He burst inside the front door, moving to the bedroom. Orleanna lay in bed as before, only now—and strangely—the tapestry was pulled over the bedclothes.

“My love,” said Blackwood, tears bursting from his eyes upon seeing her, having convinced himself on the harsh ride back that it had been Orleanna he had seen floating over John Dee’s residence, the ghost of her dead body seeking him out for one last farewell.

He gripped her head to his chest, feeling it damp with fever. He wept a bit, then suddenly stopped, fearing for his sanity. What did it mean that he had hallucinated her image? Had their scrying unwittingly unleashed a plague of mind fever?

Blackwood lowered his face into hers, leaving a light kiss upon her lips. In that moment, he wished to fall ill like her. He wished them to be united always.

He startled as he straightened, finding his wife’s doe eyes open but distant, unseeing. Vacant.

Chapter

Mr. Lusk let them off near the intersection of 72nd Street and Central Park West. Odessa followed Blackwood, entering an unmarked side door. A narrow service corridor led to another door, through which she found herself standing at a bank of old, ornate elevators.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Are we in the Dakota?”

The Dakota was famously the oldest luxury apartment building in Manhattan, and among the most exclusive. Elevator doors opened and they boarded alone.

When the doors closed, Odessa said, “This is where John Lennon lived when he was shot.”

Blackwood watched the arrow count off floors on the dial. “Oh, yes—the singer. I remember him…”

“The singer?” Was he playing dumb?

“I believe his wife sought me out once. An interesting sort. She wanted to know if this building was haunted.”

“Was it?”

“It still is.”

The doors opened, and Blackwood walked to an unlocked door almost twice Odessa’s height. The entrance foyer was floored with smooth, dark marble, the walls papered a velvet claret with an inlaid William Morris pattern. Blackwood strode straight through into the next room, a wide parlor with street-facing windows looking out on Central Park. The ceilings were towering, easily fourteen feet high, the ash moldings meticulously ornate. A cyclopean stone fireplace stood opposite the windows; an elaborate carved panel flowed from the mantelpiece and into the walls. The figures—they looked like antiquities—were naked, writhing bodies, both male and female intermingled with what seemed to be clouds of flames.

The patterned floor was mahogany. There was barely any furniture, nothing comfortable to sit upon, a parlor without chairs. Other than a long, heavy table, its surface entirely covered—indeed buried—by unrolled, unfolded maps of ancient cities, countries, and ocean routes, the room was made of books.