Ninth House

¹⁷ Winter

Alex had spent the rest of Sunday night in the common room with Mercy and Lauren, Rimsky-Korsakov on Lauren’s turntable, and a copy of The Good Soldier in her lap. The dorm seemed particularly raucous that night, and there were repeated knocks at the suite door—all of which they ignored. Eventually Anna came home looking glum and somnolent as ever. She gave them a flat “hey” and vanished into her bedroom. A minute later, they heard her on the phone to her family in Texas and had to cover their mouths, shoulders heaving and tears squeezing from their eyes when they heard her say, “I’m pretty sure they’re witches.”

If you only knew.

Alex slept dreamlessly but woke in the night to find the Bridegroom hovering outside her bedroom window, the wards keeping him at bay. His face was expectant.

“Tomorrow,” she promised. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since her journey to the borderlands. She would get to Tara, but Mercy had needed her first. She owed more to the living than to the dead.

I’m handling this, she thought, as she downed two more aspirin and fell back into bed. Maybe not the way Darlington would have, but I’m managing.

Her first stop on Monday morning was Il Bastone, to pack her pockets with graveyard dirt and to spend an hour skimming the information she could find on glumae. If Book and Snake—or whoever had sent that thing after her—wanted to try again, this was the perfect time to do it. She’d freaked out in public; she was under the gun academically. If she suddenly threw herself in a river or off a building or into traffic, there would be plenty of warning signs to point to.

Did she seem depressed? She was distant. She didn’t make many friends. She was struggling in her classes. All true. But would it have mattered if she’d been someone else? If she’d been a social butterfly, they would have said she liked to drink away her pain. If she’d been a straight-A student, they would have said she’d been eaten alive by her perfectionism. There were always excuses for why girls died.

And yet Alex was weirdly comforted by how different her story would be now from what it might have been a year ago. Dying of hypothermia after getting wasted and breaking into a public pool. Overdosing when she tried something new or went too far. Or just vanishing. Losing Len’s protection and disappearing into the long sprawl of the San Fernando Valley, the rows of little houses like stucco mausoleums in their tiny plots.

But if she could avoid dying right now, that would be nice. It’s the principle of the thing, as Darlington would say. After arguing with the library for a few hours, she found two passages on how to combat glumae, one in English, one in Hebrew, which required a translation stone and turned out to be less about glumae than golems. But since both sources mentioned the use of a wrist or pocket watch, the advice seemed sound.

Wind your timepiece tight. The steady tick of a watch confuses any creature made, not born. They perceive a heartbeat in simple clockwork and will look to find a body where there is none.

It wasn’t exactly protection, but distraction would have to do.

Darlington had worn a wristwatch with a wide black leather band and mother-of-pearl face. She’d assumed it was an heirloom or affectation. But maybe it had a purpose too.

Alex entered the armory, where they kept Hiram’s Crucible; the Golden Bowl looked almost bereft for lack of use. She found a pocket watch tangled up in a drawer with a collection of pendulums used for hypnotism, wound it, and tucked it into her pocket. But she had to open a lot of drawers before she found the mirrored compact she wanted, wrapped in cotton batting. A card in the drawer explained the mirror’s provenance: the glass originally fashioned in China, then set into the compact by members of Manuscript for a still-classified Cold War op run by the CIA. How it had made its way from Langley to the Lethe mansion on Orange, the card didn’t say. The glass was smudged, and Alex wiped it clean with a puff of breath and her sweatshirt.

Despite the events of the weekend, she made it through Spanish without her usual sense of blurriness or panic, spent two hours in Sterling powering through the last of her reading for her Shakespeare section, and then ate her usual double-serving lunch. She felt awake, focused the way she was on basso belladonna but without the heart-twitching jitters. And to think, all it had taken was an attempt on her life and a visit to the borderlands of hell. If only she’d known sooner.

That morning, North had been hovering in the Vanderbilt courtyard, and she’d muttered that she wouldn’t be free until after lunch. Sure enough, he was waiting when she emerged from the dining hall, and they set out together up College to Prospect. They were nearly to Ingalls Rink when she realized she hadn’t seen a single Gray—no, that wasn’t quite true. She saw them behind columns, darting into alleys. They’re afraid of him, she realized. She remembered him standing in the river, smiling. There are worse things than death, Miss Stern.

