Ninth House

¹⁰ Last Fall

The night of the Manuscript party, Darlington spent the early-evening hours with the windows of Black Elm lit, handing out candy, jack-o’-lanterns lining the driveway. He loved this part of Halloween, the ritual of it, the tide of happy strangers arriving on his shores, hands outstretched. Most times Black Elm felt like a dark island, one that had somehow ceased to appear on any chart. Not on Halloween night.

The house lay in the gentle swell of a hill not far from the lands that had once belonged to Donald Grant Mitchell, and its library was stocked with multiple copies of Mitchell’s books: Reveries of a Bachelor, Dream Life, and the only title his grandfather had deemed worth reading, My Farm of Edgewood. As a boy, Darlington had been drawn in by the mysterious sound of Mitchell’s pen name, Ik Marvel, and woefully disappointed by the lack of anything magical or marvelous in his books.

But that had been his feeling about everything. There should be more magic. Not the creased-greasepaint performances of clowns and hack illusionists. Not card tricks. The magic he’d been promised would be found at the backs of wardrobes, under bridges, through mirrors. It was dangerous and alluring and it did not seek to entertain. Maybe if he’d been raised in an ordinary house with quality insulation and a neatly mowed front yard, instead of beneath Black Elm’s crumbling towers, with its lakes of moss, its sudden, sinister spikes of foxglove, its seeping mist that crawled up through the trees in the autumn dusk, maybe then he would have stood a chance. Maybe if he’d been from somewhere like Phoenix instead of cursed New Haven.

The moment that doomed him hadn’t even really belonged to him. He was eleven years old, at a picnic organized by the Knights of Columbus, which their housekeeper Bernadette had insisted on bringing him to because “boys need fresh air.” Once they’d arrived at Lighthouse Point, she sequestered herself beneath a tent with her friends and a plate of deviled eggs and told him to go play.

Darlington had found a group of boys around his age, or they’d found him, and they spent the afternoon running races and competing in carnival games, then inventing their own games when those got boring. A tall boy named Mason, with buzzed hair and buck teeth, had somehow become the day’s decision maker—when to eat, when to swim, when a game got dull—and Darlington was happy to follow in his wake. When they tired of riding the old carousel, they walked down to the edge of the park that looked out over the Long Island Sound and the New Haven Harbor in the distance.

“They should have boats,” said Mason.

“Like a speedboat. Or a Jet Ski,” said a boy named Liam. “That would be cool.”

“Yeah,” said another kid. “We could go across to the roller coaster.” He’d been tagging along with them all afternoon. He was small, his face dense with sand-colored freckles and now sunburned across the nose.

“What roller coaster?” Mason asked.

The freckled kid had pointed across the sound. “With all the lights on it. Next to the pier.”

Darlington had looked into the distance but seen nothing there, just the fading day and a flat spit of land.

Mason stared, then said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Even in the growing twilight, Darlington had seen red spreading hot across the freckled kid’s face. The kid laughed. “Nothing. I was just fucking with you.”

“Tool.”

They’d walked down to the thin sliver of beach to run back and forth in the waves, and the moment had been forgotten. Until months later, when Darlington’s grandfather opened his paper at the breakfast table and Darlington saw the headline: REMEMBERING SAVIN ROCK. Beneath it was a picture of a big wooden roller coaster jutting into the waters of the Long Island Sound. The caption read: The legendary Thunderbolt, a favorite at Savin Rock amusement park, destroyed by a hurricane in 1938.

Darlington had cut the picture from the paper and taped it above his desk. That day at Lighthouse Point, that sunburned, freckled boy had seen the old roller coaster. He’d believed they could all see it. He hadn’t been pretending or joking around. He’d been surprised and embarrassed, and then he’d shut up quick. As if he’d had something like that happen before. Darlington had tried to remember his name. He’d asked Bernadette if they could go to the Knights of Columbus for bingo, potluck dinners, anything that might put him back in that kid’s path. Eventually his grandfather had put a stop to it with a growled “Stop trying to turn him into a goddamn Catholic.”

