Page 117 of Hell Bent

“There’s no record, is there?” Turner asked. “Of their little sojourn in hell? They scrubbed the books.”

“They tried,” said Alex. But the library had known what Reiter was, probably because there had once been documentation of their attempt to use the Gauntlet. “We should look up the Lethe Days Diary of whoever was serving as Virgil when Reiter was a senior.”

Turner leaned against the wall, keeping one eye on the demons below. “I want to make sure I understand you. If we don’t put these … things back where they came from, they’re going to become vampires?”

“I think so,” Alex said. Vampires wearing their faces, fed on their souls.

“They’re going to eat the heart out of us,” Tripp rasped. “Spenser was … He said…”

“Hey,” Alex said. “He’s not Spenser.”

Tripp’s head snapped up. “He is. Spenser was just like that. He knew … he always knew the meanest thing to say.”

Alex didn’t need convincing. She remembered feeling frightened and helpless, knowing no one would believe that Spenser was a monster. It had been like being a little girl all over again, surrounded by Grays, alone without magic words or handsome knights or anyone at all to protect her.

Alex sat down next to Tripp on the bed. She had pushed him into something he wasn’t equipped for, and he was feeling it worse than all of them.

“Okay, so Spenser was pretty fucking bad. But you have to try to remember what those things down there feed off of. They’re trying to make you feel defeated before you even try. They want to make you feel hopeless and small.”

“Yeah, well,” Tripp said, eyes on the carpet. “It worked.”

“I know.” She looked around the room at the others, all of them tired and frightened. “Who else tangled with one of them?”

“Carmichael showed up,” said Turner. “But he didn’t say much. Just scared the shit out of me in the squad room.”

Dawes tucked her hands inside her sweatshirt. “I saw Blake.”

“Did he talk?”

Her chin dropped. Dawes doing her disappearing act. Her voice was low and thready. “He said plenty.”

Alex wasn’t going to push on the details, not if Dawes didn’t want to give them up. “But all they did was talk?”

“What else would they do?” Turner asked.

Alex wasn’t sure how to reply to that. Why had Hellie attacked her when the other demons had stuck to words? Was it because Alex had chased her down? Or did Alex just have a gift for the worst possible outcome?

“Hellie got physical with me.”

“They can … they can hurt us?” Tripp was digging his fingers into his thighs.

“Maybe it’s just me,” said Alex. “I don’t know.”

“We need to plan for the worst,” said Turner. “I’m not going into what might be a knife fight thinking I’m in for a lively debate.”

Mercy had been silent through all of it, but now she stepped forward looking like she was about to perform a solo in an a cappella group. “I … I think I found something. In the library. Something to help.”

“Let’s eat first,” Alex said. Tripp needed that soup. And maybe a shot of whiskey.

31

Alex was surprised at just how much the soup helped. She felt warm for the first time since she’d burst out of the underworld and into the cold New Haven rain. Nothing felt quite as dire. Not with dumplings in her belly and the taste of dill on her tongue.

“Shit, Dawes,” said Tripp, grinning as if Spenser and every other bad thing had been forgotten, “can you please just come stay in my loft and make me fat?”

Dawes rolled her eyes, but Alex could tell she was pleased.

None of them looked toward the windows, where the curtains remained drawn.