Ninth House

by Leigh Bardugo

  The candles flared, their flames gone vibrant green.

  “We’ve found him!” cried Sandow in a trembling voice. He sounded almost frightened. “Activate the deed!”

  Amelia touched a candle to the papers lying at the center of the circle. Green light kindled and rose around the piles. She tossed something into the flame and it ignited in bright sparks like a firework.

  Iron, Alex realized. She’d seen an experiment just like that in a science class once.

  Words seemed to hover in the green flame over the document as the iron filings sparked.

  WITNESSETH

  THAT THE

  SAID GRANTOR

  FOR GOOD AND VALUABLE

  CONSIDERATION

  FOR GOOD

  FOR GOOD

  The words curled in on themselves, rising in the fire and vanishing like smoke.

  The candle flames shot even higher, then sputtered. The fire covering the deed banked abruptly. They were left in darkness.

  And then Black Elm came alive. All at once, the sconces on the walls flared to brightness, music blared from the speakers in the corner, and the halls echoed with the sound of a late-night newscast as somewhere in the house a television came on.

  “Who the hell left all the lights on?” said an old man standing outside the circle. He was frighteningly thin, his hair a wisp on his head, his bathrobe hanging open to reveal an emaciated chest and shriveled genitals. A cigarette hung from his mouth.

  He wasn’t sharp and clear the way Grays usually were to Alex; he looked … well, gray. As if she were viewing him through layers of milky chiffon. The Veil.

  She knew she was looking at Daniel Tabor Arlington III. A moment later he was gone.

  “It’s working!” shouted Josh.

  “Use the bells,” cried Amelia. “Call him home!”

  Alex lifted the silver bell at her feet and saw the others do the same. They rang the bells, the sweet sound rolling over the circle, over the din of the music and the chaos of the house.

  The windows blew open. Alex heard a squeal of tires and a loud crash from somewhere below. Around her, she saw people dancing; a young man with a heavy mustache who distinctly resembled Darlington floated past, dressed in a suit that looked like it belonged in a museum.

  “Stop!” shouted Sandow. “Something’s wrong! Stop the ringing!”

  Alex seized the clapper of her bell, trying to silence it, and saw the others do the same. But the bells did not stop ringing. She could feel her bell still vibrating in her hand as if struck, hear the peals growing louder.

  Alex’s cheeks felt flushed. The room had been icy moments before, but now she was sweating in her clothes. The stink of sulfur filled the air. She heard a groan that seemed to rumble through the floor—a deep bass rattle. She remembered the crocodiles calling to each other from the banks of the river in the borderlands. Whatever was out there, whatever had entered the room, was bigger. Much, much bigger. It sounded hungry.

  The bells were screaming. They sounded like an angry crowd, a mob about to do violence. Alex could feel the vibrations making her palms buzz.

  Boom. The building shook.

  Boom. Amelia lost her footing, clutched at Zelinski to keep her balance, the bell tumbling from her hands, still ringing and ringing.

  Boom. The same sound Alex had heard that night at the prognostication, the sound of something trying to break through the circle, to break through to their world. That night the Grays in the operating theater had pierced the Veil, splintered the railing. She’d thought they were trying to destroy the protection of the circle, but what if they were trying to get inside it? What if they were afraid of whatever was coming? That low rumbling groan shook the room again. It sounded like the jaws of something ancient creaking open.

  Alex gagged, then retched, the scent of sulfur so heavy she could taste it, rotten in her mouth.

  Murder. A voice, hard and loud, above the bells—Darlington’s voice, but deeper, snarling. Angry. Murder, he said.

  Well, shit. So much for him keeping his mouth shut.

  And then she saw it, looming over the circle, as if there were no ceiling, no third story, no house at all, a monster—there was no other word for it—horned and heavy-toothed, so big its hulking body blotted out the night sky. A boar. A ram. The rearing, segmented body of a scorpion. Her mind leapt from terror to terror, unable to make sense of it.

  Alex realized she was screaming. Everyone was screaming. The walls seemed lit by fire.

