Лей Бардуго - Ninth House

As the dean’s coffin was lowered into the earth, Alex met Michelle Alameddine’s eyes and gave a brief bob of her head—an invitation. She and Dawes drifted away from the graveside, and Alex hoped Michelle would follow.

They took a winding path to the left, past the tomb of Kingman Brewster, planted with a witch hazel tree that bloomed yellow every year in June—almost always on his birthday—and that lost its leaves in November at the time of his death. Somewhere in this cemetery, Daisy’s first body was buried.

When they reached a quiet corner between two stone sphinxes, Dawes said, “Are you sure about this?” She’d worn mom slacks and pearl earrings to the funeral, but her red bun had slid gently to one side.

“No,” admitted Alex. “But we need all the help we can get.”

Dawes wasn’t going to argue. She’d been full of apologies once Lethe had reached her at her sister’s house in Westport and she’d heard the real story of what happened at the president’s party from Alex. Besides, she wanted this quest, this mission, as much as Alex did. Maybe more.

Alex saw Michelle headed their way through the grass. She waited for her to join them, then dove right in. “Darlington isn’t dead.”

Michelle sighed. “That’s what this is about? Alex, I understand—”

“He’s a demon.”

“Excuse me?”

“He didn’t die when he was eaten by the hellbeast. He was transformed.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“Listen,” said Alex. “I’ve spent some time in the borderlands recently—”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Every time I heard… well, I don’t know what they were—Grays? Monsters? Some kind of creature that wasn’t quite human on the darker shore. They were saying something I couldn’t quite make out. I thought it was a name at first, Jonathan Desmond or Jean Du Monde. But that wasn’t it at all.”

“And?” Michelle’s expression was rigidly impassive, as if she was fighting to appear open-minded.

“ Gentleman demon. That’s what they were saying. They were talking about Darlington. And I think they were scared.”

Darlington was a gentleman. But this isn’t a time for gentlemen. Alex had barely registered the dean’s words at the time. But when she’d played back the recording of their conversation, they’d stuck in her head. Darlington: the gentleman of Lethe. People had always described him that way. Alex had thought of him like that herself, as if he’d somehow stepped into the wrong time.

But it had still taken her a while to put it together, to realize that the creatures on that dark shore had always muttered those strange sounds when Alex mentioned Darlington or even thought about him. They hadn’t been angry, they’d been frightened, the same way the Grays had been frightened the night of the prognostication. It had been Darlington who had spoken “murder” at the new-moon rite, not just some echo—but it was Sandow he’d been accusing, not Alex. The man who had murdered Tara. The man who had tried to murder him. At least, Alex hoped that was the case. Daniel Tabor Arlington, always the gentleman, a boy of infinite manners. But what had he become?

“What you’re suggesting isn’t possible,” said Michelle.

“I know it sounds that way,” said Dawes. “But humans can become—”

“I know the process. But demons are created one way: the union of sulfur and sin.”

“What kind of sin are we talking about?” said Alex. “Masturbation? Bad grammar?”

“You’re in a graveyard,” chided Dawes.

“Trust me, Dawes. The dead don’t care.”

“There’s only one sin that can make a man into a demon,” Michelle said. “Murder.”

Dawes looked stricken. “He would never, could never—”

“You killed someone,” Alex reminded her. And so have I. “ ‘Never’ is a big word.”

“Darlington?” Michelle said incredulously. “The teacher’s pet? The knight in shining armor?”

“There’s a reason knights carry swords, and I didn’t tag you in so we could argue. You don’t want to help, that’s fine. I know what I know: A hellbeast was sent to kill Darlington. But he survived and that thing shat him out in hell. We’re going to go get him.”

“We are?” said Michelle.

“We are,” said Dawes.

A cold wind blew through the cemetery trees and Alex had to restrain a shiver. It felt like winter trying to hold on. It felt like a warning. But Darlington was on the other side of something terrible, waiting for rescue. Sandow had stolen the golden boy of Lethe from this world, and someone had to steal him back.

“So,” she said as the wind picked up, shaking the new leaves on their branches, moaning over the gravestones like a mourner lost to grief. “Who’s ready to go to hell?”

Rich or poor, all are equal in death.

Teachings: Extispicy and splanchomancy. Divination using human and animal entrails.

Notable Alumni: William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, John Kerry.

Have power on this dark land to lighten it, and power on this dead world to make it live.

Teachings: Duru dweomer , portal magic. Astral and etheric projection.

Notable Alumni: Dean Acheson, Gary Trudeau, Cole Porter, Stone Phillips.

Everything changes, nothing perishes.

Teachings: Nekyia or nekromanteía , necromancy and bone conjuring.

Notable Alumni: Bob Woodward, Porter Goss, Kathleen Cleaver, Charles Rivkin.

The strength of the pack is the wolf. The strength of the wolf is the pack.

Teachings: Therianthropy.

Notable Alumni: Stephen Vincent Benét, Benjamin Spock, Charles Ives, Sam Wagstaff.

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion.

Teachings: Mirror magic and glamours.

Famous Alumni: Jodie Foster, Anderson Cooper, David Gergen, Zoe Kazan.

Teachings: Logomancy—word binding and divination through language.

Notable Alumni: Admiral Richard Lyon, Samantha Power, John B. Goodenough.

Teachings: Tempestate Artium , elemental magic, storm calling.

Notable Alumni: Calvin Hill, John Ashcroft, Allison Williams.

Teachings: None. Founded in the tradition of its namesake, Jöns Jacob Berzelius, the Swedish chemist who created a new system of chemical notation that left the secrecy of alchemists in the past.

Notable Alumni: None.

In New York: Many thanks to everyone at Flatiron Books, particularly Noah Eaker, who took a gamble on this book early, Amy Einhorn, Lauren Bittrich, Patricia Cave, Marlena Bittner, Nancy Trypuc, Katherine Turro, Cristina Gilbert, Keith Hayes, Donna Noetzel, Lena Shekhter, Lauren Hougen, Kathy Lord, and Jennifer Gonzalez and her team. Thank you to New Leaf Literary—Pouya Shahbazian, Veronica Grijalva, Mia Roman, Hilary Pecheone, Meredith Barnes, Abigail Donoghue, Jordan Hill, Joe Volpe, Kelsey Lewis, Cassandra Baim, and Joanna Volpe, who championed me and this idea from the start.

In New Haven and at Yale: Professor Julia Adams of Hopper College, Angela McCray, Jenny Chavira if the Association of Yale Alumni, Judith Ann Schief in Manuscripts and Archives, Mark Branch of the Yale Alumni Magazine , David Heiser of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Michael Morand at the Beinecke, and Claire Zella. Thank you to Rabbi Shmully Hecht for granting me access to the Anderson Mansion and to Barbara Lamb, who shared her extensive knowledge of Connecticut and squired me through many cemeteries. I have taken the occasional liberty with New Haven history and geography. Most notably, Wolf’s Head built their first hall on Prospect Street in 1884. The new hall on High Street was built more than forty years later.