Kate Masters perched on a stool by the door with a hand stamp, but Darlington snatched Alex’s wrist before she could offer it up. “You don’t know what’s in the stamp dye,” he murmured. “You can just let us through, Kate.”

“Coatroom to the left.” She winked, red glitter sparkling on her lids. She was dressed as Poison Ivy, construction-paper leaves stapled onto a green bustier.

Inside, the music thumped and wailed, the heat of bodies washing over them in a gust of perfume and moist air. The big square room was dimly lit, packed with people circling skull-shaped vats of punch, the back garden strewn with strings of twinkling lights beyond. Darlington was already starting to sweat.

“Doesn’t look so bad,” said Alex.

“Remember what I said? The real party is down below.”

“So nine levels total? Nine circles of hell?”

“No, it’s based around Chinese mythology. Eight is considered the luckiest number, so eight secret levels. The staircase represents a divine spiral.”

Alex shucked off her coat. Beneath it she wore a black sheath dress. Her shoulders were strewn with a cascade of silver stars. “What are you supposed to be?” he asked.

“A girl in black with a lot of eye makeup on?” She pulled a crown of plastic flowers sprayed with silver paint from her coat pocket and settled it on her head. “Queen Mab.”

“You didn’t strike me as a Shakespeare fan.”

“I’m not. Lauren got a Puck costume from the Dramat closet. Mercy’s going as Titania, so she shoved me in this and said I could be Mab.”

“You know Shakespeare called Mab the faeries’ midwife.”

Alex frowned. “I thought she was the Queen of the Night.” “That too. It suits you.”

Darlington had meant it to be a compliment, but Alex scowled. “It’s just a dress.”

“What have I been trying to tell you?” Darlington said. “Nothing is ever just anything.” And maybe he wanted her to be the kind of girl who dressed as Queen Mab, who loved words and had stars in her blood. “Let’s walk the first floor before we tackle what lies beneath.”

It didn’t take them long. Manuscript had been built on the open floor plans popular in the fifties and sixties, so there were few rooms or passages to investigate. At least on this level.

“I don’t get it,” Alex murmured as they glanced around the scrubby backyard. It was too crowded for comfort, but nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happening. “If tonight is so special to Manuscript, why perform a rite with so many people around?”

“It’s not a rite precisely. It’s a culling. But that’s the problem with their magic. It can’t be practiced in seclusion. Mirror magic is all about reflection and perception. A lie isn’t a lie until someone believes it. It doesn’t matter how charming you are if there’s no one to charm. Everybody on this floor is powering what happens below.”

“Just by having a good time?”

“By trying to. Look around. What do you see? People in costumes, horns, false jewels, adorning themselves in tiny layers of illusion. They stand up straighter, suck in their stomachs, say things they don’t mean, indulge in flattery. They commit a thousand small acts of deception, lying to each other, lying to themselves, drinking to the point of delusion to make it easier. This is a night of compacts, between the seers and the seen, a night when people enter false bargains willingly, hoping to be duped and to dupe in turn for the pleasure of feeling brave or sexy or beautiful or simply wanted—no matter how fleetingly.”

“Darlington, are you telling me Manuscript is powered by beer goggles?”

“You do have a way of cutting straight to it, Stern. Every weekend night, every party is a series of these bargains, but Halloween compounds it all. These people enter the pact when they walk through that door, full of anticipation. Even before that, when they put on their wings and horns”—he shot her a glance—“and glitter. Didn’t someone say love is a shared delusion?”

“Cynical, Darlington. Doesn’t suit you at all.”

“Call it magic if you prefer. Two people reciting the same spell.”

“Well, I like it,” said Alex. “It looks like a party from a movie. But the Grays are all over it.”

