For a moment the static rose to a roar and he had to pause and force it to the back of his mind.

A crowd of vampires, most of them wearing white, was moving steadily toward him from either direction, passing all around, each headed his or her own way. Alex turned to the wall, pretending to study a bulletin board, looking for a map.

There wasn’t one. For a moment he listened to the voices as they passed, hearing the vampires talking among themselves. He could pick up nothing of import—most of them seemed to be students concerned about classes. Here and there he heard the term Icemaker, but nothing he could grab on to.

Then he heard voices on a higher register and looked down the hall. A bunch of student vampires, appearing to be in their mid-teens, were moving in a group. They were young ones—or at least vampires who had been young when turned.

A tall vampire woman with long, brown hair came out of the cafeteria and seemed to stop and look at Alex as she passed, slowing a bit.

Determined not to stand still, Alex waited until the classroom-size group had nearly passed and then he slipped in behind them.

For about fifty yards he walked with the short vampires. One toward the end of the line looked back and slowed to walk next to him.

It was a vampire boy with black hair and white eyes, his hood down. “Are you one of Icemaker’s army?” he asked.

Alex kept walking, nodding inside his hood. “Yes,” he rasped. “We, ah, serve the master in all things.”

“Do you all talk like that? That must be really weird. I thought only the really ancient ones talked that way. Are you very old but got changed as a boy?”

Alex looked sideways, trying not to let too much of his face show. “I don’t remember anymore,” he said. Ridiculous answer.

His eye started to twitch. He felt instantly what was happening and swore inwardly. A speck of dust fell from his eyelash into his right eye and he blinked rapidly. “I mean, it was very long ago,” he stuttered to the boy. He tried to control his blinking, but the soft plastic of the contact was shifting under his eyelid. It was losing its grasp on his eyeball. Beside him, the boy was trying to get a better look at him as he kept talking.

“I’m kind of new at this—I only got changed recently,” the boy said. “But I’m getting better. Some of us are going to sneak out later and go hunting.”

Alex said, choking back the itch in his eye, “Hunting?”

“Absolutely,” said the boy. “But don’t tell anyone. One girl didn’t come back after we hunted this painter the other night. It’s against the rules, you know. But still.”

“But still,” Alex repeated. Don’t let him see your face. Don’t touch your face. The contact rolled in his eyelid as he blinked uncontrollably and felt it pop out.

He was blind in the right eye. Half his vision, including the boy, went into a dull, indecipherable blur.

He panicked for a second; he hated being blind, he couldn’t be blind here, not now. The contact hadn’t fallen—he felt it resting on his cheek, slick and stuck for a moment.

“You know, you kind of smell funny,” the vampire boy said.

Get away. He shrugged as a response to the boy, reaching inside his pocket for the stake and dropping back.

The crowd was moving toward the next corner, but on his left, in his clear vision, Alex spotted a large, black door along the hallway. He prayed that the contact would stay stuck to his face if he just moved steadily enough. As he passed the door, he slid in one quick movement to the wall, grasped the brass handle, and opened the door, slipping out of the hall into a room.

He immediately grabbed the contact, knowing his hands were filthy but having no other choice, and hurriedly popped the lens into his mouth. He kept it on his tongue, willing himself not to swallow, not to allow his mouth to fill too much with saliva. He could wash it with his tongue if he was careful enough.

Alex looked around and nearly gulped in surprise.

The room was entirely made of gold—actual, literal gold, with a golden slab at the center. Instantly he saw that the slab was not resting on any support; it floated in the air as if suspended from invisible wire. Something the size of a birdcage, two feet tall and rounded at the top, sat on the slab, covered in a golden blanket.

Alex kept his mouth shut, tumbling the contact lens around on his tongue as he spun back. The door behind him appeared as a thinly demarcated line engraved in a wall that shimmered in gold as well. The walls shone and went on in a circle. No right angles. No decoration.

Fix your eye.

Alex furiously rubbed his hands as clean as he could get them on the tunic, swishing the contact against the roof of his mouth. After a moment he stuck out his tongue, grasping the lens tenderly between his right thumb and forefinger.

He held it up, using his good left eye to visually inspect the outline of the contact. Alex frowned—he had it turned inside out. It didn’t look like a bowl. The curve of the contact lens was lipped out at the edges. Alex popped it back into his mouth and moved his tongue, feeling it switch its orientation. He stuck out his tongue again and grabbed it.

