horrors.
There was one video left on the screen. It was black. For now. Lilly knew exactly who it was for.
Karl Swann rummaged through another drawer. He extracted a folder. Inside the folder were pages and pages of drawings and brittle diagrams, scribbled blueprints. He extracted a single page.
'This,' he said, 'is the Fire Grotto.'
The drawing was of a large box, a cage made of steel and smoked glass. As Lilly ran her eyes over the drawing, she catalogued every corner, every hinge, every latch. 'How does it work?' she asked.
Five minutes later, when the old man finished telling her how the illusion worked, and of its spectacular, fiery flourish, Lilly knew all she needed to know about the Fire Grotto. She also knew what was going to happen. Joseph Swann aimed to put her in the box, and set it afire. There was no doubt in her mind.
'You must remember the secret latch on the bottom,' the old man said. 'This is very important.' The old man then held up another yellowed blueprint. 'It is quite easy to get lost in Faerwood. There are many rooms here, many machines. If you do get lost, this will help.'
Lilly took the old blueprint. She instantly memorized the dimensions, the details, where the doors and hidden stairwells were located, where the switches were. It seemed each room had a secret.
Before she could ask Karl Swann another question, Lilly heard the sound of a car engine. She looked out the barred window. Three stories below a van pulled into the driveway.
Lilly grabbed the blueprint and ran to the corner of the room, to the secret passage. The man stepped in front of her. He put something in her hand. 'You will need this.'
When she reached the opening, Lilly heard the old man add, 'Remember the secret latch. Remember, Odette.'
Lowering herself into the dark shaft, Lilly had no idea if she was returning the way she had come. She scrambled forward as fast as she could, banging her knees and elbows. Her hands were slick with sweat. The passageway seemed endless, and even darker than it had earlier. After a full minute she stopped, felt the sides, the ceiling. Had she passed Claire's room? She had no idea. She listened for any change in the hot silence. She heard only her pulse.
She continued onward. The sound of the classical music returned, this time louder. She was finding her way back. She was about to stop again when she saw the faint rectangle of light in the distance. She rumbled forward as quickly as she could, emerged through the panel, dashed into the room, gulping the fresh air. She heard footsteps in the hallway outside. A key turned in the lock.
Lilly grabbed her shoes from the opening, letting the panel slide shut. She bolted across the room and dove under the covers as the second key turned. As the door opened, Lilly noticed she had dropped the old blueprint on the floor. She grabbed it, pulled it under the comforter at the last second, her heart racing.
Joseph Swann.
The Fire Grotto.
Lilly did not know how she was going to get out of this, or if she would make it until morning, but she knew one thing for certain.
She could not allow Joseph Swann to get her inside that box.
EIGHTY-ONE
3:20 AM
They had nearly one hundred addresses of people named Swan, more than thirty for Swann. Uniformed officers from virtually every district were pounding on doors, calling in on police radios.
They had gotten word on the publishing house that handled David Sinclair's books. It was a small outfit in Denver. According to the senior editor, no one there had ever met Mr. Sinclair. Sinclair had sent an unagented proposal to them six years earlier, by mail. The editor had spoken to the man many times over the course of the writing and editing of the book, but Sinclair had never come to Denver. They corresponded with the author via a Hotmail account and a street address in Philadelphia, an address that turned out to be a drop box on Sansom Street. Their records showed that the man had rented the box by the year, sending a money order for a year at a time. There was a high turnover rate in employees, and the few who were contacted at this hour could not recall the man who rented box 18909. The initial form that was filled out appeared to be typed on an old IBM Selectric, and the street address and phone number listed were both phony.
Payments from the publishing house were made by company check, made out to David Sinclair. They had never been cashed.
The bookstore in Chester County had no address for him, just the cell phone number the detectives already had. It was a dead end.
At 3:20 AM a department car roared to a stop. It was Detective Nicci Malone. 'We've got prints,' she said. 'They're on that Chinese box.'
'Please tell me they're in the system,' Jessica said.
'They're in the system. His name is Dylan Pierson.'
The team descended on a run-down row house near Nineteenth and Poplar. Byrne knocked on the door until lights came on inside. He held his weapon behind his back. Soon the door opened. A heavyset white woman in her forties stood before them, her face puffed with sleep, last night's mascara racoooning her eyes. She wore an oversized Flyers jersey, baggy pink sweats, stained white terrycloth flops.
'We're looking for Dylan Pierson,' Byrne said, holding up his badge.
The woman looked from Byrne's eyes, to the badge, back. 'That's my son.'
'Is he here?'
'He's upstairs sleeping. Why do you-'
Byrne pushed her aside, bulled through the small dirty living room. Jessica and Josh Bontrager followed.
'Hey!' the woman yelled. 'You can't just… I'll sue you!'
Byrne reached into his pocket. Without looking back he tossed a handful of his business cards in the air, and stormed up the stairs.
Dylan Pierson was nineteen. He had long greasy hair, a feeble soul patch below his lower lip, way too much attitude for the time of night and Byrne's mood. On the walls were a mosaic of skateboarding posters: Skate or Die; A Grind is a Terrible Thing to Waste; Rail Against the Machine.
Dylan Pierson had been arrested twice for drug possession; had twice gotten away with community service. His room was a sty, the floor covered in dirty clothes, potato chip bags, magazines, questionably stained Kleenex.
When Byrne entered, he had flipped on the overhead light and all but lifted Dylan Pierson from his bed. Pierson was cowering against the wall.
'Where were you tonight?' Byrne yelled.
Dylan Pierson tried to comprehend how his little kingdom had suddenly been invaded by big scary police in the middle of the night. He wiped sleep from his eyes. 'I… I have no idea what you're talking about.'
Byrne took out a picture, a blowup of a computer screen capture of the Collector. 'Who is this?'
The kid tried to focus. 'I have no idea.'
Byrne grabbed his arm, yanked. 'Let's go.'
'Wait! Jesus. Let me look.' He turned on a desk lamp, looked more carefully at the photograph. 'Hang on. Hang on. Okay. Okay. I know who this is, man. He looks different with that beard and shit, but I think I know him.'
'Who is he?'
'I have no idea.'
Byrne reared back, fists clenched.
'Wait!' The kid cowered. 'I met him on the street, man. He asked me if I wanted to make some money. It happens to me all the time.'
Jessica looked at Nicci Malone, back at Dylan Pierson, thinking, You ain't all that, kid. Still, he was young, and
