Darlington had cut the picture from the paper and taped it above his desk. That day at Lighthouse Point, that sunburned, freckled boy had seen the old roller coaster. He’d believed they could all see it. He hadn’t been pretending or joking around. He’d been surprised and embarrassed, and then he’d shut up quick. As if he’d had something like that happen before. Darlington had tried to remember his name. He’d asked Bernadette if they could go to the Knights of Columbus for bingo, potluck dinners, anything that might put him back in that kid’s path. Eventually his grandfather had put a stop to it with a growled “Stop trying to turn him into a goddamn Catholic.”

Darlington had grown older. The memory of Lighthouse Point had grown dimmer. But he never took the picture of the Thunderbolt from his wall. He would forget about it for weeks, sometimes months at a time, but he could never shake the thought that he was seeing only one world when there might be many, that there were lost places, maybe even lost people who might come to life for him if he just squinted hard enough or found the right magic words. Books, with their promises of enchanted doorways and secret places, only made it worse.

The feeling should have ebbed away with time, worn down by the constant, gentle disappointments of growing up. But at sixteen, with his brand-new provisional driver’s license tucked into his wallet, the first place Darlington had taken his grandfather’s old Mercedes was Lighthouse Point. He’d stood at the edge of the water and waited for the world to reveal itself. Years later, when he met Alex Stern, he had to resist the urge to bring her there too, to see if the Thunderbolt might appear to her like any other Gray, a rumbling ghost of joy and giddy terror.

When full dark fell and the stream of children in their goblin masks slowed to a trickle, Darlington put on his own costume, the same one he wore every year—a black coat and a pair of cheap plastic fangs that made him look like he’d just had dental surgery.

He parked in the alley behind the Hutch, where Alex was waiting, shivering in a long black coat that he’d never seen before.

“Can’t we drive?” she asked. “It’s freezing.”

Californians. “It’s fifty degrees and we’re walking three blocks. Somehow you’ll manage this journey through the tundra. I pray you’re not wearing a skimpy cat ensemble underneath that. We’re supposed to project some measure of authority.”

“I can do my job in hot pants. I can probably do it better.” She executed a half-hearted karate kick. “More room to move.” At least she’d worn practical boots.

In the light from the streetlamp, he could see she’d heavily lined her eyes and had big gold earrings on. Hopefully she hadn’t worn anything too provocative or appropriative. He didn’t want to spend the evening fielding judgmental snipes from Manuscript because Alex had felt the urge to dress as sexy Pocahontas.

He led them up the alley and onto Elm. She seemed alert, ready. She’d done well since the incident at Aurelian, since they’d smashed a few thousand dollars’ worth of glass and china on Il Bastone’s kitchen floor. Maybe Darlington had done a little better too. They’d watched a series of first transformations at Wolf’s Head that had gone without incident—though Shane Mackay had trouble coming down and they had to pen him in the kitchen while he shook off his rooster form. He’d bloodied his nose trying to peck the table and one of his friends had spent an hour dutifully plucking tiny white feathers from his body. The cock jokes had been interminable. They’d monitored a raising at Book and Snake, where, with the help of a translator, a desiccated corpse had relayed the final accounts of recently dead soldiers in the Ukraine in a bizarre game of macabre telephone. Darlington didn’t know who in the state department had requested the information, but he assumed it would be dutifully passed along. They’d observed an unsuccessful portal opening at Scroll and Key—a botched attempt to send someone to Hungary, which had resulted in nothing but the whole tomb smelling like goulash—and an equally unimpressive storm summoning by St. Elmo at their dump of an apartment on Lynwood, which had left the delegation president and attending alumni sheepish and ashamed.

“They all have the look a guy gets when he’s too drunk to get it up,” Alex had whispered.

“Must you be so vulgar, Stern?”

“Tell me I’m wrong, Darlington.”

“I certainly wouldn’t know.”

Tonight would be a bit different. They would draw no circles of protection, only make their presence known, monitor the power being gathered at the Manuscript nexus, and then write up a report.

“How long will we be at this thing?” Alex asked as the street forked left.

“After midnight, maybe a little later.”

