This machine can be fed with numbers or cards. I don’t have the card, but the codes to everything in this house are in my head somewhere.

Garrick cocked his head while his brain supplied the numbers. He cracked his knuckles, then tapped the code into the pad. The light winked green and the door popped open.

“Abracadabra,” he said with satisfaction.

Garrick doffed his hat and ducked inside, smiling at the thought of Riley’s amazement.

Oh, my son. We have much to share. So much.

The cell was spartan, with only a narrow cot, a single chair and, of course, a camera crouched like a spider on the ceiling. But that was all.

No boy.

Riley had gone. His son.

Garrick would not allow himself to roar the boy’s name. He had once been a celebrated illusionist, after all, not a simple player of dreadful melodrama. Instead he contented himself with a resounding slam of the door on his way to interview Miss Savano.

How fortunate that I did not kill her before, he mused. Now she may help me find Riley before she dies.

Chevie’s world was spinning in a kaleidoscope of dull colors. Concrete gray and streaked brown. She had been thinking, The boy is dead, over and over, but now she couldn’t remember if that was a snatch of a song lyric or an actual thought she should be concerned about.

Something was happening outside her head to one of her body parts. A shoulder, maybe? Yes, her shoulder. Why was someone shaking her shoulder when all she wanted to do was sleep?

“Miss, wake up,” said a voice urgently. “He’s coming.”

Wake up? No, thanks. This was her day off. Maybe a little surfing later on down at Malibu.

“Miss, on your feet now, or Garrick will kill both of us.”

Garrick.

An image flashed through Chevie’s mind of a bloody body emerging from some kind of cocoon.

One of her eyes fluttered open; the other was still swollen like a pink beetle in her eye socket. The boy leaned over her, hoisting her by the lapels.

“Riley?”

“The one and only, Miss Savano. We have to quit this place right now.”

Leaving? But I thought you were dead. I’m just going to close my eyes for a second.

Riley grabbed the agent under her armpits, and hauled her upright.

“Come along now,” he grunted. “Upsy-daisy.”

Chevie’s good eye flicked open. “I am not a child.”

At this moment Garrick appeared in the corridor, his face set like alabaster and streaked with blood.

He is angry, Riley realized, and the sight of his master’s cold expression nearly paralyzed him with fear.

His survival instincts took over. He grabbed Chevie’s pistol, placed it in her fingers, and, clasping her hand in both of his, he aimed the gun at Garrick’s chest.

“Shoot, miss,” he said. “Now!”