Darlington had grown older. The memory of Lighthouse Point had grown dimmer. But he never took the picture of the Thunderbolt from his wall. He would forget about it for weeks, sometimes months at a time, but he could never shake the thought that he was seeing only one world when there might be many, that there were lost places, maybe even lost people who might come to life for him if he just squinted hard enough or found the right magic words. Books, with their promises of enchanted doorways and secret places, only made it worse.

The feeling should have ebbed away with time, worn down by the constant, gentle disappointments of growing up. But at sixteen, with his brand-new provisional driver’s license tucked into his wallet, the first place Darlington had taken his grandfather’s old Mercedes was Lighthouse Point. He’d stood at the edge of the water and waited for the world to reveal itself. Years later, when he met Alex Stern, he had to resist the urge to bring her there too, to see if the Thunderbolt might appear to her like any other Gray, a rumbling ghost of joy and giddy terror.

When full dark fell and the stream of children in their goblin masks slowed to a trickle, Darlington put on his own costume, the same one he wore every year—a black coat and a pair of cheap plastic fangs that made him look like he’d just had dental surgery.

He parked in the alley behind the Hutch, where Alex was waiting, shivering in a long black coat that he’d never seen before.

“Can’t we drive?” she asked. “It’s freezing.”

Californians. “It’s fifty degrees and we’re walking three blocks. Somehow you’ll manage this journey through the tundra. I pray you’re not wearing a skimpy cat ensemble underneath that. We’re supposed to project some measure of authority.”

“I can do my job in hot pants. I can probably do it better.” She executed a half-hearted karate kick. “More room to move.” At least she’d worn practical boots.

In the light from the streetlamp, he could see she’d heavily lined her eyes and had big gold earrings on. Hopefully she hadn’t worn anything too provocative or appropriative. He didn’t want to spend the evening fielding judgmental snipes from Manuscript because Alex had felt the urge to dress as sexy Pocahontas.

He led them up the alley and onto Elm. She seemed alert, ready. She’d done well since the incident at Aurelian, since they’d smashed a few thousand dollars’ worth of glass and china on Il Bastone’s kitchen floor. Maybe Darlington had done a little better too. They’d watched a series of first transformations at Wolf’s Head that had gone without incident—though Shane Mackay had trouble coming down and they had to pen him in the kitchen while he shook off his rooster form. He’d bloodied his nose trying to peck the table and one of his friends had spent an hour dutifully plucking tiny white feathers from his body. The cock jokes had been interminable. They’d monitored a raising at Book and Snake, where, with the help of a translator, a desiccated corpse had relayed the final accounts of recently dead soldiers in the Ukraine in a bizarre game of macabre telephone. Darlington didn’t know who in the state department had requested the information, but he assumed it would be dutifully passed along. They’d observed an unsuccessful portal opening at Scroll and Key—a botched attempt to send someone to Hungary, which had resulted in nothing but the whole tomb smelling like goulash—and an equally unimpressive storm summoning by St. Elmo at their dump of an apartment on Lynwood, which had left the delegation president and attending alumni sheepish and ashamed.

“They all have the look a guy gets when he’s too drunk to get it up,” Alex had whispered.

“Must you be so vulgar, Stern?”

“Tell me I’m wrong, Darlington.”

“I certainly wouldn’t know.”

Tonight would be a bit different. They would draw no circles of protection, only make their presence known, monitor the power being gathered at the Manuscript nexus, and then write up a report.

“How long will we be at this thing?” Alex asked as the street forked left.

“After midnight, maybe a little later.”

“I told Mercy and Lauren I’d meet them at the Pierson Inferno.”

“They’ll be so wasted by then they’re not going to notice if you’re late. Now focus: Manuscript looks harmless, but they’re not.”

Alex cut him a glance. There was some kind of glitter on her cheeks. “You actually sound nervous.”

Of all the societies, the one that made Darlington most wary was Manuscript. He could see the skepticism on Alex’s face as they stopped in front of a grubby white brick wall.

