Ninth House

by Leigh Bardugo

  Darlington had grown older. The memory of Lighthouse Point had grown dimmer. But he never took the picture of the Thunderbolt from his wall. He would forget about it for weeks, sometimes months at a time, but he could never shake the thought that he was seeing only one world when there might be many, that there were lost places, maybe even lost people who might come to life for him if he just squinted hard enough or found the right magic words. Books, with their promises of enchanted doorways and secret places, only made it worse.

  The feeling should have ebbed away with time, worn down by the constant, gentle disappointments of growing up. But at sixteen, with his brand-new provisional driver’s license tucked into his wallet, the first place Darlington had taken his grandfather’s old Mercedes was Lighthouse Point. He’d stood at the edge of the water and waited for the world to reveal itself. Years later, when he met Alex Stern, he had to resist the urge to bring her there too, to see if the Thunderbolt might appear to her like any other Gray, a rumbling ghost of joy and giddy terror.

  When full dark fell and the stream of children in their goblin masks slowed to a trickle, Darlington put on his own costume, the same one he wore every year—a black coat and a pair of cheap plastic fangs that made him look like he’d just had dental surgery.

  He parked in the alley behind the Hutch, where Alex was waiting, shivering in a long black coat that he’d never seen before.

  “Can’t we drive?” she asked. “It’s freezing.”

  Californians. “It’s fifty degrees and we’re walking three blocks. Somehow you’ll manage this journey through the tundra. I pray you’re not wearing a skimpy cat ensemble underneath that. We’re supposed to project some measure of authority.”

  “I can do my job in hot pants. I can probably do it better.” She executed a half-hearted karate kick. “More room to move.” At least she’d worn practical boots.

  In the light from the streetlamp, he could see she’d heavily lined her eyes and had big gold earrings on. Hopefully she hadn’t worn anything too provocative or appropriative. He didn’t want to spend the evening fielding judgmental snipes from Manuscript because Alex had felt the urge to dress as sexy Pocahontas.

  He led them up the alley and onto Elm. She seemed alert, ready. She’d done well since the incident at Aurelian, since they’d smashed a few thousand dollars’ worth of glass and china on Il Bastone’s kitchen floor. Maybe Darlington had done a little better too. They’d watched a series of first transformations at Wolf’s Head that had gone without incident—though Shane Mackay had trouble coming down and they had to pen him in the kitchen while he shook off his rooster form. He’d bloodied his nose trying to peck the table and one of his friends had spent an hour dutifully plucking tiny white feathers from his body. The cock jokes had been interminable. They’d monitored a raising at Book and Snake, where, with the help of a translator, a desiccated corpse had relayed the final accounts of recently dead soldiers in the Ukraine in a bizarre game of macabre telephone. Darlington didn’t know who in the state department had requested the information, but he assumed it would be dutifully passed along. They’d observed an unsuccessful portal opening at Scroll and Key—a botched attempt to send someone to Hungary, which had resulted in nothing but the whole tomb smelling like goulash—and an equally unimpressive storm summoning by St. Elmo at their dump of an apartment on Lynwood, which had left the delegation president and attending alumni sheepish and ashamed.

  “They all have the look a guy gets when he’s too drunk to get it up,” Alex had whispered.

  “Must you be so vulgar, Stern?”

  “Tell me I’m wrong, Darlington.”

  “I certainly wouldn’t know.”

  Tonight would be a bit different. They would draw no circles of protection, only make their presence known, monitor the power being gathered at the Manuscript nexus, and then write up a report.

  “How long will we be at this thing?” Alex asked as the street forked left.

  “After midnight, maybe a little later.”

  “I told Mercy and Lauren I’d meet them at the Pierson Inferno.”

  “They’ll be so wasted by then they’re not going to notice if you’re late. Now focus: Manuscript looks harmless, but they’re not.”

  Alex cut him a glance. There was some kind of glitter on her cheeks. “You actually sound nervous.”

  Of all the societies, the one that made Darlington most wary was Manuscript. He could see the skepticism on Alex’s face as they stopped in front of a grubby white brick wall.

