Page 18 of Hell Bent

Alex felt an unpleasant flutter in her stomach. “I know. Front door, back door.” Sandow had made sure the windows were boarded up, and the old Mercedes had been repaired on Lethe’s dime. Dawes occasionally used it to run errands, just to keep it from sitting idle.

Dawes tucked her chin into her neck. “I put one in the ballroom.”

In the ballroom. Where they’d attempted the new moon ritual.

“And?” Alex could hear Anselm talking in the parlor, the crackle of soap bubbles in the sink.

“Something … I got a notification.” She bobbed her head at her phone resting on the counter.

Alex made herself pick it up, swipe the screen. Nothing but a dark blur was visible, a faint light dancing at the edges.

“That’s all the camera is picking up,” said Dawes.

Alex stared at the screen as if she could find some pattern in the dark. “It might just be Cosmo. He could have knocked the camera over.”

Darlington’s cat had rejected all attempts to rehome him to Il Bastone or Dawes’s apartment up near the divinity school. All they could do was offer tributes of food and water and hope he’d watch over Black Elm, and that the old house would watch over him.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Dawes.”

“Of course not.”

Of course not.

But Dawes still had that startled look and Alex knew what she was thinking.

Wait. The plea had come too late, but what if, when the portal at Scroll and Key had slammed shut, Darlington had somehow still found a way through? What if they’d somehow gotten it right? What if they’d brought him back?

And what if we got it very wrong? What if whatever was waiting at Black Elm wasn’t Darlington at all?

“Alex?” Anselm called from the other room. “A word. Just you, please.” But Dawes hadn’t budged. She had her hands clenched around the edge of the sink, like she was clinging to the safety bar on a roller coaster, like she was getting ready to scream on the way down. Had Alex really ever understood what Darlington meant to Pamela Dawes? Quiet, closed-off Dawes, who had mastered the art of disappearing into the furniture? The girl only he’d called Pammie?

“We’ll get rid of Anselm and then go take a look,” Alex said. Her voice was steady, but her heart had taken off at a sprint.

It’s nothing, Alex told herself as she joined Anselm in the parlor. A cat. A squatter. A wayward tree branch. A wayward boy. She needed to keep a clear head if she was going to figure out how to appease Anselm and the Lethe board.

“I’ve spoken with the new Praetor. He was already reluctant to take the position, and I doubt today’s activities will fill him with confidence, so I’ve made every effort to downplay this little disaster.”

Thanks didn’t seem appropriate, so Alex stayed quiet.

“What were you really doing at Scroll and Key?”

Alex had been hoping Anselm wouldn’t be so direct. Lethe liked to dance around trouble, and they were expert at finding dusty rugs to sweep the truth under. She took a closer look at Anselm—tan from some kind of summer vacation, slightly rumpled from the night’s adventures. He’d loosened his collar and poured himself a scotch. He looked like an actor playing a man whose wife had just asked him for a divorce.

“I smelled sulfur,” he continued wearily. “Everyone within two miles probably smelled it. So tell me what went wrong with a revelation casting to cause something like that? To smash a centuries-old table?”

“You said it yourself: Their nexus is unstable.”

“Not fire-and-brimstone unstable.” He lifted his glass, pointing a finger as if ordering another. “You were trying to open a portal to hell. I thought I made myself clear. Daniel Arlington isn’t—”

Alex considered. He wasn’t going to let her get away with saying this was an accident or a revelation casting gone wrong. But she wasn’t about to admit to trying to find Darlington, not when he might be back, not when something far worse might be waiting at Black Elm.

“It wasn’t an accident,” she lied. “I did it on purpose.”

Anselm blinked. “You intended to destroy the table?”

“That’s right. They shouldn’t have gotten away with what they did last year.”

“Alex,” he scolded gently, “our job is to protect. Not dole out punishment.”