Percival sprang onto the stage proper, and he knew that at this distance there was not a man or animal on earth who could escape the deadly arc of his swing.

I could fell a bear from this distance, he thought.

He raised the ax high and brought the blade down with terrific force. It struck nothing but chair, slicing through the padding and biting deep into the wooden backrest.

Percival’s brain could not understand how certainty had become uncertain.

“Magic,” said a voice. “All is not as it seems.”

Percival yanked the ax free and whirled toward the source of these mysterious words. There in the corner stood the mark himself, Garrick, wrapped in his conjurer’s cape.

“Do you approve of my cloak? It’s a little theatrical, but this is a performance, after all.”

He don’t know about the others, thought Percival. Else he would not be blathering on.

Percival whistled two notes, high and low. The signal for Turk to advance from the folds of velvet curtain that concealed him.

Turk made even less noise than Percival, as he wore silken slippers, which he called his murder shoes. He came up on Garrick from the rear and reached out for a shoulder, to steady the magician for the scimitar’s blade, but his questing fingers skinned themselves on glass instead of flesh and bone.

A mirror, thought Turk. I have been misled.

Terror sank into his gut like a lead anchor—he had the wit to know that he was done for.

The mirror image of Garrick reached out through the mirror and plucked Turk’s own sword from his hand.

“You will not have need of this,” said Garrick’s image, and he plunged it directly into Turk’s heart.

Turk died believing a phantasm had killed him. His final wish was that he could return as a spirit to this place in order to decipher the events leading up to his death, but unfortunately that’s not the way the afterlife works, especially for blackhearted killers.

Percival would have attacked then, but he was uncertain of his enemy’s position. He heard an ominous creaking behind him and turned to see a large set piece being lowered from the flies. The piece was circular and constructed of canvas stretched over a wooden frame. On the front were circles painted within circles.

“Stone me,” breathed Percival. “A target.”

“Stone you?” came a voice from the blackness of the stalls. “I fear you are missing the point, but not for long.”

Percival backed up until his shoulder blades bumped the target and his head sat squarely in the bull’s-eye. Before he could twig the implications, a veritable hail of blades hissed from the darkness.

I am done, thought Percival, and closed his eyes.

But done he was not; instead the various knives, forks, swords, and bayonets pinned him tightly to the target, drawing no more than a pint of blood from minor wounds.