Page 29 of Dead Beat

“Could that be him?” Alex asked.

“I don’t think so,” Dawes said as she handed forward the photograph of Kittscher they’d taken from the Lethe archives.

Alex peered at it, then frowned. “It’s hard to tell in black-and-white.”

For a long while each Virgil had been photographed before graduating, the portraits becoming increasingly irreverent as the years passed. When they’d fished out the old collection, Darlington had felt a stab of embarrassing longing at the idea of the picture he might never take in the Lethe parlor, followed by a wave of remorse at the memory of Michelle Alameddine standing before the sunflower staircase, one hand on her hip, grinning like she would never have anything to worry about in the world. She’d probably already been spying for Linus Reiter then, feeding him information along with her blood. But it was easier to forgive the dead.

Rudolph Kittscher would have been twenty-one when this picture was taken. He wore a dark three-piece suit with a white collared shirt and a black tie, his face unsmiling, round glasses perched on his narrow nose, his dark hair neatly parted on the side and combed back from his forehead to reveal a slight widow’s peak. He looked bright, arrogant, alive.

The young man shoving garbage into bins in front of the house had a thick mop of brown curls. He was spectacle-free, but he might be wearing contacts. He looked more athletic too, but Darlington didn’t know what rules governed a vampire’s musculature. Maybe they were unchanging, locked in some kind of stasis. No one really knew. He supposed that was something Tripp could help them understand.

“It’s time,” he said, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Why not just sit in the warmth of this idling car, speculating forever? After a sojourn in hell, any comfort felt like something to cling to.

And yet even if the stakes had not been so high, he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from getting out of the car and handing Dawes the keys. He needed to know as he’d always needed to know. The same greed that had driven him to understand New Haven and the magic at its heart drew him onward, the hunger to see the mystery solved. It had led him to hell and now it would lead him inside this comfortable beachside house with its neat white trim and its creaking weather vane in the shape of a whale.

“If anyone comes out of that house other than us,” he told Dawes, “you get out of here. If we’re not back by three, you do the same.”

“That only gives you an hour.”

“You can’t risk getting trapped here after dark. Definitely not with Tripp.”

“Hey!” Tripp objected. Darlington cast him a yellow glare and Tripp threw up his hands to make peace. “Easy, killer.”

“I might say the same.”

“He’s trying to help,” said Dawes.

“He can help by watching your back and making certain you get home safe.”

“That’s your job,” Alex said to Tripp, holding his gaze. “We can cover our own vig. Dawes is yours to watch over. Understood?” She held up her knuckles.

Tripp gave them a bump. “Understood.”

Dawes blew out an exasperated breath. “I’m not completely incapable of defending myself.”

“You better not be,” said Alex. “If we get eaten, you’re the only one standing between New Haven and the legions of hell.”

Dawes went from pale to positively wan, and Darlington considered offering some words of comfort, but Alex was already striding toward Kittscher’s front door.

She’s been called.

Maybe. But Darlington was finding it harder and harder to discern the difference between a calling and a death wish.

12

Darlington pushed the low gate open. The front yard was little more than winter mud, but the stone path had been swept clean and a mat on the front porch read, Life is better at the beach!

They’d prepared as best they could, but the puzzle box would be a last resort. If Kittscher was a demon, trapping him inside the Voynich Coffin meant they wouldn’t get to question him. They had no idea how to extricate individuals and cracking the whole thing open would mean tangling with far too many monsters at once.

Alex raised her hand to knock, then hesitated. She didn’t look at him when she said, “Reiter was stronger. Even with a Gray inside me, I almost didn’t get away.”

“Do you remember what I did to Golgarot? What I did to the thing pretending to be Hellie?”

He could tell she was fighting a smile. “Yeah.”

“Whatever is behind that door isn’t stronger than me.”

“I like Tough Guy Darlington.”