Page 57 of Dead Beat

“Stop me,” he said, his voice rough, pleading. “You can stop me.”

“No.” She moved against him, trying to get closer. He bit into the skin of her neck and she shuddered. She knew this feeling would slip away because it always did. She just wanted to keep hold of it as long as she could.

The chanting rose around them, wedja, wedja. Cries of demand. A prayer to be made whole again. She actually had done the reading.

He seized her waist, forcing her to turn. Then her back was against the wall of the passage, and he wrapped her hair in one hand, tugging her head back, making her offer up her mouth. His lips closed over hers.

She could acknowledge now that she had imagined this, what his mouth would feel like, what it would mean to be the focus of this man’s attention. She locked her hands around his neck and wrapped her legs around his hips, pressing her body against the hard ridge of his cock as he braced her weight with his arm.

The voices grew louder. Her mind caught on them—nine voices instead of six. The supplicants were chanting too. Her mind wheeled away from the moment, rational thought returning, the past in all its ugliness crowding in with it.

“Darlington,” she managed. “They’re coming back.”

The growl of the beast answered, and she knew she was going to have to use hellfire. The bloom came on almost too fast, a rush of flame that engulfed them both.

He recoiled and then he was staring at her through a veil of blue fire, his eyes like polished coins. He looked positively horrified.

He released his grip on her thighs, let her hair slide from his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That shouldn’t have hap—”

“Shut up.”

“But—”

“Don’t apologize. It makes me feel shitty.”

“I’m—” He nodded. Swallowed. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he was human once more. “Okay,” he said.

She had to admit she was sorry to see the demon go.

Pectoral; gold, carnelian, lapis

Provenance: Valley of the Kings; New Kingdom (disputed)

Origins of the pectoral are hazy, as early documents and bills of lading indicate it was acquired during a secret but sanctioned dig, while dating suggests it may have been acquired through illegal means near Giza. Its purpose is ceremonial rather than practical, most likely created to celebrate a military victory and either gifted to or by one of the pharaoh’s most successful generals. The star-shaped dent and the presence of Anubis may refer to “the weighing of the heart,” the ritual by which one was judged worthy or unworthy of eternal life. The light heart, unburdened by sin, earned entry to the realm of the dead. A heavy heart would be consumed by Ammit the Devourer.

—from the Lethe Armory Catalogue, incomplete entry

21

Alex didn’t sleep. She lay in her narrow bed in the room she shared with Mercy, staring at the wash of streetlight across the ceiling.

She knew it was her own damn fault, but she and Darlington had crossed an unmarked border. She didn’t know the customs here or how to survive. Maybe it was less like passing into new territory than crash-landing on an alien planet. How was she supposed to breathe in this atmosphere?

She understood that Darlington was embarrassed. He hated losing control, loathed the idea of being anything less than gentlemanly and proper. An abuse of his office. A lapse in etiquette. But Alex didn’t feel ashamed; she felt greedy. Gluttonous. Covetous. She wanted to walk to Il Bastone and sneak into his bed. She wanted to roll around in his scent.

But then what? She had craved Hellie. There were even moments, early on, maybe too early, when she’d felt something like lust for Len, when her body responded even if her head and her heart were trailing somewhere far behind. She had always been able to hide the moments when eager wanting fell away. She made the right sounds, kept her body following the steps of the dance, preserved the illusion of her desire. She wasn’t sure she could sell that lie to Darlington, not with the hellfire bond there to tell on her.

He’s expensive. Too costly. Too pretty. But was it so wrong to want him, to have him, even if she couldn’t keep him? She had held his soul inside her, tasted honey on her tongue. It wasn’t enough. She had spent her life hungry, getting by on crumbs and pretending it was a meal. If she was going to die, why couldn’t she eat until she’d had her fill of him, until she’d made herself sick with him? Let them be fed on honey until they are overwhelmed with sweetness.

She must have slept, because when she woke, the room was bleached in daylight and Mercy had already gone. Alex didn’t feel up to the dining hall, so she toasted a couple of Pop-Tarts and then hurried to her Art of the Italian Renaissance survey, which was taught in a grim gray-and-white building just two doors down from Wolf’s Head. She couldn’t help but think she was returning to the scene of the crime, though she wasn’t at all sure she meant the theft of the breastplate.

Alex liked the class, but there was too much to memorize on top of her work for Lethe and she had to struggle not to doze off when the professor darkened the lecture hall to show them slides. The whole room seemed to jolt awake when the Barberini Faun appeared on-screen, lolling with legs spread in all his marble glory. Alex pressed her fingers to her temples. She was in danger of becoming a very artsy pervert.

She had lunch back at JE with some people she’d met when Mercy had dragged her to a wine-and-cheese happy hour at the college head’s house. Back when Mercy had still been trying to include her in everything. Alex did her best to look interested as two of them talked about planning a tour for their sketch comedy group, but she was eager to get away to the library upstairs. Maybe if she gave these people a real chance, she might like them as much as she liked Mercy and Lauren and Turner and Dawes. But they were barely more than strangers and she could feel her wrongness around them, the gulf that lay between her and all the precocious, passionate children of Yale.

Alex had been on campus almost two years and she still didn’t know how to close that gap. She had lived with too much violence. An Ivy League degree couldn’t scrub it away. And did she feel some contempt for their shining optimism, their certainty? They knew so much more than she ever would—knowledge gleaned from summer camps, family vacations, shelves filled with the right books. People had paid attention to their feelings, fostered their gifts, curated the world for their benefit. But maybe that kind of knowing was its own ignorance. They looked at life and thought they understood it, made their judgments accordingly. They couldn’t see the threats that were so obvious to her. An education could be a lot of things. Maybe taking a punch and knowing you could get back up was just as valuable as a philosophy seminar or a trip to the symphony.

Death comes on swift wings. She could feel it now, above her in the rafters, peering from behind doorways, patient and inevitable. She couldn’t pretend to look forward to some exciting future when she was always watching her back. So she smiled, and she tried to look like she cared, and when there was a pause in the conversation, she fled.