Ninth House

²⁶ Winter

“You’ll stay, won’t you?” Dawes asked as they entered the foyer at Il Bastone. The house sighed around them as if sensing their sadness. Did it know? Had it known from the start that Darlington would never come back?

“Of course.” She was grateful Dawes wanted her there. She didn’t want to be alone or to try to put on a cheerful face for her roommates. She couldn’t pretend right now. And yet she couldn’t stop reaching for some scrap of hope. “Maybe we got it wrong. Maybe Sandow screwed up.”

Dawes switched on the lights. “He’s had almost three months to plan. It was a good ritual.”

“Well, maybe he got it wrong on purpose. Maybe he doesn’t want Darlington back.” She knew she was grasping at smoke, but it was all she had. “If he’s involved in covering up Tara’s murder, you think he really wants a crusader like Darlington around instead of me?”

“But you are a crusader, Alex.”

“A more competent crusader. What did Sandow say to stop the ritual?”

“Your tongues are made stone—he used that to silence the bells.” “And the rest?”

Dawes shucked off her scarf and hung her parka on the hook. She kept her back to Alex when she said, “Hear the silence of an empty home. No one will be made welcome.”

The thought of Darlington being forever banned from Black Elm was horrible. Alex rubbed her tired eyes. “The night of the Skull and Bones prognostication, I heard someone—something—pounding on the door to get in right at the moment Tara was murdered. It sounded just like tonight. Maybe it was Darlington. Maybe he saw what was happening to Tara and he tried to warn me. If he—”

Dawes was already shaking her head, her loose bun unwinding at her neck. “You heard what they said. It… that thing ate him.” Her shoulders shook and Alex realized she was crying again, clutching her hanging coat as if without its support she might topple. “He’s gone.” The words like a refrain, a song they’d be singing until the grief had passed.

Alex touched a hand to Dawes’s arm. “Dawes—”

But Dawes stood up straight, sniffled deeply, wiped the tears from her eyes. “Sandow was wrong, though. Technically. Someone could survive being consumed by a hellbeast. Just no one human.”

“What could, then?”

“A demon.”

Far above our pay grade.

Dawes took a long, shuddering breath and pushed her hair back from her face, re-fastening her bun. “Do you think Sandow will want coffee when he gets here?” she asked as she retrieved her headphones from the parlor carpet. “I want to work for a while.”

“How’s it going?”

“The dissertation?” Dawes blinked slowly, looked down at the headphones in her hand as if wondering how they’d gotten there. “I have no idea.”

“I’ll order pizza,” said Alex. “And I’m taking first shower. We both reek.”

“I’ll open a bottle of wine.”

Alex was halfway up the stairs when she heard the knock at the door. For a second, she thought it might be Dean Sandow. But why would he knock? In the six months she’d been a part of Lethe, no one had knocked at Orange.

“Dawes—” she began.

“Let me in.” A male voice, loud and angry through the door.

Alex’s feet had carried her all the way to the base of the stairs before she realized it. Compulsion.

“Dawes, don’t!” she cried. But Dawes was already unlocking the door.

The lock clicked and the door slammed inward. Dawes was thrown back against the banister, headphones flying from her hand. Alex heard a loud crack as her head connected with the wood.

Alex didn’t stop to think. She snatched up Dawes’s headphones and shoved them down over her ears, using her hands to keep them tight to her head as she ran up the stairs. She glanced back once and saw Blake Keely—beautiful Blake Keely, the shoulders of his wool coat dusted with snow as if he’d emerged from the pages of a catalog—step over Dawes’s body, his eyes locked on Alex.

Dawes will be okay, she told herself. She has to be okay. You can’t help her if you lose control.

Blake was using Starpower or something like it. Alex had felt the pull of it in his voice through the door. It was the only reason Dawes had flipped the lock.

She bolted toward the armory, punching Turner’s number into her phone, and slammed her hand against the old stereo panel on the wall by the library, hoping that for once it would oblige. Maybe the house was fighting alongside her, because music boomed through the hallways, louder and clearer than she’d ever heard it before. When Darlington had been around, it would have been Purcell or Prokofiev. Instead, it was the last thing Dawes had listened to—if Alex hadn’t been so frightened, she would have laughed as Morrissey’s warble and the jangle of guitars filled the air.

