Speaking of ice…Alex sat in Secheron’s ice-cream parlor for the second time in his life, this time joined not just by Minhi, Paul, and Sid but also by Sangster.

“So where is he being kept?” Alex asked.

“We have refrigerated places,” Sangster said. “You don’t want to know where.” Sangster had decided he would speak as plainly as possible about his second job with the present company, mainly because they had already witnessed most of the pertinent stuff. He was protected by the insanity of what they might try to reveal—for who would believe any of it?

“Is this like in The Blob,” Alex asked, “where you attach a parachute to him and drop him in the Arctic?”

“The Blob?” Minhi said, as she sat holding hands with Paul. Alex felt an utterly tiny pang of jealousy. “That’s the best you can do, a fifty-year-old movie reference?”

“The Arctic is a lot warmer than it was when that movie was made, so any frozen monster dropped off there runs the risk of not staying frozen long.” Sangster sighed. “But that reminds me that we need to be on the lookout for the Blob. There’s always one more thing.” He laughed.

Alex nodded. One more thing. The Polidorium had discovered that the lake entrance to the Scholomance near the Villa Diodati was gone. The demonic school was unreachable for now.

Carerras had agreed not to call Alex’s father, after Alex pleaded with him. For now, that was a favor the Polidorium was willing to extend in thanks for his help stopping a clan lord. Alex himself would have to decide how to proceed with Dad. Since Dad had gone to so much trouble to cover up Alex’s first (unknowing) attack on a supernatural creature, he would surely whisk Alex out of here as well. And Alex wanted anything but that. Not with the Polidorium still in place. Not with these friends.

“What about the skeleton?” Alex asked. It was something that had been bothering him since that night, and of course he had not been able to go back down into the Villa Diodati, which had been cordoned off. The Polidorium’s cover story was that a tree had damaged the porch in the storm. “What about Claire?”

Sangster shrugged. “We’re watching,” he said. “But she hasn’t turned up.”

This didn’t happen: Alex Van Helsing didn’t stop all his vampire hunting training and turn instead to a quiet life of contemplation and study. That might have happened—in an infinite universe that had to happen sometimes—but it didn’t happen this time.

Because far below the waters of the lake, the Scholomance had other plans.