  Alex could feel the heat on her cheeks, searing the hair on her arms.

  Sandow strode forward to the center of the circle. He tossed down his bell and roared, “Lapidea est lingua vestra!” He threw his arms open as if conducting an orchestra, his face made golden in the flames. He looked young. He looked like a stranger. “Silentium domus vacuae audito! Nemo gratus accipietur!”

  The windows of the ballroom blew inward, glass shattering. Alex fell to her knees, covering her head with her hands.

  She waited, heart pounding in her chest. Only then did she realize the bells had stopped ringing.

  The silence was soft against her ears. When Alex opened her eyes, she saw that the candles had bloomed to light again, bathing everything in a gentle glow. As if nothing had happened, as if it had all been a grand illusion—except for the pebbles of broken glass littering the floor.

  Amelia and Josh were both on their knees, sobbing. Dawes was huddled on the floor with her hands clasped over her mouth. Michelle Alameddine paced back and forth, muttering, “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit.”

  Wind gusted through the shattered windows, the smell of the night air cold and sweet after the thick tang of sulfur. Sandow stood staring up at where the beast had been. His dress shirt was soaked through with sweat.

  Alex forced herself to stand and make her way to Dawes, boots crunching over glass.

  “Dawes?” she said, crouching down and laying a hand on her shoulder. “Pammie?”

  Dawes was crying, the tears making slow, silent tracks down her cheeks. “He’s gone,” she said. “He’s really gone.”

  “But I heard him,” Alex said. Or something that sounded very much like him.

  “You don’t understand,” Dawes said. “That thing—”

  “It was a hellbeast,” said Michelle. “It was talking with his voice. That means it consumed him. Someone let it into our world. Left it like a cave for him to walk into.”

  “Who?” said Dawes, wiping the tears from her face. “How?”

  Sandow put his arm around her. “I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.”

  “But if he’s dead, then he should be on the other side,” said Alex. “He isn’t. He—”

  “He’s gone, Alex,” Michelle said. Her voice was harsh. “He’s not on the other side. He’s not behind the Veil. He was devoured, soul and all.”

  It’s not a portal. That was what Darlington had said that night in the Rosenfeld basement. And now she knew what he had meant to say, what he had tried to say, before that thing had taken him. It’s not a portal. It’s a mouth.

  Darlington had not disappeared. He had been eaten.

  “No one survives that,” said Sandow. His voice was hoarse. He took off his glasses and Alex saw him wipe at his eyes. “No soul can endure it. We summoned a poltergeist, an echo. That’s all.”

  “He’s gone,” Dawes said again.

  This time Alex didn’t deny it.

  * * *

  They collected Aurelian’s bells and Dean Sandow said he would make calls to have the windows of the ballroom boarded up the next morning. It was starting to snow, but it was too late in the evening to do anything about it now. And who was there left to care? Black Elm’s keeper, its defender, would never return.

  They made their slow way out of the house. When they entered the kitchen, Dawes began to cry harder. It all looked so impossibly stupid and hopeful: the half-full glasses of wine, the tidily arranged vegetables, the pot of soup waiting on the stove.
r />   Outside, they found Darlington’s Mercedes smashed into Amelia’s Land Rover. That was the crash Alex had heard, Darlington’s car possessed by whatever echo they’d drawn into this world.

  Sandow sighed. “I’ll call a tow truck and wait with you, Amelia. Michelle—”

  “I can take a car to the station.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “It’s fine,” she said. She seemed distracted, confused, as if she couldn’t quite make the numbers tally, as if she’d only now realized that in all her years at Lethe she’d been walking side by side with death.

  “Alex, can you see Dawes home?” Sandow asked.

  Dawes wiped her sleeve across her tearstained face. “I don’t want to go home.”

  “To Il Bastone, then. I’ll join you as soon as I can. We’ll…” He trailed off. “I don’t know exactly what we’ll do.”

  “Sure,” said Alex. She used her phone to request a ride, then put her arm around Dawes and herded her down the driveway after Michelle.

