“You should stay behind me,” he said when he caught up to her, vexed by the petulant edge to his own voice. She was already on the next level, looking around with eager eyes. This floor resembled the VIP section of a nightclub, the lights dimmer, the bass muted, but there was a dreamy quality to it all, as if every person and every item in the room was limned in golden light.

“It looks like a music video,” Alex said.

“With an infinite budget. It’s a glamour.”

“Why did he call you the gentleman of Lethe?”

“Because people who can’t be bothered with manners pretend to be amused by them. Onward, Stern.”

They continued down the next flight of stairs. “Are we going all the way down?”

“No. The lowest levels are where the rites are performed and maintained. At any given time they have five to ten magics working internationally. Charisma spells and glamours need constant maintenance. But they won’t be performing any rites tonight, just culling power from the party and the city to store in the vault.”

“Do you smell that?” asked Alex. “It smells like—”

Forest. The next landing brought them to a verdant wood. The previous year it had been a high desert mesa. Sunlight filtered through the leaves of a copse of trees and the horizon seemed to stretch on for miles. Partyers dressed in white lolled on picnic blankets that had been laid out over the lush grass, and hummingbirds bobbed and hovered in the warm air. From this level on, only alumni and the current members who attended them were permitted.

“Is that a real horse?” Alex whispered.

“As real as it has to be.” This was magic, wasteful, joyous magic, and Darlington couldn’t deny that some part of him wanted to linger here. But that was exactly why they had to press on. “Next floor.”

The stairs curved again, but this time the walls seemed to bend with them. The building somehow took on a different shape, the ceiling high as a cathedral, painted the bright blue and gold of a Giotto sky; the floor was covered in poppies. It was a church but it was not a church. The music here was otherworldly, something that might have been bells and drums or the heartbeat of a great beast lulling them with every deep thud. On the pews and in the aisles, bodies lay entwined, surrounded by crushed red petals.

“Now this is more like what I expected,” said Alex.

“An orgy in a flower-filled cathedral?”

“Excess.”

“That’s what this night is all about.”

The next level was a mountaintop arbor, which didn’t even bother trying to look real. It was all hazy peach clouds, wisteria hanging in thick clusters from pale pink columns, women in sheer gowns lazing on sun-warmed stone, their hair caught in an impossible breeze, a golden hour that would never end. They’d walked into a Maxfield Parrish painting.

Finally, they arrived in a quiet room, a long banquet table set against one wall and lit by fireflies. The murmur of conversation was low and civilized. A vast circular mirror nearly two stories high took up the north-facing wall. Its surface seemed to swirl. It was like looking into a huge cauldron being stirred by an invisible hand, but it was wiser to understand the mirror as a vault, a repository of magic fed by desire and delusion. This level of Manuscript, the fifth level, marked the central point between the culling rooms above and the ritual rooms below. It was far larger than the others, stretching under the street and beneath the surrounding houses. Darlington knew the ventilation system was fine, but he struggled not to think about being crushed.

Many of the partygoers here were masked, most likely celebrities and prominent alums. Some wore fanciful gowns, others jeans and T-shirts.

“Do you see the purple tongues?” Darlington asked, bobbing his chin toward a boy covered in glitter pouring wine and a girl in cat ears and little else carrying a tray. “They’ve taken Merity, the drug of service. It’s taken by acolytes to give up their will.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“To serve me,” said a soft voice.

Darlington bowed to the figure dressed in celadon silk robes and a golden headdress that also served as a half-mask.

“How may we address you this night?” Darlington inquired.

The wearer of the mask represented Lan Caihe, one of the eight immortals of Chinese myth, who could move amongst genders at will. At each gathering of Manuscript, a different Caihe was chosen.

“Tonight I am she.” Her eyes were entirely white behind her mask. She would see all things this night and be deceived by no glamour.

“We thank you for the invitation,” said Darlington.