  “Here?” she asked, drawing her coat tighter. The thump of bass and murmur of conversation floated back to them from somewhere down the narrow walkway.

  Darlington understood Alex’s disbelief. The other tombs had been built to look like tombs—the flat neo-Egyptian plinths of Bones, the soaring white columns of Book and Snake, the delicate screens and Moorish arches of Scroll and Key, Darlington’s favorite crypt. Even Wolf’s Head, who had claimed they wanted to shake off the trappings of the arcane and establish a more egalitarian house, had built themselves an English country estate in miniature. Darlington had read the descriptions of each tomb in Pinnell’s guide to Yale and felt that, somehow, the analysis of their parts had fallen short of the mystery they evoked. Of course, Pinnell hadn’t known about the tunnel beneath Grove Street that led directly from Book and Snake to the heart of the cemetery, or the enchanted orange trees taken from the Alhambra that bore fruit year-round in the Scroll and Key courtyard.

  But the exterior of Manuscript just looked like a squat brick lump with a bunch of recycling bins stacked along its side.

  “This is it?” Alex asked. “This is sadder than that place on Lynwood.”

  Actually, nothing was sadder than the St. Elmo house on Lynwood, with its stained carpet and sagging stairs and roof spiked with tilting weather vanes.

  “Don’t judge a book, Stern. This crypt is eight stories deep and houses one of the best collections of contemporary art in the world.”

  Alex’s brows shot up. “So they’re Cali rich.”

  “Cali rich?”

  “In L.A., the really loaded guys dress like bums, like they need everyone to know they live at the beach.”

  “I suspect Manuscript was aiming for understated elegance, not I bang models at my Malibu manse, but who can say?” The tomb had been finished in the early sixties by King-lui Wu. Darlington had never managed more than a grudging respect for mid-century architecture. Despite his best attempts to admire its severe lines, its clean execution, it always fell flat for him. His father had openly mocked his son’s bourgeois taste for turrets and gabled roofs.

  “Here,” Darlington said, taking Alex by the shoulders and walking her a little to the left. “Look.”

  It pleased him when she exclaimed, “Oh!”

  At this angle, the circular pattern hidden in the white bricks emerged. Most people thought it represented a sun, but Darlington knew better.

  “It can’t be seen head-on,” said Darlington. “Nothing here can. This is the house of illusions and lies. Keep in mind just how charismatic some of these people can be. Our job is to make sure that no one gets too out of line and no one gets hurt. There was an incident in 1982.”

  “What kind of incident?”

  “A girl ate something at one of these parties and decided she was a tiger.”

  Alex shrugged. “I watched Salome Nils pull feathers out of a guy’s butt in the Wolf’s Head kitchen. Pretty sure it could be worse.”

  “She never stopped thinking she was a tiger.”

  “What?”

  “Wolf’s Head is all about changing the physical, relinquishing human form but retaining human awareness. Manuscript specializes in altering consciousness.”

  “Messing with your head.”

  “That girl’s parents still have her in a cage in upstate New York. It’s a pretty nice setup. Acres to run on. Raw meat twice a day. She got out once and tried to maul their mailman.”

  “Hell on a ma
nicure.”

  “She had him down on the ground and was chewing on his calf. We covered it up as a mental breakdown. Manuscript paid for all of her care and was suspended from activity for a semester.”

  “Harsh justice.”

  “I didn’t say it was fair, Stern. Not much is. But I’m telling you, you cannot trust your own perception tonight. Manuscript’s magics are all about tricking the senses. Don’t eat or drink anything. Keep your wits about you. I don’t want to have to send you upstate with your own ball of yarn.”

  They followed a cluster of girls dressed in corsets and zombie makeup down the narrow alley and in through the side door. Henry VIII’s wives. Anne Boleyn’s neck was covered in sticky-looking fake blood.

  Kate Masters perched on a stool by the door with a hand stamp, but Darlington snatched Alex’s wrist before she could offer it up. “You don’t know what’s in the stamp dye,” he murmured. “You can just let us through, Kate.”

