“He told us that,” Alex said. “But it’s impossible. He’s a demon. He couldn’t get past the wards. It’s why he didn’t take us to the Hutch the night he banished us from Lethe.”

Darlington nodded. “He’d set up an early-warning system. Hell is vast.

He couldn’t guard every entry. But he knew where you were headed, and once the alarm was tripped, he knew you’d found me.”

Turner drew in a breath. “The wolves.”

“That’s right. He’d set them to watch over Black Elm.”

“They were demons,” said Alex, the realization like a slap. “They became our demons.”

Four wolves for four pilgrims. They’d all drawn blood when they’d attacked, all gotten a taste of their human terror. Alex remembered the wolves burning like comets as they’d fled hell. The demons had followed them into the mortal realm.

“Golgarot stopped the ritual,” Mercy said. “He made me turn off the metronome.”

“But he didn’t step into the courtyard.” Alex remembered him hovering beneath Dürer’s magic square. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to risk seeing it or getting caught up in the puzzle.

“He wasn’t going to let you take me out of hell,” Darlington said. “He intended to strand you there with me.”

“But Alex got us out,” Turner said.

Alex shifted in her seat. “And left the door open for our demons to follow us through.”

“I don’t understand,” Dawes said. “Why are there no warnings about the Gauntlet in the Lethe library? Why are there no records of its construction, of what happened to the first pilgrims who walked it, of Lionel Reiter?”

“I don’t know,” Darlington admitted. “It wouldn’t be the first cover-up in Lethe’s history.”

Alex met Dawes’s gaze. They knew that well enough. Lethe’s members, its board, the few in the Yale administration who knew the true occupation of the secret societies, had a long history of sweeping all kinds of atrocities under the rug. Magical casualties, mysterious power outages, strange disappearances, the map in the Peabody basement. Everyone had believed Daniel Arlington was in Spain for most of last semester, and almost no one knew Elliot Sandow had turned out to be a murderer. There were no consequences, not if you just kept finding new places to bury your mistakes.

Mercy had set her red notebook next to her soup bowl and she was drawing a series of concentric circles in it. “So they covered it up. But Lionel Reiter became a vampire. We don’t even know what happened to the other pilgrims or their sentinel. Why leave the Gauntlet intact if they knew how dangerous it was?”

There was silence then, because no one had the answer, but they all knew the truth couldn’t be good. Something had gone wrong on that first journey, something bad enough that the Gauntlet had been wiped from the books and Rudolph Kittscher’s diary had been hidden or destroyed. It might just be that Reiter had been followed by a demon, that Lethe was responsible for creating a vampire. But then why not hunt him? Why leave him to prey on innocent people for nearly a hundred years?

“Could I go alone?” Alex asked. She didn’t want to say it. She didn’t want to do it. But they might be down one pilgrim, and the longer they waited, the worse it was going to get. “I don’t need the Gauntlet. Why can’t I just walk back through that circle and find some way to drag our demons with me?”

“That’s awfully self-sacrificing,” said Turner. He glanced at Darlington.

“She fall on her head?”

“I’m not doing it to play hero,” Alex said sourly. “But I already got Tripp killed.”

“You don’t know that,” protested Dawes.

“I can make an educated guess.” She hoped it wasn’t true. She hoped Tripp was safely tucked away in his fancy loft apartment, eating bowls of vegan chili, but she doubted that was the case. “I roped him into this, and there’s a good chance he’s not coming back from it.”

“You can’t just walk in by yourself,” said Darlington. “You might pull your own demon with you, but you’ll all have to go through to get rid of the others.”

“What about Spenser?” Mercy asked. “Uh … Not Spenser, Tripp’s demon?”

“If the demon consumed Tripp’s soul—” Darlington began.

“We don’t know that happened,” Dawes insisted.

“But if it did, then the demon would be able to remain in the mortal world and feed on the living.”

A new vampire could be preying on people in New Haven right now.

Another bit of misery Alex had helped to create. Mercy had every right not to trust Tripp, to suspect he was a coward. But Alex liked Tripp. He was a dumbass, but he’d tried to do his best for them. I like being one of the good guys.

“We’re going to have to create a tether,” Dawes said. “Open the doorway and pull them back through.” “The vampire too?” asked Mercy.

“No,” said Darlington. “If Tripp’s demon really did become a vampire, it will have to be hunted on its own.”

“Mercy and I have been searching the armory and the library for a way to lure our demons,” said Dawes. “But there’s only so much we can do if we need to be in the right position to open the Gauntlet.”

“They’re drawn to us when things are bad,” said Alex.

Turner shot her a look. “So every hour of the day?”

“There’s the Doom Sparrow,” Mercy said, consulting her notes. “If you release it in a room, it sows discord and creates a general sense of malaise. It was used to disrupt meetings of union organizers in the seventies.”

“Have you heard that silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird?” Darlington quoted.

“I really missed having no idea what you’re talking about,” Alex said.

And she meant it. “But I’m not sure we want to start a trip into hell feeling completely miserable and defeated.”

“There’s the Voynich,” said Dawes. “But I don’t know how to get hold of it.”

“Why the Voynich, of all things?” Mercy asked.

Even Alex had heard of the Voynich manuscript. Aside from the original Gutenberg Bible, it was probably the most famous book at the Beinecke. And it was certainly harder to get a look at. The Bible was always on display in a glass case in the lobby and one page was turned daily. But the Voynich was very much under lock and key.

“Because it’s a puzzle,” said Darlington. “An unparseable language, an unsolvable code. It’s what it was created for.”

Mercy shut the cover of her notebook with a loud snap. “Wait a minute.

Just … You’re saying the Voynich manuscript was created to trap demons?

Scholars have been speculating on it for centuries!”

Darlington lifted his shoulders. “I suppose it traps academics too. But Dawes is right. Accessing anything other than a digital copy is nearly impossible, and taking it out of Beinecke? Forget it.” “What about Pierre the Weaver?” asked Mercy.

Turner leaned back and crossed his arms. “This ought to be good.”

But Dawes was tapping her pen against her lips. “That’s an interesting idea.”

“It’s brilliant actually,” said Darlington.