  They stood in silence by the stone columns, Black Elm behind them, the snow gathering around them.

  Michelle’s car came first. She didn’t offer to share it, but she turned to Alex as she got in.

  “I work in gifts and acquisitions in the Butler Library at Columbia,” she said. “If you need me.”

  Before Alex could reply, she ducked inside. The car vanished slowly down the street, cautious in the snow, its red taillights dwindling to sparks.

  Alex kept her arm around Dawes, afraid that she might pull away. Until this moment, until this night, anything had been possible and Alex had really believed that somehow, inevitably, maybe not on this new moon but on the next, Darlington would return. Now the spell of hope was broken and no amount of magic could make it whole.

  The golden boy of Lethe was gone.

  26

  Winter

  “You’ll stay, won’t you?” Dawes asked as they entered the foyer at Il Bastone. The house sighed around them as if sensing their sadness. Did it know? Had it known from the start that Darlington would never come back?

  “Of course.” She was grateful Dawes wanted her there. She didn’t want to be alone or to try to put on a cheerful face for her roommates. She couldn’t pretend right now. And yet she couldn’t stop reaching for some scrap of hope. “Maybe we got it wrong. Maybe Sandow screwed up.”

  Dawes switched on the lights. “He’s had almost three months to plan. It was a good ritual.”

  “Well, maybe he got it wrong on purpose. Maybe he doesn’t want Darlington back.” She knew she was grasping at smoke, but it was all she had. “If he’s involved in covering up Tara’s murder, you think he really wants a crusader like Darlington around instead of me?”

  “But you are a crusader, Alex.”

  “A more competent crusader. What did Sandow say to stop the ritual?”

  “Your tongues are made stone—he used that to silence the bells.”

  “And the rest?”

  Dawes shucked off her scarf and hung her parka on the hook. She kept her back to Alex when she said, “Hear the silence of an empty home. No one will be made welcome.”

  The thought of Darlington being forever banned from Black Elm was horrible. Alex rubbed her tired eyes. “The night of the Skull and Bones prognostication, I heard someone—something—pounding on the door to get in right at the moment Tara was murdered. It sounded just like tonight. Maybe it was Darlington. Maybe he saw what was happening to Tara and he tried to warn me. If he—”

  Dawes was already shaking her head, her loose bun unwinding at her neck. “You heard what they said. It … that thing ate him.” Her shoulders shook and Alex realized she was crying again, clutching her hanging coat as if without its support she might topple. “He’s gone.” The words like a refrain, a song they’d be singing until the grief had passed.

  Alex touched a hand to Dawes’s arm. “Dawes—”

  But Dawes stood up straight, sniffled deeply, wiped the tears from her eyes. “Sandow was wrong, though. Technically. Someone could survive being consumed by a hellbeast. Just no one human.”

  “What could, then?”

  “A demon.”

  Far above our pay grade.

  Dawes took a long, shuddering breath and pushed her hair back from her face, re-fastening her bun. “Do you think Sandow will want coffee when he gets here?” she asked as she retrieved her headphones from the parlor carpet. “I want to work for a while.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “The dissertation?” Dawes blinked slowly, looked down at the headphones in her hand as if wondering how they’d gotten there. “I have no idea.”

  “I’ll order pizza,” said Alex. “And I’m taking first shower. We both reek.”

  “I’ll open a bottle of wine.”

  Alex was halfway up the stairs when she heard the knock at the door. For a second, she thought it might be Dean Sandow. But why would he knock? In the six months she’d been a part of Lethe, no one had knocked at Orange.

  “Dawes—” she began.

  “Let me in.” A male voice, loud and angry through the door.

  Alex’s feet had carried her all the way to the base of the stairs before she realized it. Compulsion.

  “Dawes, don’t!” she cried. But Dawes was already unlocking the door.

  The lock clicked and the door slammed inward. Dawes was thrown back against the banister, headphones flying from her hand. Alex heard a loud crack as her head connected with the wood.

