One day he came home and flipped the switch in the kitchen, only to discover the electricity had been turned off. He pulled all of the blankets and his grandfather’s old fur coat down from the attic and slept buried beneath them. He watched his breath plume in the quiet of the house. For six long weeks he lived in the cold and dark, doing his homework by candlelight, sleeping in the old ski clothes he discovered in a trunk.
When Christmas came, his parents appeared at the front door of Black Elm, rosy-cheeked and smiling, laden with presents and bags from Dean & DeLuca, Jaguar idling in the drive. Danny bolted the doors and refused to let them in. They’d made the mistake of teaching him he could survive.
Danny worked at the luncheonette. He got a job laying out manure and seed at Edgerton Park. He took tickets at Lyric Hall. He sold off clothes and pieces of furniture from the attic. It was enough to keep him fed and keep the lights on. His few friends were never invited over. He didn’t want inquiries about his parents or about what a teenage boy was doing alone in a big, empty house. The answer he couldn’t give was simple: He was caring for it. He was keeping Black Elm alive. If he left, the house would die.
A year passed, another. Danny got by. But he didn’t know how long he could keep just making do. He wasn’t sure what came next. He wasn’t even sure if he could afford to apply to college with his friends. He would take a year off. He would work, wait for the money from his trust. And then? He didn’t know. He didn’t know and he was scared, because he was seventeen and already weary. He’d never thought of life as long, but now it seemed impossibly so.
Later, looking back on what happened, Danny could never be sure what he’d intended that night in early July. He’d been in and out of the Beinecke and the Peabody for weeks, researching elixirs. He’d spent long nights gathering ingredients and sending away for what he couldn’t scavenge or steal. Then he’d begun the brew. For thirty-six hours straight he’d worked in the kitchen, dozing when he could, setting his alarm to wake him for the next stage in the recipe. When at last he’d looked down at the thick, tarlike syrup at the bottom of Bernadette’s ruined Le Creuset, he’d hesitated. He knew what he was attempting was dangerous. But he’d run out of things to believe in. Magic was all he had left. He was a boy on an adventure, not a boy swallowing poison.
The UPS man had found him lying on the steps the next morning, blood streaming from his eyes and mouth. He’d made it out of the kitchen door before he’d collapsed.
Danny woke in a hospital bed. A man in a tweed jacket and a striped scarf sat beside his bed.
“My name is Elliot Sandow,” he said. “I have an offer for you.” Magic had almost killed him, but in the end it had saved him. Just like in stories.
14
Winter
Alex curled into the window seat at the Hutch, and Dawes brought her a cup of hot chocolate. She’d placed a gourmet marshmallow at the top, the kind that looked like a rough-hewn stone yanked from a quarry.
“You went to the underworld,” said Dawes. “You earned a treat.”
“Not all the way to the underworld.”
“Then give the marshmallow back.” She said it shyly, as if afraid to make the joke, and Alex cradled her cup close to show she was playing along. She liked this Dawes, and she thought maybe this Dawes liked her.
“What was it like?”
Alex looked out over the rooftops in the late-morning light. From here she could see the gray gables of Wolf’s Head and part of the ivy-tangle backyard, a blue recycling bin leaning tipsily against the wall. It looked so ordinary.
She set aside her bacon and egg sandwich. Usually she could eat at least two herself, but she could still feel the water pulling her under and it was messing with her appetite. Had she really crossed over? How much was illusion and how much was real? She described what she could and what the Bridegroom required.
When she finished, Dawes said, “You can’t go to Tara Hutchins’s apartment.”
Alex picked at her sandwich. “I just told you about communing with the dead in a river full of golden-eyed crocodiles and that’s what you have to say?”
But apparently a taste of adventure had been enough for Dawes. “If Dean Sandow finds out what you did to Salome to get us into the temple—”
“Salome may bitch to her friends, but she’s not going to bring in the big guns. Offering us access to the temple, stealing from Scroll and Key, it’s all too messy.”
“And if she does?”
“I’ll deny it.”
“And you want me to deny it too?”
“I want you to think about what’s important.”
“And are you going to threaten me?” Dawes kept her eyes on her cup of cocoa, her spoon circling around and around.
“No, Dawes. Are you afraid I will?”
The spoon stopped. Dawes looked up. Her eyes were a warm, dark coffee, and sunlight caught in her messy bun making the red in her hair glow brighter. “I don’t think I am,” she said, as if she was surprised by the fact herself. “Your reaction was… extreme. But Salome was in the wrong.” Dawes with the ruthless streak. “Still, if the dean learns you made a deal with a Gray…”
“He won’t.”
“But if he does—”
“You’re afraid he’ll call you out for helping me. Don’t worry. I won’t snitch. But Salome saw you. You might have to keep her quiet too.”
Dawes’s eyes widened and then she realized Alex was kidding. “Oh. Right. It’s just… I really need this job.”
“I get it,” said Alex. Maybe better than anyone else who had ever sat beneath this roof. “But I need something that belonged to Tara. I’m going to her apartment.”
“Do you even know where she lived?”
“No,” Alex admitted.
“If Detective Turner figures out—”
“What’s Turner going to find out? That I went halfway to the underworld to talk to a ghost? I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count as witness tampering.”
“But going to Tara’s apartment, going through her stuff—that’s breaking and entering. It’s interfering with an active police investigation. You could be arrested.”
“Only if I get caught.”
Dawes gave a decisive shake of her head. “You’re crossing a line. And I can’t follow if you’re going to put both of us and Lethe at risk. Detective Turner doesn’t want you involved and he’ll do whatever he has to do to protect his case.”
“Good point,” Alex said, considering. So maybe instead of going around Turner, she should just go through him.
Alex wanted to hide at the Hutch and let Dawes make her cups of cocoa. She wouldn’t have minded a little mothering. But she needed to go back to Old Campus, to renew her grasp on the ordinary world before the things that really mattered slipped away.
She left Dawes in front of the Dramat, but not before she’d asked about the name she’d heard—or thought she’d heard—spoken in the borderlands. “Jean Du Monde? Or maybe Jonathan Desmond?”
“It doesn’t ring a bell,” said Dawes. “But I’ll do a few searches and see what the library has to say once I’m back at Il Bastone.”
Alex hesitated, then said, “Be careful, Dawes. Keep your eyes open.”
Dawes blinked. “Why?” she said. “I’m nobody.”
“You’re Lethe and you’re alive. You’re somebody.”
Dawes blinked again, like clockwork waiting for a cog to turn, for the right wheel to click so she could continue moving. Then her vision cleared and her brows knitted together. “Did you see him?” she said in a rush, staring at her feet. “On the other side?”