Have you never wondered why magic takes such a toll? Ourbrushes with the uncanny are encounters with these parasitic forces.

The demon is feeding even if its powers are contained. The bigger themagic, the more powerful the demon. And the nexuses are little morethan doorways through which demons may, for a brief time, pass.

NOWNES: What you suggest is perverse in every way.

KITTSCHER: But you do not say I am wrong.

—Kittscher’s Daemonologie, 1933

36

Alex and Anselm fell backward as the ballroom floor collapsed from above in a cascade of plaster and wood. Darlington crouched in the wreckage, his horns glowing, his golden eyes like searchlights. He looked bigger than he had before, his back broader.

He growled, and in the sound she heard a word, maybe a name, but she couldn’t make sense of it.

Alex put herself between Darlington and Anselm. “Darlington—”

Darlington roared, the sound like the thunder of a subway train. He slashed at the floor, leaving deep trenches in the wood. She thought of the claw marks in his parents’ chests.

“Run!” she shouted at Anselm. “I can hold him off!”

Anselm was pressed against the wall, plaster on his suit, his eyes big as moons. “It … he … what…”

Darlington stalked toward them.

She licked at her wrist, and the salt snakes leapt from her body, hissing and snapping. Anselm screamed. Whatever Darlington had become halted as the snakes slithered across the floor toward him.

Anselm whimpered. “That’s … that’s Daniel Arlington?”

The rattlers lunged at Darlington, jaws closing on his legs and arms. He howled and tried to shake them off, stumbling back toward the stairs.

“This is … this is an abomination,” Anselm gibbered. “Stop him now!

You have the advantage.”

“Just get out of here!” Alex shouted over her shoulder.

“You can’t possibly think you’re going to save him! He could bring down Lethe, all of us.”

Darlington slammed one of the salt serpents against the banister, then pinned it there with his horns.

“Look at him,” Anselm demanded. “For once in your life, think, Stern.”

Think, Stern.

“Don’t let him get to the circle!” Anselm cried. “Send that monster back to hell and I’ll find a way to get you back into Lethe!”

But why would Darlington want to go back to his prison? And how did Anselm know about the circle of protection?

Think, Stern. To Anselm she’d always been Alex. Miss Stern when he was angry. It was Darlington who called her Stern. She hesitated, an impossible notion fighting its way through her muddled thoughts. She remembered when Anselm had told her the story of the three judges, how much he’d reminded her of Darlington.

Darlington without magic, without Black Elm. Without a soul.

She remembered how surprised she’d been when he had asked about her mother. Does she embarrass you? The wave of shame that had overtaken her, how exhausted she’d felt after that meeting. She remembered Anselm stretching in the sunlight like a well-fed cat. I feel almost human.

Alex knew she shouldn’t turn her back on a wounded demon, but she had the feeling she’d already made that mistake. She moved slowly, cautiously, trying to keep both Darlington and Anselm in her sights.

Anselm was pressed against the wall in his rumpled suit.

Alex slid her tongue over her wrist. Her salt snakes uncoiled. They knew a demon when they saw one. Even if he was dressed up in human skin and the authority of Lethe. They leapt.

Anselm held up his hands and a ring of orange fire swept forward. The salt snakes seemed to pop and sizzle in the heat, exploding in a hail of sparks.

“Well,” he said, dusting himself off for the second time that day. “I had hoped you’d do the killing. I wanted to watch you torment yourself over the murder of your beloved mentor for a while.”

Does she embarrass you? The question had hit her like a punch to the gut, left her shaken and tied up in guilt. He’d been feeding on her. She remembered him standing in Sterling, shaking his head like a beleaguered dad on a television show. Like he was performing being human.

“You’re his demon,” Alex said, understanding coming on in a flood.

“You hitched a ride when we tried to bring Darlington out of hell the first time. When Dawes and I botched the ritual at Scroll and Key. And you’ve

been fucking with us ever since.” He was our son but not our son. “You killed Darlington’s parents.”

Anselm rolled his shoulders, his body seeming to shift beneath his skin.

“They showed up at Black Elm when I was trying to figure out how to get my lesser half out of that cursed circle.”

Whatever I am will be unleashed upon the world. Darlington hadn’t just been using the force of his will to stay inside the circle; he’d called on the remainder of his humanity for restraint. It was that same humanity that had fought to give them clues, even to try to warn her. In the dream, there had been two of him: demon and man. There have to be, he’d said. The boy and the monster.

But Anselm hadn’t been able to feed on Darlington in the mortal realm, because he was protected by the circle. So the demon had needed to take on another form.

“You killed Michael Anselm too,” she said. That was the husk in the basement. The demon had fed on Anselm, stolen his life. When Alex had lunch with him by the water, she’d even noted how different he seemed—

young, at ease, handsome, like he was having a damn fine time. Because he was. He was sated on human misery. She’d shaken his hand. Made a deal for her mother’s life. How he must have laughed at her desperation.

On the stairs, Darlington snarled, still besieged by Alex’s serpents, but she had no idea how to call them off. And why was Anselm so much better at fighting her salt spirits than Not Hellie or Not Blake or the other demons?

“The murders,” she said, “all of that about the judges and Professor Lambton, they were just distractions.”

“A game,” Anselm corrected with a gentle smile. “A puzzle.”

To keep them from finding and using the Gauntlet and freeing Darlington’s soul from hell.

“Two people died and Andy Lambton is in a psych ward.”

“It was a good game.”

The night of their disastrous ritual at Scroll and Key, it had been the real Michael Anselm at Il Bastone—fussy, cold, determined to keep Lethe trouble free. The first campus murder had happened later that very night. The demon had fed on Marjorie Stephen, aging her like a terrible poison, but he’d stopped