“My little piggies,” he howled. “Oh, come back, piggies.”

“Who sent you?” demanded Garrick, brandishing a second blade.

“No. Never.”

“I admire your stoicism, Mr. Percival, really I do, but this is a battle of wills, so you leave me little choice...” Garrick steadied himself against the saw-box, then drove the second blade into its slot.

Percival gibbered, tears flowing from eyes to ears, and he unconsciously began to sing the ditty of freemasonry loyalty that he had warbled in many a public house with his tattooed brethren.

We stabs ’em,
We fights ’em,
Cripples ’em,
Bites ’em.

Garrick was not surprised. “Ah, Mr. Malarkey, would you insert yourself in my affairs? Thank you, faithful Sir Percival. You have done all I asked of you. So I will inflict no further harm upon your person.”

Percival was beyond rational thinking now, and continued to sing.

No rules for our mayhem.
You pay us, we slay ’em.
If you’re in a corner,
With welshers or scams.

Garrick sang along for the last two lines, inserting a clever harmony.

Pay us a visit,
The Battering Rams.

Garrick applauded, his red glove flashing in the lights. “You have a fine tenor, Percival. Not professional standard, but pleasing. Won’t you delight me with an encore?”

Percival obliged, his voice becoming more tremulous with each note, dissolving entirely into a terrified, burbling scream as Garrick took hold of the head box and sent it twirling across the stage.

Percival’s last sight was his own receding torso and the wiggling tips of his fingers, straining to be loose from their bonds.

Garrick could have told him that it was all done with mirrors and prosthetics, but a good magician never reveals his secrets.

He danced a quickstep jauntily across the orchestra pit bridge.

“‘Pay us a visit,’” he sang, deciding to sing high for the last phrase, “‘The Battering Raaaaaaams.’”

And he thought, I intend to do just that.

The magician stamped on a powder bomb hidden beneath a patch of carpet in the center aisle and disappeared in a magnesium flash and a ball of smoke.

Golgoth Golgoth

THE BATTERING RAMS' HIDEY-HOLE. ROGUES' WALK. LONDON. 1898

It had occurred to special agent Chevron Savano that she might be the victim of some massive sting operation. There were files from World War II that told stories of prisoners in war hospitals who had been convinced that the war was over by English-speaking enemies and allowed themselves to be debriefed, but they were high-ranking prisoners and the operations were hugely expensive. She was barely more than a FBI wannabe with a tin badge. No one was going to go to such fantastic lengths for the piddly secrets in her brain.

Any lingering doubts that she might not actually be in nineteenth-century London disappeared the moment Chevie emerged from the dungeon into Otto Malarkey’s den of thieves, cutthroats, and wastrels.

Riley grabbed her elbow.