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He chuckles at that as we pull up to the gate. The cop frowns at the car as Victor rolls down the window.

“Private party,” the cop says dully. “Please turn around.”

I guess Victor’s ancient sedan doesn’t look like the typical ride for Wolrath’s guests. I hold my breath, but Victor is as smooth as silk as he says, “I know. We have two invitations.”

Then he hands them over. The cop blinks down at them, then looks back up at Victor. Shifts his gaze over to me.

“So you do,” he says. “Go on through.”

A second later, the gate grinds open, and Victor pulls into the drive.

I let out my breath and will my muscles to relax. Victor, however, doesn’t seem bothered at all. “That was easy,” he says once we’re fully cleared of the gate, the car’s tires crackling over the loose gravel

“Was it?” My stomach’s in knots—from anxiety, from excitement. “It was the car, you know. It’s all wrong.”

“Yeah, he’ll remember it for sure.” Victor glances over at me, gas mask gleaming. “We’ll have to swap it out when we leave.”

I nod wordlessly, although in truth I can’t think about that part now. I can only focus on the party. What we’re going to do at the party. How I’m going through with the one thing I’ve always wanted to do, even if I buried it so deep down inside myself I convinced myself I didn’t.

There’s a valet service waiting at the end of the drive, and my anxiety flares again. But Victor just hands over the keys like he’s not bothered at all by the prospect of giving away our only means of escape. And it’s not like I can ask him about it, either. The valet is smiling at us, handing us a ticket, tossing the keys to his partner.

I remind myself that Victor knows what he’s doing, far more than I do.

I clutch the invitations as we walk up to the front door. That’s not guarded by a cop but by a big, burly man in a caveman costume. “I’ll just need to see your invitations,” he says cheerfully, and I can hardly breathe as I hand them over.

This man looks at them much more closely than the cop at the gate did. He also scans them with his phone, which nearly makes me fall apart in terror on the spot. But I suppose Sarah really did get the real things, because the phone chimes appreciatively, and the man says, “Welcome to the party, Mr. and Mrs. Astor.”

Victor glances over at me when he says that. I can practically feel him smiling beneath his gas mask, and as we slip into the big, dazzling foyer, he wraps his arm around my waist and tilts his head down and says, “Maybe we can take that name. I like how it sounds, Mrs. Astor.”

“Don’t be dumb,” I say, even though the implication makes butterflies flap around in my belly. Victor laughs softly and presses his hand against the small of my back to guide me forward into the big, expansive living room.

There are tons of people there, milling around in bright, extravagant costumes. Most of them are in masks, thank god. It does make it all so much easier to be anonymous.

Of course, it also makes it harder to find Nicholas Wolrath.

Victor catches my hand in his, pulling me forward into the crowd. Music thumps out of hidden speakers, and orange and purple lights wash over the space, including the temporary dance floor set up in the center of the room. Beautiful women in skimpy costumes dance together while the actual guests hang around the periphery, talking in groups of two or three. Some of them waltz over to a table in the corner, on which there’s a trick-or-treat pail filled with multi-colored pills beside a distressingly large pile of what I can only assume is cocaine.

“How are we going to find him?” I whisper to Victor, squeezing his hand in mine. I can’t feel his skin, though, not with both of us wearing gloves.

“They’re going to show the way.” His voice is low and quiet, and at first I don’t know what he’s talking about. But then he tilts his head a little, like he’s listening to something. And that’s when I understand. The gods. They’re… helping him.

Helping us.

“They’re here?” I whisper, sweeping my gaze around. The whole room is bathed in strange, flickering shadows, but there are too many people crowded around, and the music is much too loud, pounding deep in the marrow of my bones. I can’t hear anything else.

“Mmhmm.” Victor grips my hand tighter. “Like I said, they want this for you.” His gas mask turns to me, and I think of the first time I saw it, standing by my car on an empty highway as he stepped out of the woods.

I was scared, seeing it then. I was prey.

Not anymore.

“I can’t feel them,” I say softly.

“They’re here. Come on.” He tugs on my hand again, and we wind deeper into the party, past the drug table, past the dancing girls, past a huge, glimmering bar stocked with three very busy bartenders. I can’t feel the gods, but I can feel something—a hot, sweeping urgency. A tide, almost, dragging us toward a spiral staircase draped with rattling plastic skeletons. Up, I think, a few seconds before Victor’s foot touches the first step. I follow him, my heart pounding.

Wolrath’s up there.

I don’t know how I know. I just do, the way I knew Adrian was staying at the Clifwell Inn or the way I knew the directions into town. It’s like someone told me, but I don’t remember the telling.