Page 139 of Dead Beat

“Herbs?” asked Mercy.

Alex nodded. She couldn’t remember the Latin names. “True unicorn root. True mistletoe. True dandelion. That kind of stuff.”

“That’s clever,” Mercy said wistfully, the pull of magic tugging at her. “And it really works?”

“It should,” said Alex. “You’ve seen Dawes in action. But your best bet is to be out of town before it all goes down.”

Mercy blew out a shaky breath then snatched the pouch and paper from the table, shoving them in her cardigan pocket. “Are you coming back? When this is over?”

“I don’t know.” If she could withstand whatever this trial required, if she could outthink Alban Reed, if she could dodge an order of murderous priests and their henchmen owls. “If I can put this all right, then maybe.”

Mercy nodded. “Okay.”

Alex rose as Lauren approached, her plate heaped with noodles. “Mercy is about to tell you some extremely crazy shit. It doesn’t matter if you believe her, just get out of town on Thursday night.”

Lauren set down her plate. “What are you talking about?”

“Get away from campus. That’s all I’m asking.”

“Are you wrapped up in some Weather Underground Baader- Meinhof stuff? Because—”

“Lauren, just listen to Mercy, okay? I have to go.”

She picked up her duffel, but as Alex passed, Mercy snagged her hand. “Be careful.”

Alex swallowed the sudden ache of tears in her throat and managed a wink. “You know I won’t.”

She squeezed Mercy’s hand, and then she did the hard part. She let go.

51

Alex was grateful to blow off her classes and spend the afternoon with the others at Il Bastone. Dawes was making a roast and stuffed Japanese sweet potatoes with crème fraîche. Darlington had insisted they open one of the most expensive bottles of wine in the Il Bastone cellar to properly toast her finished dissertation and what might be their last night on earth. Alex let it all wash over her—the smells from the kitchen, Turner and Darlington arguing over how to set a perimeter without drawing the attention of campus security, the frost on Il Bastone’s windows, and the fire roaring in the grate.

There was little they could do to prepare her for the climb because they had no idea what it might require, but they went over the plan to secure Harkness. They would be armed with salt swords and chains, and a variety of complex knot patterns. If Reiter’s familiars decided to show up, a series of repulsion and obfuscation spells would keep them at bay.

The carillonneurs would finish playing and leave the tower after six thirty, when it would already be full dark. Darlington suspected that the original pilgrims had planned to use the conquest room as a staging area, but now that it was part of the dean’s apartments, there was no access. They agreed the simplest thing was to take Turner’s Dodge and the Subaru and park on High Street. They had considered trying to clear the whole quadrangle, but it was an impossible undertaking without creating some kind of massive emergency. So she’d go to meet a prince of hell while Yale slept on.

Alex would start her climb from the chapel at the base of the tower, and Darlington would remain behind with the others and the overstuffed Voynich Coffin. If Alex made it to the top, if she managed to beat Golgarot, then she would call to her second, and this time Daniel Arlington would be ready. They’d send the puzzle box and all the demons in it back to hell with Golgarot.

“You can’t hesitate to call out to me, do you understand?” Darlington asked. “If it looks like it’s going wrong—”

“I will,” Alex reassured him. But she wasn’t sure she meant it. She didn’t know what she might find at the top of the tower, but if they failed, if Golgarot and his legion came through, if Alex and Darlington both ended up in hell, who would be left to stop them? She didn’t much care about what happened to the rest of the world, but she wanted the people she loved to survive.

“How many stairs?” she asked, trying to parse the elevation of the tower Darlington had pulled from the Lethe archives.

“Two hundred and eighty-four,” Darlington said.

“Great.”

“I told you to go to the gym.”

“You’ve blessed me with so much wisdom. It can be hard to keep it all straight.”

“Let’s start at the bottom and work our way to the top. Harkness is built on a square foundation, and the first set of stairs is enclosed. It’s very narrow, a spiral.” His hand corkscrewed upward. “The exterior of that level is largely unadorned. It’s strange, now that I think about it. There’s almost nothing at eye level or where anyone on the ground could see it. Everything changes when you get to the clock level.”

Darlington talked her through the levels of the tower, the stonework Lawrie had created, statues, symbols, layer upon layer of history and meaning. It was too much.

“Will any of this make a difference?” Alex asked. Her mind was swimming with details she knew she couldn’t retain.