“Here?” she asked, drawing her coat tighter. The thump of bass and murmur of conversation floated back to them from somewhere down the narrow walkway.

Darlington understood Alex’s disbelief. The other tombs had been built to look like tombs—the flat neo-Egyptian plinths of Bones, the soaring white columns of Book and Snake, the delicate screens and Moorish arches of Scroll and Key, Darlington’s favorite crypt. Even Wolf’s Head, who had claimed they wanted to shake off the trappings of the arcane and establish a more egalitarian house, had built themselves an English country estate in miniature. Darlington had read the descriptions of each tomb in Pinnell’s guide to Yale and felt that, somehow, the analysis of their parts had fallen short of the mystery they evoked. Of course, Pinnell hadn’t known about the tunnel beneath Grove Street that led directly from Book and Snake to the heart of the cemetery, or the enchanted orange trees taken from the Alhambra that bore fruit year-round in the Scroll and Key courtyard.

But the exterior of Manuscript just looked like a squat brick lump with a bunch of recycling bins stacked along its side.

“This is it?” Alex asked. “This is sadder than that place on Lynwood.”

Actually, nothing was sadder than the St. Elmo house on Lynwood, with its stained carpet and sagging stairs and roof spiked with tilting weather vanes.

“Don’t judge a book, Stern. This crypt is eight stories deep and houses one of the best collections of contemporary art in the world.”

Alex’s brows shot up. “So they’re Cali rich.”

“Cali rich?”

“In L.A., the really loaded guys dress like bums, like they need everyone to know they live at the beach.”

“I suspect Manuscript was aiming for understated elegance, not I bang models at my Malibu manse, but who can say?” The tomb had been finished in the early sixties by King-lui Wu. Darlington had never managed more than a grudging respect for mid-century architecture. Despite his best attempts to admire its severe lines, its clean execution, it always fell flat for him. His father had openly mocked his son’s bourgeois taste for turrets and gabled roofs.

“Here,” Darlington said, taking Alex by the shoulders and walking her a little to the left. “Look.”

It pleased him when she exclaimed, “Oh!”

At this angle, the circular pattern hidden in the white bricks emerged. Most people thought it represented a sun, but Darlington knew better.

“It can’t be seen head-on,” said Darlington. “Nothing here can. This is the house of illusions and lies. Keep in mind just how charismatic some of these people can be. Our job is to make sure that no one gets too out of line and no one gets hurt. There was an incident in 1982.”

“What kind of incident?”

“A girl ate something at one of these parties and decided she was a tiger.”

Alex shrugged. “I watched Salome Nils pull feathers out of a guy’s butt in the Wolf’s Head kitchen. Pretty sure it could be worse.”

“She never stopped thinking she was a tiger.”

“What?”

“Wolf’s Head is all about changing the physical, relinquishing human form but retaining human awareness. Manuscript specializes in altering consciousness.”

“Messing with your head.”

“That girl’s parents still have her in a cage in upstate New York. It’s a pretty nice setup. Acres to run on. Raw meat twice a day. She got out once and tried to maul their mailman.”

“Hell on a manicure.”

“She had him down on the ground and was chewing on his calf. We covered it up as a mental breakdown. Manuscript paid for all of her care and was suspended from activity for a semester.”

“Harsh justice.”

“I didn’t say it was fair, Stern. Not much is. But I’m telling you, you cannot trust your own perception tonight. Manuscript’s magics are all about tricking the senses. Don’t eat or drink anything. Keep your wits about you. I don’t want to have to send you upstate with your own ball of yarn.”

They followed a cluster of girls dressed in corsets and zombie makeup down the narrow alley and in through the side door. Henry VIII’s wives. Anne Boleyn’s neck was covered in sticky-looking fake blood.

Kate Masters perched on a stool by the door with a hand stamp, but Darlington snatched Alex’s wrist before she could offer it up. “You don’t know what’s in the stamp dye,” he murmured. “You can just let us through, Kate.”

