My eyes appraise the cave around us of their own accord. The beach we're on stretches out to both sides, out of reach of the flickering candlelight we carry. The wall doesn't stay smooth forever; this end seems to have held the focus of whoever carved this place for human consumption. I grab Exie's arm and drag us both in the direction that stays broad for longer, with more protrusions roughening the cave's gangrenous walls. My gamble pays off. The footsteps are still circling slowly down the stairs by the time we reach an outcrop large enough to shelter us. Exie ducks beside me as I blow out the candle. Pitch darkness slams down around us. My free hand Catholic-crosses me of its own accord. I can't even bring myself to be mad at the superstitious impulse, knowing what I know.

If we want to relight the candle, the rocks here may be too damp to strike a match.

The demon might know we're here. He could tell whoever's coming, or whoever knows about this place.

We'll be cornered if they come.

My eyes stray around the cave, but the darkness is so absolute, my eyes have begun to fill it with psychedelic mirages of their own invention. Pulsing waves of color dance across my vision until I close my eyes, at which point they only intensify. If I force my mind hard enough, I can almost reconstruct a mental image of the glassy dark pool an arm's length away from me, sitting still and silent like the corpse version of water. I will never stop appreciating the irony of how hard I wished for a lake when I first arrived at Melliford Academy. I was so prepared to fling myself into it and swim across to safety.

This pool isn't safety. If the inscription on that altar is to be believed, it's the place where a fallen angel hit the ground hard enough to drive him all the way to the underworld.

I hope he got some good bruises on his ex-angelic ass for that.

The approaching footsteps stop. I hold my breath like that will do anything at all, and dare to peek up over our protective stone buttress. There's nothing to see. I'm hit with the mental image of someone standing on the opposite shore, watching us. The tinkle of a distant lantern makes me startle so hard, Exie seizes my sleeve again. Light springs to life down the tunnel. It's not candlelight. It's green. I sink down again as the footsteps resume, once again approaching.

I know these footsteps. I've heard them before.

There's a gap in the rock near my shoulder, just wide enough to peek through without being seen. Exie and I crowd together to press our eyes to it, braced against each other so we don't slip and give our eavesdropping away. Only Exie is surprised when Headmaster Massingham shuffles from the tunnel we came in along. He holds a green-glowing lantern aloft in one frail hand. In its ghastly cast, he looks even older than the last time I saw him. I find myself begging the stones not to make him slip, but that's a reflex from some spare reservoir of social propriety beaten into me by my parents. I don't care if this man is a senior who could break six bones on a slip-and-fall down here where nobody will hear him scream. He's cult-spawn. I hope the rock treats him harshly.

The rock, to my chagrin, shows no more malice than a sessile lump of geology normally can. Grandpa Massingham makes it to the altar and sets his lantern reverently down on it. It might be my imagination, but the glow seems to brighten in contact with the stone. I don't know how it's glowing. I've seen chemical reactions shed light like this, but the ones I know about are usually toxic. He must have come up with an alternative to avoid carrying open flame down here into the den of a creature purgeable by fire.

On the other hand, at least we now have confirmation of that vulnerability.

Grandpa Massingham digs around in his pocket and comes up with a book that makes Exie's hand tighten on my arm again. We both know that cover decor. Massingham flips through the fragile pages until he comes to one that seems sufficient for his purposes. It's my turn to startle as a surprisingly strong tenor pierces the cave's loaded silence. Age has not weakened Massingham's singing voice. He eases into a hymn I've never heard before, its haunting melody somehow extra resonant in the cave, like the two were made for one another. Knowing this cult's history, I wouldn't be surprised.

The hymn runs for only two verses. When it wraps up, Massingham pockets the hymnal again, then presses his palms together at an angle like a prayer slipped slideways. His hands make an X in the lantern's silhouetting glow. Or maybe it's a pair of angel wings. He begins to sway gently, robes swishing along the ground as he rocks from side to side. He's mumbling something. I watch, fascinated. Whatever he's communicating with has him in a trance soon enough, eyes creepily half-closed and voice sing-song in a way that just sounds inhuman.

A moment later, he flinches. His hands press harder, rising, fingers clasped momentarily before they resume their angelic interpretation. He lifts them several times. The murmuring intensifies. I hear what I'm pretty sure is an apology, then a very clear, "—almost done" whose context I can't identify. I'd forfeit shoes forever to be close enough to listen to this unhinged rambling, demon or no demon. I have a feeling it'd make so much sense of this school.

"Just a little further," says Massingham, clearly this time, like he's raised his voice in protest. "There will be enough pages. This year will be enough."

He flinches again and hunches down, cowed. When he resumes his murmuring, it's once again unintelligible. He bobs his hands a second time, a pigeon pantomime that's so absurd in mime, I almost find it funny. He begins to nod along. "Yes, yes," he murmurs, audible again. "Yes, we'll find it. I will not let you down."