  Alex didn’t stop to think. She snatched up Dawes’s headphones and shoved them down over her ears, using her hands to keep them tight to her head as she ran up the stairs. She glanced back once and saw Blake Keely—beautiful Blake Keely, the shoulders of his wool coat dusted with snow as if he’d emerged from the pages of a catalog—step over Dawes’s body, his eyes locked on Alex.

  Dawes will be okay, she told herself. She has to be okay. You can’t help her if you lose control.

  Blake was using Starpower or something like it. Alex had felt the pull of it in his voice through the door. It was the only reason Dawes had flipped the lock.

  She bolted toward the armory, punching Turner’s number into her phone, and slammed her hand against the old stereo panel on the wall by the library, hoping that for once it would oblige. Maybe the house was fighting alongside her, because music boomed through the hallways, louder and clearer than she’d ever heard it before. When Darlington had been around, it would have been Purcell or Prokofiev. Instead, it was the last thing Dawes had listened to—if Alex hadn’t been so frightened, she would have laughed as Morrissey’s warble and the jangle of guitars filled the air.

  The words were muted by the headphones, the sound of her own breathing loud in her ears. She hurtled into the armory, throwing open drawers. Dawes was down and bleeding. Turner was far away. And Alex didn’t want to think about what Blake might do to her, what he might make her do. Would it be revenge for what she’d done? Had he figured out who she was and somehow followed her here? Or was it Tara who had brought him to her door? Alex had been so focused on the societies, she hadn’t noticed another suspect right in front of her—a pretty boy with a rotten core who didn’t like the word “no.”

  She needed a weapon, but nothing in the armory was made to fight a living, human body hyped up on super charisma.

  Alex glanced over her shoulder. Blake was right behind her. He was saying something, but thankfully she couldn’t hear him over the music. She reached into the drawers, grabbing anything heavy she could find to throw. She wasn’t even sure what priceless thing she was hurling at him. An astrolabe. A glittering paperweight with a sea frozen inside it.

  Blake batted them aside and seized the back of her neck. He was strong from lacrosse and vanity. He tore the headphones from her ears. Alex screamed as loud as she could and raked her nails across his face. Blake shrieked and she fled down the hall. She’d fought monsters before. She’d won. But not on her own. She needed to get outside, a
way from the wards, where she could draw on North’s strength or find another Gray to help her.

  The house seemed to be humming, buzzing its anxiety. A stranger is here. A killer is here. The lights crackled and flared, the static from the stereo rising.

  “Calm down,” Alex told the house as she pounded down the hallway, back to the stairs. “You’re too old for this shit.”

  But the house continued to whir and rattle.

  Blake tackled her from behind. She hit the floor hard. “Be still,” he crooned in her ear.

  Alex felt her limbs lock up. She didn’t just stop moving—she was glad to do it, thrilled, really. She would be perfectly still, still as a statue.

  “Dawes!” she screamed.

  “Be quiet,” said Blake.

  Alex clamped her lips shut. She was happy to have the chance to do this for him. He deserved it. He deserved everything.

  Blake rolled her over and stood, towering over her. He seemed impossibly tall, his golden, tousled head framed by the coffered ceiling.

  “You ruined my life,” he said. He lifted his foot and rested his boot on her chest. “You ruined me.” Some part of her mind screamed, Run. Push him off. Do something. But it was a distant voice, lost to the contented hum of submission. She was so happy, so very happy to oblige.

  Blake pressed down with his boot and Alex felt her ribs bend. He was big, two hundred pounds of muscle, and all of it felt like it was resting just beneath her heart. The house rattled hysterically, as if it could feel her bones crying out. Alex heard a table topple somewhere, dishes crashing from their shelves. Il Bastone giving voice to her fear.

  “What gave you the right?” he said. “Answer me.”

  He’d granted her permission.

  “Mercy and every girl before her,” Alex spat, even as her mind begged for another command, another way to please him. “They gave me the right.”

  Blake lifted his boot and brought it down hard. Alex screamed as pain exploded through her.

  At the same moment the lights went out. The stereo went with it, the music fading, leaving them in darkness, in silence, as if Il Bastone had simply died around her.