“They can … they can hurt us?” Tripp was digging his fingers into his thighs.

“Maybe it’s just me,” said Alex. “I don’t know.”

“We need to plan for the worst,” said Turner. “I’m not going into what might be a knife fight thinking I’m in for a lively debate.”

Mercy had been silent through all of it, but now she stepped forward looking like she was about to perform a solo in an a cappella group. “I … I think I found something. In the library. Something to help.”

“Let’s eat first,” Alex said. Tripp needed that soup. And maybe a shot of whiskey.

31

Alex was surprised at just how much the soup helped. She felt warm for the first time since she’d burst out of the underworld and into the cold New

Haven rain. Nothing felt quite as dire. Not with dumplings in her belly and the taste of dill on her tongue.

“Shit, Dawes,” said Tripp, grinning as if Spenser and every other bad thing had been forgotten, “can you please just come stay in my loft and make me fat?”

Dawes rolled her eyes, but Alex could tell she was pleased.

None of them looked toward the windows, where the curtains remained drawn.

They’d gone seeking the Lethe Days Diary from Lionel Reiter’s time at Yale. Rudolph Kittscher had served as Virgil then, but while his Daemonologie had been allowed to remain, his diaries were gone. All part of the cleanup job.

Even so, Dawes was thrilled with the protection spell Mercy had found.

It needed only ingredients from Lethe’s stores, and she thought they could manage it in Hiram’s Crucible. She gave them each a list of supplies to gather, and they spent the next hour in the dim light of the armory, searching the small drawers and glass cabinets, disturbed by nothing except Tripp humming frat rock and occasionally yelping when he touched something he wasn’t supposed to.

“Why do you even have this stuff?” Tripp complained, sucking on his finger after a locket that had belonged to Jennie Churchill bit him.

“Because someone has to keep it safe,” Dawes said primly. “Please focus on your list and try not to blow anything up.”

Tripp’s lower lip jutted out, but he went back to work, and a minute later he was singing “Under the Bridge” in a passable falsetto. Alex didn’t have the heart to tell him she’d gladly spend the next two semesters in hell if it meant never hearing the Red Hot Chili Peppers again.

The recipe was seemingly banal—a slew of herbs of protection, including sage, vervain, and mint, along with heaps of ground amethyst and black tourmaline, crow feathers bound with rosemary, and dried jackdaw eyes that struck the base of the crucible with a clatter like pebbles. With Turner’s help, Dawes removed several of the baseboards beneath the crucible, revealing a heap of coals. Dawes whispered a few words in Greek, and they glowed red, gently heating the bottom of the big golden bowl.

“This is the greatest moment of my life,” Mercy said in a giddy whisper.

“All of it comes with a price tag,” Alex warned. Those coals never cooled completely, never extinguished, never needed replenishing. They’d been used by Union Pacific to take dominance over the rails, and the creation of each briquette had required a human sacrifice. No one knew whose blood had been shed to create them, but the suspicion was working men, immigrants from Ireland, China, Finland. Men whom no one would come looking for.

The coals had arrived at Yale through William Averell Harriman, Bonesman.

Most of the coals had been lost or stolen, but these remained, another cursed gift to Lethe, another bloody map hidden in a basement.

“We have enough supplies to do this once,” Dawes said as Alex and Mercy hefted sacks of salt from Prahova and the secret chamber at Zipaquirá and tipped them into the crucible. “Can someone get me an ash paddle?”

Tripp snorted, then blurted a hasty sorry when Dawes glared at him.

Alex found the glass cabinet hung with everything from a Model 1873

Winchester that carried the doom Sarah Winchester was so certain had followed her out to California; a broomstick that dated back to a Scottish witch-burning in the 1600s, charred black but unharmed by the pyre; what might have been a solid gold scepter; and a slender stick of ash, carved and sanded to smooth perfection. It looked a bit like a wizard’s staff if the wizard had planned on making brick-oven pizza.

“We have to stir continuously,” Dawes said as she began to combine the ingredients, moving the paddle in steady time. “Now, spit.” “Pardon?” said Turner.

“We need enough saliva to dissolve the salt.”

“My moment to shine,” said Tripp and let fly.

“This is disgusting,” Mercy said as she daintily spat into the cauldron.

She wasn’t wrong, but Alex would take this over another trip to the Manuscript aviary any day.

“Okay, who wants to try the paddle?” Dawes asked without breaking the rhythm. “Keep to the beat.”

“How long do we do this?” Turner asked, taking the paddle from her smoothly.

“Until the mixture quickens,” Dawes said as if that explained everything.

One by one they took their turns stirring with the ash paddle until their arms reached fatigue. It didn’t seem magical, and Alex felt a twitchy selfconsciousness. Magic was supposed to be mystical, perilous, not a mess in the bottom of a giant mixing bowl. Maybe some part of her wanted the others to be impressed with what Lethe could do, with the power in their arsenal. But Dawes didn’t seem concerned at all. She was entirely focused on the task, and when the crucible began to hum, she grasped the paddle in Alex’s hands and said, “Give it to me.”

Alex stepped back and felt the heat building in the floor, radiating from the crucible.

The mixture sparked and hissed, the glow lighting Dawes’s determined face. Her hair had come down from her bun and spread over her shoulders in damp red coils. Sweat gleamed on her pale brow.

Fuck me, Alex thought, Dawes is a witch. She worked magic with her potions and brews and healing ointments, with her soups made from scratch, her plastic containers of broth in the fridge, just waiting to be needed. How many times had she healed Alex and Darlington with cups of tea and tiny sandwiches, with bowls of soup and jars of preserves?

“Keep the rhythm!” Dawes commanded, and they beat their hands against the side of the crucible, the sound louder than it should have been, filling the room and making the walls shake as heat rose from Dawes’s cauldron in shimmering waves.

Alex heard a loud pop, like a cork bursting from a champagne bottle, and a cloud of amber smoke burst from the crucible, flooding Alex’s nose and mouth, making her eyes sting. They all bent double, coughing, the rhythm lost.

When the dust cleared, the only thing left in the crucible was a heap of powdery white ash.

Mercy cocked her head to the side. “I don’t think it worked.”

“I … I thought I got the proportions right,” Dawes said, her confidence dissipating with the smoke.

“Hold on,” Alex said. There was something down there. She bent over the edge of the crucible, reaching. It was deep enough that the lip dug into her belly and she had to tip forward off her toes. But her fingertips brushed

something solid in the ash. She dragged it out and dusted it off. A salt sculpture of a snake nestled in the palm of her hand, sleeping in a circle, its flat head resting against its body.

“A talisman,” said Dawes, her cheeks glowing with pride. “It worked!”

“But what does it—” Alex choked back a gasp as the snake uncoiled in her hand. It spiraled around her forearm, all the way up to her elbow, then vanished into her skin.

“Look!” Mercy cried.

There were gleaming scales all over Alex’s bare arms. They glowed brightly and then dimmed, leaving nothing behind.

“Was that supposed to happen?” she asked.