Page 146 of Hell Bent

“I need to know what to tell Dawes,” she said. “Anselm avoided her cameras, but she knows I’m here and she knows the ballroom camera is offline. Are you ready to be back?”

“I don’t know that it matters. Perhaps it would be best to explain in person.” He hesitated, but there was no reason not to ask. “Did you see them? My parents? After…”

She nodded. “They helped get me out of the basement.”

“Do they think I killed them?”

“Sort of?”

“Are they here now?”

Alex shook her head. Of course not. He knew better than that. Grays rarely returned to the scene of their deaths. Contrary to most popular fiction, ghosts didn’t come back to haunt their murderers. They wanted to be reminded of places and people they loved, human pleasures. It took a vengeful and dedicated spirit to haunt someone, and neither of his parents had that kind of drive.

And they would have wanted to be far from Golgarot. The dead feared demons because they promised pain when the pain should be over. They’d been very frightened of Darlington indeed.

Alex drew her coat more tightly closed. “The old man is here.”

“My grandfather?”

“I can hear him. I can hear all of them now.”

Darlington tried not to show his surprise, his curiosity, his envy. How could this scrap of a girl have so much power? How could she see into the hidden world that had evaded him for so long? And after a year in hell, why did he still give a damn?

“They never shut up,” she added.

She’s trusting me, he told himself. Alex was handing him knowledge that he knew, with complete certainty, Lethe didn’t have. Another offering. He found he was as greedy for her trust as her power. He pushed those thoughts away.

“What is he saying?”

Now Alex’s eyes shifted uneasily to the toes of her boots. “He says to be free. That you’ve given up enough blood to this place. It’s yours to take or leave. It always should have been.”

Darlington snorted. “You’re lying. What did he really say?”

Alex shrugged and met his eyes. “That Black Elm needs you more than ever, that this is your home by right of blood and treasure, and a lot of rambling about the Arlington legacy.”

“That sounds much more like him.” He paused, studying her. “You know what happened here, don’t you? What I did? Why I survived the hellbeast?”

Alex didn’t look away. “I know.”

“I always wondered if I’d done the right thing.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’d smother him right now if I could.”

Darlington was startled by his own abrupt laugh. Maybe Alex could have stopped him from being eaten that night in Rosenfeld Hall. Maybe she’d wanted his discovery of her crimes to die with him in that basement. He supposed she had betrayed him. But in the end it had taken this monstrous girl to drag him back from the underworld. There was nothing he could say that would shock her, and that was powerful comfort.

“I’ll be back,” he said, in the hopes that his grandfather would understand what he was about to do. “Better to flee from death than feel its grip,” he quoted, letting the death words cast the old man out, a peace offering to Alex of his own.

“Thanks,” she said.

“I don’t know what to do about…” He couldn’t quite manage to say their bodies. He bobbed his chin toward the basement instead.

“We have bigger problems,” Alex said, rising from the counter. “Come on, I called a car.”

“Why don’t we take the Mercedes?” She winced. “Stern, what happened to my car?”

“Long story.”

She locked the kitchen door behind them, and they started down the gravel drive. But after only a few steps, he had to stop, put his hands on his knees, breathe deeply.