Page 149 of Dead Beat

One step, then another, the stairs turning in a slow spiral, the path so narrow her shoulders brushed the walls. She counted—ten, then twenty, thirty, forty. Darlington had said there would be an office here where the carillonneurs worked and practiced, but the landing was empty stone, the only feature the changing staircase—metal now, gaps between the steps, a railing.

At seventy-one, she’d be a quarter of the way there.

Four pilgrims, four artifacts, four sets of seventy-one stairs. At fifty, she heard voices, the sound of a crowd.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. If the last thought she had was Darlington reciting poetry to her, that didn’t seem so bad.

Another step and she smelled—salt water, the cinnamon and sugar of frying churros. Another and she heard the looping whine of an electric guitar.

It was warm now, the light in the stairwell too bright. Another step, another. She was squinting against the brightness. She couldn’t see the stairs anymore. She had to trust her feet to find the way. She could feel sweat beading under her armor.

Except her armor was gone. She was wearing cutoff shorts and flip-flops, a black tank top over her swimsuit. She was standing on the Venice boardwalk and Hellie was beside her, all muscles and tanned skin in a bikini top and board shorts. She’d braided her hair. She was holding out her tarot deck. She pulled the Nine of Wands.

“No way I’m getting that tattooed on me. Let me draw again.”

She pulled a card, but Alex couldn’t quite make it out.

The bell jingled as they opened the door and passed into the cool dark. They pushed through a beaded curtain and into the front room. The walls were covered in all the usual offerings for dabblers who didn’t want something original—skulls, flowers, military insignia. A woman stood at the counter. She had to be in her sixties and she was strangely clean-cut: lean, dressed in a black satin slip, no ink, no piercings, a smooth cap of short white hair. Marguerite Belbalm. The Wheelwalker responsible for every nexus at Yale. Daisy.

Golgarot had shown her visions in hell, some real, some imagined. This seemed to be a combination of the two.

“Welcome, welcome,” Belbalm said in her light French accent, a complete fabrication, the posturing of a woman who had lived a century stuck in New Haven, greedy for the cosmopolitan life her fiancé had once promised, unable to escape the magical hold of the city. “He’s just finishing up.”

Over Belbalm’s shoulder, the tattoo artist was working with his back to her, inking a Grateful Dead dancing bear onto the ropey calf of a kid with a skateboard.

“Who’s first?” Belbalm asked with a smile.

Hellie raised her hand. “I’m just making up my mind.”

“May I?” Belbalm asked, reaching for the deck.

Alex wanted to scream for her to stop, but Hellie handed over the cards.

“Would you like a reading?” Belbalm asked.

“No,” Alex said too harshly.

Hellie laughed. “Why are you so stressed?”

“Maybe we should get ice cream or something first.”

“He has time now,” said Belbalm. “Who knows what might come later?” She spread the cards over the counter. “Choose.”

Hellie pointed to a card in the middle and Belbalm plucked it up. She held it in the air and flipped it, revealing a man in a red miter.

“Name it,” she said, her eyes fastened on Alex. Her irises looked yellow in the dim light, a wolf’s eyes.

Alex glanced at Hellie, but Hellie was gone.

“Name it,” Belbalm demanded. “This shouldn’t be hard. You learned my true name. You made me take it back.”

She smiled and Alex saw her gums were black.

I’m in it now. She had lost her connection to the mortal world when she had started up the staircase. But this was the ascent, the mirror of the Gauntlet, the new trial she would have to face. This was what Hector had meant when he’d said that she and Golgarot would both have to survive the climb.

“Ow! Don’t go too deep.”

Hellie’s voice, trying to sound cheerful but not quite landing. In the room behind Belbalm, it was Hellie on the table now. The tattoo artist hunched over her long, tanned legs. Her shorts were pulled down to show her flat stomach and her hip where his gloved hands were working, the high buzz of the gun too loud.