“The Praetor just called. He wants to meet with you today.” Was this it? The official dismissal? The formal fuck-you?

“What did he say?” Alex pressed.

“Just that in light of last night’s events, the Praetor requires Virgil’s presence at his office hours.”

Not at Il Bastone or the Hutch. “He still called me Virgil?”

“He did,” Dawes said on a tired sigh. “And he called me Oculus. Maybe there’s some kind of process we have to go through before we’re … I don’t know. Stripped of our offices.”

Alex looked out the window into the courtyard. The morning sky was dark, the pavement damp. Slate-colored clouds promised more rain. It was too cold to be sitting outside, but there was a girl slouched on a bench below in just a T-shirt and jeans. Not Hellie looked up at Alex and grinned, her smile crooked, her teeth too long. Like the wolves they’d fought in hell. As if the longer she went hungry, the harder it was for her to pretend to be human.

But it was the man beside her that sent a bolt of fear through Alex. His hair was long and blond, his suit white, his fine-boned face made nearly gentle by the gray autumn light. Linus Reiter gazed up at her, his expression bemused, as if someone had told a joke he didn’t really find funny.

Alex yanked the curtains closed. Fuck having access to Grays. She needed to ward the courtyard. Maybe the whole campus.

“Alex?”

Dawes was still on the phone.

“He’s here,” Alex managed, the words emerging in a strangled whisper.

“He’s…”

“Who is?”

Alex slumped down next to the bed, knees drawn up, her heart pounding.

She couldn’t quite take a full breath. “Linus Reiter,” she gasped. “The vampire. In the courtyard. I don’t … I can’t…” She could hear the blood rushing in her ears. “I think I’m going to pass out.”

“Alex, tell me five things you see in your room.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

“I … My desk. A chair. The blue tulle on Mercy’s bed. My Flaming June poster. Those sticky stars someone put up on the ceiling.”

“Okay, now four things you can touch.”

“Dawes—”

“Do it.”

“We have to warn the others—”

“Just do it, Virgil.”

Dawes had never called her that. Alex managed a shaking breath.

“Okay … the bed frame. It’s smooth. Cold wood. The rug—kind of soft and nubbly. There’s glitter in it. Maybe from Halloween.”

“What else?”

“My tank top—cotton, I think.” She reached up and touched the dried roses on Mercy’s bedside table. “Dry flowers, like tissue paper.”

“Now three things you hear.”

“I know what you’re doing.”

“Then do it.”

Alex drew another long breath in through her nose. “The flowers rustle when I touch them. Someone’s singing down the hall. My own fucking heart pounding in my chest.” She rubbed a hand over her face, feeling some of her terror recede. “Thanks, Dawes.”

“I’m going to text the group to warn them about Reiter. Remember, your salt spirit should work against him too.”

“How can you sound so calm?”

“I wasn’t attacked by a vampire.”

“It’s daytime. How—”

“I’m assuming he’s not in direct sunlight. He’ll keep to the shadows, and he certainly won’t be able to hunt until dusk falls.” That wasn’t reassuring.

“Alex,” Dawes insisted, “you have to stay calm. He’s just another demon and he can’t change shape or get in your head.”

“He’s fast, Dawes. And so strong.” She’d been no match for him, even with the strength of a Gray inside her. She’d barely escaped him once, and she wasn’t sure she’d be that lucky again.

“Okay, but all of the reading I’ve done says he won’t stay away from his nest for long. He can’t.”

His precious nest full of priceless objects and white flowers. That Alex had set fire to.

Alex made herself get up and pull back the curtain. Not Hellie was gone.

She saw Reiter moving across the courtyard toward the gates that would take

him out of JE and hopefully away from campus. Someone in dark clothes and a hooded jacket walked beside him, keeping a white umbrella above Reiter’s head.

“What if Reiter gets peckish on the way home?” Alex said. “I brought him here. I put all these people in his sights.”

“Stop it. Reiter knew about Yale long before you. I think … I think he’s here to frighten you. And maybe because we used the Gauntlet.”

Now Dawes’s voice wavered. If Alex’s theory—really Rudolph Kittscher’s theory—was correct, then Reiter was actually a demon who had followed the real Lionel Reiter out of hell and taken on his form and identity.

He’d fed on Reiter’s soul and now he sustained himself with blood. Had the demons that followed them through the portal to hell called to him somehow?

Did he care that the Gauntlet had been awakened, or did he just want payback for Alex wrecking his fancy things?

It didn’t matter. There was only one way to deal with him.