approached the front of the house. On the way in, Byrne had gotten on his cell phone to Hell Rohmer and gotten a brief background on the property. In the 1800s it had been known as Prescott Square. Byrne realized it was the final piece of the puzzle. He couldn't help feeling they were too late.
Byrne drew his weapon, chambered a round. Bontrager covered him as he peered through the leaded glass. Byrne couldn't see anything except the distorted flames of a hundred candles. Music came from inside. Byrne reached out, tried the knob. Locked.
The two detectives backed off the porch, their weapons lowered.
That's when Byrne smelled the smoke.
'Do you-' he began, just as the first flame licked the inside of the front window.
Three seconds later, an explosion rocked the world.
ONE HUNDRED THREE
5:55 AM
In the darkness, in the deep violet folds of night, he hears whispers: low, plaintive sounds that speak to him of his many crimes, his many sins. As the voices overlap, as the pitch and timbre rise, so does the temperature in the glass coffin in which he is trapped. He soon realizes that these are not the voices of his past.
It is the voice of fire.
His head throbs with the effects of the chloroform. Where did Odette get it? Why had she done this to him? He tries to calm himself. Panic is the enemy. He slips his fingers into the secret latch in the corner of the box that is the Fire Grotto. The catch is vertical. It does not move. Again he tries. This time the metal is too hot to touch. Smoke filters in. He cannot breathe. He is once again the Singing Boy. And once again he is locked inside a cabinet of his father's design.
He maneuvers his hand into his pocket, removes the small remote control. He slides off the back panel, snaps it in two. He slips the hard plastic shard into the slot at the bottom of the main catch and begins to turn the screw. The heat is becoming unbearable. Sweat pools on the floor of the cage; steel hinges brand his back. Turn by turn, the screw slowly loosens. Finally, the catch drops to the floor of the cage. He pushes against the door. Nothing. He tries again. This time it begins to move. He takes a deep breath, holds it, as the box is now filled with smoke. His eyes and lungs burn as he rocks back and forth, forcing his shoulder into the door. The glass panels of the Fire Grotto start to crack in the intense heat. He expands his chest, flexes his upper arms. The door flings open. He emerges from the cage to find the stage now covered in thick black smoke. He makes it to his feet. The backs of his arms and hands are scorched and blistered.
As the flames devour the curtains on either side of the stage, he looks into the wings. Through the miasma he sees the Great Cygne. It is not the broken man he knows, the man who has lived in his filth for almost twenty years. It is the young illusionist, the man who strode onto the stage, his magnificent cape billowing behind him, his eyes mesmerizing. 'Where dwells the effect, Joseph?' 'The effect,' he says, each word burning his throat, 'is in the mind.' The Great Cygne lifts his cape over his face. In an instant it drops to the floor.
The Great Cygne is gone.
Joseph Swann removes his false beard and eyebrows, his cutaway coat, and makes his way to the stairs, through the flaming inferno of the basement.
ONE HUNDRED FOUR
5:58 AM
Fire encircled the first floor of the house, and Jessica was trapped on the third floor. All the secret doors that had stood open were now closed, and she could not find the seams. There was no way out. As her handset crackled with static, a blast rocked the walls. The floor, the ceilings, rained plaster onto her head, and the concussive air sucked her breath from her lungs for a moment. The ornate clock on the wall behind her crashed to the floor, shattering its glass. The chandelier in the center of the room ripped from its plaster medallion.
She tore at the velvet drapes of one window, then the other. Both were barred.
She had to calm herself, to concentrate.
'There are things you should know about this house.'
Jessica looked at the yellowed schematic. Half of it had been ripped away. It took her a few moments to orient the diagram. There were lines and notations all across the surface. She soon realized she had the southern and eastern sections of the house. Was she in the eastern section? She had no idea.
Smoke drifted under the door. Jessica heard glass shattering elsewhere in the house, popping like small arms' fire.
Her eyes danced over the yellowed page.
Where was she?
She found her location. Eastern wall. It showed three windows, but she only saw two, both of them barred. An arrow pointed to something on the wall, equidistant between the two windows. Jessica looked up. The only thing on the wall was a large wrought-iron sconce. She pulled on it. Nothing. She pushed. Nothing. She felt the heat in the very walls. The room was already thick with smoke up to her knees.
She twisted the sconce left, right, left, right, nearly tearing it from the wall. She was just about to give up when a panel slid down in front of her. Behind it was a round window. No bars.
Jessica looked around in the dense smoke. She found a heavy footstool. She lifted it and heaved it through the glass. Cool night air came rushing in. She was nearly knocked to the floor by the backdraft. Behind her, the door to the room slammed open and fire raged inside, devouring the brocade fabrics, the old dry furniture.
Jessica looked out the window. She could not see the ground. She recalled the sharp iron spikes along the railing. The flames raged ever closer. She could see part of the way down the hall, to the stairs leading up to the attic. The heat was so intense she felt as if her skin was about to peel from her face.
A figure emerged, clawing its way slowly up stairs. It was almost unrecognizable as human.
The figure paused for a moment, stared into the room. For a brief moment, through the flames, Jessica saw the man's eyes. And it was in this instant they knew each other. Hunter and hunted.
Jessica turned back to the window, to the smoke-thickened night air. Lungs fit to burst, she could wait no longer. As she climbed onto the sill she realized what she had seen in the charred and blistered apparition outside the door.
His eyes were silver.
She jumped.
ONE HUNDRED FIVE
6:00 AM
He turns to climb the final flight of stairs, just as a pair of oil paintings melt and slide from the walls. On the landing, a burlwood collector's cabinet catches fire, its glass front cracking, its contents-a rare nineteenth century edition of The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin- vaporizing in a burst ofsearing ash, coating his face and arms.
He glances down the main corridor as doors are flung open. Through the dense smoke he sees each room. He recalls the lovely faces of Monica Renzi and Caitlin O'Riordan, of Katja Dovic and Elise Beausoleil, Patricia Sato and Claire Finneran.
He sees Lilly. His Odette.
As he drags himselfup the staircase to the attic, the flesh from his hands is left behind on the white-hot iron
