Ninth House

²⁸ Early Spring

Alex woke to the sound of glass breaking. It took her a moment to remember where she was, to take in the hexagon pattern of the Hutch’s bathroom floor, the dripping faucet. She grabbed the lip of the sink and pulled herself up, pausing to wait out the head rush before she padded through the dressing room to the common room. For a long moment she stared at the broken window—one leaded pane smashed, the cool spring air whistling through, the glass slivers scattered on the plaid wool of the window seat beside her discarded falafel and Suggested Requirements for Lethe Candidates, the pamphlet still open to the page where Alex had stopped reading. Mors irrumat omnia.

Cautiously, she peered down at the alley. The Bridegroom was there, just as he had been every day for the last two weeks. Three weeks? She couldn’t be sure. But Mercy was there too, in a belted jacket patterned with cabbage roses, her black hair pulled into a ponytail, a guilty expression on her face.

Alex thought about just not doing anything. She didn’t know how Mercy had found her, but she didn’t have to stay found. Eventually her roommate would get tired of waiting for Alex to show and she’d leave. Or throw another rock through the window.

Mercy waved and another figure stepped into view, dressed in a purple crochet coat and glittery mulberry-colored scarf.

Alex leaned her head against the window frame. “Shit.”

She pulled on a Lethe House sweatshirt to cover her filthy tank top and limped barefoot down the stairs. Then she took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

“Baby!” her mom cried, lunging toward her.

Alex squinted against the spring sunshine and tried not to actually recoil. “Hi, Mom. Don’t hug—”

Too late. Her mother was squeezing her and Alex hissed in pain.

“What’s wrong?” Mira asked, pulling back.

“Just dealing with an injury,” Alex said.

Mira bracketed Alex’s face with her hands, pushing the hair back, tears filling her eyes. “Oh, baby. Oh, my little star. I was afraid this might happen.”

“I’m not using, Mom. I swear. I just got really, really sick.” Mira’s face was disbelieving. Otherwise, she looked good, better than she had in a long time. Her blond hair had fresh highlights; her skin was glowing. She looked like she’d put on weight. It’s because of me, Alex realized with a pang. All those years that she looked tired and too old for her age, she was worrying about me. But then her daughter had become a painter and gone to Yale. Magic.

Alex saw Mercy hovering near the alley wall. Snitch.

“Come on,” Alex said. “Come in.”

She was breaking Lethe House rules by allowing outsiders into the Hutch, but if Colin Khatri could show Lance Gressang how to portal to Iceland, she could have her mother and her roommate in for tea.

She glanced at the Bridegroom. “Not you.”

He started moving toward her and she hurriedly closed the door.

“Not who?” said her mother.

“Nobody. Nothing.”

Climbing the stairs left Alex winded and dizzy, but she still had enough sense to be embarrassed when she opened the door to the Hutch and let them inside. She’d been too out of it to realize just how bad her mess had gotten. Her discarded blankets were crumpled in a heap on the couch, and there were dirty dishes and containers of spoiled food everywhere. Now that she’d had a breath of fresh air, she could also tell the common room stank like a cross between a swamp and a sick ward.

“Sorry,” said Alex. “It’s been… I haven’t been up to housekeeping.”

Mercy set to opening the windows, and Mira began picking up trash.

“Don’t do that,” said Alex, skin prickling with shame.

“I don’t know what else to do,” said Mira. “Sit down and let me help. You look like you’re going to fall over. Where’s the kitchen?”

“On the left,” Alex said, directing her to the cramped galley kitchen, which was just as messy as the common room if not worse.

“Whose place is this?” asked Mercy, removing her coat.

“Darlington’s,” Alex said. It was true in a way. She lowered her voice. “How did you know I was here?”

Mercy shifted uneasily. “I, uh… may have followed you here once or twice.”

“What?”

“You’re very mysterious, okay? And I was worried about you. You look like hell, by the way.”

“Well, I feel like hell.”

“Where have you been? We’ve been worried sick. We didn’t know if you’d gone missing or what.”

“So you called my mom?”

Mercy threw up her hands. “Don’t expect me to be sorry. If I disappeared, I hope you’d come looking.” Alex scowled, but Mercy just jabbed her shoulder with her finger. “You rescue me. I rescue you. That’s how this works.”

“Is there recycling?” Mira called from the kitchen.

Alex sighed. “Under the sink.”

Maybe good things were the same as bad things. Sometimes you just had to let them happen.