All at once, he goes still. I wait with bated breath to see if the demon has arrived to smite him. When Massingham moves again, though, he simply lifts his head. His motions have lost their trance-like cadence, and he reaches for the lantern just as a voice calls down the hallway from the school. Massingham drops his hand and turns slowly.

"You may come," he calls.

Footsteps patter down the stairs. There's a brisk striding through the total darkness of the tunnel, which discharges Mrs. Hardwick a heartbeat later.

"Ah, Agatha." Massingham actually smiles, though it's the kind of smile I see people force when they're trying and failing to reassure others that everything's okay. "Did you recover the page?"

My heart skips several beats. Mrs. Hardwick's face is grim as she reaches into her pocket and draws out a handkerchief that she unfolds like it's ancient paper. There's nothing but a grey smudge in the middle of it. Massingham runs a finger through it, disturbing its color consistency. They found the ashes of the paper dove we burned.

Mrs. Hardwick keeps her voice quiet, though there's no one else here to listen in. Or maybe the demon is listening. "The judged has fallen unconscious and been transferred to the infirmary. The bond may be salvageable with another page, but we shall want to hurry before it weakens too far to retain its bonded memories."

Exie's hand is tightening on my arm again. Tighter than every other time combined. She'll attempt an impromptu amputation at this rate.

"Of course," says Massingham, nodding like this is a perfectly reasonable exchange. "We shall treat it like we did that incident two years ago. Have other students asked?"

"We told them the judged was resting and cannot take visitors. He was... a popular one, Leander. It wasn't a good person to have this happen with."

Leander.

Leander Massingham. It's very on-brand for me that my first thought is back to the bet I made with Exie when we first began investigating this school. She stuck a veto clause into it: whoever confirmed the identity of the commissioner of the school's angel paintings would win the bet automatically. The name on those little plaques was Leander Massingham.

This school's headmaster is the fourth prophet of the Cult of Miranda, as I have henceforth decided to call it for lack of any better name. If my mind decides to mangle that and present me with the Cult of Mastema, Melliford, or Massingham, I don't really care either way. At this point, they're all interchangeable. The spectacular lack of surprise I feel about this revelation, meanwhile, maintains my interest for about as long as a bad math lecture. Which is good, because that entire sequence flashes through my consciousness in the span of the silence between the two teachers. 

"Well, let us get to it then," says Massingham, and picks up the lantern again. "You and Gervase separate the other judged in the event that this is less than an unfortunate accident. I will be in the infirmary if you need me."

"Will you need any assistance with the ritual?"

"The offer is appreciated. Hadwin and Phillipa should be sufficient help, though. Your priority should be the other students. You know many of them personally."

Exie's grip slips from my arm. My heart takes a plunge at its absence, then a steeper skydive as her fingers brush against my hand instead. She laces them through mine and squeezes. Any other time, my brain would combust spontaneously, but the sudden clarity of the situation means I haven't lost enough mental faculties to catch fire just yet. Though combustion may not be a bad thing, if we're dealing with a flame-sensitive demon here. Silver linings.

I squeeze Exie's hand back.

We crouch there together, silent in the darkness, until the two teachers' voices are winding their way up the staircase at the tunnel's end. I count my own heartbeats to distract myself into staying stationary, then switch to counting seconds when my heartbeat proves rudely hasty. We're too far away to hear the open or close of the painting at the top of the stairs, but voices echo along these stone walls, so I can only assume we're safe when both teachers' prattling cuts short. My legs protest vehemently as I rise to my feet, pulling Exie with me.

"He's in the infirmary," she whispers. "Des? We need to get him back."

She's here to figure out what happened to her brother—and we've found a way she might be able to save him, if I'm correct in my interpretation of Massingham and Mrs. Hardwick's exchange. Barnabas is out cold and has been taken to the school sick bay. I don't know where it is, but Exie's done her own exploring, and we still have Clarice on the outside. If she hasn't found a way to pilfer at least one shiny scalpel from an infirmary supply bin, I'll be very surprised.

The bond might be salvageable with another page, but we shall want to hurry before it weakens too far to retain its bonded memories.

Mrs. Hardwick's words are half gibberish to me, but they tell us one thing: we cut some demon leash on Barnabas when we burned his paper dove. If any "bonded memories" associated with it have a hand in his zombie mimicry, we want those memories to fade. We want that bond to weaken. But that means reaching Barnabas before the school does. If I had my choice of mischief, I'd spy on that ritual and leave again without intervening. But Exie's hand is trembling in mine, and her whole body leans forward in the darkness, straining towards the exit we'll need to take to start this operation. She's here to save her brother, which means saving Barnabas is our trial run. We just need to not get caught.