  “Coatroom to the left.” She winked, red glitter sparkling on her lids. She was dressed as Poison Ivy, construction-paper leaves stapled onto a green bustier.

  Inside, the music thumped and wailed, the heat of bodies washing over them in a gust of perfume and moist air. The big square room was dimly lit, packed with people circling skull-shaped vats of punch, the back garden strewn with strings of twinkling lights beyond. Darlington was already starting to sweat.

  “Doesn’t look so bad,” said Alex.

  “Remember what I said? The real party is down below.”

  “So nine levels total? Nine circles of hell?”

  “No, it’s based around Chinese mythology. Eight is considered the luckiest number, so eight secret levels. The staircase represents a divine spiral.”

  Alex shucked off her coat. Beneath it she wore a black sheath dress. Her shoulders were strewn with a cascade of silver stars. “What are you supposed to be?” he asked.

  “A girl in black with a lot of eye makeup on?” She pulled a crown of plastic flowers sprayed with silver paint from her coat pocket and settled it on her head. “Queen Mab.”

  “You didn’t strike me as a Shakespeare fan.”

  “I’m not. Lauren got a Puck costume from the Dramat closet. Mercy’s going as Titania, so she shoved me in this and said I could be Mab.”

  “You know Shakespeare called Mab the faeries’ midwife.”

  Alex frowned. “I thought she was the Queen of the Night.”

  “That too. It suits you.”

  Darlington had meant it to be a compliment, but Alex scowled. “It’s just a dress.”

  “What have I been trying to tell you?” Darlington said. “Nothing is ever just anything.” And maybe he wanted her to be the kind of girl who dressed as Queen Mab, who loved words and had stars in her blood. “Let’s walk the first floor before we tackle what lies beneath.”

  It didn’t take them long. Manuscript had been built on the open floor plans popular in the fifties and sixties, so there were few rooms or passages to investigate. At least on this level.

  “I don’t get it,” Alex murmured as they glanced around the scrubby backyard. It was too crowded for comfort, but nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happening. “If tonight is so special to Manuscript, why perform a rite with so many people around?”

  “It’s not a rite precisely. It’s a culling. But that’s the problem with their magic. It can’t be practiced in seclusion. Mirror magic is all about reflection and perception. A lie isn’t a lie until someone believes it. It doesn’t matter how charming you are if there’s no one to charm. Everybody on this floor is powering what happens below.”

  “Just by having a good time?”

  “By trying to. Look around. What do you see? People in costumes, horns, false jewels, adorning themselves in tiny layers of illusion. They stand up straighter, suck in their stomachs, say things they don’t mean, indulge in flattery. They commit a thousand small acts of deception, lying to each other, lying to themselves, drinking to the point of delusion to make it easier. This is a night of compacts, between the seers and the seen, a night when people enter false bargains willingly, hoping to be duped and to dupe in turn for the pleasure of feeling brave or sexy or beautiful or simply wanted—no matter how fleetingly.”

  “Darlington, are you telling me Manuscript is powered by beer goggles?”

  “You do have a way of cutting straight to it, Stern. Every weekend night, every party is a series of these bargains, but Halloween compounds it all. These people enter the pact when they walk through that door, full of anticipation. Even before that, when they put on their wings and horns”—he shot her a glance—“and glitter. Didn’t someone say love is a shared delusion?”

  “Cynical, Darlington. Doesn’t suit you at all.”

  “Call it magic if you prefer. Two people reciting the same spell.”

  “Well, I like it,” said Alex. “It looks like a party from a movie. But the Grays are all over it.”

  He knew that and yet it still surprised him. After so long, he felt he should be able to sense their presence in some way. Darlington tried to step back, see this place as Alex did, but it just looked like a party. Halloween was a night when the dead came alive because the living were more alive: happy children high on candy, angry teenagers with eggs and shaving cream tucked into their hoodies, drunk college students in masks and wings and horns giving themselves permission to be something else—angel, demon, devil, good doctor, bad nurse. The sweat and excitement, the over-sugared punches loaded with fruit and grain alcohol. The Grays could not resist.