Mercy and Mira were a surprisingly efficient team. They got the garbage packed away, made Alex shower, and got her an appointment at the university health center to get on a course of antibiotics, though she didn’t go so far as to show them her wound. She said she’d just been dealing with some kind of flu or virus. They made her shower and change into clean sweats, then Mira went to the little gourmet market and got soup and Gatorade. She went back out again when Alex told them she’d had to throw away her boots.

“Tar,” she said. “They were ruined.” Tar, blood spatter. Same difference.

Mira returned an hour later with a pair of boots, a pair of jeans, two Yale T-shirts, and a set of shower sandals that Alex didn’t need but thanked her for anyway.

“I got you a dress too.”

“I don’t wear dresses.”

“But you might.”

They settled in front of the fireplace with cups of tea and instant cocoa. Unfortunately, Alex had eaten all of Dawes’s fancy gourmet marshmallows. It wasn’t quite cold enough for a fire, but the room felt snug and safe in the late-afternoon light.

“How long are you here for?” Alex asked. It came out with an ungrateful edge she hadn’t intended.

“First flight out in the morning,” said Mira.

“You can’t stay longer?” Alex wasn’t sure how much she wanted her to. But when her mother beamed, so happy to be asked, Alex was glad she’d made the gesture.

“I wish I could. Work on Monday.”

Alex realized it must be the weekend. She’d only checked her email once since she’d holed up in the Hutch and hadn’t read any of Sandow’s messages. She’d let her phone go dead. For the first time she wondered if the societies had continued meeting without Lethe to oversee them. Maybe activity had been suspended after the attack at Il Bastone. She didn’t much care. She did wonder if her mom could afford a last-minute cross-country flight. Alex wished she’d extorted some money from Lethe along with that grade bump.

Mercy had brought notes from the three weeks of classes she’d missed and was already talking about a plan of attack before finals. Alex nodded along, but what was the point? The fix was in. Sandow had said he’d make sure Alex would pass, and even if he didn’t, Alex knew she didn’t have the will to catch up. But she could pretend. For Mercy’s sake and for her mother’s.

They ate a light dinner and then made the slow walk back to Old Campus. Alex showed her mom the Vanderbilt courtyard and their shared suite, her map of California and the poster of Leighton’s Flaming June, which Darlington had once rolled his eyes at. She let Mira coo over the sketchbook she’d tried to make herself pick up once in a while for the sake of appearances but admitted she hadn’t been drawing or painting much.

When her mom lit up a bundle of sage and started smudging the common room, Alex tried not to melt into the floor in embarrassment. Still, she was surprised at how good it felt to be back in the dorms, to see Lauren’s bike leaning up against the mantel, the toaster oven topped by boxes of Pop-Tarts. It felt like home.

When it was time for Mira to head back to her hotel, Alex walked outside with her, trying to hide how much it took out of her just to descend the few steps to the street.

“I didn’t ask what happened and I’m not going to,” said Mira, gathering her glittery scarf around her neck.

“Thank you.”

“It’s not for you. It’s because I’m a coward. If you tell me you’re clean, I want to believe you.”

Alex wasn’t sure what to say to that. “I think I may have a job lined up for the summer. But it means I won’t be coming home.”

Mira looked down at her shoes, handmade leather booties she’d been getting from the same guy at the same craft fair for the last ten years. She nodded, then brushed tears from her eyes.

Alex felt her own tears rising. How many times had she made her mother cry? “I’m sorry, Mama.”

Mira drew a tissue from her pocket. “It’s okay. I’m proud of you. And I don’t want you to come home. After all of those horrible things with those horrible people. This is where you belong. This is where you were meant to bloom. Don’t roll your eyes, Galaxy. Not every flower belongs in every garden.”

Alex couldn’t quite untangle the wave of love and anger that rushed through her. Her mother believed in faeries and angels and crystal visions, but what would she make of real magic? Could she grasp the ugly truth of it all? That magic wasn’t something gilded and benign, just another commodity that only some people could afford? But the car was pulling up and it was time to say goodbye, not time to start arguments over old wounds.

“I’m glad you came, Mom.”

“I am too. I hope… If you aren’t able to manage your grades—”

“I’ve got this,” Alex said, and it felt good to know that thanks to Sandow she wasn’t lying. “Promise.”

Mira hugged her and Alex breathed in patchouli and tuberose, the memory of being small. “I should have done better,” her mother said on a sob. “I should have set clearer boundaries. I should have let you have fast food.”

Alex couldn’t help but laugh, then winced at the pain. No amount of strict bedtimes and trans fats could have kept her safe.

