I swear this whole cult lives in a rabbit warren. Or lived, I guess; the tunnels down here look so old, I half expect to find three-hundred-year-old treatises to love or copulation graffitied on its walls from bygone occupants. There's certainly enough room to sustain a sizable secret operation. If they packed enough food in the cellar-like cold rooms, and were willing to drink from the demon's pool, they could probably even withstand a proper siege.

We've got less than half an hour until Exie and her small army need to be back in class. That's not to say the teachers won't come looking for them before then, but several students assure me their compatriots at ground level have got us covered in that respect. I decide to believe them. If the school proves them wrong, at least we've got the teachers outnumbered.

The scout-student leads us down the tunnel to whatever room they found. Everyone resumes their guarding positions as we cluster around the new door. Sure enough, there are faint sounds of motion from the other side: a shuffling of shoes and the occasional faint cough. I surreptitiously ready a match. If we bust down this door and find actual demons locked up on the other side, I want to be ready to burn something. I no longer take chances with this school.

The two human brick walls from before line up to annihilate this door, too. Exie rolls her eyes.

"We have a lockpicker here," she says.

The pair steps back with sheepish looks. Juliet accompanies Barnabas to the door, where he plucks a small metal tool from some secret compartment on his shoe and gets to work. It's another minute before the lock clicks open. Barnabas retreats immediately and is surrounded by protective students once more. It's kind of endearing. If this is the attitude the student body has towards each other in the face of adversity, we might actually stand a chance in this fight.

Nobody seems to want to touch the door. Exie steps in again, directing the two bodyguards to make the first move. One tentatively takes the door handle while the other braces to intercept anyone or anything that launches through when it opens. On a count of three, the door swings wide.

Nothing lunges out. Students inside step back from the light we carry, shielding their eyes. Colson II is here, which is really all we need to know. We've found the right people. I bob and weave in the candlelight, trying to get a better view into the room. My heart clenches when I spot Clarice. She's standing like the rest, but there's no recognition in her eyes. At least she's alive. We can get her back. We have to.

"Everyone hand over your doves," says one burly student.

Nobody in the room moves.

Exie releases my hand and steps forward. "We're here to free you," she says. "If you want to be freed, step forward now."

It's a fruitless endeavor, I already know. I've been glared at by several of these possessed kids for so much as touching matches in the school chapel. Sure enough, not one student volunteers for exorcism, and several begin to glare. Exie returns to my side with a nod around her. Her strongest compatriots surge into the room. We're fortunate, really, that none of the judged students thus far have been on the particularly muscled side. Clarice nearly makes a bolt for it, but Gilbert intercepts her.

"Be careful," I gasp.

"I'm trying."

He grunts as an elbow connects with his abdomen. Clarice is awfully slippery when she wants to be. Gilbert, luckily, has at least twenty centimeters on her, and a reach to match. With another student's help, he manages to restrain my friend.

I want to be the one to do this. I avoid Clarice's eyes as I dip a hand into each of her pockets. I find her dove on the third try. Clarice goes completely still as I withdraw it. I don't look up. I don't want to give her father the satisfaction of seeing his daughter possessed by an actual demon—not the one he long thought had a hold on her. The dove crinkles in my hand as I fight not to clench my fist around it. I want to crush it like charcoal. But only fire will end this madness.

"You have it?" says Gilbert.

I nod. He and his fellow restrainer march Clarice back to the cell. She's the last student to return to it, and struggles only briefly as Gilbert and his companion propel her back into captivity and shut the door. The burly students brace themselves against it like Mastema himself will burst through the moment they're not ready for him. I hope the wood is thick enough to muffle the screams. When I turn around again, Exie is accepting the last few doves from other students. The walk to her side takes forever. Her eyes search my face when I join her.

"Clarice," I say, and hold out the last dove.

Exie's gaze drops. Rather than take the cursed thing, though, she points me to the pitiful, fragile-looking pile in the middle of the hallway floor. A fire so small won't even risk our suffocation in here. All this grief from a few ancient, folded bits of paper.

But I know it's more than just paper. And so I lay Clarice's dove with the rest and look to Exie. She just nods back to me.

I pull out a match.

Silence falls in the hallway. The scritch of phosphorus on stone echoes sharp off the close stone walls. Flame leaps to life. I drop to one knee and touch it to Clarice's dove with ceremonial finality.

The moment of silence only lasts a dozen heartbeats. Fire seizes ancient paper and begins to devour it, and just like that, the judged students snap from their trances. One slams against the cell door, snarling like a wild animal. The bodyguards' arms shudder as a second joins the assault. The captives batter the door's other side with increasing ferocity as the fire spreads, snatching wings and tails of paper doves, until the first one falls to ashes, and the first student in the cell screams.

