Ever since that night at Rosenfeld Hall, Alex would catch herself hoping that maybe this was all a test, one given to every Lethe House apprentice, and that Dawes and Sandow
and Turner were all in on it. Darlington was in his third-floor bedroom hiding out right now. He’d heard the car in the driveway. He’d raced up the stairs and was huddling there,
in the dark, waiting for her to leave. The murder could be part of it too. There was no dead
girl. Tara Hutchins would come waltzing down the stairs herself when this was all over.
They just had to be sure Alex could handle something serious on her own.
It was absurd. Even so, that voice persisted: He’s here.
Sandow had said he might still be alive, that they could bring him back. He’d said all
they needed was a new moon, the right magic, and everything would be the way it had been before. But maybe Darlington had found his own way back. He could do anything.
He could do this.
She drifted farther into the house. The lights from the driveway cast a yellowy dimness
over the rooms—the butler’s pantry, with its white cupboards full of dishes and glasses; the big walk-in freezer, with its metal door so like the one at the morgue; the formal dining room, with its mirror-shine table like a dark lake in a silent glade; and then the vast living room, with its big black window looking out over the dim shapes of the garden, the humps
of hedges and skeletal trees. There was another, smaller room off the main living room, full of big couches, a TV, gaming consoles. Len would have wet himself over the size of
the screen. It was very much a room he would have loved, maybe the only thing he and
Darlington had in common. Well, not the only thing.
Most of the rooms on the second floor were closed up. “This was where I ran out of money,” he’d told her, his arm slung across her shoulders, as she’d tried to move him along. The house was like a body that had cut off circulation to all but the most vital parts of itself in order to survive. An old ballroom had been turned into a kind of makeshift gym. A speed bag hung from the ceiling on a rack. Big metal weights, medicine balls, and
fencing foils were stacked on the wall, and heavy machines loomed against the windows
like bulky insects.
She followed the stairs to the top floor and wound her way down the hall. The door to
Darlington’s room was open.
He’s here. Again, the certainty came at her, but worse this time. He’d left the light on for her. He wanted her to find him. He would be sitting in his bed, long legs crossed, bent
over a book, dark hair falling over his forehead. He would look up, cross his arms. It’s about time.
She wanted to run toward that square of light, but she forced herself to take measured
steps, a bride approaching an altar, her certainty draining away, the refrain of He’s here shifting from one step to the next until she realized she was praying: Be here, be here, be here.
The room was empty. It was small compared to the lodgings at Il Bastone, a strange round room that had clearly never been meant to be a bedroom and somehow reminded her of a monk’s chamber. It looked exactly as she had last seen it: the desk pushed against
one curved wall, a yellowing newspaper clipping of an old roller coaster taped above it, as
if it had been forgotten there; a mini-fridge—because of course Darlington wouldn’t want
to stop reading or working to go downstairs for sustenance; a high-backed chair placed by
the window for reading. There were no bookshelves, only stacks and stacks of books piled
at varying heights, as if he had been in the process of walling himself in with colored bricks. The desk lamp cast a circle of light over an open book: Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism.
Dawes. Dawes had come to see to the house, to sort the mail, to take the car out. Dawes
had come to this room to study. To be closer to him. Maybe to wait for him. She’d been
called away suddenly, left the lights on, assumed she’d be back that evening to take care
of it. But Alex had been the one to return the car. It was that simple.