“Ya crecen las yerbas y dan amarillo triste mi corazón vive con suspiro.”
He didn’t know the song, but the words seemed to slow the Grays’ steps.
The leaves are growing and turning gold.
My heavy heart beats and sighs.
“More!” said Darlington.
“I don’t know the rest of the song!” Alex yelled. The Grays moved forward.
“Say something, Stern! We need more words.”
“Quien no sabe de mar no sabe de mal!” She didn’t sing these words; she shouted them, again and again.
He who knows nothing of the sea knows nothing of suffering.
The line of Grays outside stumbled, looked over their shoulders: Something was moving behind them.
“Keep going!” he told her.
“Quien no sabe de mar no sabe de mal!”
It was a wave, a massive wave, rising from nowhere over the plaza. But how? She wasn’t even speaking death words. He who knows nothing of the sea knows nothing of suffering. Darlington wasn’t even sure what the words meant.
The wave rose and new words came to Darlington from Virgil—the real Virgil. From the Eclogues. “Let all become mid-ocean!” he declared. The wave climbed higher, blotting out the buildings and the sky beyond. “Farewell, ye woods! Headlong from some towering mountain peak I will throw myself into the waves; take this as my last dying gift!”
The wave crashed and Grays were scattered over the stone tiles of the plaza. Darlington could see them through the glass, bobbing like chunks of ice in the moonlight.
Hastily, Darlington redrew the marks of protection, strengthening them with heaps of graveyard dirt.
“What was that?” he said.
Alex was staring out at the fallen Grays, her cheeks still wet with tears. “I… It was just something my grandmother used to say.”
Ladino. She’d been speaking Spanish and Hebrew and he wasn’t sure what else. It was the language of diaspora. The language of death. She’d gotten lucky. They both had.
He offered her his hand. “You’re all right?” he asked. Her palm was cold, clammy in his, as she rose.
“Yes,” she said, but she was still shaking. “Fine. I’m sorry, I—”
“Do not say another word until we’re back at Il Bastone, and for God’s sake don’t apologize to anyone until we’re out of here.”
Zelinski was striding toward them, the Emperor close behind. The ritual had ended and they looked furious, though also a bit like Klan members who’d gone for a stroll and forgotten their hoods. “What the hell were you doing?” said Amelia. “You almost ruined the ritual with your shouting. What happened here?”
Darlington whirled on them, blocking their view of the smudged marks and summoning every bit of his grandfather’s authority. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Zelinski stopped short; his sleeves—now clean and white again—flapped gently as he dropped his arms. “What?”
“Have you performed this ritual before?”
“You know we have!” snapped Amelia.
“Exactly in this way?”
“Of course not! The ritual always changes a bit depending on the need. Every story is different.”
Darlington knew he was on shaky ground but better to go on the offense than to make Lethe look like a bunch of amateurs. “Well, I don’t know what Zeb has in mind for his new novel, but he almost unleashed a whole host of phantoms on your delegation.”
Zelinski’s eyes widened. “There were Grays here?”
“An army of them.”
“But she was screaming—”
“You put my Dante and me at risk,” said Darlington. “I’m going to have to report this to Dean Sandow. Aurelian shouldn’t be tampering with forces—”
“No, no, please,” Zelinski said, putting his palms up as if to tamp down a fire. “Please. This is our first ritual as a delegation. Things were bound to get a little tricky. We’re campaigning to get our rooms in SSS back.”
“She could have been hurt,” said Darlington, bristling with blue-blood indignation. “Killed.”
“This is a donation year, isn’t it?” said Amelia. “We… we can make sure it’s a generous one.”
“Are you trying to bribe me?”
“No! Not at all! A negotiation, an understanding.”
“Get out of my sight. You’re just lucky no lasting damage was done to the collection.”
“Thanks,” Alex whispered as the Emperor and Zelinski hurried away.
Darlington cast her one angry glance and bent to begin the work of clearing the circle. “I did that for Lethe, not you.”
They cleaned up the leavings of the markings, made sure the Aurelians had left no traces and that Zeb’s arms were bandaged and his vitals were stable. He still had ink stains on his lips and all over his teeth and gums. It trickled from his ears and the inner corners of his eyes. He looked monstrous but he was grinning, gibbering to himself, already scribbling away in a notebook. He would continue that way until the story was out of him.
Darlington and Alex walked back to Il Bastone in strained silence. The night felt colder, not only because of the hour, but because of the lasting effects of Hiram’s elixir. Usually he felt a sense of sadness when its magic was gone, but tonight he was perfectly happy for the Veil to fall back into place.
What had happened during the rite? How could Alex have been so incautious? She’d broken the most basic rules he’d set for her. The circle was inviolable. Guard the marks. Had he been too easygoing about the whole thing? Tried too hard to put her at ease?
When they entered Il Bastone, the entry lights flickered, as if the house could sense their mood. Dawes was exactly where they’d left her in front of the fireplace. She glanced up and seemed to shrink more deeply into her sweatshirt, before returning to her array of index cards, happy to turn her back on human conflict.
Darlington drew off his coat and hung it by the door, then headed down the hall to the kitchen, not waiting to see if Alex would follow. He turned on the burner to heat Dawes’s soup and took the sandwich platter from the refrigerator, setting it down with a loud clatter. A bottle of Syrah had been decanted and he poured himself a glass, then sat and watched Alex, who had slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, her dark eyes trained on the black-and-white tiles of the floor.
He made himself finish his glass of wine, poured another, and at last said, “Well? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured, her voice barely audible.
“Not good enough. You are literally of no use to us if you can’t handle a few Grays.”
“They weren’t coming at you.”
“They were. Two of those gates were mine to guard, remember?”
She rubbed her arms. “I just wasn’t ready. I’ll do better next time.”
“Next time will be different. And the next. And the next. There are six functioning societies and each has different rituals.”
“It wasn’t the ritual.”
“Was it the blood?”
“No. One of them grabbed me. You didn’t say that was going to happen. I—”
Darlington couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re saying one of them touched you?”
“More than one. I—”
“That isn’t possible. I mean…” He set down his wine, ran his hands through his hair. “Rarely. So rarely. Sometimes in the presence of blood or if the spirit is particularly moved. That’s why true hauntings are so rare.”
Her voice was hard, distant. “It’s possible.”
Maybe. Unless she was lying. “You need to be ready next time.
You weren’t prepared—”
“And whose fault is that?”
Darlington sat up straighter. “I beg your pardon? I gave you two weeks to get up to speed. I sent you specific passages to read to keep it manageable.”