Page 9 of Dead Beat

He kept the engine idling in the cold. At last he said, “There’s a ritual called the Sleepwalker that was created for intel gathering during the Cold War. It doesn’t require a portal or a nexus, and your mother will be at no risk.”

“Don’t bullshit me. There’s no such thing as magic without risk.”

“Were you always a cynic, Stern?”

“From birth.”

He gave a small shrug. “I’m not going to push you.”

“You’re pushing me now.”

“I’m hardly one to lecture on the matter of familial bonds.”

“Do you miss them?”

She hadn’t meant to ask about his parents. They’d never talked about what Golgarot had done to Darlington’s mother and father, not since the day they’d stood on the basement stairs and let Harper and Dan Arlington’s bodies burn away in a tide of hellfire. There was nothing left of them in this world, not even ash.

“I miss … the idea of them. I’ve read enough books to know what families are supposed to be like. Close families. Broken families. We weren’t like any of them.”

Another fractured constellation. You knew the shape you were meant to look for in those scattered stars, but sometimes it just didn’t line up.

She peered at the weathervanes spinning on the rooftop of St. Elmo’s. A ship. A rooster. A rabbit emerging from a top hat. Overseeing the ritual had been a way to escape Turner’s scrutiny, but now she wished they could just skip right over this sorry business with St. Elmo. The problem with stopping, with letting yourself rest, was that it made it that much harder to move again.

“Do we really have to do this?” Alex asked. Darlington sighed, and she laughed. “This is where you’re supposed to remind me of our sacred duty as delegates of Lethe.”

“I know,” he said. “But it’s hard to feel much investment when we’re spending most of our time—”

“Staving off Armageddon?”

“I fear we’ve veered into melodrama.”

“You sure?”

“No,” he admitted.

In the warm pocket of the car, his profile was limned in a gold wash of light from the streetlamps. She had the sudden feeling that she’d slipped into another life, a safer, more lovely version of the world. They’d spent a happy evening together. He’d taken her to a nice dinner in a restaurant with vases full of fresh flowers and white tablecloths. He’d parked his car to drop her off at the end of the date. Except Darlington was a gentleman. He would walk her to the door.

We’d go to a play, a diner, the park. We wouldn’t know each other’s secrets. Alex wasn’t sure she’d ever been on a real date. She and Len had gone to the movies a few times and she’d agreed to meet her TA from Psychology of Milton for coffee before she realized it was maybe closer to a date than a study session. He would walk me to the door, and then what? Usually, she avoided looking at Darlington. She didn’t think about it; she just kept her head down, kept her focus elsewhere. Because once she looked, she just wanted to keep looking. His beauty was offensive, absurd, powerfully unfair. He had been given too much of it and left scraps for the rest.

“Stern?” He turned to her, confused by her silence, and when he saw her watching him, his eyes flickered gold. The world felt suddenly distant. “We should go.”

He had turned off the engine and leapt from the car before she could reply, shutting the door behind him and stamping his feet in the cold.

She gave her head a shake, relieved he couldn’t read her mind. She was tired and being near him was harder than she wanted it to be. During his long absence, he had lived in her thoughts—confidant, companion, and, on the hard days, an unwelcome conscience. But the reality of his presence, the weight and heat of his body beside her, was so much more complicated than that precise, knowledgeable voice in her head. She wished they were walking into something tricky or dangerous; it would be easier to keep her mind straight. But instead they had to go waste two hours with the duds of St. Elmo.

“Why did they buy the ugliest house on the block?” she asked as they approached the squat lump of red brick and white trim.

“It was available,” Darlington said. “And I’m sure they thought it was temporary.”

That Alex understood. When you were in the slide, you always had to tell yourself the bad choice wouldn’t last. We’ll squat until we find something permanent. I’ll sleep in my car until the next paycheck. I’ll chip away at the vig next week. But loss was easy. It was why she’d held so tightly to this life at Yale. She knew that if she let herself get too far from this place, she’d never find her way back.

They were greeted at the doorway by a short redhead with thick bangs wearing a ratty cloak embroidered with clouds. “They’re here!” she called over her shoulder. She stepped aside and declared, “Welcome, delegates of Lethe.”

“We are one step away from a m’lady,” Alex grumbled as they entered.

“I’m Nell,” the girl said, closing the door. “Sorry, I’m not sure who’s Dante and who’s Virgil.”

“It can be hard to tell lately,” Darlington replied.