“Coatroom to the left.” She winked, red glitter sparkling on her lids. She was dressed as Poison Ivy, construction-paper leaves stapled onto a green bustier.

Inside, the music thumped and wailed, the heat of bodies washing over them in a gust of perfume and moist air. The big square room was dimly lit, packed with people circling skull-shaped vats of punch, the back garden strewn with strings of twinkling lights beyond. Darlington was already starting to sweat.

“Doesn’t look so bad,” said Alex.

“Remember what I said? The real party is down below.”

“So nine levels total? Nine circles of hell?”

“No, it’s based around Chinese mythology. Eight is considered the luckiest number, so eight secret levels. The staircase represents a divine spiral.”

Alex shucked off her coat. Beneath it she wore a black sheath dress. Her shoulders were strewn with a cascade of silver stars. “What are you supposed to be?” he asked.

“A girl in black with a lot of eye makeup on?” She pulled a crown of plastic flowers sprayed with silver paint from her coat pocket and settled it on her head. “Queen Mab.”

“You didn’t strike me as a Shakespeare fan.”

“I’m not. Lauren got a Puck costume from the Dramat closet. Mercy’s going as Titania, so she shoved me in this and said I could be Mab.”

“You know Shakespeare called Mab the faeries’ midwife.”

Alex frowned. “I thought she was the Queen of the Night.” “That too. It suits you.”

Darlington had meant it to be a compliment, but Alex scowled. “It’s just a dress.”

“What have I been trying to tell you?” Darlington said. “Nothing is ever just anything.” And maybe he wanted her to be the kind of girl who dressed as Queen Mab, who loved words and had stars in her blood. “Let’s walk the first floor before we tackle what lies beneath.”

It didn’t take them long. Manuscript had been built on the open floor plans popular in the fifties and sixties, so there were few rooms or passages to investigate. At least on this level.

“I don’t get it,” Alex murmured as they glanced around the scrubby backyard. It was too crowded for comfort, but nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happening. “If tonight is so special to Manuscript, why perform a rite with so many people around?”

“It’s not a rite precisely. It’s a culling. But that’s the problem with their magic. It can’t be practiced in seclusion. Mirror magic is all about reflection and perception. A lie isn’t a lie until someone believes it. It doesn’t matter how charming you are if there’s no one to charm. Everybody on this floor is powering what happens below.”

“Just by having a good time?”

“By trying to. Look around. What do you see? People in costumes, horns, false jewels, adorning themselves in tiny layers of illusion. They stand up straighter, suck in their stomachs, say things they don’t mean, indulge in flattery. They commit a thousand small acts of deception, lying to each other, lying to themselves, drinking to the point of delusion to make it easier. This is a night of compacts, between the seers and the seen, a night when people enter false bargains willingly, hoping to be duped and to dupe in turn for the pleasure of feeling brave or sexy or beautiful or simply wanted—no matter how fleetingly.”

“Darlington, are you telling me Manuscript is powered by beer goggles?”

“You do have a way of cutting straight to it, Stern. Every weekend night, every party is a series of these bargains, but Halloween compounds it all. These people enter the pact when they walk through that door, full of anticipation. Even before that, when they put on their wings and horns”—he shot her a glance—“and glitter. Didn’t someone say love is a shared delusion?”

“Cynical, Darlington. Doesn’t suit you at all.”

“Call it magic if you prefer. Two people reciting the same spell.”

“Well, I like it,” said Alex. “It looks like a party from a movie. But the Grays are all over it.”

He knew that and yet it still surprised him. After so long, he felt he should be able to sense their presence in some way. Darlington tried to step back, see this place as Alex did, but it just looked like a party. Halloween was a night when the dead came alive because the living were more alive: happy children high on candy, angry teenagers with eggs and shaving cream tucked into their hoodies, drunk college students in masks and wings and horns giving themselves permission to be something else—angel, demon, devil, good doctor, bad nurse. The sweat and excitement, the over-sugared punches loaded with fruit and grain alcohol. The Grays could not resist.

“Who’s here?” he asked.

