“But why?” Nathaniel broke in. “Why create such a large circle? Ordinary pentagrams work perfectly well. There’s no reason he could possibly . . .” He paused, his narrowed eyes boring into Prendergast. “Ashcroft needed something from you before he could complete the ritual. What was it?”

Prendergast returned Nathaniel’s glare. Animosity darkened his features. “A name. That’s what I’ve been guarding all these years.”

“A name,” Nathaniel echoed flatly.

“You know of lesser demons, fiends and goblins and so on, the lowest subjects of demonic society. And you know of the highborn demons who rule them, like your demon there. But the highborn are ruled by something else in turn. On the Otherworld’s throne sits a being of almost limitless power—a creature called an Archon.”

Both Nathaniel and Elisabeth turned to Silas. His face was as inscrutable as a marble carving, but his yellow eyes, fixed upon Prendergast, seemed to glow with a cold inner light. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded. Prendergast was telling the truth.

A humorless smile twisted Prendergast’s mouth. “Cornelius and I were close friends, or so I thought. I told him of my travels in the Otherworld. We theorized that the Archon’s true name could be used to summon it, supposing a sorcerer could assemble a ritual equal to the task, which I did not believe possible. For years, the matter never rose again between us. Then, one day, he asked me for the Archon’s name. By then he had already begun building the Great Libraries. When I realized what he was planning, and refused to tell him, he flew into a rage. Until that moment, I believe he truly expected me to help him. He viewed the Archon as a resource, something that could be harnessed and controlled for the betterment of mankind. . . .”

“Progress,” Elisabeth murmured. How ignorant she had been, they all had been, raising their glasses in praise of Ashcroft’s plan.

“Arrogance,” Prendergast corrected. “There is no controlling a being like the Archon. Yet Cornelius’s heir is going to attempt the summoning. Tonight.”

She looked to Silas. “What will happen if he succeeds?”

“If the Archon is permitted to enter your realm, its power will destroy the veil that separates our worlds.” Silas’s lips thinned. “Demons will run free, slaughtering your kind with abandon.”

She stood so quickly that the blood rushed from her head. “We must stop him,” she said, glancing to Nathaniel in appeal. The hopelessness she saw in his eyes sent a jolt through her stomach.

“Even the full strength of the Magisterium would take hours to breach Ashcroft’s wards. We don’t have that much time. He’ll have finished the ritual by then.”

“Then you go directly to Harrows,” Prendergast said, “and prevent the final sacrifice.”

“But it’s a three-day journey,” Elisabeth protested.

“Not necessarily.” Prendergast gripped the nearest shelf and wrenched himself to his feet. He staggered deeper between the broken shelves, trailing his fingers along the jars, skulls, and books that lay tumbled along them. Finally he dragged out a chain, on the end of which hung an onyx stone. No, not a stone—a round crystal vial, filled with blood.

“I alone discovered the means by which to travel between dimensions, to fold reality like a tapestry, joining one location to another. The magic lives on in my blood. Since I no longer possess a true physical form, this is the final sample remaining.” Bitterness warped his mouth. “And here I am, about to hand it over to a Thorn.”

Elisabeth couldn’t stand the mistrust etched across his face. “Nathaniel isn’t Baltasar,” she blurted out. “I swear to you, he’s different.”

Prendergast gave her a sour look. “There is enough blood to transport the three of you to Harrows and back.” He threw the vial to Nathaniel, who caught it one-handed, startled. “Use it carefully, boy. It will exact a toll.”

As Nathaniel ducked his head through the chain, Prendergast limped away. He set a chair upright and then leveled a bleak stare at the overturned table. Elisabeth lifted it back into place for him, even knowing her efforts wouldn’t do any good. The embers had eaten away another several feet of the floorboards. In minutes, the section they were standing on would be consumed, and the table would topple into the void.

Another tremor shook the workshop. Wood groaned, and more jars smashed around them. Prendergast’s fingers spasmed on the chair’s backrest.

“What about you?” she asked. “Can we take you with us?”

He shook his head. Slowly, as though every joint ached, he eased himself into the chair, facing the approaching darkness. “Go, girl,” he said in a rough voice. “My time is finished. Pray that yours meets a better end.”

THIRTY-ONE

ELISABETH FELL. IMAGES whipped past like scenes glimpsed through the window of a runaway carriage. Darkened hills. Trees silhouetted against the night sky. Countryside spread beneath a crescent moon. And stranger vistas, like a forest of gray, twisted branches shrouded in mist, and a ruin overgrown with luminous flowers. They were not hurtling through the mortal realm or the Otherworld, but somewhere in between.

She couldn’t close her eyes. In this place of nothingness she felt no wind, no breath, only the pressure of Nathaniel’s hand gripping her own, accompanied by the endless sensation of falling.

And then wind slammed against her body. It tore the breath from her lungs, whipped her hair around her face. Cold pierced to the marrow of her bones. The ground reeled beneath her as though she had been spinning in circles; the stars whirled overhead.

She staggered, only for her boot to meet empty air. An arm hooked around her waist and yanked her back. Stones tumbled from the lip of rock where she had stood a second before, plunging silently toward the trees far below. The three of them had materialized on a cliff’s edge. Stunned, she took in the dizzying drop as Silas dragged them away from the precipice.

“We seem to be in the right place,” he remarked, “but you may wish to take more care with your aim on the return journey, master.”

Nathaniel laughed, a wild sound. Then he bent over and retched. Something dark spattered the pine needles underfoot.

“It is not his blood, Miss Scrivener,” Silas said when she cried out in alarm. He steered Nathaniel toward a boulder and firmly sat him down before he fell over.

Of course. The vial hung half-empty against Nathaniel’s chest, the upper portion of the crystal coated in a red slime. In order to harness Prendergast’s magic, he had had to drink it. He’d explained the principles of the spell as they’d leaped from the disintegrating Codex back to his study, scrambling to tug their boots and coats on over their nightclothes. This was blood magic, strictly banned by the Reforms, which Elisabeth thought he had declared altogether too cheerfully as he’d raised the vial to his lips.

“Are you all right?” she asked, a twinge of nausea stealing through her relief.

Nathaniel grinned at her, even though he still looked slightly peaked. “Don’t worry, I’ve swallowed far less wholesome substances. Once, for instance, I was permanently banned from a lord’s estate for—”

“Let us save that story for another time, Master Thorn,” Silas interrupted, ignoring Nathaniel’s frown. “If memory serves, the Inkroad passes by this hill, and the Great Library lies less than a quarter mile onward. You will be able to reach it in a few minutes.”