Page 13 of Hell Bent

Were Eitan’s people still watching Mira? Or had he decided to leave her mother alone now that Alex was doing what she was told? California seemed less like another coast than another age, a hazy time before that Alex wanted to keep blurry, the details too painful to draw into focus.

The party was at a house on Lynwood, not far from St. Elmo’s sad slump of an apartment, its hopeful weather vanes spinning slowly on the roof. Alex drank water the whole night and was bored out of her skull, but she didn’t mind. She liked standing with a red Solo cup in her hand, flanked by her friends, pretending to be buzzed. Well, not quite pretending. She’d dosed herself with basso belladonna. She’d told herself she was going to get through the year clean, but the year was being a dick, so she’d do what she had to.

Saturday morning, she slipped out while Mercy was still asleep and called over to Scroll and Key. As promised, she was nothing but polite; then she curled up in bed and went back to sleep until Mercy woke her.

They ate breakfast late in the dining hall, and Alex piled her plate high as she always did. They were about to try to open a portal to hell; she should be too nervous to eat. Instead, she felt like she couldn’t get full. She wanted more syrup, more bacon, more everything. Grays loved this place, the smells of the food, the gossip. Alex could have warded it, the same way she had set up protections on her dorm room. But if something came after her, she wanted a Gray close enough to use—just not near enough to bother her. And here, they seemed to blend into the crowd. There was something peaceable about all of it, the dead breaking bread with the living.

Alex knew there were more beautiful rooms at Yale, but this was her favorite, the dark wood of the rafters floating high above, the great stone fireplace. She loved to sit here and let the clatter of trays, the roar of chatter wash over her. She had expected Darlington to smirk when she’d told him how much she loved JE’s dining hall, but he’d only nodded and said, “It’s too grand to be the common room of a tavern or an inn, but that’s how it feels. As if you could put up your feet here and wait for any storm to pass.” Maybe that was true for some weary traveler, for the student she was pretending to be. But the real Alex belonged in the storm, a lightning rod for trouble. That would change when Darlington returned. It wouldn’t just be her and Dawes trying to bar the door against the dark anymore.

“Where are you going?” Mercy asked as Alex rose and shoved a piece of buttered toast in her mouth. “We’ve got reading.”

“I finished ‘The Knight’s Tale.’”

“And ‘The Wife of Bath’?”

“Yup.”

Lauren leaned back in her chair. “Hold up. Alex, you’re ahead on the reading?”

“I’m very scholarly now.”

“We have to memorize the first eighteen lines,” said Mercy. “And it isn’t easy.”

Alex set down her bag. “What? Why?”

“So we know how it all sounds? They’re in Middle English.”

“I had to learn them in high school,” said Lauren.

“That’s because you went to a fancy prep school in Brookline,” said Mercy. “Alex and I were stuck in public school, honing our street smarts.”

Lauren nearly spit out her juice laughing.

“Best be careful,” Alex said with a grin. “Mercy will fuck you up.”

“You didn’t say where you were going!” Lauren called after her as she strode out of the dining hall. Alex had almost forgotten how tiring it was to come up with excuses.

Dawes was waiting in front of the music school, its pink-and-white facade like a heavily decorated cake. Alex had never seen Venice, probably never would, but she knew this was the style. Darlington had loved this building too.

“They said yes?”

No Hello, no How are you. Dawes looked impossibly awkward in long frumpy cargo shorts and a white V-neck, a canvas satchel slung across her body. Something seemed off about her, and Alex realized she was so used to seeing Dawes with headphones fastened around her neck, she appeared oddly naked without them.

“In a way,” said Alex. “I told them I was doing an inspection.”

“Oh, good … Wait, why are you doing an inspection?”

“Dawes.” Alex cast her a look. “What would I be inspecting?”

“You said you’d talk to them, not lie to them.”

“Lying is a kind of talking. A very useful kind. And it didn’t take much.” After the shit Scroll and Key had pulled last year—not the drugs, of course; that was perfectly acceptable according to the rules of Lethe. But they’d let outsiders, townies, into their tomb and made them part of their rituals. It had all ended in murder and scandal. And of course there had been no repercussions except a firm warning and a fine.

Robbie Kendall was waiting on the steps of the tomb in madras shorts and a light blue polo shirt, his blond hair worn just long enough to suggest surfer without actually looking disreputable. The afternoon heat didn’t seem to be getting to him. He looked like he’d never sweat in his life.

“Hi,” he said, smiling nervously. “Alex? Or, uh … do I call you Virgil?”

Alex felt Dawes stiffen beside her. She hadn’t been with Alex on the first two ritual nights. She hadn’t heard that name since Darlington vanished.