Her dark brows shot up. “You want specifics?”

“I’m not asking you to endanger yourself for the sake of my curiosity. Just… an overview.”

“Two by the sliding glass door, five or six in the yard, one by the entry right behind that girl working the door, a whole herd of them clumped by the punch. Impossible to tell how many.”

She hadn’t missed a beat. She was aware of them because she was afraid of them.

“The lower floors are all warded. You don’t have to worry about that tonight.” He led her to the top of the stairs, where Doug Far was leaning against the banister, making sure no one without an invite proceeded below. “Blood magic is strictly regulated on Halloween. It’s too appealing to the dead. But tonight Manuscript will siphon off all the desire and abandon of the holiday to power their rites for the rest of the year.”

“Partying is that powerful?”

“Anderson Cooper is actually five foot four inches tall, weighs two bills, and talks with a knee-deep Long Island accent.” Alex’s eyes widened. “Just be careful.”

“Darlington!” Doug said. “The gentleman of Lethe!”

“You stuck here all night?”

“Just the next hour and then I’m gonna go get high as fuck.”

“Nice,” said Darlington, and glimpsed Alex rolling her eyes. Other than the night they’d gotten drunk after the disastrous Aurelian ritual, he’d never seen her take even a sip of wine. He wondered if she partied with her roommates or if she’d chosen to stay mostly clean after what had happened to her friends in Los Angeles.

“Who’s this?” Doug said, and Darlington found himself annoyed by Doug’s lazy perusal of Alex’s costume. “Your date or your Dante?”

“Alex Stern. She’s the new me. She’ll be watching over all you dullards when I finally get out of here.” He said it because they expected him to, but Darlington would never leave this city. He’d fought too hard to remain here, to hold on to Black Elm. He would take a few months to travel, visit the remnants of the library cave in Dunhuang, make a pilgrimage to the monastery at Mont Sainte-Odile. He knew Lethe expected him to apply to graduate school, maybe take a research position in the New York office. But that wasn’t what he really wanted. New Haven needed a new map, a map of the unseen, and Darlington wanted to be the one to draw it, and maybe, in the lines of its streets, the quiet of its gardens, the deep shadow of East Rock, there would be an answer to why New Haven had never become a Manhattan or a Cambridge, why, despite every opportunity and every hope for prosperity, it had always foundered. Was it merely chance? Bad luck? Or had the magic that lived here somehow stunted the town even as it continued to flourish?

“So what are you?” Doug asked Alex. “A vampire? Gonna suck my blood?”

“If you’re lucky,” said Alex, and disappeared down the stairs.

“Stay safe tonight, Doug,” Darlington said as he followed her. She was already out of sight, vanishing down the spiral, and she shouldn’t be on her own tonight.

Doug laughed. “That’s your job.”

The blast of a fog machine struck him full in the face, and he nearly stumbled. He waved the mist away, annoyed. Why couldn’t people just have a quality drink and a conversation? Why all of this desperate pretense? And was some part of him jealous of Doug, of everyone who managed to be reckless for a night? Maybe. He’d felt disconnected from everything since he’d moved back to Black Elm. Freshmen and sophomores were required to live in the dorms, and though he’d visited Black Elm religiously, he’d liked the feeling of being pulled into other orbits, yanked forcibly from his shell by his well-meaning roommates, drawn into a world that had nothing to do with Lethe or the uncanny. He’d liked Jordan and E.J. enough to room with them both years, and he was grateful that they’d felt the same. He kept intending to call them, to invite them out. But another day would go by and he’d find it lost to books, to Black Elm, to Lethe, and now to Alex Stern.

“You should stay behind me,” he said when he caught up to her, vexed by the petulant edge to his own voice. She was already on the next level, looking around with eager eyes. This floor resembled the VIP section of a nightclub, the lights dimmer, the bass muted, but there was a dreamy quality to it all, as if every person and every item in the room was limned in golden light.

“It looks like a music video,” Alex said.

“With an infinite budget. It’s a glamour.”

“Why did he call you the gentleman of Lethe?”

