The strobe sputters like an erratic flashbulb. Someone grabs my arm: the Jester, his comedy mask exchanged for the leer of tragedy. I shove him off, but he raises a finger, wags it back and forth. And then the lights black out and his mask transforms into a glowing skull.

Hands seize mine, force them behind my back. I struggle and then stumble as I am dragged through the melee.

I shout for Luka, scream for him to run. But the music drowns me out and there’s the Jester’s finger, fluorescent as his skeletal teeth, wagging in front of me like a metronome.

The temperature cools as I’m hauled into a tunnel, music fading till I can hear the breath of my captor.

“Where are you taking me?” I shout. My voice echoes, the ground is uneven beneath my feet. I wrench around, catch sight of my captor’s mask. A gilded gladiator. The scabbard of the short sword at his hip does not feel like plastic.

He says, roughly near my ear, “Stop fighting. I’m taking you to Tibor.”

I’m escorted through a carved wooden entrance guarded by two centurions, into a strangely lit chamber.

The entire back wall is filled with television screens. They flash with electric blue light and the chaos of the cavern I have just come from. The court, from ten different angles, zooming in on masked faces at intervals. One screen dedicated to the entrance, empty except for the butler. The last shows the tunnel I just came through.

A figure rises from a carved chair to my right. He’s dressed in striped pants, top hat askew on his head. Jet hair hangs on either side of a horned red and black samurai mask past the shoulders of a long topcoat. A cat-o’-nine-tails is coiled at his hip, and, like the gladiator’s sword, it does not look fake. He steps forward as I enter, the most sinister ringmaster I have ever seen.

Tibor.

“And so the prodigal daughter returns.” His voice is as wiry as his frame. He opens his arms and frowns when I make no move. “You do not remember poor Tibor? No, of course you do not.”

But he is not the only one in the room.

“Who’s there?” I demand, looking around us.

Tibor audibly sucks in a breath.

A moment later a shadow emerges from behind the bank of screens. His cloak is far too reminiscent of Luka’s grim reaper the first night, black hood drawn over his head. His mask is utterly white and featureless, only the eyes alive.

“Do you believe me now?” the figure says, before turning toward me.

“Hello, Audra. I am Nikola of Budapest.”

26

Nikola. The Prince of Budapest.