Alex had to keep consulting her phone as she cut down to Mansfield. She still couldn’t quite hold the map of New Haven in her head. She knew the main arteries of the Yale campus, the routes she walked each week to class, but the rest of the body was vague and shapeless to her. She was headed toward a neighborhood she’d driven with Darlington once in his old battered Mercedes. He’d shown her the old Winchester Repeating Arms factory, which had been partially turned into fancy lofts, the line running straight down the building where the paint gave way to raw brick—the exact moment when the developer had run out of money. He’d gestured to the sad grid of Science Park—Yale’s bid for medical-tech investment in the nineties.

“I guess it didn’t work,” Alex had said, noting the boarded-up windows and empty parking lot.

“In the words of my grandfather, this town has been fucked from the start.” Darlington had leaned on the gas, as if Alex had witnessed some embarrassing family spat at the Thanksgiving table. They’d passed the cheap row houses and apartment buildings where workmen had lived during the Winchester days, then, farther up the slope of Science Hill, the homes that had belonged to the company’s foremen, their houses built of brick instead of wood, their lawns wider and trimmed by hedges. Up the hill, farther and farther, solid homes giving way to grand mansions and, at last, the imposing, wooded sprawl of the Marsh Botanical Garden, as if a spell had been lifted.

But today, Alex wouldn’t go to the top of the hill. She kept to the shallows, the weathered row houses, barren yards, liquor stores notched into the corners. Detective Turner had said Tara lived on Woodland, and even without the uniform posted at the door, Alex would have had no trouble picking out the dead girl’s place. Across the street, a woman leaned against the fence bordering her yard, arms draped over the chain links as if caught in a slow-motion dive, gazing at the ugly apartment building as if it might start speaking. Two guys in tracksuits stood talking on the sidewalk, their bodies turned toward the scrubby front lawn of Tara’s building but keeping a coy distance. Alex couldn’t blame them. Trouble had a way of catching.

“Most cities are palimpsests,” Darlington had once told her. When she’d searched for the word’s meaning, it had taken her three starts to find the right spelling. “Built over and over again so you can’t remember what went where. But New Haven wears its scars. The big highways that run the wrong way, the dead office parks, the vistas that stretch into nothing but power lines. No one realizes how much life happens between the wounds, how much it has to offer. It’s a city built to make you want to keep driving away from it.”

Tara had lived in the ridges of one of those scars.

Alex hadn’t worn her peacoat, hadn’t pulled her hair back. It was easy for her to fit in here and she didn’t want to draw notice.

She set a slow pace, stopped well down the block as if waiting for someone, checked her phone, glanced at North just long enough to detect his frustrated expression.

“Relax,” she muttered. I don’t answer to you, buddy. At least I don’t think I do.

At last a man exited Tara’s building. He was tall, thin, wearing a Patriots jacket and light-wash jeans. He nodded a hello to the officer and popped his headphones in as he made his way down the brick steps. Alex trailed him around the corner. When they were out of view, she tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and she held up the mirror in her hand. It flashed bright sunlight over his face and he threw his hand up to block the glare, stepping back.

“What the hell?”

Alex snapped the mirror shut. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I thought you were Tom Brady.”

The guy shot her an ugly look and strode off.

Alex jogged back to the apartment building. When she approached the officer at the door, she held up the mirror like a badge. The light fell on his face.

“Back already?” asked the cop, seeing nothing but the captured image of the guy in the Patriots jacket. Manuscript might have the worst tomb, but they had some of the best tricks.

“Forgot my wallet,” Alex said, making her voice as gruff as possible.

The cop nodded and she vanished inside the front door.

Alex pocketed the mirror and headed down the hall, moving quickly. She found Tara’s apartment on the second floor, the threshold marked by police tape.

Alex thought she might have to pick the lock—she’d had to learn the basics after her mom had gone all tough love and barred her from the apartment. There had been something eerie about breaking into her own home, slipping inside like she was herself a phantom, standing in a space that might have belonged to anyone. But the lock on Tara’s door was missing entirely. It looked like the cops had removed it.

Alex nudged the door forward and ducked beneath the tape. It was clear no one had been back to try to straighten up Tara’s apartment after the police had been through it. Who would? One of its occupants was in police custody, the other dead on a slab.

Drawers were pulled open, cushions removed from the couches, some cut open by the police looking for contraband. The floor was littered with debris: a framed poster that had been yanked out of its frame, a discarded golf club, makeup brushes. Even so, Alex could see Tara had tried to make it a nice place to live. There were colorful quilts pinned to the walls, all purples and blues. Calming colors, Alex’s mom would have said. Oceanic. A dream catcher hung in the window above a collection of succulents. Alex picked up one of the small pots, touching her fingers to the fat, waxy leaves of the plant inside. She’d bought one almost exactly like it at a farmers’ market. They required almost no care or water. Little survivors. She knew her plant had probably been thrown into the garbage or bagged as evidence, but she liked to think of it still sitting on the windowsill at Ground Zero, gathering sun.