“Because people who can’t be bothered with manners pretend to be amused by them. Onward, Stern.”

They continued down the next flight of stairs. “Are we going all the way down?”

“No. The lowest levels are where the rites are performed and maintained. At any given time they have five to ten magics working internationally. Charisma spells and glamours need constant maintenance. But they won’t be performing any rites tonight, just culling power from the party and the city to store in the vault.”

“Do you smell that?” asked Alex. “It smells like—”

Forest. The next landing brought them to a verdant wood. The previous year it had been a high desert mesa. Sunlight filtered through the leaves of a copse of trees and the horizon seemed to stretch on for miles. Partyers dressed in white lolled on picnic blankets that had been laid out over the lush grass, and hummingbirds bobbed and hovered in the warm air. From this level on, only alumni and the current members who attended them were permitted.

“Is that a real horse?” Alex whispered.

“As real as it has to be.” This was magic, wasteful, joyous magic, and Darlington couldn’t deny that some part of him wanted to linger here. But that was exactly why they had to press on. “Next floor.”

The stairs curved again, but this time the walls seemed to bend with them. The building somehow took on a different shape, the ceiling high as a cathedral, painted the bright blue and gold of a Giotto sky; the floor was covered in poppies. It was a church but it was not a church. The music here was otherworldly, something that might have been bells and drums or the heartbeat of a great beast lulling them with every deep thud. On the pews and in the aisles, bodies lay entwined, surrounded by crushed red petals.

“Now this is more like what I expected,” said Alex.

“An orgy in a flower-filled cathedral?”

“Excess.”

“That’s what this night is all about.”

The next level was a mountaintop arbor, which didn’t even bother trying to look real. It was all hazy peach clouds, wisteria hanging in thick clusters from pale pink columns, women in sheer gowns lazing on sun-warmed stone, their hair caught in an impossible breeze, a golden hour that would never end. They’d walked into a Maxfield Parrish painting.

Finally, they arrived in a quiet room, a long banquet table set against one wall and lit by fireflies. The murmur of conversation was low and civilized. A vast circular mirror nearly two stories high took up the north-facing wall. Its surface seemed to swirl. It was like looking into a huge cauldron being stirred by an invisible hand, but it was wiser to understand the mirror as a vault, a repository of magic fed by desire and delusion. This level of Manuscript, the fifth level, marked the central point between the culling rooms above and the ritual rooms below. It was far larger than the others, stretching under the street and beneath the surrounding houses. Darlington knew the ventilation system was fine, but he struggled not to think about being crushed.

Many of the partygoers here were masked, most likely celebrities and prominent alums. Some wore fanciful gowns, others jeans and T-shirts.

“Do you see the purple tongues?” Darlington asked, bobbing his chin toward a boy covered in glitter pouring wine and a girl in cat ears and little else carrying a tray. “They’ve taken Merity, the drug of service. It’s taken by acolytes to give up their will.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“To serve me,” said a soft voice.

Darlington bowed to the figure dressed in celadon silk robes and a golden headdress that also served as a half-mask.

“How may we address you this night?” Darlington inquired.

The wearer of the mask represented Lan Caihe, one of the eight immortals of Chinese myth, who could move amongst genders at will. At each gathering of Manuscript, a different Caihe was chosen.

“Tonight I am she.” Her eyes were entirely white behind her mask. She would see all things this night and be deceived by no glamour.

“We thank you for the invitation,” said Darlington.

“We always welcome the officers of Lethe, though we regret you never accept our hospitality. A glass of wine perhaps?” She raised a smooth hand, the nails curled like claws but smooth and polished as glass, and one of the acolytes stepped forward with a pitcher.

Darlington gave Alex a warning shake of his head. “Thank you,” he said apologetically. He knew some members of Manuscript took personal offense that Lethe members never sampled the society’s pleasures. “But we’re bound by protocol.”

“None of our suggestions for the freshman tap were accepted,” said Lan Caihe, her white eyes on Alex. “Very disappointing.”