The words were muted by the headphones, the sound of her own breathing loud in her ears. She hurtled into the armory, throwing open drawers. Dawes was down and bleeding. Turner was far away. And Alex didn’t want to think about what Blake might do to her, what he might make her do. Would it be revenge for what she’d done? Had he figured out who she was and somehow followed her here? Or was it Tara who had brought him to her door? Alex had been so focused on the societies, she hadn’t noticed another suspect right in front of her—a pretty boy with a rotten core who didn’t like the word “no.”

She needed a weapon, but nothing in the armory was made to fight a living, human body hyped up on super charisma.

Alex glanced over her shoulder. Blake was right behind her. He was saying something, but thankfully she couldn’t hear him over the music. She reached into the drawers, grabbing anything heavy she could find to throw. She wasn’t even sure what priceless thing she was hurling at him. An astrolabe. A glittering paperweight with a sea frozen inside it.

Blake batted them aside and seized the back of her neck. He was strong from lacrosse and vanity. He tore the headphones from her ears. Alex screamed as loud as she could and raked her nails across his face. Blake shrieked and she fled down the hall. She’d fought monsters before. She’d won. But not on her own. She needed to get outside, away from the wards, where she could draw on North’s strength or find another Gray to help her.

The house seemed to be humming, buzzing its anxiety. A stranger is here. A killer is here. The lights crackled and flared, the static from the stereo rising.

“Calm down,” Alex told the house as she pounded down the hallway, back to the stairs. “You’re too old for this shit.”

But the house continued to whir and rattle.

Blake tackled her from behind. She hit the floor hard. “Be still,” he crooned in her ear.

Alex felt her limbs lock up. She didn’t just stop moving—she was glad to do it, thrilled, really. She would be perfectly still, still as a statue.

“Dawes!” she screamed.

“Be quiet,” said Blake.

Alex clamped her lips shut. She was happy to have the chance to do this for him. He deserved it. He deserved everything.

Blake rolled her over and stood, towering over her. He seemed impossibly tall, his golden, tousled head framed by the coffered ceiling.

“You ruined my life,” he said. He lifted his foot and rested his boot on her chest. “You ruined me.” Some part of her mind screamed, Run. Push him off. Do something. But it was a distant voice, lost to the contented hum of submission. She was so happy, so very happy to oblige.

Blake pressed down with his boot and Alex felt her ribs bend. He was big, two hundred pounds of muscle, and all of it felt like it was resting just beneath her heart. The house rattled hysterically, as if it could feel her bones crying out. Alex heard a table topple somewhere, dishes crashing from their shelves. Il Bastone giving voice to her fear.

“What gave you the right?” he said. “Answer me.”

He’d granted her permission.

“Mercy and every girl before her,” Alex spat, even as her mind begged for another command, another way to please him. “They gave me the right.”

Blake lifted his boot and brought it down hard. Alex screamed as pain exploded through her.

At the same moment the lights went out. The stereo went with it, the music fading, leaving them in darkness, in silence, as if Il Bastone had simply died around her.

In the quiet, she heard Blake crying. His left hand was clenched in a fist, as if readying to strike her. But the light from the streetlamps filtering in through the windows caught on something silver in his other hand. A blade.

“Can you be quiet?” he asked. “Tell me you can be quiet.”

“I can be quiet,” said Alex.

Blake giggled, that high-pitched giggle she remembered from the video. “That’s what Tara said too.”

“What did she say?” Alex whispered. “What did she do to make you mad?”

Blake leaned down. His face was still beautiful, cut in sharp, almost angelic lines. “She thought she was better than all my other girls. But everyone gets the same from Blake.”

Had he been stupid enough to use the Merity on Tara? Had she realized what he was using it for? Had she threatened him? Did any of it matter now? Alex was going to die. In the end, she’d been no smarter than Tara, no more able to protect herself.

“Alex?” Dean Sandow’s voice from somewhere down below.

“Don’t come up here!” she screamed. “Call the cops! He has—” “Shut the fuck up!” Blake drew back his foot and kicked her hard in the side. Alex went silent.

It was too late anyway. Sandow was at the top of the stairs, his expression bewildered. From her place on the floor, Alex saw him register her on her back, Blake above her, the knife in his hand.

Sandow lunged forward, but he was too slow.

