Everly Sterling had been tracking Arden Grimm for six blocks when he turned up the drive of a manor she had spent three years pretending did not exist. Black obsidian. Red glass. A gate that hummed when she stepped near it. She had come to this city to close a rift that widened every night, and she needed a demon's favor to do it, and eventually she needed Lucifer's favor to reach the library below Hell where a spell waited that could name the family she had never been told about. Arden was not supposed to be part of any of that. Arden was supposed to be her competition. "You're going to dinner," she said, catching his sleeve at the top step. "With him." "I am attending an intimate gathering with a Duke of Hell," Arden said. He did not slow. "Please do not ruin my posture. I have been practicing." He looked her over once and his mouth pulled tight. "Go home, Sterling." She went in with him instead. The dining room smelled like iron and orange peel. Azraxis sat at the head of a table long enough to seat twenty, alone, eating something that was still moving. He looked up at Everly and smiled without surprise. "Two demonologists. Better." He set down his fork. "I want a crown. Ivory. Twisted. It belonged to an angel who fell and kept his taste. Bring it to me and I sign whatever you like." A shadow cat with three yellow eyes slid off the sideboard and landed at his heel. "She goes with you," he told Arden. "I want to see how you work together." Outside, Arden rounded on her under a streetlight. "You should not have been able to walk through that gate. It reads intent. It reads power. You read as something I did not expect." His purple coat caught the wind. His eyes were furious. "What are you, Sterling." "Late for dinner," she said. "Same as you." She started walking. The cat padded after them, dissolving into smoke and reforming a pace ahead. She kept her hands in her pockets so he would not see them shake. Arden hated being surprised. Arden was surprised. That would cost her later. She thought about the claw marks on the wall on Sixteenth, eight feet up, and kept walking. They found the trail before dawn, in a records room Arden bribed his way into. The crown had a keeper. The keeper had a name. Arden read it aloud twice, because the first time he did not believe it. A fallen angel called Zereth held the Ash Crown, and had held it for longer than the city had existed. Arden closed the ledger. "Well," he said. "I have never robbed an angel before." He smiled at her like a man who had already decided to enjoy it. Everly did not smile back. She had a name now. She had a partner she did not want. And she had until Azraxis got bored.

Everly and Arden spent two days chasing Zereth's name through every archive they could bribe or pick a lock into. Nothing. The fallen angel had guarded the ivory crown for centuries, and no living record said where. Arden sat on the floor of a shuttered book stall at dawn, coat spread around him, and admitted defeat by not speaking for a full minute. The shadow cat watched them from a shelf, three yellow eyes half-lidded. Everly counted the hours she had left before Azraxis lost patience. Then she stood up and said the thing she had been avoiding since Tuesday. "I know someone who will know. You are not going to like it." "I love not liking things," Arden said, already on his feet. "Lead." She drew the door in an alley behind a laundromat, with chalk and a drop of her own blood. The door opened onto a room that had no business existing. Soft couches shaped like clouds. A ceiling painted with stars that moved. Pink pillows. A crescent moon lamp. Arden stopped in the doorway and made a noise she had never heard from him before. On the largest couch sat a demon the size of a doorway, olive-skinned, black horns curling back from his head, wearing gray pajamas. He looked up from a mug and his tired red eyes went bright. "Little bird," he said. He was across the room before Everly could brace, and he lifted her off the ground in a hug that smelled like cedar. "Put me down," Everly said, muffled against his shoulder. He did. He kept one huge hand on the back of her head a moment longer, checking. Then he looked at Arden. The warmth went out of his face. "Who." "Arden Grimm," Arden said, bowing. "Charmed. Astonished. Deeply curious about several things." His eyes flicked to Everly. "Little bird?" "Don't," Everly said. Belphegor guided her to the couch, sat her down, and pushed the mug into her hands before she could refuse. She drank. It tasted like honey. "I need to find a fallen angel. Zereth. A Duke gave me a job and a clock. I can't find where he is." Belphegor's jaw shifted. He looked at her the way he had looked at her when she was six years old and lost. "Azraxis," he said. Not a question. She nodded. He was quiet for a long moment. "Zereth is in the Abyss. Bottom of the pits. Locked in." He sat down across from her, and the couch groaned. "I will get you in. And out. You do not go alone." Arden, still standing, still staring, finally spoke. "Sterling. Your brother is a Prince of Hell." Everly did not answer. She held the mug and watched Belphegor's face, and thought about the door in Hell she had walked through at six, and how she still did not know why she had been there. She had a location now. She had a guide. She had one more secret Arden would not stop pulling at.

Belphegor walked them to a black door set into a wall of raw stone. He pressed his palm against it and the door split like skin. Heat rolled up through the crack, sour and wet. "One hour," he said. "After that the door shuts and I cannot open it again from this side." He looked at Everly the way he had looked at her on the couch. "Ignore what you hear down there. Ignore what you feel. It is not yours. Find Zereth. Come back." Everly nodded. Arden gave a small bow that was almost serious. Then they went through. The pit dropped in tiers, each one wider and darker than the last. A narrow path spiraled the wall. Everly kept her hand on the stone and counted her steps to have something to count. Voices came out of the rock. Her mother's voice, which she had not heard in fifteen years, saying her name from a doorway. A child crying that sounded like Belphegor at six. Arden's breath hitched once behind her. She did not turn around. "Keep walking," she said. "None of it is real." "I know," Arden said. His voice was tight. "Talk to me anyway. Tell me something true. It helps." She told him. She told him about the door in Hell she had walked through when she was six, and how she still did not know who had put her on the other side, or why Belphegor had been waiting. She told him she became a demonologist because a rift had opened near her school and a boy she knew had come out of it wrong. She told him about the rift bleeding into her city right now, three weeks old, growing every night. "I want Lucifer's favor," she said. "I want into his library. There is a spell there that names blood. I want to know whose I am." Arden was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "Sterling. That is the least ridiculous thing you have ever told me." The path ended at the spire. It rose from the pit floor like a black cage twisted around itself, thorned iron wound through the bars, red light bleeding from the door at its base. Inside, on the stone, a gaunt figure sat with his back to them. Silver hair to the shoulders. Two burned stumps where wings had been. He did not turn when they entered. "You are not guards," Zereth said. "You want the crown." "We do," Everly said. She kept her voice level. "Azraxis sent us. Tell us your price." Zereth turned his head. His eyes were pale and steady. He looked at her a long moment, then at Arden. "My wings," he said. "And out of this pit. That is the price." "We cannot give you either," Arden said. "Then get someone who can," Zereth said. "Lucifer. No one else. Bring me his word and the crown is yours." Everly checked the watch on her wrist. Thirty-eight minutes. She looked at Arden. He nodded once. "We will bring it," she said. Zereth turned his face back to the wall. They climbed. The door was still open when they reached it. Belphegor pulled them through and shut it behind them. Everly stood in the soft light of his room with her hands shaking and a new name to carry upstairs. She had her price. Now she had to walk it to the throne.