Darlington bristled. But Alex said, “At least you won’t expect much from me.”

“Careful now,” said Caihe. “I like to be disarmed. You may raise my expectations yet. Who glamoured your arms?”

“Darlington.”

“Are you ashamed of the tattoos?”

“Sometimes.”

Darlington glanced at Alex, surprised. Was she under persuasion? But when he saw Lan Caihe’s pleased smile, he realized Alex was just playing the game. Caihe liked surprises and candor was surprising.

Caihe reached out and ran a fingernail up the smooth skin of Alex’s bare arm.

“We could erase them entirely,” said Caihe. “Forever.”

“For a small price?” asked Alex.

“For a fair price.”

“My lady,” said Darlington in warning.

Caihe shrugged. “This is a night of culling, when the stores are replenished and the casks are made full. No bargain will be made. Descend, boy, if you wish to know what’s next. Descend and see what awaits you, if you dare.”

“I just want to know if Jodie Foster is here,” Alex murmured as Lan Caihe returned to the banquet table. She was one of Manuscript’s most famous alums.

“For all you know that was Jodie Foster,” said Darlington, but his head felt heavy. His tongue felt too big for his mouth. Everything around him seemed to shimmer.

Lan Caihe turned to him from her place at the head of the banquet table. “Descend.” Darlington shouldn’t have been able to hear the word at this distance, but it seemed to echo through his head. He felt the floor drop away and he was falling. He stood in a vast cavern carved into the earth, the rock slick with moisture, the air rich with the smell of turned soil. A hum filled his ears and Darlington realized it was coming from the mirror, the vault that still somehow hung on the cave wall. He was in the same room but he was not. He looked into the mirror’s swirling surface and the mists within it parted, the hum rising, vibrating through his bones.

He shouldn’t look. He knew that. You should never look into the face of the uncanny, but had he ever been able to turn away? No, he’d courted it, begged for it. He had to know. He wanted to know everything. He saw the banquet table reflected in the mirror, the food upon it going to rot, the people around it still shoveling spoiled fruit and meat into their mouths along with the swirling flies. They were old, some barely strong enough to lift a cup of wine or a withering peach to their cracked lips. All but Lan Caihe, who stood illumined by fire, the golden headdress a flame, her gown glowing ember red, the features of her face changing with each breath, high priestess, hermit, hierophant. For a moment, Darlington thought he glimpsed his grandfather there.

He could feel his body quaking, felt dampness on his lips, touched his hand to his face and realized his nose had started to bleed.

“Darlington?” Alex’s voice, and in the mirror he saw her. But she looked the same. She was still Queen Mab. No… This time she really was Queen Mab. Night ebbed and flowed around her in a cape of glittering stars; above the oil-black sheaf of her hair, a constellation glowed—a wheel, a crown. Her eyes were black, her mouth the dark red of overripe cherries. He could feel power churning around her, through her.

“What are you?” he whispered. But he didn’t care. He went to his knees. This was what he’d been waiting for.

“Ah,” said Lan Caihe, approaching. “An acolyte at heart.”

In the mirror, he saw himself, a knight with bowed head, offering his service, a sword in his hand, a sword in his back. He felt no pain, only the ache in his heart. Choose me. There were tears on his cheeks, even as he felt the shame of it. She was no one, a girl who had lucked into a gift, who had done nothing to earn it. She was his queen.

“Darlington,” she said. But that was not his true name any more than Alex was hers.

If only she would choose him. If only she would let him…

She touched her fingers to his face, lifted his chin. Her lips brushed his ear. He didn’t understand it. He only wanted her to do it again. Stars poured through him, a cold and billowing wave of night. He saw everything. He saw their bodies entwined. She was above him and beneath him all at once, her body splayed and white as a lotus flower. She bit his ear—hard.

Darlington yelped and flinched back, sense flooding through him.

“Darlington,” she snarled. “Get your shit together.”

And then he saw himself. He’d hiked up her skirt. His hands were braced on her white thighs. He saw the masked faces around them, sensed their eagerness as they leaned forward, eyes glittering. Alex was looking down at him, gripping his shoulders, trying to shove him away. The cavern was gone. They were in the banquet room.