Her mother slid into the back seat of the car, but before Alex closed the door, she said, “Mom… my dad…” Over the years, Mira had made an effort to answer Alex’s questions about her father. Where was he from? Sometimes he told me Mexico, sometimes Peru, sometimes Stockholm or Cincinnati. It was a joke with us. It doesn’t sound funny. Maybe it wasn’t. What did he do? We didn’t talk about money. He liked to surf. Did you love him? I did. Did he love you? For a while. Why did he leave? People leave, Galaxy. I hope he finds his bliss.

Had her mother meant it? Alex didn’t know. When she’d gotten old enough to realize how much the questions hurt her mother and to realize the answers were never going to change, she stopped asking. She decided not to care. If her father couldn’t be bothered with her, she wasn’t going to bother with him.

But now she found herself saying, “Was there anything unusual about him?”

Mira laughed. “How about everything?”

“I mean…” Alex struggled for a way to describe what she wanted to know without sounding crazy. “Did he like the same stuff you did? Tarot and crystals and all that? Did you ever get the sense he could see things that weren’t there?”

Mira looked down Chapel Street. Her gaze turned distant. “Have you ever heard of the arsenic eaters?”

Alex blinked, confused. “No?”

“They would ingest a little bit of arsenic every day. It made their skin clear and their eyes bright and they felt wonderful. And all the while they were just drinking poison.” When Mira turned her eyes back to Alex, they were sharper and steadier than Alex ever remembered them being, free of the usual determined cheer. “That’s what being with your father was like.” Then she smiled and the old Mira was back. “Text me after you see the doctor.”

“I will, Mom.”

Alex closed the door and watched the car drive away. The Bridegroom had stood a respectful distance away, watching the whole exchange, but now he drew closer. Was he ever going to let up? She really didn’t want to go to Il Bastone, but she was going to need the Lethe library to figure out how to break their connection. “No one is immortal,” she snapped at him, and saw him reluctantly shrink back, vanishing through the bricks.

“Your mom okay?” Mercy asked as Alex entered the common room. She’d put on her hyacinth robe and curled up on the couch.

“I think so. She’s just worried about me getting through the rest of the year.”

“And you’re not?”

“Sure,” Alex said. “Of course.”

Mercy snorted. “No, you’re not. I can tell. So continues the mystery of Alex Stern. It’s okay. Mystery is good. I played softball for two years in high school.”

“You did?”

“See? I have secrets too. Did you hear about Blake?”

She hadn’t. She hadn’t heard about anything during the weeks she’d hid at the Hutch. That had been the point. But according to Mercy, Blake Keely had attacked a woman in her home and her husband had fought him off with a golf club. Forensics had matched the knife he’d been carrying with the weapon in the Tara Hutchins murder investigation. There was no mention of Dawes, or the mansion on Orange, or Hiram Bingham III’s fatal marble noggin. No discussion of Merity. Not a single word about the societies. Case closed.

“I could have ended up dead,” said Mercy. “I guess I should be grateful.”

Grateful. The word hung in the air, its wrongness like the sour clang of a bell.

Mercy tilted her head back, letting it flop on the arm of the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “My great-grandmother lived to be one hundred and three years old. She was doing her own taxes and swimming at the Y every morning until she keeled over dead in the middle of a yoga class.”

“She sounds great.”

“She was a total asshole. My brother and I hated going to her house. She served the nastiest-smelling tea and she never stopped complaining. But you always felt a little tougher at the end of a visit. Like you’d endured her.”

Alex figured she’d be lucky if she made it to the end of the semester. But it was a nice sentiment. “I wish my grandmother had made it to a hundred and three.”

“What was she like?”

Alex sat down in Lauren’s ugly recliner. “Superstitious. Religious. I’m not sure which one. But she had a steel spine. My mom told me when she brought my father home, he took one look at my grandmother, turned right around, and never came back.” Alex had asked her grandmother about it once, after her first heart attack. Too pretty, she’d said, waving her hand dismissively. Mal tormento que soplo. He was a bad wind that blew through.

“I think you have to be like that,” Mercy said. “If you’re going to survive to get old.”

Alex looked out the window. The Bridegroom had returned. His face was taut, determined. As if he could wait forever. And he probably could.

What do you want? Belbalm had asked her. Safety, comfort, to feel unafraid. I want to live to grow old, Alex thought as she pulled the curtains closed. I want to sit on my porch and drink foul-smelling tea and yell at passersby. I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me.