  “Who’s here?” he asked.

  Her dark brows shot up. “You want specifics?”

  “I’m not asking you to endanger yourself for the sake of my curiosity. Just … an overview.”

  “Two by the sliding glass door, five or six in the yard, one by the entry right behind that girl working the door, a whole herd of them clumped by the punch. Impossible to tell how many.”

  She hadn’t missed a beat. She was aware of them because she was afraid of them.

  “The lower floors are all warded. You don’t have to worry about that tonight.” He led her to the top of the stairs, where Doug Far was leaning against the banister, making sure no one without an invite proceeded below. “Blood magic is strictly regulated on Halloween. It’s too appealing to the dead. But tonight Manuscript will siphon off all the desire and abandon of the holiday to power their rites for the rest of the year.”

  “Partying is that powerful?”

  “Anderson Cooper is actually five foot four inches tall, weighs two bills, and talks with a knee-deep Long Island accent.” Alex’s eyes widened. “Just be careful.”

  “Darlington!” Doug said. “The gentleman of Lethe!”

  “You stuck here all night?”

  “Just the next hour and then I’m gonna go get high as fuck.”

  “Nice,” said Darlington, and glimpsed Alex rolling her eyes. Other than the night they’d gotten drunk after the disastrous Aurelian ritual, he’d never seen her take even a sip of wine. He wondered if she partied with her roommates or if she’d chosen to stay mostly clean after what had happened to her friends in Los Angeles.

  “Who’s this?” Doug said, and Darlington found himself annoyed by Doug’s lazy perusal of Alex’s costume. “Your date or your Dante?”

  “Alex Stern. She’s the new me. She’ll be watching over all you dullards when I finally get out of here.” He said it because they expected him to, but Darlington would never leave this city. He’d fought too hard to remain here, to hold on to Black Elm. He would take a few months to travel, visit the remnants of the library cave in Dunhuang, make a pilgrimage to the monastery at Mont Sainte-Odile. He knew Lethe expected him to apply to graduate school, maybe take a research position in the New York office. But that wasn’t what he really wanted. New Haven needed a new map, a map of the unseen, and Darlington wanted to be the one to draw it, and maybe, in the lines of its streets, the quiet of its gardens, the deep shado
w of East Rock, there would be an answer to why New Haven had never become a Manhattan or a Cambridge, why, despite every opportunity and every hope for prosperity, it had always foundered. Was it merely chance? Bad luck? Or had the magic that lived here somehow stunted the town even as it continued to flourish?

  “So what are you?” Doug asked Alex. “A vampire? Gonna suck my blood?”

  “If you’re lucky,” said Alex, and disappeared down the stairs.

  “Stay safe tonight, Doug,” Darlington said as he followed her. She was already out of sight, vanishing down the spiral, and she shouldn’t be on her own tonight.

  Doug laughed. “That’s your job.”

  The blast of a fog machine struck him full in the face, and he nearly stumbled. He waved the mist away, annoyed. Why couldn’t people just have a quality drink and a conversation? Why all of this desperate pretense? And was some part of him jealous of Doug, of everyone who managed to be reckless for a night? Maybe. He’d felt disconnected from everything since he’d moved back to Black Elm. Freshmen and sophomores were required to live in the dorms, and though he’d visited Black Elm religiously, he’d liked the feeling of being pulled into other orbits, yanked forcibly from his shell by his well-meaning roommates, drawn into a world that had nothing to do with Lethe or the uncanny. He’d liked Jordan and E.J. enough to room with them both years, and he was grateful that they’d felt the same. He kept intending to call them, to invite them out. But another day would go by and he’d find it lost to books, to Black Elm, to Lethe, and now to Alex Stern.

  “You should stay behind me,” he said when he caught up to her, vexed by the petulant edge to his own voice. She was already on the next level, looking around with eager eyes. This floor resembled the VIP section of a nightclub, the lights dimmer, the bass muted, but there was a dreamy quality to it all, as if every person and every item in the room was limned in golden light.