“We always welcome the officers of Lethe, though we regret you never accept our hospitality. A glass of wine perhaps?” She raised a smooth hand, the nails curled like claws but smooth and polished as glass, and one of the acolytes stepped forward with a pitcher.

Darlington gave Alex a warning shake of his head. “Thank you,” he said apologetically. He knew some members of Manuscript took personal offense that Lethe members never sampled the society’s pleasures. “But we’re bound by protocol.”

“None of our suggestions for the freshman tap were accepted,” said Lan Caihe, her white eyes on Alex. “Very disappointing.”

Darlington bristled. But Alex said, “At least you won’t expect much from me.”

“Careful now,” said Caihe. “I like to be disarmed. You may raise my expectations yet. Who glamoured your arms?”

“Darlington.”

“Are you ashamed of the tattoos?”

“Sometimes.”

Darlington glanced at Alex, surprised. Was she under persuasion? But when he saw Lan Caihe’s pleased smile, he realized Alex was just playing the game. Caihe liked surprises and candor was surprising.

Caihe reached out and ran a fingernail up the smooth skin of Alex’s bare arm.

“We could erase them entirely,” said Caihe. “Forever.”

“For a small price?” asked Alex.

“For a fair price.”

“My lady,” said Darlington in warning.

Caihe shrugged. “This is a night of culling, when the stores are replenished and the casks are made full. No bargain will be made. Descend, boy, if you wish to know what’s next. Descend and see what awaits you, if you dare.”

“I just want to know if Jodie Foster is here,” Alex murmured as Lan Caihe returned to the banquet table. She was one of Manuscript’s most famous alums.

“For all you know that was Jodie Foster,” said Darlington, but his head felt heavy. His tongue felt too big for his mouth. Everything around him seemed to shimmer.

Lan Caihe turned to him from her place at the head of the banquet table. “Descend.” Darlington shouldn’t have been able to hear the word at this distance, but it seemed to echo through his head. He felt the floor drop away and he was falling. He stood in a vast cavern carved into the earth, the rock slick with moisture, the air rich with the smell of turned soil. A hum filled his ears and Darlington realized it was coming from the mirror, the vault that still somehow hung on the cave wall. He was in the same room but he was not. He looked into the mirror’s swirling surface and the mists within it parted, the hum rising, vibrating through his bones.

He shouldn’t look. He knew that. You should never look into the face of the uncanny, but had he ever been able to turn away? No, he’d courted it, begged for it. He had to know. He wanted to know everything. He saw the banquet table reflected in the mirror, the food upon it going to rot, the people around it still shoveling spoiled fruit and meat into their mouths along with the swirling flies. They were old, some barely strong enough to lift a cup of wine or a withering peach to their cracked lips. All but Lan Caihe, who stood illumined by fire, the golden headdress a flame, her gown glowing ember red, the features of her face changing with each breath, high priestess, hermit, hierophant. For a moment, Darlington thought he glimpsed his grandfather there.

He could feel his body quaking, felt dampness on his lips, touched his hand to his face and realized his nose had started to bleed.

“Darlington?” Alex’s voice, and in the mirror he saw her. But she looked the same. She was still Queen Mab. No … This time she really was Queen Mab. Night ebbed and flowed around her in a cape of glittering stars; above the oil-black sheaf of her hair, a constellation glowed—a wheel, a crown. Her eyes were black, her mouth the dark red of overripe cherries. He could feel power churning around her, through her.

“What are you?” he whispered. But he didn’t care. He went to his knees. This was what he’d been waiting for.

“Ah,” said Lan Caihe, approaching. “An acolyte at heart.”

In the mirror, he saw himself, a knight with bowed head, offering his service, a sword in his hand, a sword in his back. He felt no pain, only the ache in his heart. Choose me. There were tears on his cheeks, even as he felt the shame of it. She was no one, a girl who had lucked into a gift, who had done nothing to earn it. She was his queen.

“Darlington,” she said. But that was not his true name any more than Alex was hers.