“I told Mercy and Lauren I’d meet them at the Pierson Inferno.”

“They’ll be so wasted by then they’re not going to notice if you’re late. Now focus: Manuscript looks harmless, but they’re not.”

Alex cut him a glance. There was some kind of glitter on her cheeks. “You actually sound nervous.”

Of all the societies, the one that made Darlington most wary was Manuscript. He could see the skepticism on Alex’s face as they stopped in front of a grubby white brick wall.

“Here?” she asked, drawing her coat tighter. The thump of bass and murmur of conversation floated back to them from somewhere down the narrow walkway.

Darlington understood Alex’s disbelief. The other tombs had been built to look like tombs—the flat neo-Egyptian plinths of Bones, the soaring white columns of Book and Snake, the delicate screens and Moorish arches of Scroll and Key, Darlington’s favorite crypt. Even Wolf’s Head, who had claimed they wanted to shake off the trappings of the arcane and establish a more egalitarian house, had built themselves an English country estate in miniature. Darlington had read the descriptions of each tomb in Pinnell’s guide to Yale and felt that, somehow, the analysis of their parts had fallen short of the mystery they evoked. Of course, Pinnell hadn’t known about the tunnel beneath Grove Street that led directly from Book and Snake to the heart of the cemetery, or the enchanted orange trees taken from the Alhambra that bore fruit year-round in the Scroll and Key courtyard.

But the exterior of Manuscript just looked like a squat brick lump with a bunch of recycling bins stacked along its side.

“This is it?” Alex asked. “This is sadder than that place on Lynwood.”

Actually, nothing was sadder than the St. Elmo house on Lynwood, with its stained carpet and sagging stairs and roof spiked with tilting weather vanes.

“Don’t judge a book, Stern. This crypt is eight stories deep and houses one of the best collections of contemporary art in the world.”

Alex’s brows shot up. “So they’re Cali rich.”

“Cali rich?”

“In L.A., the really loaded guys dress like bums, like they need everyone to know they live at the beach.”

“I suspect Manuscript was aiming for understated elegance, not I bang models at my Malibu manse, but who can say?” The tomb had been finished in the early sixties by King-lui Wu. Darlington had never managed more than a grudging respect for mid-century architecture. Despite his best attempts to admire its severe lines, its clean execution, it always fell flat for him. His father had openly mocked his son’s bourgeois taste for turrets and gabled roofs.

“Here,” Darlington said, taking Alex by the shoulders and walking her a little to the left. “Look.”

It pleased him when she exclaimed, “Oh!”

At this angle, the circular pattern hidden in the white bricks emerged. Most people thought it represented a sun, but Darlington knew better.

“It can’t be seen head-on,” said Darlington. “Nothing here can. This is the house of illusions and lies. Keep in mind just how charismatic some of these people can be. Our job is to make sure that no one gets too out of line and no one gets hurt. There was an incident in 1982.”

“What kind of incident?”

“A girl ate something at one of these parties and decided she was a tiger.”

Alex shrugged. “I watched Salome Nils pull feathers out of a guy’s butt in the Wolf’s Head kitchen. Pretty sure it could be worse.”

“She never stopped thinking she was a tiger.”

“What?”

“Wolf’s Head is all about changing the physical, relinquishing human form but retaining human awareness. Manuscript specializes in altering consciousness.”

“Messing with your head.”

“That girl’s parents still have her in a cage in upstate New York. It’s a pretty nice setup. Acres to run on. Raw meat twice a day. She got out once and tried to maul their mailman.”

“Hell on a manicure.”

“She had him down on the ground and was chewing on his calf. We covered it up as a mental breakdown. Manuscript paid for all of her care and was suspended from activity for a semester.”

“Harsh justice.”

“I didn’t say it was fair, Stern. Not much is. But I’m telling you, you cannot trust your own perception tonight. Manuscript’s magics are all about tricking the senses. Don’t eat or drink anything. Keep your wits about you. I don’t want to have to send you upstate with your own ball of yarn.”

They followed a cluster of girls dressed in corsets and zombie makeup down the narrow alley and in through the side door. Henry VIII’s wives. Anne Boleyn’s neck was covered in sticky-looking fake blood.