Alex looked close with his good eye. The contact was mottled with spit, but unblemished and whole. He pried open his right eye and pressed the contact in, wincing as he swirled his eye around, letting the lens settle back into place. After a moment he was able to blink. Man, I hate these things.

Alex swiveled in a circle. What is this place?

The birdcage with the blanket stared back at him in silence.

He had no choice. He had to see.

Slowly, stepping on a soft golden floor that was burnished to an extreme shine, Alex approached the slab. As he drew near he became aware of a dull thrumming sound.

Alex reached for the blanket, watching his own human hand as if stunned that he dared. He grabbed the top of the blanket and ripped it back.

Before him lay the world.

It spun slowly in the air, the vaguely misshapen world itself. As Alex peered closer he saw that this was not simply a globe—it was the earth, in some magical way. He saw textures and crevices, vast swaths of white concrete stretching through North America, glass and steel towering in the Northeast.

He circled the globe, tracing the line of the Great Wall of China through Asia.

There were golden dots shining from the globe, groups of them in Europe, America, Asia, everywhere.

He circled a second time against the slow revolution of the earth, peering closely at Europe, trying to find Switzerland.

A large glob of gold shone from Lake Geneva.

This was a map of vampires. In his mind he remembered the slogan of the Polidorium: There are such things.

Alex reached out a finger to touch the Atlantic.

It felt wet to the touch and he scoffed lightly. Then the room erupted with alarms.

As blaring horns rang out, Alex threw the blanket back over the vampire earth and bolted for the door. He pushed at it, and in a second was out in the hallway.

The door slid back into place, looking no more impressive than it had before.

He took a half second to study the hall and saw now that fewer vampires were passing. Out here, he couldn’t hear the alarm. He kept moving.

Down the hall Alex stopped at another bulletin board with little note cards that read things like MUSICAL TRYOUTS and NEED A ROOMMATE/NONSMOKING ONLY. He turned his hood to the wall to lessen the exposure of his face to the passing students.

On one side of the board was a calendar with upcoming and current events listed, and Alex silently read them off.

His eyes landed on a notice that filled him with alarm: MIDNIGHT TONIGHT: PRESENTATION OF THE KEYHOLE SACRIFICE. DUNGEON AUDITORIUM. ALL WELCOME.

Keyhole sacrifice?

Keyhole?

His mind raced. There was something Sid had said, something Mary Shelley had put into Frankenstein when she revised it. Mary Shelley said Polidori had told a story about a skull-headed lady looking through a keyhole. And Sid had said that was made up, because Polidori was working on a story about Byron. Alex shook his head, wishing he could get Sid on his useless Bluetooth to talk him through it. Too many coincidences. Was it possible that somehow Frankenstein carried a clue?

Alex snuck a look at his watch: 11:42 P.M.

He had to move.

In the corner of the bulletin board Alex saw a campus map. The Dungeon Auditorium. He found its location and headed for the interior of the castle back the way he’d come.

Alex walked as quickly as he dared through the hallways, passing the golden map room and the cafeteria, until he entered darker, older interiors. The tile of the new buildings gave way to the rough-hewn stone of the castle. He joined a steady flow of vampires all heading in the same direction. Alex reached an open door into a circular stairwell that traveled down several flights. No one was paying attention to him as he descended, and after a moment he understood why. As he reached a large entryway where many vampires were entering, he felt the temperature drop mightily.

He pushed silently into an auditorium, past rows and rows of seats that were filling up.

Toward the front, with a backdrop of curtains, was a tower of ice that flattened out at the top into a circular raised stage. From the stage of ice rose a tombstonelike monolith, also ice, some ten feet high.

In the center of the monolith was a window, cut in the shape of a keyhole and framed by stone set into the ice. Before it stood Icemaker himself.

Alex stuck to the wall, reaching the corner and trying to melt into it. The lights dimmed.

“My children, what is your suit?” came the voice of Icemaker.

“We seek everlasting life,” the crowd responded.

“The time has come to become something new,” he said. “To speak to the demon-goddess Nemesis and beg her for our queen. All has been prepared.”

He held up a scroll. Alex stared at it, the carved animal head atop it—a fox? “In a few minutes’ time, at the start of what the mortals call the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows”—Icemaker looked up at the enormous clock, which read ten to midnight—“we will summon her and make our sacrifice.” He gestured dramatically toward the curtains in the back of the auditorium.

The crowd roared in approval.

Minhi and Paul had not been among the captives at the cafeteria. They were probably about to be the main course here. That meant they might be backstage even now. Alex started moving along the wall.