I walked over and joined in the wall-feel and I picked up slight traces of a sharp odor. It reminded me of shoe polish. As I ran my hands over a smooth spot, my fingers felt an inconsistency in the texture.

“Here.” I said.

I gave the wall a push. There was a click and the panel opened. Classic hidden door bullshit. I glanced at Mo’Lock. He was looking at my hand on the wall.

“Cal . . . your hand.”

There were spots on the back of my hand, freckles, like the skinny man’s hands. A sinking nausea swelled in my throat and felt like a stone to my belly. Something had me. I didn’t know what, but I knew, somehow, and I also knew it was too late to do anything about it so I pushed through the hidden door. The ghoul followed. I was pissed.

I should have waited. I should have taken a step back and looked at the situation, but I didn’t and I walked right into the skinny man’s trap. On the floor of the hidden room was a symbol like a pentagram, but more complex, with smaller signs inside each triangle. The pentagram was burned into the wood floor and I was inside it.

The ghoul had been smart enough to move slow. He was outside the burned circle, looking around at the walls of the claustrophobic room. I looked up slowly and saw one of the worst sights I’d ever laid my eyes on.

The walls were covered with faces.

The skinny man had told the truth. He had taken his victims home. He’d skinned them and nailed their faces to the walls, their empty mouths stuck in permanent howls of pain, their eyes stretched wide and empty.

From the doorway I heard the ghoul. “You better get out of there, Cal.”

But his warning was just for show. He had to warn me, but he knew by my expression I couldn’t. He saw the spots growing on my now tightening skin.

I was stuck right where I stood. The symbol had me and held me in place with an invisible death grip and I was being drained of life.

I watched spots grow and spread up my arms. My skin turned sickly and transparent. Blue veins rose to the surface through the diminishing pigment. I could see small flecks of my flesh rising off me, like wisps of dandruff. They floated in the air around me, swirling, as if teasing me and then they whisked off, sucked into the eyes of the dead faces on the wall.

I didn’t have a clue what to do and I was losing strength fast. I reached for the phone and dialed. Brueger picked up after half a ring.

“I was just calling you,” she said. She sounded excited.

“Where’s the—”

She cut me off.

“The suspect . . . he escaped.”

I couldn’t believe it.