Ninth House

by Leigh Bardugo

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She thought of Lance’s face floating above her. I’m sorry. What had they been using that final night together? “What were they dealing? Acid? Molly? I know it wasn’t just pot.”

  Turner’s eyes narrowed, his old, smooth demeanor slipping back into place. “Like everything else related to this case, that is none of your business.”

  “Were they dealing to students? To the societies?”

  “They had a long roster.”

  “Who?”

  Turner shook his head. “Let’s go. Now.”

  He reached for her arm but she sidestepped him. “You can stay here,” Alex told the coroner. “The handsome Detective Turner will see me out.”

  “What did you do to him?” Turner muttered as they stepped into the hall.

  “Freaky shit.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Ms. Stern.”

  As he hustled her down the hall, Alex said, “I’m not doing this for fun either, you get that? I don’t like being Dante. You don’t like being Centurion, but these are our jobs and you’re screwing it up for both of us.”

  Turner looked slightly put out by that. Of course, it wasn’t really true. Sandow had told her to stand down. Rest easy.

  They stepped into the waiting room. Dawes was nowhere to be seen. “I told your friend to wait in the car,” said Turner. “At least she has the sense to know when she fucks up.”

  And not a single warning. Dawes was a crap lookout.

  Moira Adams smiled from the desk. “You get your moment, hon?”

  Alex nodded. “I did. Thank you.”

  “I’ll have your family in my prayers. Good night, Detective Turner.”

  “You do some freaky shit to her too?” Turner asked as they stepped into the cold.

  Alex rubbed her arms miserably. She wanted her coat. “Didn’t have to.”

  “I told Sandow I’d keep him up-to-date. If I thought any of the young psychopaths under your care were connected, I would be pursuing it.”

  Alex believed that. “There could be things you’re not seeing.”

  “There’s nothing to see. Her boyfriend was arrested near the scene. Their neighbors heard some ugly arguments the last few weeks. There’s blood evidence linking him to the crime. He had powerful hallucinogens in his system—”

  “What exactly?”

  “We’re not sure yet.”

  Alex had stayed away from any kind of hallucinogen after she realized they just made the Grays more terrifying, but she’d held plenty of hands during good and bad trips and she had yet to meet the mushroom that could make you feel like you weren’t being stabbed to death.

  “Do you want him to get away with it?” Turner said.

  “What?” The question startled her.

  “You tampered with a corpse. Tara’s body is evidence. If you mess around with this case enough, it could mean Lance Gressang doesn’t go away for this. Do you want that?”

  “No,” Alex said. “He doesn’t get away with it.”

  Turner nodded. “Good.” They stood in the cold. Alex could see the old Mercedes idling in the lot, one of the only remaining cars. Dawes’s face was a dim smudge behind the windshield. She raised her hand in what Alex realized was a limp wave. Thanks, Pammie. It was long past time to let this go. Why couldn’t she?

  She tried one last play. “Just give me a name. Lethe will find out eventually. If the societies are messing around with illegal substances, we should know.” And then we can move on to kidnapping, insider trading, and—did cutting someone open to read their innards fall under assault? They’d need a whole new section of the penal code to cover what the societies dabbled in. “We can investigate without stepping on your murder case.”

  Turner sighed, his breath pluming white in the cold. “There was only one society name in her contacts. Tripp Helmuth. We’re in the process of clearing him—”

  “I saw him last night. He’s a Bonesman. He was working the door at a prognostication.”

  “That’s what he said. Was he there the whole night?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. Tripp had been banished to the hallway to stand guard. It was true that once a ritual started, people rarely went in or out, only when someone got faint or sick or if something had to be fetched for the Haruspex. Alex thought she remembered the door opening and closing a few times, but she couldn’t be certain. She’d been worrying about the chalk circle and trying not to vomit. But it was hard to believe Tripp could have skipped out on the ritual, gotten all the way to Payne Whitney, murdered Tara, and gotten back on duty without anyone knowing. Besides, what homicidal beef could he have with Tara? Tripp was rich enough to buy himself out of any kind of trouble Tara or her boyfriend might have tried to make for him, and it wasn’t Tripp’s face Alex had seen hovering above Tara with a knife. It was Lance’s.