“Stop!” snapped Blake.

The dean went rigid, nearly toppling.

Blake turned to Alex, a smile spreading across his lips. “He a friend of yours? Should I make him throw himself down the stairs?”

Alex was silent. He’d told her to be silent and she just wanted to make him happy, but her mind was mule-kicking around her skull. They were all going to die tonight.

“Come here,” Blake said. Sandow strode forward eagerly, a spring in his step. Blake bobbed his head at Alex. “I want you to do me a favor.”

“Whatever I can do to help,” said Sandow, as if inviting a promising new student to office hours.

Blake held out the knife. “Stab her. Stab her in the heart.”

“A pleasure.” Sandow took the knife and straddled Alex.

A cold wind gusted through the house from the open door. Alex felt it on her flushed face. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t fight, couldn’t run. Behind Sandow the top of the open door and the brick path were visible. Alex remembered the first day Darlington had brought her here. She remembered Darlington’s whistle. She remembered the jackals, spirit hounds, bound to serve the delegates of Lethe.

We are the shepherds.

Alex’s hand lay against the floorboards. She could feel the cool, polished wood beneath her palm. Please, she begged the house silently. I am a daughter of Lethe, and the wolf is at the door.

Sandow raised the knife high above his head. Alex parted her lips—she wasn’t speaking, no, she wasn’t talking—and desperately, hopelessly, she whistled. Send me my hounds.

The jackals burst through the front door in a snapping, snarling pack. They raced up the stairs, claws clattering and paws sliding. Too late.

“Do it,” said Blake.

Sandow brought the knife down. Something slammed into him, driving him off Alex. The hallway was suddenly full of jackals, trampling over her in a snarling mass. One of them crashed into Blake. The weight of their bodies drove the breath from Alex’s lungs, and she cried out as their paws smacked over her broken bones.

They were wild with excitement and bloodlust, yelping and snapping. Alex had no idea how to control them. She’d never had reason to ask. They were a mess of gleaming canines and black gums, muzzles frothing. She tried to push up, push away. She felt jaws clamp closed on her side and screamed as long teeth sank into her flesh.

Sandow shouted a string of words she didn’t understand and Alex felt the jaws open, hot blood gushing from her. Her vision was turning black.

The jackals retreated, slinking back toward the stairs, bodies bumping against each other. They crouched by the banister, whining softly, jaws snapping at the air.

Sandow lay bleeding on the hall runner beside her; his pant leg was torn. She could see that the jackal’s jaws had snapped clean through his femur, the white jut of bone gleaming like a pale tuber. Blood was gouting from his leg. He was gasping, fumbling in his pocket, trying to find his phone, but his movements were slow, sluggish.

“Dean Sandow?” she panted.

His head lolled on his shoulders. She saw the phone slip from his fingers and fall to the carpet.

Blake was crawling toward her. He was bleeding too. She saw where the jackals had sunk their teeth into the meat of his biceps, his thigh.

He pulled himself up the length of her body, resting against her like a lover. His hand was still clenched in a fist. He struck her once, twice. The other hand slid into her hair.

“Eat shit,” he whispered against her cheek. He sat up, gripped her hair in his hand, and slammed her skull against the floor. Stars exploded behind her eyes. He lifted her head again, yanking on her hair, tilting her chin back. “Eat shit and die.”

Alex heard a wet, heavy thud and wondered if her skull had split open. Then Blake fell forward onto her. She shoved at him, scrabbling against his chest, his weight impossible, and finally rolled him off her. She touched her hand to the back of her head. No blood. No wound.

She couldn’t say the same for Blake. One side of his perfect face was a bloody red crater. His head had been smashed in. Dawes stood over him, weeping. In her hands she clutched the marble bust of Hiram Bingham III, patron saint of Lethe, his stern profile covered with blood and bits of bone.

Dawes let the bust slip from her fingers. It hit the carpet and rolled to its side. She turned away from Alex, fell to her knees, and vomited.

Blake Keely stared at the ceiling, eyes unseeing. The snow had melted on his jacket, and the wool glittered like something far finer. He looked like a fallen prince.

The jackals padded down the stairs, vanishing through the open door. Alex wondered where they went, what they spent their hours hunting.

Somewhere in the distance she heard what might have been a siren or some lost thing howling in the dark.