Page 48 of Dead Beat

“This should be good.” Alex wasn’t just being difficult. She needed Darlington to convince her this wasn’t another bit of Lethe madness, more pride before the fall.

Darlington held up one of the pages. “We know Golgarot won’t venture out of hell until we’re weak enough or he’s strong enough to win. We also know we won’t survive another descent. We barely escaped him the last time. Maybe this is the fail-safe. The thing that could fight Golgarot on his own territory and win.”

“Let’s say you’re right,” said Turner. “Let’s say this is real and all these artifacts are still lying around and we somehow make it work. What if we build this thing and we can’t control it?”

“If you have a better solution, I’m eager to hear it,” said Darlington.

Turner didn’t look convinced. “We create this golem and we send it to hell and just cross our fingers?”

“And we don’t let it return.”

“There’s something printed inside the envelope,” Alex said. “I can’t read it.”

“May I?” Darlington asked politely, though she knew he wanted to snatch it from her hands. He peered inside. “I need a knife.”

Turner handed him a Swiss Army knife from his pocket. Of course the Eagle Scout was prepared. Carefully, Darlington sliced along the seam of the envelope and spread it open.

“It’s a blueprint,” said Turner.

Alex cocked her head to the side. It looked familiar—

“That’s the Memorial Quadrangle,” Darlington said. He tapped the corner of the plan. “That’s Harkness Tower.”

“Where we saw the first demon,” Alex murmured. The blueprint was familiar because Alex passed these buildings every day. The plan showed a big square that encompassed Branford and Saybrook colleges with their multiple courtyards. It was bordered by Elm to the north and the Library Walk to the south—Alex’s college and dorm room were just off the map.

“This is High Street?” Alex asked, running her finger down the artery on the far left of the page, trying to orient herself.

Darlington nodded. He was frowning, arms crossed over his chest, eyes distant. “The entrance to Sterling Library sits almost directly north. They have a similar footprint in terms of square area. It creates a kind of mirror.”

“I don’t like it when he gets ideas,” said Turner.

“But he keeps doing it,” said Alex. “So we might as well get this over with. What are you piecing together, Darlington?”

Darlington’s eyes were still gazing at nothing she could see, and Alex felt a strange mix of pleasure and envy watching him solve this puzzle, his agile mind sifting through the history he drank like water and savored like wine. “Ned Harkness’s brother Edward died young. He and his mother built the tower and the quadrangle as a memorial to him.”

“Sterling is a memorial too,” said Alex.

“Yes,” said Darlington. “And I think you can guess who Harkness chose as his architect.”

Alex felt a sudden sense of vertigo, as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff. “James Gamble Rogers.” The same man who had built the Gauntlet into the library.

“That’s right. Lee Lawrie did the stonework for both too.”

“Which came first?” asked Turner.

“The library was finished first,” said Darlington. “Harkness Tower opened in 1922, but the quadrangle wasn’t finished until…” He looked up from the plans. “1933.”

The year the original pilgrims made their descent. They’d focused on the construction of Sterling, but maybe the library had been one small part of a larger plan.

“Then these buildings could have something to do with the precautions Kittscher said they took,” Turner said. “It could be part of the fail-safe?”

The biggest benefactors of the societies had constructed the Gauntlet. It was more than possible they had used their money and resources to build other structures into the heart of Yale.

“I think…” Darlington said. “I don’t know how it’s connected. I think it’s something more.”

He was being cautious, but for the first time in months, Alex glimpsed a hint of hope. The meeting with the board and the trip to New York, their showdown with Kittscher’s demon—it hadn’t been for nothing. The real Kittscher had found a way to point them down the right path even as his demon had forced him to play this game.

“This is it,” Alex said, rapping her knuckles against the stolen armory entries one by one. “This is our chance to beat Golgarot.”