been pilfered from the Sterling Library years ago to hide vital information on Lethe and the flow of magical artifacts through the city.

Alex flipped through the thick pages of newspaper clippings, old photographs, and maps, until her eyes landed on a photo of a group of young men at Mory’s, all stern-faced, all suited. And there was Linus, in the back row, his face solemn, his pale blue eyes nearly white in the old picture. He looked softer somehow, more mobile in this photo than he had been sitting in his own living room. Had he been human then? Or already turned and having a laugh? And how was she supposed to best a drug-dealing blue blood Connecticut vampire?

Kittscher’s Daemonologie was also on the shelf, the same book Michelle Alameddine had recommended and that Dawes had been using for research.

Alex flipped through, still hoping for a catalogue of monsters and ideally how to best them. But the book was as Dawes had described: a series of debates on hell between Ellison Nownes, a divinity student and devout Christian, and Rudolph Kittscher, an atheist and member of Lethe.

Nownes seemed to be arguing for Turner’s version of hell—a place of eternal punishment for sinners: Whether there be nine circles or twelve, whether pits of fire or lakes of ice, though the architecture of hell be indeterminate, its existence and purpose are not.

But Kittscher disagreed: Superstition and bunk! We know there are other worlds and planes and that their existence enables the use of portals —why, ask any Locksmith if he thinks he’s simply disappearing from one place and reappearing in another. No! We know better. There are other realms. And why should we not understand “hell” as one of these realms? Here, the transcript noted “loud applause.”

Some of what they were saying went right over Alex’s head, but she was pretty sure Kittscher was suggesting the existence of hell—and heaven —

was a bargain between demons and men: Just as we may be nourished by meat or fowl, or survive upon a diet of simple roots and berries, so demons are nourished by our base emotions. Some feed on fear or greed or lust or rage, and yes, some hunger after joy. Heaven and hell are a compromise, nothing more, a treaty binding demons to remain in their realm and feed only upon the dead.

This was where the crowd turned on Kittscher and the notes described Nownes as “red-faced.” Nownes: This is what comes of a vision of a world without God—not only a life but an afterlife devoid of any higher morality.

You suggest that we, creatures born of God and made in His image, are thelowliest of beasts, timid rabbits trapped in a snare, made not for great studyor high achievement, but to be consumed? This is the purpose and fate ofhumanity?

Kittscher had laughed. Our bodies are food for worms. Why should our souls not be made meals too?

At that point both parties had nearly come to blows and a recess had been taken.

Alex rubbed her eyes. She’d been straight with Turner: She didn’t believe in his Sunday school version of the underworld. But she wasn’t sure she bought into Kittscher’s theory either. And why had this turned up in her search regarding Linus Reiter?

She combed through the index for any mention of him, then slid her finger down to V, for vampire. A single page was listed.

Kittscher: Think on the vampire.

(Jeering from the assembly.)

Herman Moseby: What’s next, leprechauns and kelpies?

(A call to order from the moderator.)

Kittscher: Have you never wondered why in our stories someseduce and some terrify? Why some are beautiful and othersgrotesque? These disparate stories are proof that demons remain inour world, some who feed on misery or terror, others who feed ondesire, all of whom take the forms most likely to elicit those emotions.

(Terrence Gleebe is recognized by the moderator.)Gleebe: In this scenario, is blood a vehicle or incidental to theprocess?

(Laughter from the assembly.)

Alex touched her fingers to the bandage on her neck. “Incidental, my ass.”

She thought of handsome Linus Reiter in his white suit. Why would a vampire become a drug dealer? There had to be a thousand ways to make

money when you had that kind of power and that much time. But what if you fed on desperation? What if the money meant nothing but you required an endless buffet of fear and need? Alex remembered the hangers-on at Eitan’s house, the losers at Ground Zero, her own aching sadness, the desolation that had been her life, the scraps of hope she’d wrung from the moments of peace that a little weed, a little alcohol, a pop of Valium could provide.

