he’d been accusing, not Alex. The man who had murdered Tara. The man who had tried to
murder him. At least, Alex hoped that was the case. Daniel Tabor Arlington, always the gentleman, a boy of infinite manners. But what had he become?
“What you’re suggesting isn’t possible,” said Michelle.
“I know it sounds that way,” said Dawes. “But humans can become—”
“I know the process. But demons are created one way: the union of sulfur and sin.”
“What kind of sin are we talking about?” said Alex. “Masturbation? Bad grammar?”
“You’re in a graveyard,” chided Dawes.
“Trust me, Dawes. The dead don’t care.”
“There’s only one sin that can make a man into a demon,” Michelle said. “Murder.”
Dawes looked stricken. “He would never, could never—”
“You killed someone,” Alex reminded her. And so have I. “ ‘Never’ is a big word.”
“Darlington?” Michelle said incredulously. “The teacher’s pet? The knight in shining armor?”
“There’s a reason knights carry swords, and I didn’t tag you in so we could argue. You
don’t want to help, that’s fine. I know what I know: A hellbeast was sent to kill
Darlington. But he survived and that thing shat him out in hell. We’re going to go get him.”
“We are?” said Michelle.
“We are,” said Dawes.
A cold wind blew through the cemetery trees and Alex had to restrain a shiver. It felt
like winter trying to hold on. It felt like a warning. But Darlington was on the other side of something terrible, waiting for rescue. Sandow had stolen the golden boy of Lethe from this world, and someone had to steal him back.
“So,” she said as the wind picked up, shaking the new leaves on their branches, moaning over the gravestones like a mourner lost to grief. “Who’s ready to go to hell?”
The Houses of the Veil
“The Ancient Eight”
MAJOR HOUSES
Skull & Bones — 1832
Rich or poor, all are equal in death.
Teachings: Extispicy and splanchomancy. Divination using human and animal entrails.
Notable Alumni: William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, John Kerry.
Scroll & Key — 1842
Have power on this dark land to lighten it, and power on this dead world to make it
live.
Teachings: Duru dweomer, portal magic. Astral and etheric projection.
Notable Alumni: Dean Acheson, Gary Trudeau, Cole Porter, Stone Phillips.
Book & Snake — 1863
Everything changes, nothing perishes.
Teachings: Nekyia or nekromanteía, necromancy and bone conjuring.
Notable Alumni: Bob Woodward, Porter Goss, Kathleen Cleaver, Charles Rivkin.
Wolf’s Head — 1883
The strength of the pack is the wolf. The strength of the wolf is the pack.
Teachings: Therianthropy.
Notable Alumni: Stephen Vincent Benét, Benjamin Spock, Charles Ives, Sam Wagstaff.
Manuscript — 1952
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion.
Teachings: Mirror magic and glamours.
Famous Alumni: Jodie Foster, Anderson Cooper, David Gergen, Zoe Kazan.
LESSER HOUSES
Aurelian — 1910
Teachings: Logomancy—word binding and divination through language.
Notable Alumni: Admiral Richard Lyon, Samantha Power, John B. Goodenough.
St. Elmo’s — 1889
Teachings: Tempestate Artium, elemental magic, storm calling.
Notable Alumni: Calvin Hill, John Ashcroft, Allison Williams.
Berzelius — 1848
Teachings: None. Founded in the tradition of its namesake, Jöns Jacob Berzelius, the Swedish chemist who created a new system of chemical notation that left the secrecy of
alchemists in the past.
Notable Alumni: None.