Ninth House Page 63
“Hey,” said Turner, and repeated, “Hey!” when she didn’t answer.
Dawes jumped. It was like watching a big beige rabbit come to life. She startled and cringed backward at the sight of Turner and Alex in the parlor.
“Is she a racist or just twitchy?” asked Turner.
“I’m not a racist!” said Dawes.
“We’re all racists, Dawes,” said Alex. “How did you even make it through undergrad?”
Dawes’s mouth went slack as Turner dragged Alex into the light. “Oh my God. Oh my God. What happened?”
“Long story,” said Alex. “Can you fix me?”
“We should go to the hospital,” said Dawes. “I’ve never—”
“No,” said Alex. “I’m not leaving the wards.”
“What got you?”
“A very big dude.”
“Then—”
“Who can walk through walls.”
“Oh.” She pressed her lips together and then said, “Detective Turner, I … could you—”
“What do you need?”
“Goat’s milk. I think Elm City Market stocks it.”
“How much?”
“As much as they have. The crucible will do the rest. Alex, can you get up the stairs?”
Alex glanced at the staircase. She wasn’t sure she could.
Turner hesitated. “I can—”
“No,” said Alex. “Dawes and I will manage.”
“Fine,” he said, already heading toward the back door. “You’re lucky this dump of a town is gentrifying. Like to see me walk into the Family Dollar looking for goat’s milk.”
“You should have let him carry you,” Dawes grunted as they made their slow way up the stairs.
Alex’s body was fighting every step. “Right now he feels guilty for not listening to me. I can’t let him make up for it just yet.”
“Why?”
“Because the worse he feels, the more he’ll do for us. Trust me. Turner doesn’t like to be in the wrong.” Another step. Another. Why didn’t this place have an elevator? A magical one full of morphine. “Tell me about Scroll and Key. I thought their magic was waning. The night Darlington and I observed, they couldn’t even open a portal to Eastern Europe.”
“They’ve had a few bad years, trouble getting the best taps. There’s been some speculation in Lethe that portal magic is so disruptive it’s been eroding the power nexus their tomb is built on.”
But maybe the Locksmiths had been pretending, running a little con, trying to look weaker than they actually were. Why? So that they could perform rituals in secret without Lethe interference? Or was there something shady about the rituals themselves? But how would that connect Colin Khatri to Tara? All Tripp had said was that Tara had mentioned Colin once in passing. There had to be more to it. That tattoo couldn’t just be coincidence.
Dawes led Alex to the armory and propped her up against Hiram’s Crucible. It felt like it was vibrating gently, the metal cool against Alex’s skin. She had never used the Golden Bowl, just watched Darlington mix his elixir in it. He had treated it with reverence and resentment. Like any junkie with a drug.
“The hospital would be safer,” Dawes said, rummaging through the drawers in the vast cabinet, opening and closing one after another.
“Come on, Dawes,” Alex said. “You gave me that spider-egg stuff before.”
“That’s different. It was a specific magical cure for a specific magical ailment.”
“You didn’t hesitate to drown me. How hard can it be to fix me up?”
“I did hesitate. And none of the societies specialize in healing magic.”
“Why?” Alex said. Maybe if she kept talking, her body couldn’t give up. “Seems like there’d be money in it.”
Dawes’s disapproving frown—that “learning should be for the sake of learning” look—reminded her painfully of Darlington. Actually, everything she did in this moment was painful.
“Healing magic is messy,” said Dawes. “It’s the most commonly practiced by laypeople, and that means power gets distributed more broadly instead of being drawn to nexuses. There are also strong prohibitions against tampering with immortality. And it isn’t like I know exactly what’s wrong with you. I can’t x-ray you and just cast a spell to mend a broken rib. You could have internal bleeding or I don’t know what.”
“You’ll think of something.”
“We’re going to try reversion,” said Dawes. “I can take you back … will an hour do it? Two hours? I hope we have enough milk.”
“Are you … are you talking about time travel?”
