Mr. Alvarez’s voice was gentle, but his words sliced into me. “Regardless of how he’s been living the past seventeen years, Verrick has been unsealed. Gideon is gone.”

“No,” I said. “I won’t believe that. I don’t believe that. There has to be some way to save him.”

“Maybe he doesn’t deserve to be saved,” Leon answered.

My eyes snapped to his. He was looking at me finally. His face was hard and angry.

“What happened at Gideon’s house?” Mom interjected, sinking down onto the couch beside me. “How is it that he got released?”

The scene replayed before me—Gideon’s fingers clasped in mine, our hands separating, the two of us flying apart, the look in his eyes in that final second before the world dimmed around me. If I could just rearrange events, I thought, reverse and rewrite them. This time, Gideon would stand, lifting himself up from the ground. He’d walk to me, take my hand. Shane would not appear. We would reach the stairs unhindered. We’d run.

“Audrey?” Mom asked.

“It was the Beneath. It unsealed him. I don’t know how.”

Mr. Alvarez gave me a quizzical look. “What do you mean, the Beneath?”

“It was the Beneath that killed the elders,” I said. The words came out in a rush. “Iris found me just before I went to Gideon’s. She said—she said the Beneath got woken somehow. And that it’s been growing in strength. That’s why there wasn’t any sign that Shane had stopped being neutral. He didn’t. It just…sort of took him over, I guess. And Gideon—the Beneath can’t inhabit him, so it unsealed him. That’s what Iris told me.”

Mr. Alvarez blinked. “A physical manifestation of the Beneath?”

“I don’t know that you want to trust anything Iris has to say,” Mom said.

I shook my head. “No. She wasn’t lying about this. It’s what she’s been trying to tell me, the whole reason she came out from Beneath,” I said. “And she’s right. I felt it, Mom. At Sonja’s house. And at Gideon’s. It was the same thing I felt when Iris and I went Beneath.”

I didn’t know how to explain it. How to describe the abyss given form, a black hole that walked and breathed. And it wasn’t just sense or feeling, either. It had a smell. A taste. I could almost taste it now, in the stifling air of the living room, with the windows open and the humidity sticking in my lungs. Rancid and sickly sweet. My stomach twisted.

My face must have conveyed what my words couldn’t, because Mr. Alvarez said, “If that’s true, I’m not sure how we’re meant to fight it.” He sighed, tapping his fingers against his leg. “The elders might have had a solution, or at least some idea if anything like this has ever happened before. Maybe the other Circles will have information.”

“We fight Harrowers,” Mom said. “As many as it takes.”

“It may take a lot,” Mr. Alvarez said. His voice was grim. “That could be why there hasn’t been any Harrower activity at the other Circles. It could be they’re all converging here.”

I thought of Susannah’s army, the demons she had gathered just beyond the edge of the Circle, waiting to surge forth once the barrier was opened. That had been bad enough. Now I imagined all the Beneath teeming with Harrowers’ bodies, a sea of scarlet and silver clawing toward the surface.

Mom must have had a similar thought. “That’s not good,” she said.

“I don’t have any evidence to back it up,” he added. “It’s just supposition.”

“A worrying supposition.”

Leon’s eyes narrowed. “And so, just like that, you’re going to forget that Verrick is running free? Do you remember what Verrick did?”

“I’m not forgetting anything, Leon,” Mom answered. “But if what Audrey says is true, we may actually have bigger problems.”

“Audrey is not an impartial source in this.”

I hopped to my feet. “You think I’m lying?”

“You’ve been lying for months.”

“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t say anything.”

“It’s the same thing, and you know it is,” he shot back.

“Argue about this later,” Mom said.

But I didn’t stop talking. I had to make Leon understand. My hands balled into fists. “I couldn’t tell. The Kin would have killed Gideon. The elders would have killed him, the way they killed Brooke.”

My words hung in the air. There was a long moment of silence, broken only by drone of an engine from outside.

Finally, Mr. Alvarez said, “Brooke Oliver’s powers were sealed.”

I shook my head. “I asked Esther. She told me the truth.”

“Audrey…” Mom said. She covered her mouth with her hand. “Jesus.”

Mr. Alvarez stared at me. He looked as though he’d been slapped. Or like he was about to be sick. His dark eyes were huge in his face. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. Though I’d grown accustomed to seeing him outside of school, I still had trouble separating Ryan Alvarez, leader of the Guardians, from the stern, no-nonsense math teacher he always presented in class. Now, abruptly, I remembered how young he actually was. Too young to lead the Kin, Esther had told me. Too raw.

Too innocent.

He swallowed. A muscle in his jaw twitched. Then, without saying another word, he turned and left the room.

Mom rose from the couch and followed him. “Ryan—”

He quickened his pace. I heard the front door slam and then his car roll down the driveway.

Mom stopped in the living room doorway, her hands on her hips. “Perfect,” she sighed. After a second, she turned to face Leon and me. “I need to see what I can do to handle this mess. I’m going to speak with Esther. Don’t go anywhere, either of you, until we figure out what’s going on.”

“Wait,” I said, as she headed for the door. “Just…so you’re aware. Iris is no longer Beneath. I don’t know where she went, but I think she stayed up here.”

Mom sighed again. “Any other complications you want to throw my way?”

“Esther said we’re being Harrowed.”

“Well, that isn’t a surprise at least,” she said. “If the Beneath is suddenly sentient and hijacking bodies, I doubt it’s doing it to make friends.”

I gripped my arms. “You think this is the start of a Harrowing?”

“We’re going to end it before it gets that far.”

“Are you still going to kill Shane?”

She didn’t answer. I would have said more, but I suspected I’d already used up my It’s Not His Fault argument on Gideon, and any other words of that nature would not be well-received. I watched her leave.

And then turned to face my reckoning.

We watched each other in silence, the length of the living room between us. I lingered near the edge of the couch, my fingers grazing the soft fabric of the upholstery. I wanted to go to Leon, but I sensed he would retreat if I did. There was a wary look in his eyes, and his entire body was tensed, like a deer ready to bolt. It reminded me of the night he’d first arrived in the Cities, nearly four years ago now. In the late-summer twilight, the moon above us had been hazy and glazed with heat, the stars hidden by the glow of the city. I remembered how Leon had parked his motorcycle at the end of the driveway and stepped slowly forward through the grass, a backpack slung over his shoulder. His helmet had matted his hair to his head, and in the thin half-light, the blue of his eyes had been darkened to black. There had been a hint of bewilderment within his serious expression—a sense of puzzlement, like he wasn’t certain where he was, or if he should be there. But then he’d looked at me, and we’d smiled at each other, and the lost look in his eyes had dissolved.

I studied him, noting the differences four years had brought. He was just as skinny as he’d been that night, but he was taller now, and his shoulders had broadened. His hair was shorter, though the ends still curled slightly. There was a spot of blood on his shirt, a faint streak turning brown. My blood, I realized, from when he’d found me at Gideon’s. And I knew a smile wouldn’t solve this problem.