“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.