  “Do not talk to him,” Turner said. “I’ll send you and the dean the info once we lock in his alibi. You stay away from my case.”

  “And away from your career?”

  “That’s right. The next time I find you anywhere you’re not supposed to be, I’ll arrest you on the spot.”

  Alex couldn’t help the dark bubble of laughter that burst from her.

  “You’re not going to arrest me, Detective Turner. The last place you want me is in a police station, making noise. I’m messy and Lethe is messy and all you want is to get through this without our mess getting on those expensive shoes.”

  Turner gave her a long, steady look. “I don’t know how you ended up here, Ms. Stern, but I know the difference between quality goods and what I find on the bottom of my shoe, and you are most definitely not quality.”

  “Thanks for the talk, Turner.” Alex leaned in, knowing the stink of the uncanny was radiating off her in heavy waves. She gave him her sweetest, warmest smile. “And don’t grab me like that again. I may be shit, but I’m the kind that sticks.”

  9

  Winter

  Alex parted with Dawes near the divinity school, at a sad horseshoe-shaped apartment building in the grad school ghetto. Dawes hadn’t wanted to leave the car in Alex’s care, but she had papers to grade that were already late, so Alex said she would return the Mercedes to Darlington’s home. She could tell Dawes wanted to refuse, papers be damned.

  “Be careful and don’t … You shouldn’t…” But Dawes just trailed off, and Alex had the startling realization that Dawes had to defer to her in this situation. Dante served Virgil, but Oculus served them both. And they all served Lethe. Dawes nodded, kept nodding, nodded all the way out of the car and up the walkway to her apartment, as if she was affirming every step.

  Darlington’s house was out in Westville, just a few miles from campus. This was the Connecticut Alex had dreamed of—farmhouses without farms, sturdy red-brick colonials with black doors and tidy white trim, a neighborhood full of wood-burning fireplaces, gently tended lawns, windows glowing golden in the night like passageways to a better life, kitchens where something good bubbled on the stove, breakfast tables scattered with crayons. No one drew their curtains; light and heat and good fortune spilled out into the dark as if these foolish people didn’t know what such bounty might attract, as if they’d left these shining doorways open for any hungry girl to walk through.

  Alex hadn’t driven much since she’d left Los Angeles and it felt good to be back in a car, even one she was terrified of leaving a scratch on. Despite the map on her phone, she missed the turn into Darlington’s driveway and had to double back twice before she spotted the thick stone columns that marked the entry to Black Elm. The lamps that lined the drive were lit, bright halos that made the bare-branched trees look soft and friendly like a winter postcard. The bulky shape of the house came into view, and Alex slammed her foot down on the brakes.

  A light glowed in the kitchen window, bright as a beacon, another up in the high tower—Darlington’s bedroom. She remembered his body curled against hers, the cloudy panes of the narrow window, the sea o
f black branches below, the dark woods separating Black Elm from the world outside.

  Hurriedly, Alex turned off the headlights and the engine. If someone was here, if something was here, she didn’t want to scare it away.

  Her boots on the gravel drive sounded impossibly loud but she wasn’t sneaking—no, she wasn’t sneaking; she was just walking up to the kitchen door. She had the keys in her hand. She was welcome here.

  It could be his mom or dad, she told herself. She didn’t know much about Darlington’s family, but he had to have one. Another relative. Someone else Sandow had hired to look after the place when Dawes was busy.

  All of those things were more likely, but … He’s here, her heart insisted, pounding so hard in her chest she had to pause at the door, make herself breathe more steadily. He’s here. The thought pulled her along like a child who had hold of her sleeve.

  She peered in through the window, safe in the dark. The kitchen was all warm wood and patterned blue tiles—the tiles are Delft—a big brick hearth and copper pots gleaming from their hooks. Mail was stacked on the kitchen island, as if someone had been in the middle of sorting it. He’s here.

