Here was where they had run to. Blackwood knew their owner was very near.

They advanced, stalking him, all shoulders and sinewy muscle, ravenous drool spilling from their gnashing fangs.

Blackwood extended his empty hand, palm forward, muttering a spell of compulsion. His eyes met theirs, and as he slowly rotated his open hand, as though adjusting a large dial, the beasts’ eyes softened, their lips eased back over their black gums, and their bristling fur lay down flat.

As the dogs stood there locked into his spell, Blackwood removed a vial from his kit, dabbing a bit of oil on the tip of his right middle finger. He approached the animals with his hand extended, and gently swiped the oil vertically along each dog’s philtrum, the indentation splitting the nostrils, running down to the upper lip.

Two or three breaths and the animals sank onto their hindquarters, falling onto their sides, slipping into a deep sleep.

Blackwood stepped between the slumbering watchdogs, rounding the corner as the incantation grew louder. There he saw a woman wearing a white robe wrap and a white headdress, presiding over a crypt of chalky soil, out of which rose an ethereal violet mist. The cold vapor assumed the form of the long-dead people buried there, some two and three deep: forty or more men, women, and children, silhouettes rippling, wisps of purplish steam slipping from their hair and their shoulders like heat from cooked meat, dissipating into the stale air.

At the low, moaned urging of the conjurer Juanita, the violet spirits turned and faced Hugo Blackwood from the loamy floor of the unearthed crypt.

Odessa looked for the source of the familiar voice, fearing it was Solomon.

“Odessa? Honey, it’s me.”

She watched her father walk out of the shadow, a grateful smile on his face. He wore one of his old cardigans over a Lands’ End oxford, like he always did.

“Dad?” she said. Odessa was amazed to see her father, and yet his presence here in this subterranean catacomb in the center of New York City felt completely normal to her. In fact, his presence put her gently at ease. “Where did you come from?”

He stopped a few steps away from her, a hesitant smile on his face. “Why did you stop visiting me, honey?” he asked.

Odessa was suffused with regret, but at the same time, she welcomed the opportunity to explain herself and clear the air between them. “I couldn’t do it anymore, Dad,” she said. “You betrayed your clients. You betrayed your family. You betrayed me.”

Her voice cracked on the last word. She went on.

“Me,” she said again. “Of all people. I stood by you. I sat at your defense table in court. I vouched for you with everyone in town. You made a fool out of all of us. But especially me. You broke my heart.”