Page 156 of Dead Beat

She was back in the stairwell and that awful bell was still tolling, that single tone vibrating on and on. Alex leaned against the railing. She was shaking, covered in cold sweat.

She looked up at the twisting staircase. The spiral seemed to float between the bells, impossibly steep.

Fifty-four bells, Darlington had told her, some original, all inscribed with For God, for country, and for Yale. Her muscles felt weak and loose.

“Okay,” she said. “You’re okay.”

No, she was better than okay. Everything touched the number four, the number of death. Four doors to wake the Gauntlet. Four artifacts to build the soldier’s armor. That meant she was halfway to the top.

There was fresh air waiting up there, maybe relief from the dull, relentless thunder of the bell.

“Two down,” she said, frightened by how thready her voice sounded, how very small. “Two to go.”

57

No voices now, no mysterious noises. She kept her hands tight on the railing. She didn’t quite trust her legs anymore. No rooms, no stonework, no places to stop and rest, just the stairs continuing to turn, up and up.

She hesitated when she reached the two hundredth step. She wasn’t sure her count was right. She let herself pause and breathe. Then she began the climb again. Two hundred and ten, eleven, twelve.

Thirteen and she was standing at the entrance to Beinecke Library, the wind blowing hard against her, cooling the sweat on her neck. She pushed through the revolving door.

The shelves rose six stories up, all encased in the central glass column, an idol made of books at the heart of the temple. The marble panels of the walls glowed amber. She had come to love this place as Darlington did. But was she in a memory from her own past or trapped in a slice of history she’d never seen?

“Alex!”

She turned. Darlington was standing behind the glass wall of the stacks, trapped inside the central column.

Another illusion. Or was it?

He held up his hand, pressing it against the glass. “You’re okay,” he said, his voice muffled. “I thought … When I ended up here, I thought something happened to you.”

Was he real? Had she somehow called to her second without meaning to? That wasn’t her plan. He was supposed to stay safe, beyond the reach of Golgarot.

“What is this?” he asked.

“A puzzle.” But was he the answer or the question? “There will be a test, a choice. They’re going to try to hurt you.”

“Whatever happens to me, you don’t break. You have to make it to the end of this. For all of us.”

Alex rested her forehead against the glass. Real or illusion, she wanted him here with her. She wanted to know she wasn’t alone.

“Look,” he said.

She turned. A man had entered through the revolving door. He was tall and bespectacled, with a thinning crown of tufty gray hair. His suit seemed modern enough, so they weren’t in the distant past.

“That’s the map thief,” Darlington said in wonder. “He was an antiquities dealer who stole hundreds of rare maps from different libraries. They caught him here.”

Alex found herself standing at the security desk, dressed in a guard’s uniform. The thief approached, smiling, but she could see the illusion already fraying at the edges. His jagged teeth pressed at the seam of his lips and the whites of his eyes were yellowing and bloodshot.

“Good evening,” he said, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth, unwinding like a spool of wet pink ribbon. “Oops,” he said with a giggle and tucked it back in. “I need assistance.”

So here it was. “How can I help?”

“It’s easy.” That’s what they all said, and it never was. “I need you to find the most valuable item in the library.”

She turned back to Darlington. He would know. But the stacks were filling with smoke. She could see him coughing, covering his mouth with his sleeve.

It’s not real.