Alex walked down the narrow hall to the bedroom. It was in a similar state of disarray. A heap of pillows and stuffed animals lay by the bed. The back of the dresser had been taken apart. From the window, Alex could just make out the peaked tower of the old Marsh mansion. It was part of the forestry school, its long, sloping backyard full of greenhouses—and all just a few minutes walk from Tara’s place. What did you get up to, girl?

North had paused in the hall by the bathroom, hovering. Something with effluvia, he’d told her.

The bathroom was long and skinny, with little room to move between the standing sink and the battered shower-tub combination. Alex eyed the items on the sink, in the wastebasket. A toothbrush or used tissues weren’t going to do it. North had said the item should be personal. Alex opened the medicine cabinet. There was barely anything left inside, but perched on the top shelf was a blue plastic box. A sticker on the lid read: Change your smile, change your life.

Alex popped it open. Tara’s retainer. North looked skeptical.

“Do you even know what this is?” Alex asked. “Do you know you’re looking at the miracle of modern orthodonture?” He crossed his arms. “Didn’t think so.”

North was a century and a half short of getting it, but most of the kids on campus probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought either. A retainer was the kind of thing people’s parents bought them, that kids never knew the cost of, that got lost on school trips or forgotten in a drawer. But for Tara this was important. Something she would have saved for months to get, that she would have worn every night and would have taken care not to lose. Change your smile, change your life.

Alex tore off a piece of toilet paper and plucked the retainer from the case. “It mattered to her. Trust me.” And hopefully still had some quality effluvia on it.

Alex stoppered the sink and filled it. Would this count as a body of water? She hoped so.

She dropped the retainer into the water. Before it could sink to the bottom, she saw a pale hand emerge beside the drain, as if it had bloomed from the cracked basin. As soon as the fingers closed, both hand and retainer vanished. When she looked up, North held it in his dripping palm, his mouth curled in distaste.

Alex shrugged. “You wanted effluvia.” She pushed the stopper down, dropped the tissue in the basket, and turned to go.

A man was standing in the doorway. He was huge, his head nearly brushing the frame, his shoulders filling the space. He wore a mechanic’s gray coverall, the top unzipped and hanging loose. His white T-shirt revealed muscled arms covered in ink.

“I—” Alex began. But he was already charging.

He barreled into her, slamming her backward against the wall. Her head cracked against the window ledge and he grabbed her by the throat. She clawed at his arms.

North’s eyes had gone black. He threw himself at her attacker but passed right through him.

This was not a gluma. Not a ghost. This wasn’t something from beyond the Veil. He was flesh and blood and trying to kill her. North couldn’t help her now.

Alex slammed her palm into his throat. His breath caught on a gulp and his grip loosened. She brought her knee up between his legs. Not a direct hit, but close enough. He doubled over.

Alex shoved past him, tearing the shower curtain off its rings as she passed, stumbling over the plastic. She hurtled into the hallway, North on her heels, and was reaching for the door when suddenly the mechanic was in front of her. He hadn’t opened the door—he’d simply appeared through it—just like a Gray might. Portal magic? For the briefest moment Alex glimpsed what looked like a barren yard behind him, then he was striding toward her.

She backed up through the cluttered living room, wrapping an arm around her middle, trying to think. She was bleeding and it hurt to breathe. He’d broken her ribs. She wasn’t sure how many. She could feel something warm and wet trickling down the back of her neck from where she’d hit her head. Could she make it to the kitchen? Grab a knife?

“Who are you?” the mechanic growled. His voice was low and raspy, maybe from Alex’s chop to his windpipe. “Who hurt Tara?”

“Her shitbag boyfriend,” Alex spat.

He roared and rushed at her.

Alex lurched left toward the mantel, dodging him narrowly, but he was still between her and the door, bouncing on his heels, as if this were some kind of boxing match.

He smiled. “Nowhere to run, bitch.”

Before she could slip past him, he had his hands around her throat again. Black spots filled her vision. North was shouting, gesturing wildly, powerless to help. No, not powerless. That wasn’t right. Let me in, Alex.

No one knew who she was. Not North. Not this monster in front of her. Not Dawes or Mercy or Sandow or any of them.

Only Darlington had guessed.