Page 173 of Dead Beat

“It doesn’t feel right,” Alex said. “That everything changed for us, for our friends, and nothing changed for everyone else.”

He looked at the scenes of Yale history carved into the walls. There would never be a panel to commemorate what they’d done here. Alex facing down a demon prince. Dawes and Tripp and Turner fighting Reiter and his familiars. Darlington had never contemplated an act of vandalism in his life. He held a special kind of contempt for people who hacked their initials into monuments and tree trunks. But in that moment, he wanted to see their names cut deep into these walls—Pamela Dawes, Tripp Helmuth, Abel Turner, Alex Stern. He wanted some plaque or sign that read, We were here and we mattered.

“Look,” Alex said, gesturing to the door that would lead them back into the Branford courtyard.

He had never noticed before: The metal handles had been wrought in the shape of owls.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “I don’t ever want to hear the Harkness bells again.”

Dawes and Turner were waiting for them on High Street, the world too quiet around them thanks to the repulsion spells Dawes had refreshed in the wake of the battle. Turner had placed his jacket over Tripp’s broken body. There was no sign of Reiter’s familiars.

They wrapped up Tripp and his heart in a blanket from the trunk of Turner’s Dodge and brought him back to Il Bastone.

“He belongs with his family,” Dawes said as they stood in the parking lot. “His parents should know.”

Her face was pale, her red hair hanging loose. Turner looped his arm over her shoulders.

“We can’t do that,” he said. “There’s no way to explain this to them.”

“They’ll think he just disappeared,” she protested.

But the truth was that the real Tripp had vanished from his life when the demon had consumed him. There had been no road back to his family and friends, to a human existence. He had tried to make a place for himself, to be noble, to be of use.

In the end, they agreed to bury him at Black Elm, beside Michelle Alameddine, another casualty of Linus Reiter, of the arrogance of the original pilgrims and the donors who had made their hubris possible. But Tripp would be the last.

This time Alex would be the one to fill the great golden tub with goat’s milk. She would help Dawes into the crucible to heal the bruises and cuts she’d acquired in the fight, while Turner and Darlington drove out to Black Elm to put Tripp’s body in the frozen ground.

When the bleak work was done, Darlington asked, “Do you want to come back to Il Bastone?”

But Turner shook his head. “Drop me at my mother’s place. I need to see her and make sure she’s okay.”

Darlington understood. Even if no one knew about the battle they’d fought, it felt like they had returned from war. They needed to know the people they loved were safe and whole. But all the people Darlington loved were back at Il Bastone.

He found Alex in the kitchen scrounging together a sandwich.

“I put Dawes in the Dante bedroom,” she said. “I didn’t want her to go home to an empty apartment.”

“Good.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Just tired,” he said.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s over.”

“Because it isn’t.”

Her eyes met his and he saw his own fatigue reflected there, an understanding of all the work that remained.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“Tomorrow,” he agreed.

They climbed the stairs to the Dante bedroom and lay down there, each of them bracketing Dawes. When she began to weep, they held her close, until at last sleep came, the nearest they might come to peace.

The next day, Darlington rose and made coffee. He walked to Olmo and brought back bagels and fried egg sandwiches. Then he called Alban Reed.

“Daniel,” he said, “I was hoping I’d hear from you.”