Лей Бардуго - Ninth House

High above the intersection, the thing with the glasses was grappling with something. No, someone. A Gray. The Bridegroom, New Haven’s favorite murder-suicide, with his fancy suit and silent-movie-star hair. The thing in glasses had hold of his lapels and he flickered slightly in the sun as they careened through the air, slammed into a streetlight that sparked to life and then dimmed, passed through the walls of a building and back out. The whole street seemed to shake as if rumbling with thunder, but Alex knew only she could hear it.

The squeal of brakes cut through the noise. A black-and-white was pulling up on York, followed by an ambulance. Alex took a last look at the Bridegroom’s face, his mouth pulled back in a grimace as he launched his fist at his opponent. She bolted across the intersection.

The pain in her chest continued to unfurl in popping bursts like fireworks. Something had happened to her, something bad, and she didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to stay conscious. She only knew she had to get to the Hutch, upstairs to the safety of Lethe’s hidden rooms. There might be other Grays coming, other monsters. What could they do? What couldn’t they do? She needed to get behind the wards.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw an EMT running toward her. She leapt up on the sidewalk around the corner and then into the alley. He was right behind, but he couldn’t protect her. She would die in his care. She knew this. She dodged left, toward the doorway, out of view.

“It’s me!” she cried out to the Hutch, praying it would know her. The door blew open and the steps rolled toward her, pulling her inside.

She tried to take the stairs on her feet but slid to her knees. Usually the smell of the hall was comforting, a winter smell of burning wood, cranberries cooking slowly, mulled wine. Now it made her stomach churn. It’s the uncanny , she realized. The garbage stink of the alley outside had at least been real. These false smells of comfort were too much. Her system couldn’t handle any more magic. She fastened one hand around the iron railing, the other braced against the lip of the stone step, and pushed herself up. She saw spots on the concrete, black stars blooming in lichen clusters on the stairs. Her blood, dripping from her lips.

Panic reeled through her. She was on the floor in that public bathroom. The broken monarch flapped its one able wing.

Get up. Blood can draw them. Darlington’s voice in her head. Grays can cross the line if they want something badly enough. What if the wards didn’t hold? What if they weren’t built to keep something like that monster out? The Bridegroom had seemed to be winning. And if he won? Who said he’d be any gentler than the thing in glasses? He hadn’t looked gentle at all.

She tapped a message into her phone to Dawes. SOS. 911. There was probably some code she was supposed to use for bleeding from the mouth, but Dawes would just have to make do.

If Dawes was at Il Bastone and not here at the Hutch, Alex was going to die on these stairs. She could see the grad student clearly, sitting in the parlor of the house on Orange, those index cards she used to organize chapters spread out like the tarot before her, all of them reading disaster, failure. The Queen of Pointlessness, a girl with a cleaver over her head. The Debtor, a boy crushed beneath a rock. The Student, Dawes herself in a cage of her own making. All while Alex bled to death a mile away.

Alex dragged herself up another step. She had to get behind the doors. The safe houses were a matryoshka doll of safety. The Hutch. Where small animals went to ground.

A wave of nausea rolled through her. She retched and a gout of black bile poured from her mouth. It was moving on the stairs. She saw the wet, shiny backs of beetles. Scarabs. Bits of iridescent carapace glinting in whatever blood and sludge had erupted from her. She shoved past the mess she’d made, retching again, even as her mind tried to make sense of what was happening to her. What had that thing wanted from her? Had someone sent it after her? If she died, her petty heart wanted to know who to haunt. The stairwell was fading in and out now. She was not going to make it.

She heard a metallic clang and a moment later understood it was the door banging open somewhere above her. Alex tried to cry out for help, but the sound from her mouth was a small, wet whimper. The smack of Dawes’s Tevas echoed down the stairs—a pause, then her footsteps, faster now, punctuated by “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

Alex felt a solid arm beneath her, yanking her upward. “Jesus. Jesus. What happened?”

“Help me, Pammie.” Dawes flinched. Why had Alex used that name? Only Darlington called Dawes that.

Her legs felt heavy as Dawes hauled her up the stairs. Her skin itched as if something was crawling beneath it. She thought of the beetles pouring from her mouth and retched again.

“Don’t vomit on me,” said Dawes. “If you vomit, I’ll vomit.”

Alex thought of Hellie holding her hair back. They’d gotten drunk on Jäger and then sat on the bathroom floor at Ground Zero, laughing and puking and brushing their teeth, then doing it all over again.

“Move your legs, Alex,” Hellie said. She was pushing Alex’s knees aside, slumping down next to her in the big basket chair. She smelled like coconut and her body was warm, always warm, like the sun loved her, like it wanted to cling to her golden skin as long as possible.

“Move your stupid legs, Alex!” Not Hellie. Dawes, shouting in her ear.

“I am.”

“You’re not. Come on, give me three more steps.”

Alex wanted to warn Dawes that the thing was coming. The death words hadn’t affected it; maybe the wards wouldn’t stop it either. She opened her mouth and vomited again.

Dawes heaved in response. Then they were on the landing, through the door, toppling forward. Alex found herself falling. She was on the floor of the Hutch, face pressed to the threadbare carpet.

“What happened?” Dawes asked, but Alex was too tired to reply. She felt herself rolled onto her back, a sharp slap across her face. “Tell me what happened, Alex, or I can’t fix it.”

Alex made herself look at Dawes. She didn’t want to. She wanted to go back to the basket chair, Hellie like a glowing slice of sun beside her.

“A Gray, I don’t know. Like glass. I could see through him.”

“Shit, that’s a gluma. ”

Alex needed her flash cards. The word was there, though, somewhere in her memory. A gluma was a husk, a spirit raised from the recently dead to pass through the world, go-betweens who could travel across the Veil. They were messengers. For Book and Snake.

“There was red smoke. I breathed it in.” She heaved again.

“Corpse beetles. They’ll eat you from the inside out.”

Of course. Of course they would. Because magic was never good or kind.

She heard bustling and then felt a cup pressed to her lips. “Drink,” said Dawes. “It’s going to hurt like hell and blister the skin right off your throat, but I can heal that.”

Dawes was tipping Alex’s chin up, forcing her mouth open. Alex’s throat caught fire. She had a vision of prairies lit by blue flame. The pain seared through her and she grabbed Dawes by the hand.

“Jesus, Alex, why are you smiling?”

The gluma. The husk. Someone had sent something after her and there could only be one reason why: Alex was onto something. They knew she had gone to see Tara’s body. But who? Book and Snake? Skull and Bones? Whoever it was had no reason to think she would stop with a visit to the morgue. They didn’t know the choice she’d made, that the report had already been filed. Alex had been right. There was something wrong with Tara’s death, some connection to the societies, the Houses of the Veil. But that wasn’t why she was smiling.