Danny had been curled up in his high tower room, reading Paracelsus beside Waite’s translation, when his grandfather’s attorney had knocked on the door. “You’re going to have to make some choices,” he’d said. “I know you want to honor your grandfather’s memory, but you should do what’s best for you.”

It wasn’t bad advice, but Danny had no idea what might be best for him.

His grandfather had lived off the Arlington money, doling it out as he saw fit, but the estate prohibited him from leaving it to anyone but his son. The house was another story. It would be held in trust for Danny until he was eighteen.

Danny was surprised when his mother appeared at his bedroom door. “The university wants the house,” she said, then looked around the circular turret room. “If we all sign off, then the profits can be shared. You can come to New York.”

“I don’t want to live in New York.”

“You can’t begin to imagine the opportunities that will open for you there.”

Nearly a year before, he’d taken the Metro-North to the city, spent hours walking Central Park, sitting in the Temple of Dendur at the Met. He’d gone to his parents’ apartment building, thought about ringing the bell, lost his nerve. “I don’t want to leave Black Elm.”

His mother sat down on the edge of the bed. “Only the land is valuable, Danny. You have to understand that this house is worthless. Worse than worthless. It will drain every dollar we have.”

“I’m not selling Black Elm.”

“You have no idea what the world is like, Daniel. You’re still a child, and I envy that.”

“That’s not what you envy.”

The words emerged low and cold, exactly the way Danny wanted them to sound, but his mother just laughed. “What do you think is going to happen here? There’s less than thirty thousand dollars in the trust for your college education, so unless you think you’d like to make some friends at UConn, it’s time to start reevaluating. Your grandfather sold you a false bill of goods. He led you on just as he led us on. You think you’ll be some Lord of Black Elm? You don’t rule this place. It rules you. Take what you can from it now.”

This town.

Danny stayed in his room. He locked the door. He ate granola bars and drank water from the sink in his bathroom. He supposed it was a kind of mourning, but he also just didn’t know what to do. There was a stash of one thousand dollars tucked into a copy of McCullough’s 1776 in the library. When he was eighteen he’d have access to his college fund. Beyond that, he had nothing. But he couldn’t let go of Black Elm, he wouldn’t, not so someone could put a wrecking ball through its walls. Not for anything. This was his place. Who would he be untethered from this house? From its wild gardens and gray stone, from the birds that sang in its hedges, from the bare branches of its trees. He’d lost the person who knew him best, who loved him most. What else was there to cling to?

And then one day he realized the house had gone silent, that he’d heard his parents’ car rumble down the drive but never heard them return. He opened his door and crept down the stairs to find Black Elm completely empty. It hadn’t occurred to him that his parents might simply leave. Had he secretly been holding them hostage, forcing them to stay in New Haven, to pay attention to him for the first time in his life?

At first he was elated. He turned on all of the lights, the television in his bedroom and the one in the den downstairs. He ate leftover food from the fridge and fed the white cat that sometimes prowled the grounds at dusk.

The next day, he did what he always did: He got up and went to the Peabody. He came home, ate beef jerky, went to bed. He did it again and again. When the school year started, he went to school. He answered all of the mail that came to Black Elm. He lived off Gatorade and chicken rolls from 7-Eleven. He was ashamed that sometimes he missed Bernadette more than he missed his grandfather.

One day he came home and flipped the switch in the kitchen, only to discover the electricity had been turned off. He pulled all of the blankets and his grandfather’s old fur coat down from the attic and slept buried beneath them. He watched his breath plume in the quiet of the house. For six long weeks he lived in the cold and dark, doing his homework by candlelight, sleeping in the old ski clothes he discovered in a trunk.

When Christmas came, his parents appeared at the front door of Black Elm, rosy-cheeked and smiling, laden with presents and bags from Dean & DeLuca, Jaguar idling in the drive. Danny bolted the doors and refused to let them in. They’d made the mistake of teaching him he could survive.

