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.
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