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documents I’d removed from the package. I’d studied Greek in college but never taken to it as well as to Latin. My Greek teacher was a crazy man with a pointy beard, who used to slam the Liddell and Scott lexicon on his desk if we mistranslated a passage of Homer. I passed the documents on to Soheila. “It’s rumored that one of Alexander the Great’s generals was a nephilim and that he used Alexander’s conquests to spread the rule of the nephilim.”
    “We think they then held key positions in the Roman Empire,” Frank added, joining us at the desk. “And in the Roman Catholic Church after that. I think I may have had a few as priests when I was in Catholic school.”
    “But I thought the nephilim were descended from elves, not angels.”
    “They were,” Soheila replied, “but the nephilim weren’t happy with that origin story, so they created the story that they were descended from angels. They believed that when their fathers mated with human women, they created monsters, which the fathers then turned their backs on—the way God turns his back on the fallen angels. They say that when the last elf died, he shed a tear for his children and the tear turned into a stone.”
    “The angel stone,” Frank said. “I thought that was just a story.”
    Soheila laughed, a melodious sound that rustled the papers spread out on the desk. “What else do we have but stories? The angel stone is the one token that has power over the nephilim. I’ve heard that the witch hunts were finally stopped by using the angel stone.”
    “It’s true that the witch hunts were the last we’d heard of the nephilim,” Frank said. “We thought they’d died out.”
    “But clearly they simply went into hiding,” Soheila said. She held up a handful of papers from the desk. “There are reports here from heads of government and financial institutions. They’re everywhere. These are letters congratulating Duncan Laird on his takeover of Fairwick. They were planning this for years.”
    “But why Fairwick?” I asked. “Why would a little Northeast liberal arts college be so important to them?”
    “Because we had the last door,” Soheila answered. “The nephilim knew that the fey would stop them from taking their next step.”
    “Their next step?” I asked. But Frank and Soheila were too engaged in reading the papers to answer right away. If only my Greek were better, I thought, picking up one of the indecipherable pages. But then I recalled one of Wheelock’s translation spells.
    “Convertere,”
I said. Instantly, the words on the page resolved into English. The letter was from the president of a Swiss bank, assuring Duncan Laird that he had full support for Project NextGen.
    “What’s this Project NextGen?” I asked.
    Soheila looked up from the page she was reading. All the color had drained out of her face. Her amber-brown eyes had turned a sickly yellow. “I believe they are planning to use Fairwick students for breeding.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    “That’s … that’s …” I stuttered, unable to come up with the words to describe my disgust. Frank had no such trouble.
    “Loathsome, despicable, and subhuman.”
    “Savages!” Soheila hissed, her breath singeing the corners of the papers. I’d felt her breath warm the air, but I’d never before seen it
burn
. “We must alert the witch communities and remaining fey about what the nephilim are planning.”
    “But who can we trust?” Frank asked, scowling. “The nephilim are using their Aelvesgold to bribe fey and witch alike. It’s not just the trows. The fenoderee and the pixies have signed oaths of allegiance to the nephilim.” Frank held up two documents with heavy wax seals affixed to them.
    “We must do something,” Soheila insisted. “We can’t stand by and let these evil bastards prey on innocent young women.”
    “As long as the nephilim have the only source of Aelvesgold, we won’t be able to trust anyone who depends on the stuff—” A look