To find a portal to the afterlife. To steal a soul from hell. It\'s a simple plan, except that people who go on this journey rarely return. But Halsey Stern is determined to get Darlington out of purgatory, even if it costs her her future at Letha and Yale. After being banned from any attempts to save the boy, she cannot turn to the Ninth House for help, so a team of dubious allies is assembled to rescue the gentleman from Letha. Together, they will have to overcome a maze of cryptic texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the most closely guarded secrets of the societies and break all possible rules in the process. However, the members of the faculty begin to die one by one. Alex knows that these are not just accidents. Something deadly is on the prowl in New Haven, and if she\'s going to survive, she\'ll have to overcome monsters from her own past and the darkness that permeates the walls of the university itself.