We’d dance together in the red light and take turns racing back and forth on our stages, trying to see who could make it to the other side first. I’m not sure it was always a tie.

Sometimes I’d sit on the edge of the stage and just stare across the theater talking to the other girl. I’d ask her questions about her life. Surprisingly like my own, but with some differences.

She lived in the mountains north of there. She went to a friendlier school and had brothers and sisters. The biggest difference of all was that she knew her mother. Hers never ran off, too young and too unprepared for handling a child.

The girl on the other side of the mirror talked to her mother every day. And they looked exactly alike. When she grew up she wanted to be just like her mother. “A magician?” I would ask.

She shook her head and said magic was the furthest thing from her mother’s mind. “She helps people. She helps little girls in trouble. She’s the bravest person in the world.”

As I grew older I tried to understand what my visits there meant. Embarrassed as I was of my overactive imagination, I understood the need for a space where your mind could see the impossible and could tell you what’s really deep down inside.

Standing in the Warlock’s play space, it’s an unsettling memory. Alone in the dark, he didn’t imagine a better version of himself. He imagined how he could use his intellect in the most twisted way possible.

Shannon is using swabs on the section of the fake Times Square where the angel appeared, in the hope that we find some traces of blood. Danielle is taking photos of the tire tracks crisscrossing the Times Square layout. He’d must have driven a taxi van back and forth thousands of times to get the timing right. From one end of the building to the other is almost half a city block.

I walk to the far left corner of the warehouse when my nose picks up a musty odor. The concrete comes to an abrupt end where it’s been chipped away. There’s a rough ten-foot square of dirt.

“Three minutes,” says Ailes in our ears, reminding us that time is running out.

I try to make sense of the dirt. What purpose did it serve? In the corner I see where the ground has been disturbed and there are several deep furrows, each as wide as a hand. Exactly as wide as a hand.

My blood runs cold.

This is where Denise died.

He buried her here.

She really did die crawling out of a grave.

“Shannon, get a sample here quick!” We need to see if there’s blood in the dirt. That could be the proof we need to connect the Warlock to her murder.

Shannon comes running with a sample kit and starts scooping up dirt. He knows time is running out, so he doesn’t question me.