Dawes paused with a hand on a drawer. “Are you serious?”
“Nope,” said Alex hurriedly.
“I’m just helping your body revert to an earlier version of itself. It’s an undoing. Much easier than trying to make new flesh or bone. It’s actually a kind of portal magic, so you can thank Scroll and Key for it.”
“I’ll send them a note. How far back can you go?”
“Not far. Not without stronger magic and more people to work it.”
An undoing. Take me back. Make me into someone who has never been done harm. Go as far as you can. Make me brand-new. No bruises. No scars. She thought of the moths in their boxes. She missed her tattoos, her old clothes. She missed sitting in the sun with Hellie. She missed the gentle, dilapidated curves of her mother’s couch. Alex didn’t really know what she missed, only that she was homesick for something, maybe for someone, she’d never been.
She ran her hand along the edge of the crucible. Could this thing burn me new? Make it so I’d never have to see another ghost or Gray or whatever they decided to call it? And would she even wish for that now?
Alex remembered Belbalm asking what she wanted. Safety. A chance at a normal life. That was what had come to mind in that moment—the quiet of Belbalm’s office, the herbs blooming in the window boxes, a matched set of teacups instead of the chipped mugs of jobs lost and promotional giveaways. She wanted sunlight through the window. She wanted peace.
Liar.
Peace was like any high. It couldn’t last. It was an illusion, something that could be interrupted in a moment and lost forever. Only two things kept you safe: money and power.
Alex didn’t have money. But she did have power. She’d been afraid of it, afraid of staring directly at that blood-soaked night. Afraid she’d feel regret or shame, of saying goodbye to Hellie all over again. But when she’d finally looked? Let herself remember? Well, maybe there was something broken and shriveled in her, because she felt only a deep calm in knowing what she was capable of.
The Grays had plagued her life, changed it horribly, but after all of those years of torment, they’d finally given something back to her. She was owed. And she’d liked using that power, even the alien feeling of North inside her. She had enjoyed the surprise on Lance’s face, on Len’s face, on Betcha’s. You thought you saw me. See me now.
“You have to take your clothes off,” said Dawes.
Alex unbuttoned her jeans, trying to hook her fingers into the waist. Her movements were slow, hampered by pain. “I need your help.”
Reluctantly, Dawes stepped away from the shelves and helped shove the jeans over Alex’s hips. But once they were around her ankles, Dawes realized she needed to take off Alex’s boots, so Alex stood there in her underwear while Dawes untied her boots and yanked them off.
She stood, eyes jumping from Alex’s bruised face to the tattooed snakes at her hips, which had once matched those at her clavicles. She’d gotten them after Hellie told her there was a rattler inside her. She liked the idea. Len had wanted to try tattooing her in their kitchen. He’d gotten his own gun and inks online, insisted it was all sterile. But Alex hadn’t trusted him or their filthy apartment and she hadn’t wanted him to leave a mark on her, not that way.
“Can you lift your arms over your head,” Dawes said, cheeks red.
“Uh-uh,” Alex grunted. Even forming words was getting difficult.
“I’ll get shears.”
A moment later, she heard the snip of scissors, felt her shirt pulled away from her skin, the fabric sticking to the drying blood.
“It’s okay,” said Dawes. “You’ll feel better as soon as you’re in the crucible.”
Alex realized she was crying. She’d been choked, drowned, beaten, choked again, and nearly killed, but now she was crying—over a shirt. She’d bought it new at Target before she’d come to school. It was soft and fit well. She hadn’t owned many new things.
Alex’s head felt heavy. If she could just close her eyes for a minute. For a day.
She heard Dawes say, “I’m sorry. I can’t get you in. Turner will have to help.”
Was he back from the market? She hadn’t heard him return. She must have blacked out.
Something soft moved over Alex’s skin and she realized Dawes had wrapped her in a sheet—pale blue, from Dante’s room. My room. Bless Dawes.
“Is she in some kind of shroud?” Turner’s voice.