  Alex thought of knocking, fumbled with the keys instead. The second one turned in the lock. She entered, gently shut the door behind her. The merry light of the kitchen was warm, welcoming, reflected back in flat copper pans, caught in the creamy green enamel of the stove that someone had installed in the fifties.

  “Hello?” she said, her voice a breath.

  The sound of the keys dropping onto the counter made an unexpectedly loud jangle. Alex stood guiltily in the middle of the kitchen, waiting for someone to chastise her, maybe even the house. But this was not the mansion on Orange with its hopeful creaks and disapproving sighs. Darlington had been the life of this place, and without him the house felt huge and empty, a shipwreck hull.

  Ever since that night at Rosenfeld Hall, Alex would catch herself hoping that maybe this was all a test, one given to every Lethe House apprentice, and that Dawes and Sandow and Turner were all in on it. Darlington was in his third-floor bedroom hiding out right now. He’d heard the car in the driveway. He’d raced up the stairs and was huddling there, in the dark, waiting for her to leave. The murder could be part of it too. There was no dead girl. Tara Hutchins would come waltzing down the stairs herself when this was all over. They just had to be sure Alex could handle something serious on her own.

  It was absurd. Even so, that voice persisted: He’s here.

  Sandow had said he might still be alive, that they could bring him back. He’d said all they needed was a new moon, the right magic, and everything would be the way it had been before. But maybe Darlington had found his own way back. He could do anything. He could do this.

  She drifted farther into the house. The lights from the driveway cast a yellowy dimness over the rooms—the butler’s pantry, with its white cupboards full of dishes and glasses; the big walk-in freezer, with its metal door so like the one at the morgue; the formal dining room, with its mirror-shine table like a dark lake in a silent glade; and then the vast living room, with its big black window looking out over the dim shapes of the garden, the humps of hedges and skeletal trees. There was another, smaller room off the main living room, full of big couches, a TV, gaming consoles. Len would have wet himself over the size of the screen. It was very much a room he would have loved, maybe the only thing he and Darlington had in common. Well, not the only thing.

  Most of the rooms on the second floor were closed up. “This was where I ran out of money,” he’d told her, his arm slung across her shoulders, as she’d tried to move him along. The house was like a body that had cut off circulation to all but the most vital parts of itself in order to survive. An old ballroom had been turned into a kind of makeshift gym. A speed bag hung from the ceiling on a rack. Big metal weights, medicine balls, and fencing foils were stacked on the wall, and heavy machines loomed against the windows like bulky insects.

  She followed the stairs to the top floor and wound her way down the hall. The door to Darlington’s room was open.

  He’s here. Again, the certainty came at her, but worse this time. He’d left the light on for her. He wanted her to find him. He would be sitting in his bed, long legs crossed, bent over a book, dark hair falling over his forehead. He would look up, cross his arms. It’s about time.

  She wanted to run toward that square of light, but she forced herself to take measured steps, a bride approaching an altar, her certainty draining away, the refrain of He’s here shifting from one step to the next until she realized she was praying: Be here, be here, be here.

  The room was empty. It was small compared to the lodgings at Il Bastone, a strange round room that had clearly never been meant to be a bedroom and somehow reminded her of a monk’s chamber. It looked exactly as she had last seen it: the desk pushed against one curved wall, a yellowing newspaper clipping of an old roller coaster taped above it, as if it had been forgotten there; a mini-fridge—because of course Darlington wouldn’t want to stop reading or working to go downstairs for sustenance; a high-backed chair placed by the window for reading. There were no bookshelves, only stacks and stacks of books piled at varying heights, as if he had been in the process of walling himself in with colored bricks. The desk lamp cast a circle of light over an open book: Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism.

  Dawes. Dawes had come to see to the house, to sort the mail, to take the car out. Dawes had come to this room to study. To be closer to him. Maybe to wait for him. She’d been called away suddenly, left the lights on, assumed she’d be back that evening to take care of it. But Alex had been the one to return the car. It was that simple.

  Darlington was not in Spain. He was not home. He was never coming home. And it was all Alex’s fault.

