Andy nodded, then shook his head, as if he was a mystery to himself. “I did. He made it easy.”

“The ram?” Alex asked.

Andy’s eyelids fluttered rapidly. “He was kind.”

“Yeah?” Alex pushed.

“Easy to talk to. He … knew so much.”

“About what?”

Again Andy looked over his shoulder. “This town. The people here. He knew so many stories. He had all of the answers. But he wasn’t … He didn’t lord it over me, you know? He just wanted to help. To make things right. He was polite. A real—”

“Gentleman,” Alex finished for him. Cold sweat had broken out over her body, and she struggled not to shiver.

The ram told me. Alex thought of Darlington’s horns, curled back from his forehead, glowing behind the protection of the golden circle—his prison.

But maybe the circle had been an illusion. Maybe Darlington had let them believe it kept him at bay when it had been nothing more than fairy dust.

She had known there was something off about the crime scenes, elaborate stage sets steeped in New Haven lore. A game a demon might like to play.

Turner was watching her. “Something you want to share with the class, Stern?”

“No … I … I have to go.”

“Stern—” Turner began, but Alex was out the door, striding down the hall. She needed to get to Black Elm.

Darlington, who knew everything about New Haven’s history, who had

“recognized” the quote from Davenport’s sermon. What had he said that day?

I always admired virtue. But I could never imitateit. Alex tapped the quote into her phone. The search results popped up immediately: Charles II.

Darlington had said he was the hermit in the cave. And of course, he’d meant Judges Cave. Anselm had warned her: Whatever survived in hell wouldn’t be the Darlington you know.

Demons loved games. And he’d been playing with them from the start.

PART II

So Below

35

November

We’re not alone,” the Gray whispered, one finger held up to his lips like an actor in a play.

Alex had taken a car to the gates of Black Elm.

She had walked the gravel drive in long strides, her anger like an engine, a locomotive pushing her ahead of common sense.

She had slotted her key in the door, tidied the mail, washed her hands.

She had seen the basement door, a gaping wound, an open grave.

There had been a thousand moments to think, to reconsider. She had stood at the top of the basement stairs, gazing into the dark, a knife in her hand, and still she had believed she was being cautious.

The fall had come swiftly. But it always did.

In the cold dark of the basement, Alex took stock of her mistakes. She should have stayed with Turner and finished the interview with Andy Lambton. She shouldn’t have come to Black Elm alone. She should have told Dawes her suspicions, or Turner, or anyone. She should never have trusted her gentleman demon. But she’d wanted to believe that Darlington would be okay, that whatever he’d endured in hell wouldn’t leave a mark, that she could be forgiven and order restored. He would be made whole and she alongside him.

But what if she was leaping to the wrong conclusions now? What if Not Hellie or one of the other demons had pushed her down the stairs, or some squatter who hadn’t shown up on Dawes’s cameras? What if Eitan and Tzvi had trailed her here? Or Linus Reiter with his white umbrella?

Too many shadows, too much history, too many bodies piling up. Too many enemies. There was no way to fight them all.

At least Alex would be visible on the cameras. Someone would know where she had gone. If she didn’t come back. The pain in her ribs made it

hard to take a deep breath. She looked at the Grays in front of her. Not just any Grays. Harper Arlington and Daniel Arlington IV. Darlington’s parents.

No one from Alex’s long list of enemies had a motive to see them dead.

No one but Darlington, little Danny left alone again and again. Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out, but even Hell would not receive them.

“How long have you been here?” she asked.

Daniel’s eyes darted to the corner, as if he expected something to appear through the walls. “I don’t know.” Harper nodded in agreement.

“You can’t get out?” Alex asked. Grays never stayed with their bodies for long, not unless they had a reason. Like Hellie wanting to say goodbye.

The real Hellie who had loved her.

“He told us to stay.”

“Who?”

They said nothing.

Alex bent to look at the bodies. The cold had helped keep the corpses from rotting too badly, but they still smelled terrible. Gently, she rolled them over. There were gaping trenches carved into both of their chests. Claw marks. And they’d gone deep. Straight through the sternum, the ribs, leaving two dark, pulpy craters. He’d torn their hearts out.

“Who did this to you?”

Harper opened her mouth, closed it, like a marionette worked by a clumsy hand. “He was our son,” she said, “but not our son.”

Again, Daniel’s eyes slid to the corner. “He left that there. He said it could happen to us too. He said he would eat our lives.”

Alex didn’t want to know what was in the corner. The shadows seemed darker there, the cold deeper. She swung the light from her phone in that direction, but she couldn’t make sense of what she saw: A heap of wood curls? Scrap paper? It took her a moment to understand that she was looking at a body—the remnants of one. She was looking at someone who had been devoured, nothing left but a husk. Was that what Linus Reiter would have left of her? Was that what Darlington had started to do to Marjorie Stephen, leaving her withered and aged but still recognizable?

Alex knew it was pointless, but she tried calling Dawes. The screen hung on the number. Service at Black Elm was sketchy at best and nonexistent