He knew that and yet it still surprised him. After so long, he felt he should be able to sense their presence in some way. Darlington tried to step back, see this place as Alex did, but it just looked like a party. Halloween was a night when the dead came alive because the living were more alive: happy children high on candy, angry teenagers with eggs and shaving cream tucked into their hoodies, drunk college students in masks and wings and horns giving themselves permission to be something else—angel, demon, devil, good doctor, bad nurse. The sweat and excitement, the over-sugared punches loaded with fruit and grain alcohol. The Grays could not resist.

“Who’s here?” he asked.

Her dark brows shot up. “You want specifics?”

“I’m not asking you to endanger yourself for the sake of my curiosity. Just … an overview.”

“Two by the sliding glass door, five or six in the yard, one by the entry right behind that girl working the door, a whole herd of them clumped by the punch. Impossible to tell how many.”

She hadn’t missed a beat. She was aware of them because she was afraid of them.

“The lower floors are all warded. You don’t have to worry about that tonight.” He led her to the top of the stairs, where Doug Far was leaning against the banister, making sure no one without an invite proceeded below. “Blood magic is strictly regulated on Halloween. It’s too appealing to the dead. But tonight Manuscript will siphon off all the desire and abandon of the holiday to power their rites for the rest of the year.”

“Partying is that powerful?”

“Anderson Cooper is actually five foot four inches tall, weighs two bills, and talks with a knee-deep Long Island accent.” Alex’s eyes widened. “Just be careful.”

“Darlington!” Doug said. “The gentleman of Lethe!”

“You stuck here all night?”

“Just the next hour and then I’m gonna go get high as fuck.”

“Nice,” said Darlington, and glimpsed Alex rolling her eyes. Other than the night they’d gotten drunk after the disastrous Aurelian ritual, he’d never seen her take even a sip of wine. He wondered if she partied with her roommates or if she’d chosen to stay mostly clean after what had happened to her friends in Los Angeles.

“Who’s this?” Doug said, and Darlington found himself annoyed by Doug’s lazy perusal of Alex’s costume. “Your date or your Dante?”

“Alex Stern. She’s the new me. She’ll be watching over all you dullards when I finally get out of here.” He said it because they expected him to, but Darlington would never leave this city. He’d fought too hard to remain here, to hold on to Black Elm. He would take a few months to travel, visit the remnants of the library cave in Dunhuang, make a pilgrimage to the monastery at Mont Sainte-Odile. He knew Lethe expected him to apply to graduate school, maybe take a research position in the New York office. But that wasn’t what he really wanted. New Haven needed a new map, a map of the unseen, and Darlington wanted to be the one to draw it, and maybe, in the lines of its streets, the quiet of its gardens, the deep shadow of East Rock, there would be an answer to why New Haven had never become a Manhattan or a Cambridge, why, despite every opportunity and every hope for prosperity, it had always foundered. Was it merely chance? Bad luck? Or had the magic that lived here somehow stunted the town even as it continued to flourish?

“So what are you?” Doug asked Alex. “A vampire? Gonna suck my blood?”

“If you’re lucky,” said Alex, and disappeared down the stairs.

“Stay safe tonight, Doug,” Darlington said as he followed her. She was already out of sight, vanishing down the spiral, and she shouldn’t be on her own tonight.

Doug laughed. “That’s your job.”

The blast of a fog machine struck him full in the face, and he nearly stumbled. He waved the mist away, annoyed. Why couldn’t people just have a quality drink and a conversation? Why all of this desperate pretense? And was some part of him jealous of Doug, of everyone who managed to be reckless for a night? Maybe. He’d felt disconnected from everything since he’d moved back to Black Elm. Freshmen and sophomores were required to live in the dorms, and though he’d visited Black Elm religiously, he’d liked the feeling of being pulled into other orbits, yanked forcibly from his shell by his well-meaning roommates, drawn into a world that had nothing to do with Lethe or the uncanny. He’d liked Jordan and E.J. enough to room with them both years, and he was grateful that they’d felt the same. He kept intending to call them, to invite them out. But another day would go by and he’d find it lost to books, to Black Elm, to Lethe, and now to Alex Stern.