  A white shape cut through the dark from the corner of her vision. She leapt backward, knocking over a pile of books, and swore. But it was just Cosmo, Darlington’s cat.

  He prowled the edge of the desk, nudging up against the warmth of the desk lamp. Alex always thought of him as Bowie Cat because of his marked-up eye and streaky white fur that looked like one of the wigs Bowie had worn in Labyrinth. He was stupid affectionate—all you had to do was hold your hand out and he would nuzzle your knuckles.

  Alex sat down on the edge of Darlington’s narrow bed. It was neatly made, probably by Dawes. Had she sat here too? Slept here?

  Alex remembered Darlington’s delicate feet, his scream as he’d vanished. She held her hand down, beckoning to the cat. “Hey, Cosmo.”

  He stared at her with his mismatched eyes, the pupil of the left like an inkblot.

  “Come on, Cosmo. I didn’t mean for it to happen. Not really.”

  Cosmo padded across the room. As soon as his small sleek head touched Alex’s fingers, she began to cry.

  * * *

  Alex slept in Darlington’s bed and dreamed that he was curled behind her on the narrow mattress.

  He pulled her close, his fingers digging into her abdomen, and she could feel claws at their tips. He whispered in her ear, “I will serve you ’til the end of days.”

  “And love me,” she said with a laugh, bold in the dream, unafraid.

  But all he said was, “It is not the same.”

  Alex woke with a start, flopped over, gazed at the sharp pitch of the roof, the trees beyond the window striping the ceiling in shadow and hard winter sun. She’d been scared to try fiddling with the thermostat, so she’d bundled herself in three of Darlington’s sweaters and an ugly brown hat she’d found on top of his dresser but that she’d never seen him wear. She remade the bed, then headed downstairs to fill Cosmo’s water dish and eat some fancy nuts-and-twigs dry cereal from a box in the pantry.

  Alex took her laptop from her bag and went to the dusty sunroom that ran the length of the first floor. She gazed out at the backyard. The slope of the hill led to a hedge maze overgrown with brambles, and she could see some kind of statue or foun
tain at its center. She wasn’t sure where the grounds left off, and she wondered just how much of this particular hill the Arlington family owned.

  It took her nearly two hours to write up her report on the Tara Hutchins murder. Cause of death. Time of death. The behavior of the Grays at the Skull and Bones prognostication. She’d hesitated over that last, but Lethe had brought her here for what she could see and there was no reason for her to lie about it. She mentioned the information she’d gleaned from the coroner and from Turner in his capacity as Centurion, noting Tripp’s name coming up and also Turner’s belief that the Bonesman was not involved. She hoped Turner wouldn’t mention her visit to the morgue.

  At the end of the incident report, there was a section titled “Findings.” Alex thought for a long time, her hand idly stroking Cosmo’s fur as he purred beside her on the old wicker love seat. In the end, she said nothing about the strange feeling she’d had at the crime scene or that she suspected Tara and Lance were probably dealing to other members of the other societies. Centurion will update Dante on his findings, but at this time all evidence suggests this was a crime committed by Tara’s boyfriend while under the influence of powerful hallucinogenics and that there is no connection to Lethe or the Houses of the Veil. She read through twice more for punctuation and to try to make her answers sound as Darlingtonish as possible, then she sent the report to Sandow with Dawes cc’d.

  Cosmo meowed plaintively as Alex slipped out the kitchen door, but it felt good to leave the house behind her, breathe the icy air. The sky was bright blue, scrubbed clean of clouds, and the gravel of the drive glittered. She put the Mercedes in the garage, then walked to the end of the driveway and called a car. She could return the keys to Dawes later.

  If her roommates asked where she had been, she would just say she’d spent the night at Darlington’s. Family emergency. The excuse had long since worn thin, but there would be fewer late nights and unexplained absences from now on. She’d done right by Tara. Lance would be punished and Alex’s conscience was off the hook, for this at least. Tonight she’d nurse a beer while her roommate got shitfaced on peppermint schnapps via ice luge at Omega Meltdown, and tomorrow she’d spend all day catching up on her reading.