Лей Бардуго - Ninth House

“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 theAurelians 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.”

“And what about all of the years before that?” Alex stood and shoved her chair back. She paced into the breakfast room, her black hair reflecting the lamplight, energy sparking off her. The house gave a warning groan. She wasn’t sad or ashamed or worried. She was mad. “Where were you?” she demanded. “All you wise men of Lethe with your spells and your chalk and your books? Where were you when the dead were following me home? When they were barging into my classrooms? My bedroom? My damn bathtub? Sandow said you had been tracking me for years, since I was a kid. One of you couldn’t have told me how to get rid of them? That all it would take was a few magic words to send them away?”

“They’re harmless. It’s only the rituals that—”

Alex grabbed Darlington’s glass and threw it hard against the wall, sending glass and red wine flying. “They are not harmless. You talk as if you know, like you’re some kind of expert.” She struck her hands against the table, leaning toward him. “You have no idea what they can do.”

“Are you done or would you like another glass to break?”

“Why didn’t you help me?” said Alex, her voice nearly a growl.

“I did. You were about to be buried under a sea of Grays, if you recall.”

“Not you. ” Alex waved her arm, indicating the house. “Sandow. Lethe. Someone.” She covered her face with her hands. “ Take courage. No one is immortal . Do you know what it would have meant to me to know those words when I was a kid? It would have taken so little to change everything. But no one bothered. Not until I could be useful to you.”

Darlington did not like to think he had behaved badly. He did not like to think that Lethe had behaved badly. We are the shepherds. And yet they’d left Alex to face the wolves. She was right. They hadn’t cared. She’d been someone for Lethe to study and observe from afar.

He’d told himself he was giving her a chance, being fair to this girl who had washed up on his shore. But he’d let himself think of her as someone who had made all of the wrong choices and stumbled down the wrong path. It hadn’t occurred to him that she was being chased.

After a long moment, he said, “Would it help to break something else?”

She was breathing hard. “Maybe.”

Darlington rose and opened a cupboard, then another, and another, revealing shelf after shelf of Lenox, Waterford, Limoges—glassware, plates, pitchers, platters, butter dishes, gravy boats, thousands of dollars’ worth of crystal and china. He took down a glass, filled it with wine, and handed it to Alex.

“Where would you like to start?”

There had to be a Lethe protocol for murder, a series of steps she should follow, that Darlington would have known to follow.

He probably would have told her to enlist Dawes’s help. But Alex and the grad student had never managed to do much more than politely ignore each other. Like almost everyone else, Dawes had loved shiny-penny Darlington. He’d been the only person who seemed totally at ease talking to her, who had managed it without any of the awkwardness that hung over Dawes like one of her bulky, indeterminately colored sweatshirts. Alex was pretty sure Dawes blamed her for what had happened at Rosenfeld Hall, and though Dawes had never said much to Alex, her silence had taken on a new hostility of slammed cupboards and suspicious glares. Alex didn’t want to talk to Dawes any more than she had to.