So if Kittscher was right and vampires were demons, at least she knew what she was dealing with. But how to keep the monster at bay?

She left the library and took out the Albemarle Book, wrote: how to avoid vampires, nonfiction. Then she hesitated. Why had the library provided her with information on a vampire when she had specifically asked for books mentioning Linus Reiter? She kept the Albemarle Book open and returned to the round table where she’d left Kittscher’s Daemonologie. Reiter hadn’t been listed in the index. She flipped to the back of the book.

Minutes taken by Phillip Walter Merriman, Oculus, 1933. Inattendance:

The participants were listed by society, and there, under Skull and Bones: Lionel Reiter.

He’d been there. Under a different name, but he’d been in this house, under Lethe’s roof. Maybe he’d been mortal then. But maybe there had been a demon in one of the societies, inside Il Bastone, and no one had been the wiser. And what about the date? 1933. A year after Sterling had been built.

Did that mean there really had been a first pilgrimage to hell? Was that the subtext here? Who had known about the Gauntlet, and was this less a heated argument about philosophic hypotheticals than a very real debate about the possibility of traveling to the underworld?

And if demons fed on humans, on their happiness or their pain, even their blood, was there another variable she had to consider? She remembered Marjorie Stephen, old before her time, eyes milky and gray. What if there hadn’t been any poison? Could Reiter be involved? Or some other demon having his fun? Taunting them with scripture? Turner would have told her if they’d found neck wounds on Professor Stephen or Dean Beekman, but

before tonight, Alex hadn’t known vampires were real. What else might be lurking out there in the dark?

Alex felt panic rising up to choke her. She thought of all those studious young men from well-to-do families debating morality and immortality, arguing semantics, while a monster enjoyed their hospitality. Because we’re all a bunch of amateurs. Lethe pretended they knew the score when they didn’t even know the game. But this house, this library, could still protect her.

After three more searches, she had regained some small sense of calm, and she had a list of recommendations culled from the few books she could find in English that covered repelling demons and vampires, most of them involving weapons made of salt. According to the books she skimmed, stakes, beheading, and fire all worked because they killed just about anything.

Crosses and holy water were dependent on the faith of the user, since they lent courage, not real protection. Garlic was only effective as a repellent toward a particular type of succubus. And the wards worked. That was what mattered. In the armory, she located a wide lacy collar made of tiny salt pearls that dated back to colonial times and that she could tuck neatly under her shirt. She lay down in the Dante bedroom, beneath the velvet blue canopy, and dreamed she was playing croquet on Linus Reiter’s lawn. She was barefoot and the grass was wet. She could see blood seeping up between her toes.

“Intriguing,” he whispered, but in the dream, he was Darlington, in a white suit with glowing golden horns. He smiled at her. “Hello, honey lamb.

Have you come to be devoured?”

The house behind him was no longer Sweetwell but Black Elm, covered in ivy, somehow lonelier than even a vampire’s castle on a hill.

Alex drifted inside; she knew the way, that same strange sense of compulsion drawing her on. The rooms seemed bigger, their shadows deeper.

She climbed the stairs to the ballroom, and Darlington was there, in the circle, but he was her Darlington, just as she remembered him the night he’d disappeared from Rosenfeld Hall, handsome, human, dressed in his long dark coat, his weathered jeans.

Through the windows she could see the demon with his curling horns, standing amid the discarded croquet set on the lawn, gazing up at her with golden eyes.

“There are two of you,” Alex said.

“There have to be,” Darlington replied. “The boy and the monster. I am the hermit in the cave.”

“I saw everything. In your grandfather’s memories. I saw you try to survive this place.”

“It wasn’t all bad.”

Alex felt her lips twist. “Of course it wasn’t. If it was all bad, you could just let go.”

“When did you get so wise, Stern?”

“When you went on sabbatical to purgatory.”

“I could hear them,” he said, eyes distant. They were dark brown, tea left to brew too long. “My parents. When they were yelling at the front door.”

“Should I have let them in?”