Chapter 30

Alex sprints to Il Bastone, fearing she’s been barred, but the house admits her and strips the hitchhiking Gray. Outside, a demon wearing Hellie’s face lurks. When Dawes and Tripp arrive, the demon charges; salt burns it, and everyone retreats inside. Mercy and Turner join them as more figures appear: Hellie, Blake Keely, Detective Carmichael, and Spenser—demons mimicking their dead.

They regroup in the library at Dawes’s insistence, shivering from the underworld’s chill and shaken by what they brought back. While they research defenses, Dawes confirms the demons look disturbingly solid. The team debates the demons’ aims; Alex identifies the emotion they provoke as hopelessness, tailored to each of them, noting how Hellie’s double now mirrors Alex’s own wary anger.

Alex proposes a history: Skull and Bones likely built and used the Gauntlet in the 1930s. She links the vampire Linus (Lionel) Reiter to that expedition, arguing he returned with a demon that drained his hope and ultimately replaced him. Dawes adds that one theory equates vampires with demons, fitting what Alex witnessed in Old Greenwich.

Turner drives the stakes home: if they don’t send these beings back, the doubles will become vampire-like versions of them. Tripp admits Spenser’s barbs hit true, showing how the entities weaponize despair. Alex steadies him, reminding everyone the demons feed on defeat and must be denied it.

They compare encounters: most demons only spoke, but Hellie’s double attacked Alex, prompting Turner to insist they plan for violence. As tension peaks, Mercy reveals she may have found something useful in the library. They decide to eat, continue researching, and prepare for a second descent to finish the ritual and force the demons back.