He fell backward, letting her skirt drop, his erection throbbing valiantly in his jeans before humiliation washed over him. What the hell had they done to him? And how?

“The mist,” he said, feeling like the worst kind of fool, his mind still spinning, his body buzzing with whatever he had inhaled. He’d walked straight through the blast of that fog machine and hadn’t thought twice about it.

Lan Caihe grinned. “You can’t blame a god for trying.”

Darlington used the wall to push to his feet, keeping clear of the mirror. He could still feel its hum vibrating through him. He wanted to rage at these people. Interfering with representatives of Lethe was strictly prohibited, a violation of every code of the societies, but he also just wanted to get clear of Manuscript before he humiliated himself further. Everywhere he looked he saw masked and painted faces.

“Come on,” said Alex, taking his arm and leading him up the stairs, forcing him to walk ahead of her.

He knew they should stay. See the night past the witching hour, make sure nothing got past the forbidden floors or interfered with the culling. He couldn’t. He needed to get free. Now.

The stairs seemed to go on forever, turning and turning until Darlington had no idea how long they’d been climbing. He wanted to look back to make sure that Alex was still there, but he’d read enough stories to know you never looked back on your way out of hell.

The upper floor of Manuscript felt like a wild blaze of color and light. He could smell the fruit fermenting in the punch, the yeasty tang of sweat. The air felt sticky and warm against his skin.

Alex shook his arm and pulled him along by his elbow. All he could do was stumble after. They burst into the cold night air as if they’d slid through a membrane. Darlington inhaled deeply, feeling his head clear a little. He heard voices and realized Alex was talking to Mike Awolowo, the Manuscript delegation president. Kate Masters was beside him. She was covered in flowering vines. They were going to consume her—no. She was just dressed as Poison Ivy, for God’s sake.

“Unacceptable,” Darlington said. His lips felt fuzzy.

Alex kept one hand on his arm. “I’ll handle it. Stay here.”

They’d made it down the street to the Hutch. Darlington leaned his head against the Mercedes. He should pay attention to what Alex was saying to Kate and Mike, but the metal felt cool and forgiving against his face.

Moments later they were getting into his car and he was mumbling the address for Black Elm.

Mike and Kate peered through the passenger window as the car drove off.

“They’re afraid you’re going to report them,” Alex said.

“Damn right I will. They’re going to eat a huge fine. A suspension.”

“I told him I’d handle the write-up.”

“You will not.”

“You can’t be objective about this.”

No, he couldn’t. In his head, he was kneeling again, face pressed to her thighs, desperate to get closer. The thought of it made him instantly hard again, and he was grateful for the dark.

“What do you want me to say in the report?” Alex asked.

“All of it,” Darlington muttered miserably.

“It isn’t a big deal,” she said.

It had been a big deal, though. He had felt… “desire” wasn’t even the right word for it. He could still feel her skin under his palms, the heat of her against his lips through the thin fabric of her panties. What the hell was wrong with him?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was unforgivable.”

“You got wasted and acted a fool at a party. Relax.”

“If you don’t want to continue working with me—”

“Shut up, Darlington,” Alex said. “I’m not doing this job without you.”

She got him back to Black Elm and put him to bed. The house was ice-cold and he realized his teeth were chattering. Alex lay down beside him with the covers pulled tight between them, and his heart hurt for the wanting of someone.

“Mike said the drug should be out of your system in about twelve hours.”

Darlington lay in his narrow bed, writing and rewriting angry emails in his head to the Manuscript alumni and the Lethe board, losing the thread, overwhelmed by images of Alex lit by stars, the thought of that black dress sliding from her shoulders, then returning to his rant and a demand for action. The words tangled together, caught on the spokes of a wheel, the points of a crown. But one thought returned again and again as he tossed and turned, fell in and out of dreams, morning light beginning its slow bleed through the high tower window: Alex Stern was not what she seemed.