Page 153 of Hell Bent

Alex did too.

39

The house was big enough that there was room for everyone to sleep behind the wards. Darlington was back in the Virgil bedroom on the third floor. Dawes would sleep on the couch in the parlor, and Turner had claimed the floor of the armory.

Alex and Mercy set up camp in the Dante bedroom. But before Alex turned out the light, she tried texting Tripp once more. It wasn’t safe to go looking for him at night, but she and Turner would try in the morning.

“I wasn’t very nice to him,” said Mercy.

“That’s not what got him in trouble. And you don’t owe everyone nice.” She lay back on her pillow. “I need you to be ready tomorrow. Dawes said the descent could be different this time. I don’t know what that means for you on the surface, but there’s at least one vampire running around out there. I don’t like putting you in danger again.”

Mercy wriggled under the covers. “But we’re always in danger. Go to a party, meet up with the wrong person, walk down the wrong street. I think … I think sometimes it’s easier if instead of waiting for trouble, you go to meet it.”

“Like a bad date.”

Mercy laughed. “Yeah. But if anything terrible happens to me—”

“It won’t.”

“But if it does—”

“Mercy, if anyone fucks with you, I will teach them a new word for violence.”

Mercy laughed, the sound brittle. “I know.” She sat up, punched her pillow, leaned back on it. Alex could practically see the wheels turning. “To be a pilgrim … you all killed someone?”

Alex had known this conversation was coming. “Yup.”

“I know … I know Dawes killed Blake. I’m not sure I want to know about everyone else, but…”

“Why am I qualified to be on Team Murder?”

“Yeah.”

Alex had told Mercy about Lethe, about magic, even about the Grays, and that she could see them and use them. But she’d left her past good and buried. As far as Mercy knew, she was a kid from California with some gaps in her education.

There were plenty of lies Alex could tell now. It was self-defense. It was an accident. But the truth was that she’d contemplated killing Eitan that very morning, and if she’d been able to get away with it and find a place to stash the bodies, she would have done it and never looked back. And she’d promised she wasn’t going to lie to Mercy again.

“I killed a lot of people.”

Mercy rolled over on her side and looked at her. “How many?”

“Enough. For now.”

“Do you … How do you live with that?”

What truth was she supposed to offer up? Because it wasn’t the people she’d killed who haunted her. It was the people she’d let die, the ones she couldn’t save. Alex knew she should say something comforting. That she prayed or cried or ran laps to forget. She hadn’t had many friends and she didn’t want to lose this one. But she was tired of pretending.

“I’m just not made right, Mercy. I don’t know if it’s remorse or conscience that I’m missing or if the angel on my shoulder decided to take a long vacation. But I don’t lose sleep over the bodies on my scorecard. I guess that doesn’t make me a great roommate.”

“Maybe not,” Mercy said and turned off the light. “But I’m glad you’re on my side.”

Alex waited until Mercy was snoring, then slipped out of bed and padded upstairs to the third floor. The door to the Virgil bedroom was open, and there was a fire blazing in the hearth beneath the stained glass windows depicting a hemlock wood. Darlington was sprawled in a chair by the fire. He’d changed into Lethe House sweatpants and an old robe—or maybe it was called a dressing gown. She wasn’t sure. She just knew that she’d been looking at him without a stitch of clothes for weeks, but that something about seeing him this way—feet propped on the ottoman, robe open, bare chested, a book in his hand—made her feel like a Peeping Tom.

“Something you want, Stern?” he asked without glancing up from his reading.

That was a complicated question.

“You lied to Turner,” she said.