Page 64 of Hell Bent

Alex wished she could say no. “Michelle told me we’d have to die to complete the ritual. I’m terrified. And I really don’t want to do this.”

“Neither do I,” Dawes said. “I want to know how to be brave. Like you.”

“I’m reckless. There’s a difference.”

What might have been a smile curled the corner of Dawes’s mouth. “Maybe. Tell me about the Praetor.”

Alex sat down. “He’s a delight.”

“Really?”

“Dawes.”

Dawes’s cheeks pinked. “I did a little dive on him, and he wasn’t a popular figure at Lethe. His Virgil hated him and lobbied against his selection, but there’s no denying he was an academic superstar.”

“The bad news is he has not mellowed with age. The good news is it looks like Anselm and the board are keeping him in the dark about what really happened at Scroll and Key.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because this guy seems to be held together by righteous indignation. I think he’s been complaining to Lethe for years about how we’re all slouching toward Bethlehem. They just want him to shut up and leave them alone.”

“So now he’s our problem.”

“Something like that. I think our best bet is to just let him believe we’re dim and incompetent.”

Dawes folded her arms. “Do you know how hard I’ve had to work to be taken seriously? To have my dissertation taken seriously? Playing dumb doesn’t just hurt us, it hurts every woman he comes into contact with. It—”

“Dawes, I know. But it’s also really good cover. So let’s just dance for him until we figure this out, and then I will happily stand aside while you crush his ego with your dazzling intellect, okay?”

Dawes considered. “Okay.”

“Not to sound like Turner, but do we have a plan?”

“Sort of?” Dawes spread out a series of neatly typed pages that she’d highlighted with different colors. “If we can figure out how to finish the Gauntlet, we begin the walk at midnight. Once we find the four doorways, each threshold will need to be marked with blood.”

“On Halloween.”

“I know,” Dawes said. “But we don’t have a choice. If we get it right … something will happen. I’m not sure what. But the door to hell will open and four graves will appear. Again, the language isn’t totally clear.”

“Four graves for four murderers.”

“Assuming we have four murderers.”

“We will,” Alex said, though Turner still hadn’t given them a yes. If they had to go back to that hideous map, they would. But they’d have to do it fast. And finding someone who’d agree to be buried alive to rescue someone they’d never met wasn’t going to be easy. “Do we need to … I don’t know, bring weapons or something?”

“We can try, though I don’t know what we’ll be fighting. I have no idea what might be waiting on the other side. All I can tell you is that our bodies don’t make the descent, our souls do.”

But Alex remembered what she’d witnessed in the basement of Rosenfeld Hall. “Darlington vanished, I saw it happen. Not just his soul, his body too.” One moment he’d been there with her, a scream on his lips, and then he was gone, along with the sound of his cry. There’d been no echo, no fade, just sudden silence.

“Because he was eaten,” Dawes said, as if it were obvious. “It’s the only way he was able to become … well, whatever he is.”

“So none of us are going to turn into demons?”

Dawes renewed her grip on her headphones. “I don’t think so.”

“For fuck’s sake, Dawes.”

“I can’t be sure,” she said brusquely, as if the idea of losing her humanity was less concerning than the prospect of losing her job at Lethe. “There haven’t been enough well-documented attempts to say what will happen. But just sending our souls is a kind of protection. Bodies are permeable, changeable. It’s why we need someone watching over us, to serve as a connection to the living world. I just wish we weren’t doing this on Halloween. We’re going to draw a lot of Grays.”