The weather's warm. . . .

But he struggled to remain calm and asked casually, "How did you find me?"

"At the crafts fair. I got close to your partner. That redheaded policewoman. Very close. As close as I was to you just now. I breathed on her neck too—I'm not sure which I enjoyed more. . . . Anyway I heard her talking to you on her radio. She mentioned your name. Then it just took a little research to find you. You've been in the papers, you know. You're famous."

"Famous? A freak like me?"

"Apparently."

Rhyme shook his head and said slowly, "I'm old news. The chain of command passed me by a long time ago."

The word "command" zipped from Rhyme's lips through the microphone mounted to the headboard into the voice recognition software in his computer. "Command" was the latch word that told the computer to be prepared for instructions. A window opened up on the monitor, which he could see but the Conjurer could not.

Instruction? it asked silently.

"Chain of command?" the Conjurer asked. "What do you mean?"

"I used to be in charge of the department. Now, sometimes the young officers, they won't even return my telephone call."

The computer seized the last two words of the sentence. Its response: Whom would you like to call?

Rhyme sighed. "I'll tell you a story: I needed to get in touch with an officer the other day. A lieutenant. Lon Sellitto."

The computer reported: Dialing Lon Sellitto.

"And I told him—"

A sudden frown from the Conjurer.

He stepped forward quickly, swinging the monitor away from Rhyme's face and looking it over. The killer grimaced, ripped the phone lines from the wall and unplugged the computer. With a faint pop it went silent.

As the man hovered a few feet from him Rhyme pressed his head into the pillows, expecting the terrible razor blade to appear. But the Conjurer stepped back, breathing hard with his asthmatic wheeze. He seemed more impressed than angered by what the criminalist had tried.

"You know what that was, don't you?" he asked, smiling coldly. "Pure illusionism. You distracted me with patter and then did some classic verbal misdirection. Ruse, we call it. That was good. What you were saying was very natural—until you mentioned the name. It was the name ruined it. See, telling me that wasn't natural. It made me suspicious. But up until then you were good."

The Immobilized Man . . .

He continued, "I'm good too, though." The Conjurer reached forward with an open, empty palm. Rhyme cringed as the fingers passed close to his eyes. He felt a brush against his ear. When the Conjurer's hand appeared a second later there were four double-sided razor blades gripped between his fingers. He closed his hand into a fist and the four blades became a single one, now held once more between his thumb and index finger.