An urge to throw open the bedchamber door and see what a succubus really looked like gripped Malden, but he was able to fight it back down. It would be his doom, for one thing—to surprise Hazoth like that would be the very definition of folly. For another, judging by the sounds she made, he was willing to guess the succubus looked nothing like the toothsome painting on the wall of the House of Sighs.

A few steps farther and he came to a quite ordinary door that proved to be locked when he tried its latch. This must be the door Kemper had described for him, he decided. The door that opened on the trapped corridor. Beyond lay the sorcerer’s unholy sanctum—and the crown.

To this point Malden’s trespassing had gone without significant setbacks. Beyond this door the real game would begin, he knew. He wished for the thousandth time he could guess what lay beyond. Kemper hadn’t dared risk it, and Cythera had been unable to tell him anything. He would be wholly reliant on his own wits.

Glancing up and down the corridor to make sure Cythera wasn’t about to walk up behind him, he knelt on a rug before the door. He unwrapped his tools from the hilt of his bodkin and laid them out carefully beside him. Then he took a small dark lantern from his belt, and carefully lit the tiny candle inside. The tin lantern let no light at all escape until he slid open a hatch on its side. The beam thus released was just wide enough to shine into a keyhole. He needed that light to determine which of his rakes and picks would open the lock.

Yet when he looked into the lock, he recoiled in fright.

There were teeth in there.

Not metal spikes filed to points. Not the teeth of cog wheels. These teeth were the color of ivory and they glistened with saliva. Malden had no doubt that if he placed a finger inside the keyhole, those teeth would strip his flesh to the bone.

There was no tongue in there that he could see. He did not think the mouth in the keyhole would scream if he tried to pick the lock. He inserted a long thin hook to test this hypothesis—he was ready to run and find some other way to the crown if it made any sound at all—but the only result was that the teeth bit down hard on his hook, and snapped it off an inch from where Malden’s fingers clutched it.