ll know it when I see it.”

So far, the names of the artifacts had all been bits of wordplay and “the Head of the Dragon” had seemed an easy solve to him. Scroll and Key was steeped in Arthurian legend and King Arthur’s father had been named Uther Pendragon. Basic knowledge for any child raised on stories and yearning to play knight.

“Sure about that?” She flicked a switch and fluorescent lights buzzed to life high overhead.

“You might have mentioned this society is really just a bunch of hoarders.”

“We’ve been around for over one hundred years. People gift cartouches to Wolf’s Head and old femurs to Skull and Bones. They bring us armor.”

The room was narrow and Dawes would have been appalled to discover that, based on the damp in the air, it was not climate-controlled. The walls were lined with steep shelves piled high with shields, bracers, swords, lances, spears, visors, greaves, bowls full of metal odds and ends, and a maddening number of helms. He’d landed in a magical junk heap.

“Shall I wait?” Penny asked.

“Best not to.”

He could tell she was stung, but she would survive it. He’d felt guilty for lying to Penny, but now she’d lied to him, so he supposed they were even. She had been happy to set him up and he was happy to let their history remain just that.

“I’ll be upstairs,” she said. “But remember—you can’t take anything out of the tomb without written permission.”

“Of course,” he replied, though he had prepared an obfuscation spell for just that purpose.

When she was gone, he stepped back and reassessed the room. There was a time when he would have relished a challenge like this. He had intended to spend his life devoting himself to such pursuits, and that was certainly the future Alban Reed had envisioned for him—hunting down artifacts, writing papers, finishing his magical map of New Haven. But he found himself asking the same question Dawes had: Did any of it matter?

He would always love history, antiquity, the profound sense of knowing a thing that research could provide. Now he wondered if that sense of knowing was an illusion, if it was enough to go searching for old riddles when the riddle of the world and the people in it lay before him. None of this had troubled him before Alex Stern had crashed into his life. She had upended every table, knocked over the shelves, demanded that he poke and prod the truth of Lethe until it revealed itself. He found he couldn’t love what lay beneath the dust and books and protocol.

The room was all chaos—or so it seemed. But the pilgrims had hidden their artifacts away a century ago and they wouldn’t have just thrown them on a heap of spare parts.

Some of the shelves had been built into the stone, but the cases on the north-facing wall were wood, more recent additions, and possibly put there to hide objects of greater value. He slid his hands along the seams of the shelves, then began to trace the rough stone. He closed his eyes, letting touch detect what his eyes couldn’t, and—there, a smooth spot, nearly invisible, worn away by years of seeking fingers.

He pressed, and the shelf released a soft sigh. A narrow space appeared between the wood and the wall. He wedged his fingertips into the gap and pulled.

Instantly he knew he was in the right place. These original shelves were far less crowded and better organized. One level contained spears, the next gauntlets, and so on. There was an entire row of helms wrought in steel and bronze, each of them behind a glass door covered in symbols.