What had Alex been thinking the night that Darlington vanished? That she just had to get him back to the Hutch. They would talk. She would explain … What exactly? That they’d deserved it? That killing Len and the others had given not only Hellie but her some kind of peace? That the world punished girls like them, like Tara, for all their bad choices, every mistake. That she had liked doling out the punishment herself. That whatever conscience she’d always assumed she possessed just hadn’t shown up for work that day. And she certainly wasn’t sorry.
But she could say she was. She could pretend she didn’t remember the feel of the bat in her hand, that she wouldn’t do it again. Because that’s what Darlington feared—not that she was bad, but that she was dangerous. He feared chaos. So Alex could tell him that Hellie had possessed her. She would turn it into a mystery that they could solve together. He would like that. She would be something for him to fix, a project like his broken town, his crumbling house. She could still be one of the good guys.
But Alex never had to tell those lies. The thing in the basement made sure of that. Darlington was not abroad. He was not in Spain. And she didn’t really believe he’d vanished into some pocket realm to be retrieved like a child who’d wandered away from the group. Dawes and Dean Sandow hadn’t been there that night. They hadn’t felt the finality of that darkness.
“It’s not a portal,” he’d said in the basement of Rosenfeld Hall. “It’s a muh—”
One minute he was there and the next he was enveloped in blackness. She’d seen the terror in his eyes, the plea. Do something. Help me.
She meant to. At least, she thought she meant to. She’d replayed that moment a thousand times, wondering why she’d frozen—if it had been fear or lack of training or distraction. Or if it had been a choice. If the thing in the corner had given her a solution to the problem Darlington presented.
This isn’t something I can keep from Sandow. Darlington’s words like fingers reaching into her mouth, pinching her tongue, keeping her from crying out.
At night, she thought of Darlington’s perfect face, of the feel of his body bracketing hers in the sleep-warmed sheets of his narrow bed.
I let you die. To save myself, I let you die.
That is the danger in keeping company with survivors.
 |
The mechanic leaned over her, smiling. “Nowhere to run, bitch.”
His grip felt so heavy on her neck, like his thumbs might push right through her skin and sink into her windpipe.
Alex hadn’t wanted to think of that night at Ground Zero. She hadn’t wanted to look back. She hadn’t even been sure what had happened, if it had been Hellie or her that had made it possible.
Let me in. Stay with me.
Maybe she’d been afraid that if she opened the door again something terrible might step inside. But that was exactly what she needed now. Something terrible.
Alex’s right hand closed over the discarded golf club—a putter. She extended her left hand toward North, remembered the sense of herself splitting, willed herself to do it again. Open the door, Alex. She had time to register the look of surprise on his face, and then the dark cold of him rushed toward her.
Hellie had come to her willingly, but North fought. She sensed his confusion, his desperate terror to remain free, and then a tide of her own need swallowed his concerns.
North felt different than Hellie. She had been the powerful curve of a wave. North’s strength was dark and limber, springy as a fencer’s foil. It filled her limbs, made her feel like molten metal ran through her veins.
She twirled the putter once in her hand, tested its weight. Who said I’m running? She swung.
The mechanic managed to get his hand up, protecting his head, but Alex heard the bones of his hand give way with a satisfying crunch. He yowled and stumbled backward into the couch.
Alex went for his knee next. The big ones were easier to handle on the ground. He collapsed with a thud.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Who sent you?” “Fuck off,” he snarled.
Alex brought the putter down and struck the hard slats of the floor. He was gone—as if he’d melted straight through the floorboards. She stared at the empty place where he had been, the recoil of the strike reverberating through her arms.
Something smacked her from behind. Alex fell forward as pain exploded through her skull.
She hit the floor and rolled, scrabbling backward. The mechanic was half in and half out of the wall, his body split by the mantel.
Alex sprang to her feet, but in the next second he was beside her. His fist shot out, cracking across her jaw. Only North’s strength kept her from crumpling. She swung the putter, but the mechanic was already gone. A fist cracked into her from the other side.
This time she went down.
The mechanic kicked her hard in the side, his boot connecting with her broken ribs. She screamed. He kicked again.
“Get your hands on your head!”
Detective Turner. He was standing at the door, his weapon drawn.
The mechanic looked at Turner. He threw his middle fingers up and vanished, melting into the mantel.
Alex slumped against the wall and felt North flood out of her, saw him leave her in a blurry tide, reassuming his form, his face frightened and resentful. Was she supposed to feel sorry for him?
“I get it,” Alex muttered. “But I didn’t have a choice.” He touched his hand to the wound at his chest as if she’d been the one to shoot him.
“Just find Tara,” she snapped. “You have the retainer.”
“The what?” said Turner. He was patting the mantel and the bricked-up hearth beneath it as if expecting to find a secret passage.
“Portal magic,” Alex grunted out.
North glanced back once, then disappeared through the apartment wall. A wave of pain crashed over her, like a time-lapse of a flower blooming, as if North’s presence had shielded her from the worst of it. Now, with him gone, the damage flooded in. Alex struggled to push herself up. Turner had holstered his weapon.
Turner slammed his fist on the counter. “That’s impossible.”
“It is,” Alex replied.
“You don’t understand,” he said, looking at her with the same intensity North had, as if she had wronged him. “That was Lance Gressang. My murder suspect. I left him less than an hour ago—in a jail cell.”
Is there something unnatural woven into the very fabric of New Haven? In the stone that makes its buildings? In the rivers nourishing its grand elms? During the War of 1812, the British blockaded New Haven Harbor, and Trinity Church—not yet the Gothic structure it is today—lacked the lumber needed for its construction. But Commander Hardy of the Royal British Navy learned of the church’s plight. He allowed the timber to pass, floating it down the Connecticut River. “If there’s any place on earth that needs religion,” he declared, “it’s this New Haven. Let the rafts go through!”
—from Lethe: A Legacy
Why do you think they built so many churches here? Somehow the men and women of this city knew: Their streets were home to other gods.
—Lethe Days Diary of Elliot Sandow (Branford College ’69)
