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The beasts stretched their wings in acknowledgment, then began prowling back and forth, eerily lissome despite the stony heft of their forms. Their grace took nothing away from their fearsomeness, and Fia and Penbrook scuttled back as a grating growl scraped up from their throats. But they were no longer interested in the humans before them. At attention after whatever trouble had arrived on the ground floor, the gargoyles guarded the archives as they were meant to, teeth gnashing, claws extended, prepared to lash out at the least provocation.

With Jasper holding a startled Andromeda as if she were the most delicate of flowers, Fia climbed to her feet, tugging a rather limp Penbrook up beside her. Her heart pounded in a panicked rush. “Grace and Montrose are down there.”

Where everyone was screaming.

“And so, it seems, is Smith.” Penbrook’s mouth drew a firm line, and he pressed a fist to his stomach. Seemed to feel the tug of that dark spell drawing him and the other magician together.

“You shouldn’t have called him,” Fia said, but of course, it was already done. Nothing he could change. Nothing she hadn’t done herself.

“Perhaps not,” he grudgingly admitted, striding toward the staircase, where the wails from below spiraled even more shrilly.

“Let me down.” Andromeda squirmed out of Jasper’s arms in a cloud of tulle, and he looked bereft, missing something he never had in the first place. Leaning heavily on the banister, she followed Penbrook and Fia down the first few steps before they all turned back, realizing Jasper hadn’t moved. “Aren’t you coming?”

“I am… duty bound to the archives.” Jasper straightened his back, as if he might stand in league with the mighty gargoyles despite how completely perishable he appeared. More likely, Fia thought, he’d cower behind them.

So they left him there with his rook swooping wildly above.

Down they went, following the terror-filled cries, Fia’s feet fast on the stairs while Penbrook and Andromeda made their best effort to keep up on their sleep-heavy limbs.

On the third floor, the lamps flickered ominously.

On the second, the air grew colder and the lights snuffed out.

Before they reached the ground floor, Fia slowed. Strings of golden webbing curled around the banister, stretching thin and gossamer from spindle to spindle. It looked like lace, delicate and finely woven, a pearlescent sheen that offered a hint of eerie light. She might have thought it ornamentation for the masque—it was All Hallows’ Eve, after all—if not for the fact that the webbing hadn’t been there before. And that it felt so very wrong, what with the spiders scuttling across the threads, legs like needles, bodies like golden plum pits.

“Don’t touch it,” she warned, and they continued past, descending silently to the ground floor, which was suddenly much too quiet.

Fia didn’t want to hear any more screaming, but there should have been voices in the vast room beyond. Should have been footsteps or the fluster of rooks flapping their wings. But the only sound was a terrible humming.

She clenched her jaw against the vibration in her teeth.

Then braced herself against the sight before them.

The webbing stretched and stretched, encompassing the whole of the library. Finely spun, the strands ribboned from bookshelves and pedestals and wound like garlands around the librarian’s throne.

It caught ankles and wrists, elbows and waists.

It laced over the faces of every guest in the gala like the most hideous masks, adorned not with jewels or feathers, but with more of those horrible little spiders.

Fia fumbled on the last step, and Andromeda bumped into her back with a horrified gasp. Before them, hundreds of attendees stood unnaturally still in their loveliest vanilla-white gowns and suits of black, limbs caught in the magical webs. But their faces—oh, their faces—twisted beneath the iridescent veils, their mouths moving with muffled pleas. All Fia could hear, could feel in her bones, was that incessant humming.

Her eyes scraped the room for Grace and Montrose, trapped among the rest, but try as she might, Fia couldn’t find her friends. Please, she thought. Please be all right.

Penbrook stepped forward, but she caught his arm, madly wishing that if they just stayed right there on the last step, nothing could harm them.

“Penbrook?” she whispered, wary of disturbing the quiet.

“Oh, what’s there to fear when death is already coming for me?” His low voice guttered like a candle, less resigned than resolute.

Fia lost her grasp on his sleeve as he stole into the great web-strung room, his suited figure a dark silhouette among the shimmering gold latticework. Something slinked in the shadows ahead, and Penbrook walked purposefully toward it, undaunted.

“Smith,” he said, like a curse.

The other magician turned, a too-sharp movement, as if he wasn’t used to hearing his own name. The spiderwebs cast a strange light across his face, sharpening his features—and, disconcertingly, softening his smoke-gray eyes.

That was all it took for Fia to break loose of her frightened-doe daze. As she stepped toward Penbrook, her slipper couldn’t have made a sound, but somehow he seemed to sense her behind him and magicked a soft, rain-scented rush of wind to warn her back. He meant to face Sebastian Smith alone.

She didn’t like it and nearly stormed forward—but right then, maybe Grace and Montrose needed her more than Penbrook did. He advanced on Sebastian, his hands curled into fists at his sides, as if he might go without magic entirely and simply wrestle her mother’s spellbook from the other magician’s pocket.