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A network of chambers branched off a central shaft. Each one was a cell meant to hold something capable of shattering mountains. And all of them were tied together into one massive binding circle that kept the whole prison sealed.

Donovan’s wide eyes lifted to hers. "That's the underground prison complex. The one with all the chambers."

"Precisely what I saw." Izzy tapped the phone screen, then the parchment, lining them up edge to edge. The seven notches scorched into the invitation's border matched the seven joints where the diagram's main chambers fed into each other. It was the same, down to the lopsided gap on one side where the drawing had shown a wall different than the rest. "It’s not the whole prison, though. I think it’s this one weak room. He recreated it for her."

"Which means he's seen the drawing," Donovan muttered. "Sarah told us that book won't open for anybody but her. Ithuriel said the ink waits for the mark. How was he able to see it? Or did someone else draw it for him?"

"I love when things are clear as mud." Izzy turned the phone face down, because looking at it any longer wasn't going to give her the answers. "A fallen archangel with no Guardian blood in him can’t get close enough to memorize a diagram that's supposed to be invisible to him."

"Who the hell would have shown him? Sarah certainly didn’t." Donovan reached for the invitation, careful of the scorched notches. "Which means that either the book isn’t as secure as we've all been told. Or somebody in this city has had eyes on those pages that we don't know about."

"Neither of those options makes me want to sleep tonight." Izzy dragged the map closer and focused on the old riverbed. She traced it and noticed a section that looked as if the same shape had been burned into a piece of parchment. "If he's got the layout, he doesn't need to keep testing the whole prison for weak spots. He already knows which one to lean on. He can ration his power without wasting a single ounce."

"Then the invitation isn't really an invitation." Donovan set the parchment down and looked at her instead of the map. "It's a confirmation. He's telling her he already knows exactly where to press."

"And daring us to figure out how he got the floor plan before we figure out how to stop him from using it." Izzy snatched a fresh pin from the tin, got up, and jabbed it through the map, dead center in the loop. "I hate that he's organized. He should be drinking in his freedom and causing trouble. Give me a demon who just wants to eat somebody. It’s far easier to lop a head off than get ahead of the devil who does his homework."

"You forget that homework can be graded." Donovan's mouth twitched with the semblance of a smile, though it was the ghost of one worn thin by exhaustion and two broken ribs. "We’ve got a leak. We need to find out who's been near that book besides Sarah."

"Maybe there’s no leak. What if the book's rules aren't what Ithuriel told her they were?" Izzy tapped the pin twice, seating it deeper into the corkboard. "Either way, somebody's been where they shouldn't have. I'd very much like to know who before Lucifer collects on that invitation."

Amelia strolled into the room, holding a shard of something black and glassy between two fingers as if it had personally offended her. " I just pulled this out of the flowerbed out front, and it's still warm."

She dropped into the chair beside Izzy and set the shard on the map, right over the loop of red string. The coincidence of the placement made the back of Izzy's neck prickle. "It's flenser hide. Or what's left after one of them died. Were you cleaning up? I thought the junior angels were doing that.”

Amelia nodded in agreement. “I wasn't outside cleaning or collecting souvenirs. I was tracing the source of the summons. As you know, you don't pull a coordinated strike to divide two significant forces without someone anchoring it. I traced it back to one point." She tapped the map, and her finger landed less than an inch from where Donovan's was already resting. "Same spot you two are staring at."

"That's not proof of anything on its own," Donovan said, though Izzy knew him well enough to know that he didn't believe his own objection.

"It is once you combine it with what we just found." Izzy turned her phone back over and held the photo of the Codex page up beside the burned invitation one more time. She handed both to Amelia. "Lucifer summoned the demons from the weak chamber he traced onto that parchment. He's pulling them straight from the one weak room in that whole prison, because he already knows precisely where it is."

Amelia’s eyes went wide, and her chin dropped to her chest. Her gaze moved from the phone to the parchment and back with the same slow disbelief. "That page shouldn't exist outside the codex. Ithuriel was clear on that part if nothing else."

She flexed her fingers like they'd cramped from using her magic too long. "Either somebody's been in that shop reading pages they should not be able to see or touch. Or the Codex isn’t as secure as we have been telling ourselves. I bet Camael’s good bourbon that it’s a combination of both. It’s the only thing that makes sense."

"You people bet his bourbon like it's Monopoly money." Izzy plucked the shard off the map before it could singe a hole through the paper and turned it over. "One of these days he's going to run out, and you're going to have to bet actual currency like normal people."

"Where's the fun in that?" Amelia reached over and stole the shard back, tucking it into a fold of cloth for protection. "How's the patient?"

"Vertical but lying about not being in pain," Izzy said, at the same moment Donovan said, "Fine."

Amelia's eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. "Wonderful. Both of you are very convincing."

Sarah appeared in the doorway a beat later with one of her Nana's journals hugged to her chest. "I found something,” she blurted as she entered the war room. “In the part of the ledger that even I couldn't read an hour ago."

She dropped into an open chair and flayed the journal open. The page was dense with the same cramped handwriting Izzy remembered her complaining about at the shop, except now there were lines in the margin that hadn't been there before. "There's a second method for how a seal can be written or cast. It’s called twinned working. Two bonded bloodlines, sharing the draw, can do it together. This was created to keep one person from being burned out."

"Bonded how?" Izzy asked. She didn't need to look at Donovan to know he'd already gotten there ahead of her. She preferred having confirmation.

"Mated," Sarah clarified. "Ithuriel told me to lean on my mate. I thought that was him being cryptic for the sake of being cryptic. It wasn't. It's the actual mechanism. If Abraxos is anchored to me when I cast the seal, I don’t take the cost entirely on myself. I wouldn't carry all of it alone."

"That's good news," Amelia began, "which means there's bad news coming. Nana never gave you one without the other. What's the catch?"

Sarah's thumb traced the margin note absently. "The anchor has to be present at the convergence point when the ink goes down, and the magic is expended. He can’t be nearby or flying overhead, ready to swoop in. He will need to be standing in it, unshielded, the whole time it takes to finish the work."

She looked up, and the expression on her face made Izzy's stomach drop before she finished explaining. "Which means if Lucifer wants me weak and alone, the fastest way to guarantee that is to make sure Abraxos can't stand there with me."

"Which is exactly what four dozen demons on this lawn just tried to accomplish," Donovan pointed out as the pieces slid into place.