Danny worked at the luncheonette. He got a job laying out manure and seed at Edgerton Park. He took tickets at Lyric Hall. He sold off clothes and pieces of furniture from the attic. It was enough to keep him fed and keep the lights on. His few friends were never invited over. He didn’t want inquiries about his parents or about what a teenage boy was doing alone in a big, empty house. The answer he couldn’t give was simple: He was caring for it. He was keeping Black Elm alive. If he left, the house would die.

A year passed, another. Danny got by. But he didn’t know how long he could keep just making do. He wasn’t sure what came next. He wasn’t even sure if he could afford to apply to college with his friends. He would take a year off. He would work, wait for the money from his trust. And then? He didn’t know. He didn’t know and he was scared, because he was seventeen and already weary. He’d never thought of life as long, but now it seemed impossibly so.

Later, looking back on what happened, Danny could never be sure what he’d intended that night in early July. He’d been in and out of the Beinecke and the Peabody for weeks, researching elixirs. He’d spent long nights gathering ingredients and sending away for what he couldn’t scavenge or steal. Then he’d begun the brew. For thirty-six hours straight he’d worked in the kitchen, dozing when he could, setting his alarm to wake him for the next stage in the recipe. When at last he’d looked down at the thick, tarlike syrup at the bottom of Bernadette’s ruined Le Creuset, he’d hesitated. He knew what he was attempting was dangerous. But he’d run out of things to believe in. Magic was all he had left. He was a boy on an adventure, not a boy swallowing poison.

The UPS man had found him lying on the steps the next morning, blood streaming from his eyes and mouth. He’d made it out of the kitchen door before he’d collapsed.

Danny woke in a hospital bed. A man in a tweed jacket and a striped scarf sat beside his bed.

“My name is Elliot Sandow,” he said. “I have an offer for you.” Magic had almost killed him, but in the end it had saved him. Just like in stories.

14

Winter

Alex curled into the window seat at the Hutch, and Dawes brought her a cup of hot chocolate. She’d placed a gourmet marshmallow at the top, the kind that looked like a rough-hewn stone yanked from a quarry.

“You went to the underworld,” said Dawes. “You earned a treat.”

“Not all the way to the underworld.”

“Then give the marshmallow back.” She said it shyly, as if afraid to make the joke, and Alex cradled her cup close to show she was playing along. She liked this Dawes, and she thought maybe this Dawes liked her.

“What was it like?”

Alex looked out over the rooftops in the late-morning light. From here she could see the gray gables of Wolf’s Head and part of the ivy-tangle backyard, a blue recycling bin leaning tipsily against the wall. It looked so ordinary.

She set aside her bacon and egg sandwich. Usually she could eat at least two herself, but she could still feel the water pulling her under and it was messing with her appetite. Had she really crossed over? How much was illusion and how much was real? She described what she could and what the Bridegroom required.

When she finished, Dawes said, “You can’t go to Tara Hutchins’s apartment.”

Alex picked at her sandwich. “I just told you about communing with the dead in a river full of golden-eyed crocodiles and that’s what you have to say?”

But apparently a taste of adventure had been enough for Dawes. “If Dean Sandow finds out what you did to Salome to get us into the temple—”

“Salome may bitch to her friends, but she’s not going to bring in the big guns. Offering us access to the temple, stealing from Scroll and Key, it’s all too messy.”

“And if she does?”

“I’ll deny it.”

“And you want me to deny it too?”

“I want you to think about what’s important.”

“And are you going to threaten me?” Dawes kept her eyes on her cup of cocoa, her spoon circling around and around.

“No, Dawes. Are you afraid I will?”

The spoon stopped. Dawes looked up. Her eyes were a warm, dark coffee, and sunlight caught in her messy bun making the red in her hair glow brighter. “I don’t think I am,” she said, as if she was surprised by the fact herself. “Your reaction was … extreme. But Salome was in the wrong.” Dawes with the ruthless streak. “Still, if the dean learns you made a deal with a Gray …”

“He won’t.”

“But if he does—”