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.

Darlington was not in Spain. He was not home. He was never coming home. And it was all Alex’s fault.

A white shape cut through the dark from the corner of her vision. She leapt backward, knocking over a pile of books, and swore. But it was just Cosmo, Darlington’s cat.

He prowled the edge of the desk, nudging up against the warmth of the desk lamp. Alex always thought of him as Bowie Cat because of his marked-up eye and streaky white fur that looked like one of the wigs Bowie had worn in Labyrinth. He was stupid affectionate—all you had to do was hold your hand out and he would nuzzle your knuckles.

Alex sat down on the edge of Darlington’s narrow bed. It was neatly made, probably by Dawes. Had she sat here too? Slept here?

Alex remembered Darlington’s delicate feet, his scream as he’d vanished. She held her hand down, beckoning to the cat. “Hey, Cosmo.”

He stared at her with his mismatched eyes, the pupil of the left like an inkblot.

“Come on, Cosmo. I didn’t mean for it to happen. Not really.”

Cosmo padded across the room. As soon as his small sleek head touched Alex’s fingers, she began to cry.

Alex slept in Darlington’s bed and dreamed that he was curled behind her on the narrow mattress.

He pulled her close, his fingers digging into her abdomen, and she could feel claws at their tips. He whispered in her ear, “I will serve you ’til the end of days.”

“And love me,” she said with a laugh, bold in the dream, unafraid.

But all he said was, “It is not the same.”

Alex woke with a start, flopped over, gazed at the sharp pitch of the roof, the trees beyond the window striping the ceiling in shadow and hard winter sun. She’d been scared to try fiddling with the thermostat, so she’d bundled herself in three of Darlington’s sweaters and an ugly brown hat she’d found on top of his dresser but that she’d never seen him wear. She remade the bed, then headed downstairs to fill Cosmo’s water dish and eat some fancy nuts-and-twigs dry cereal from a box in the pantry.

Alex took her laptop from her bag and went to the dusty sunroom that ran the length of the first floor. She gazed out at the backyard. The slope of the hill led to a hedge maze overgrown with brambles, and she could see some kind of statue or fountain at its center. She wasn’t sure where the grounds left off, and she wondered just how much of this particular hill the Arlington family owned.

It took her nearly two hours to write up her report on the Tara Hutchins murder. Cause of death. Time of death. The behavior of the Grays at the Skull and Bones prognostication. She’d hesitated over that last, but Lethe had brought her here for what she could see and there was no reason for her to lie about it. She mentioned the information she’d gleaned from the coroner and from Turner in his capacity as Centurion, noting Tripp’s name coming up and also Turner’s belief that the Bonesman was not involved. She hoped Turner wouldn’t mention her visit to the morgue.

At the end of the incident report, there was a section titled “Findings.” Alex thought for a long time, her hand idly stroking Cosmo’s fur as he purred beside her on the old wicker love seat. In the end, she said nothing about the strange feeling she’d had at the crime scene or that she suspected Tara and Lance were probably dealing to other members of the other societies. Centurion will update Dante on his findings, but at this time all evidence suggests this was a crime committed by Tara’s boyfriend while under the influence of powerful hallucinogenics and that there is no connection to Lethe or the Houses of the Veil. She read through twice more for punctuation and to try to make her answers sound as Darlingtonish as possible, then she sent the report to Sandow with Dawes cc’d.

Cosmo meowed plaintively as Alex slipped out the kitchen door, but it felt good to leave the house behind her, breathe the icy air. The sky was bright blue, scrubbed clean of clouds, and the gravel of the drive glittered. She put the Mercedes in the garage, then walked to the end of the driveway and called a car. She could return the keys to Dawes later.

If her roommates asked where she had been, she would just say she’d spent the night at Darlington’s. Family emergency. The excuse had long since worn thin, but there would be fewer late nights and unexplained absences from now on. She’d done right by Tara. Lance would be punished and Alex’s conscience was off the hook, for this at least. Tonight she’d nurse a beer while her roommate got shitfaced on peppermint schnapps via ice luge at Omega Meltdown, and tomorrow she’d spend all day catching up on her reading.

She had the driver drop her in front of the fancy mini-mart on Elm. It wasn’t until she was already inside the store that she realized she was still wearing Darlington’s hat. She slid it off her head, then jammed it back on. It was cold. She didn’t need to be sentimental about a hat.

Alex filled her basket with Chex Mix, Twizzlers, sour gummy worms. She shouldn’t be spending so much money, but she craved the comfort of junk food. She reached into the drinks case, rooting back for a chocolate milk with a better expiration date, and felt something brush her hand—fingertips caressing her knuckles.