Лей Бардуго - Ninth House

Old Campus was a perfect example, a massive quadrangle of towering stone dorms surrounding a huge sun-dappled courtyard welcome to all—until night fell and the gates banged shut.

“Why?” Alex asked.

“To keep the rabble out. The soldiers came back to New Haven from the war wild, most of them unmarried, a lot of them messed up from the fighting. There was a wave of immigration too. Irish, Italians, freed slaves, everyone looking for manufacturing jobs. Yale didn’t want any of it.”

Alex laughed.

“Is something funny?” he asked.

She glanced back at her dorm. “Mercy’s Chinese. A Nigerian girl lives next door. Then there’s my mongrel ass. We all got in anyway. Eventually.”

“A long slow siege.” The word mongrel felt like dangerous bait. He took in her black hair, her black eyes, the olive cast to her skin. She might have been Greek. Mexican. White. “Jewish mother, no mention of a father, but I assume you had one?”

“Never knew him.”

There was more here but he wasn’t going to push. “We all have spaces we keep blank.” They’d reached Phelps Gate, the big echoing archway that led onto College Street and away from the relative safety of Old Campus. He didn’t want to get sidetracked. They had too much literal and figurative ground to cover. “This is the New Haven Green,” he said, as they strode down one of the stone paths. “When the colony was founded, this was where they built their meetinghouse. The town was meant to be a new Eden, founded between two rivers like the Tigris and the Euphrates.”

Alex frowned. “Why so many churches?”

There were three on the green, two of them near-twins in their Federal design, the third a jewel of Gothic Revival.

“This town has a church for nearly every block. Or it used to. Some of them are closing now. People just don’t go.”

“Do you?” she asked.

“Do you ?”

“Nope.”

“Yes, I go,” he said. “It’s a family thing.” He saw the flicker of judgment in her eyes, but he didn’t need to explain. Church on Sunday, work on Monday. That was the Arlington way. When Darlington had turned thirteen and protested that he’d be happy to risk God’s wrath if he could just sleep in, his grandfather seized him by the ear and dragged him out of bed despite his eighty years. “I don’t care what you believe,” he’d said. “The working man believes in God and expects us to do the same, so you will get your ass dressed and in a pew or I will tan it raw.” Darlington had gone. And after his grandfather had died, he’d kept going.

“The green is the site of the city’s first church and its first graveyard. It’s a source of tremendous power.”

“Yeah… no shit.”

He realized her shoulders had gone loose and easy. Her stride had changed. She looked a little less like someone gearing up to take a swing.

Darlington tried not to sound too eager. “What do you see?” She didn’t answer. “I know about what you can do. It isn’t a secret.”

Alex’s gaze was still distant, almost disinterested. “It’s empty here, that’s all. I never really see much around cemeteries and stuff.”

And stuff. Darlington looked around, but all he saw was what everyone else would: students, people who worked at the courthouse or the string of shops along Chapel, enjoying the sun on their lunch hour.

He knew the paths that seemed to bisect the green arbitrarily had been drawn by a group of Freemasons to try to appease and contain the dead when the cemetery had been moved a few blocks away. He knew that their compass lines—or a pentagram, depending on whom you asked—could be seen from above. He knew the spot where the Lincoln Oak had toppled after Hurricane Sandy, revealing a human skeleton tangled in its roots, one of the many bodies never moved to Grove Street Cemetery. He saw the city differently because he knew it, and his knowledge was not casual. It was adoration. But no amount of love could make him see Grays. Not without Orozcerio, another hit from the Golden Bowl. He shuddered. Every time was a risk, another chance that his body would say enough , that one of his kidneys would simply fail.

“It makes sense you don’t see them here,” he said. “Certain things will draw them to graveyards and cemeteries, but as a rule, they steer clear.”

Now he had her attention. Real interest sparked in her eyes, the first indication of something beyond watchful reserve. “Why?”

“Grays love life and anything that reminds them of being alive. Salt, sugar, sweat. Fighting and fucking, tears and blood and human drama.”

“I thought salt kept them out.”

Darlington raised a brow. “Did you see that on television?”

“Would it make you happier if I say I learned it from an ancient book?”

“Actually, yes.”

“Too bad.”

“Salt is a purifier,” he said, as they crossed Temple Street, “so it’s good for banishing demons—though to my great sorrow I’ve never personally had the honor. But when it comes to Grays, making a salt circle is the equivalent of leaving a salt lick for deer.”

“So what keeps them out?”

Her need crackled through the words. So this was where her interest lay.

“Bone dust. Graveyard dirt. The leavings of crematory ash. Memento mori.” He glanced at her. “Any Latin?” She shook her head. Of course not. “They hate reminders of death. If you want to Gray-proof your room, hang a Holbein print.” He’d meant it as a joke, but he could see she was chewing on what he’d said, committing the artist’s name to memory. Darlington felt an acute twinge of guilt that he did not enjoy. He’d been so busy envying this girl’s ability, he hadn’t considered what it might be like if you could never close the door on the dead. “I can ward your room,” he said by way of penance. “Your whole dorm if you like.”

“You can do that?”

“Yes,” he said. “And I can show you how to do it too.”

“Tell me the rest,” said Alex. Away from the dim cavern of the dorms, sweat had formed in a slick sheen over her nose and forehead, gathering in the divot above her upper lip. She was going to soak that shirt, and he could see she was self-conscious about it by the way she held her arms rigidly to her sides.

“Did you read The Life of Lethe ?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“I skimmed it.”

“Read it,” he said. “I’ve made you a list of other material that will help get you up to speed. Mostly histories of New Haven and our own compiled history of the societies.”

Alex gave a sharp shake of her head. “I mean tell me what I’m in for here… with you.”

That was a hard question to answer. Nothing. Everything. Lethe was meant to be a gift, but could it be to her? There was too much to tell.

They left the green and he saw tension snap back into her shoulders, though there was still nothing his eyes could see to warrant it. They passed the row of banks clustered along Elm, looming over Kebabian’s, the little red rug store that had somehow thrived in New Haven for over one hundred years, then turned left up Orange. They were only a few blocks from campus proper now, but it felt like miles. The bustle of student life vanished, as if stepping into the city was like falling off a cliff. The streets were a mess of new and old: gently weathered townhouses, barren parking lots, a carefully restored concert hall, the gargantuan high rise of the Housing Authority.

“Why here?” Alex asked when Darlington didn’t answer her previous question. “What is it about this place that draws them?”

The short answer was Who knows? But Darlington doubted that would cast him or Lethe in the most credible light.