“No answer? Well then, Signor Lombardi, tell us how the women of the south borrow their husbands’ straight razors before Sunday ceremonies.”

This was too much: the taciturn illusionist quickly drew a long dagger from his sleeve and seemingly stabbed Gallo upward under the chin, but no blood issued forth, just a stream of scarlet handkerchiefs. Gallo squeaked like a frightened child and collapsed to his knees.

“On the subject of razors,” said Lombardi, pocketing his trick blade, “it seems as though Signor Gallo has cut himself shaving. He will survive... this time.”

The joke was most definitely on the tenor, who, humiliated beyond bearing, took the morning ferry from Newhaven to France, reneging on his contract and ensuring that he would never work a music hall in Great Britain again.

It was a beautiful revenge, tied together with the bow of wordplay, and the young Garrick, perched by the fire, vowed to himself, Someday I, too, will have the power to command such respect.

It took six months of fetching and carrying, but eventually Albert Garrick persuaded the Great Lombardi to take him on as an apprentice. It was his door to a new world.

Garrick thought of his vow now, sitting in the killing chamber of the foreboding house on Bedford Square.

Someday I, too, will have the power.

And that day had finally come.

Garrick dipped his fingertips in the small pool of black blood on the bedsheets, then watched the thick liquid run down his long pale fingers. The patterns reminded him of war paint worn by the savages in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Extravaganza, which he had taken Riley to see.

Someone will come to clean this mess, he thought, and daubed his cheeks with stripes of a dead man’s blood.

They will come, and I will take their magic and their power.

BEDFORD SQUARE. BLOOMSBURY. LONDON. NOW

Special Agent Chevie Savano was feeling pretty under-informed. The first thing she did when she got the strange boy under lock and key in a holding cell was to storm into the pod room and prepare to have it out with Agent Orange. Her indignation seeped out of her like water from a sponge when she saw her partner kneeling at the hatch, staring morosely at the body inside.

“It’s... my father,” he said, without looking up. “He must have been dead or dying going into the wormhole. The rapid energy loss might explain the multiple mutations.”

Chevie had never expected to hear the words wormhole and mutations spoken outside of the movies.

“You need to tell me everything, Agent Orange.”

Orange nodded, or maybe just allowed his head to droop. “I know, of course. But first we have to call in a cleanup team. I don’t know what my father left behind. Get me the London office and tell them to send a full hazmat team. It’s probably unnecessary, but I have to go back and check.”