If the teachers find us, it will be now. Our strongest fighters are tied up just holding the door, which has no latch, and no key to close its lock again. Gilbert joins them, then Juliet. Other students take up fighting stances facing down both ends of the hallway, their expressions ranging from nervous to terrified. Only Exie remains resolute. She edges up to me and takes my hand again. I squeeze it, and she squeezes back.

Another dove. Another scream.

Another.

Another.

One by one, the doves crumble into ash and glowing paper remains. The final scream cuts short, punctuated by a thump as the final student drops. Exie waits until even the final charred fragments of paper disintegrate, then leaps into action again.

"Open the door again," she says. "Each of you, grab a student. Haven, find a room we can guard better while they recover. Des—"

"Wait," I say. "Where in the tunnels are we?"

"Not far from the pool. Why?"

"Draw it for me."

She does, crouching to map out our location in the quickly cooling ashes on the floor. I can't fight a smile as my memories of a particular map in Mrs. Hardwick's office line up with Exie's crude rendition.

"This way," I say. I grab her by the sleeve and start up the tunnel. "We don't need a room when we can get them all the way out of the school."

"What?"

"The map, Exie. These are the other lines we saw on it. Most of them stay on the school grounds, but there was one on the side, remember? It ran all the way under the wall and off the map. We didn't think there was a town in that direction, but there doesn't need to be if it just leads outside."

"Or it's a dead end."

"Send your scout."

"On it," says Haven. "Which way?"

I point them in the right direction, and they dash off as fast as the lamp they're carrying will let them. A dismantled room lamp. I want to know how they got that off the wall. The students left behind with us gather up the fallen ones, now freed from their doves. If Barnabas is to judge, it'll be hours before they wake, but we're going to need that time for whatever Exie's planning anyway.

Exie and me, I correct myself. But it'll take time either way.

Footsteps race towards us up the hallway. I don't have time to panic before Haven dashes back to us, grinning ear to ear.

"You were right!" they say when they can speak again. "There's a door, and it's locked, but there's daylight on the other side."

"Barnabas?" says Exie over her shoulder.

"I'll come with you," says Juliet. I catch the glint of a knife in her hands as she tugs Barnabas's sleeve, and the two of them take off with Haven again. By the time we catch up with them, Barnabas has picked the lock on this door, too, and cracked open a portal leading straight outside.

We stumble to our freedom one by one. I grin like a demented fish as sunlight kisses my face again, and turn to find Exie doing the same. I want to run. Hail a carriage at whatever town we find first and hitchhike halfway to a city before the school realizes we've gone missing. When I turn around, Melliford Academy squats in the middle of the rolling, grassy land like the prison it is, its gothic towers spiny and foreboding, even beneath the sunshine's glare. Nothing will ever make that cathedral look welcoming.

There's still a demon in there. My momentary happiness bursts like soap bubbles as reality crashes back down around me. There's a demon, and running away will do nothing to save us if he succeeds in his plan to rise up against God. He'll take former students across the continent with him, including Exie's brother, if we can't get to him first.

Exie's brother, that is. Or maybe it's the demon himself that we need to face.

"What is it?" says Exie. She moves to stand beside me, watching me sidelong. I don't know what my face is saying.

"Where do you think he keeps the books?" I ask.

"That's what I was wondering, too. If I had to guess? Somewhere on the second floor."

"Not the tunnels?"

"We searched half the tunnels to find you. There's nothing habitable down there. But remember Colson? He was walking up the staircase when the dove dropped him. The teachers came down from upstairs then, too."

I would rather not remember Colson, but even that avoided memory loses its bite when I look around. The other students are laying the fallen ones out on the grass, their faces turned towards the sun. They look almost peaceful, lying there, waiting to wake up again. Even Colson II—now just Colson again—doesn't instigate those staircase memories anymore.

"Alright," I say. "Who's guarding these guys, who's the diversion, and who's sneaking?"

"You're supposed to be locked away," says Exie. "You should do the sneaking. How well do you remember the tunnel network on that map?"

"Well enough to navigate it, I think." I squint, calling up that particular memory. "That failing, we just break into Mrs. Hardwick's office again."

"Did I hear breaking and entering?" says a voice. Exie and I both turn to find Barnabas standing behind us. He still looks pale, but he's smiling, and there's a glimmer of the former suavity I recognize dancing about his dark eyes.

"If you're up for it," says Exie. "We're about to help Des raid the secrets of that school, and she could use a lockpicker."

"What's the diversion?"

I've never seen Exie's look turn as mischievous as it does then. Not just mischievous. Devious.

"That," she says, "is up to how well we can sabotage things once we're back inside that school."