Eve crossed the street, walked down the sidewalk toward the corner, skirting the iron fence. Beyond the fence the huge house loomed in the darkness, its dormers rising into the sky like devil’s horns. Tortured trees obscured the walls.

As she got closer she saw lights in the windows on the first floor. She reached a gate, pushed on it. It moaned. It was almost a human sound. She pushed again, slipped through.

When she stepped onto the grounds, the feeling overwhelmed her. She felt it, smelled it. Evil dwelled here. Her heart raced.

She slowly made her way through the tall grass, moving ever closer; the undergrowth, the bushes and weeds and wildflowers, seemed to grow around her. A large evergreen stood twenty feet from the house. She stepped behind it.

The house was massive. It appeared to be a pastiche of architectural styles—Queen Anne, Italianate, Gothic revival. A half-round tower graced the right side. A room on the second floor appeared to be candlelit. Chalky shadows danced on the white sheer curtains. As she drew closer, Eve heard classical music.

She took a few more steps, stopping fifteen feet from the dining room window. The drapes were open. Inside a dozen candles flickered. She could see the buffet and hutch and sideboard, all heavy antiques, all highly polished. On the walls were enormous oil paintings; hellish, Boschian scenes. There were also a pair of large portraits of a dark-haired man with sinister, intense eyes, a Van Dyck goatee. No one stirred.

Eve circled the mansion to the east. There she found a small gazebo, a pair of stone benches covered in ivy; a rusted sundial stood guard on a weed-tufted path. As she rounded the back of the house she paused, listened. There was a sound, a low humming sound. Then a snick of metal on metal.

What was it?

She cocked her head, tuning to the noise. It wasn’t coming from the house or the garages to her right. For a moment it reminded her of the old elevators in the building where her father had once had his office. The sound seemed to rattle the ground beneath her feet.

It stopped.

The voice came from behind her.

“Welcome to Faerwood.”

Eve drew the Glock, spun around, the weapon leveled in front of her. A man stood in the small gazebo, about twenty feet away. He was in shadows, but Eve saw he wore a long coat. For a few endless moments he did not move or say another word.

Eve slipped her finger inside the trigger guard. Before she could respond, a bright yellow light shimmered overhead. She glanced at the window on the second floor. It was barred. The curtains parted to reveal a silhouette, a girl with narrow shoulders and long hair. Eve looked back at the man.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” she asked.

The man stepped into the moonlight. He was not as big as she had expected. She had anticipated a hulking ogre. Instead, he was sleek and lithe, almost elegant. “Yes,” he answered.

He slowly raised his right hand, palm upward, as if in blessing. In an instant there was a searing flash of flame and a cloud of white smoke.

Eve fired. Round after round pierced the air, the loud reports echoing off the hard brick surface of the old house. She kept pulling the trigger until the magazine was empty.

The night fell still. Eve heard the beating of her heart, felt the horror of what she had just done. She knew she had hit him, dead center in his chest. Four rounds at least. She knew she had to run, but she also knew that she had come too far not to see this to the very end. She holstered her weapon, stepped cautiously to the gazebo. In the moonlight the gun smoke lingered, painting a white haze over this surreal scene. Eve peered over the railing.

He was gone. There was no blood, no torn flesh, no body. It didn’t seem possible—it wasn’t possible—but the gazebo was empty.

It all began to close in on her. The last two months of her life had been pure madness, a summons to the grave. She understood that now. She turned and ran through the tall weeds and grass.

Moments later she reached the iron gate. She pulled on the handle. It wouldn’t budge. It seemed rusted shut. She looked around her, sweat streaming down her face, burning her eyes. Was this where she came in? She couldn’t remember. She had gotten turned around and she had lost her bearings. She pulled again on the gate. It finally moved. She might be able to squeeze through, she thought. She tried, ripping her jeans on the latch. She felt the tear of flesh on her right thigh. The pain was excruciating.

One more hard pull, giving it everything she had. The gate swung free.

And that’s when she felt the hand on her shoulder.

Eve spun, saw his eyes. At first they flashed liquid silver, mercury in the moonlight, then all the fires of hell burned inside them. They were the eyes of her nightmare.

As Eve Galvez reached for the Beretta in her ankle holster she heard the snap of breaking glass. Then came a strong chemical smell. In the instant before her world went black she knew it had all come to a close.

Mr. Ludo.

He had won the game.

EIGHT

THE DENISON WAS a ten-story ushaped apartment building on Locust Street in West Philadelphia, near Forty-third Street, not far from the main campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The building was an exhaust-ravaged bronze-colored brick, built in the 1930s, with a recently sandblasted white sandstone arched entrance and electric flambeaux flanking its glass front doors. The long flower beds leading up to the doorway were baked and cracked and arid, populated with wilting impatiens, dying salvia, dead begonias, spent lobelia.

Like the old joke went: In Philly, in August, you couldn’t just fry an egg on the sidewalk, you could fry the chicken.

Jessica and Byrne entered the building, crossed the lobby. It was five degrees cooler in here, which meant the temperature was a frigid eighty-five degrees or so. They had called the address in, checked the results against the roster of tenants in the lobby. Laura A. Somerville lived in apartment 1015. She did not have a police record or DMV record. In fact, she did not have a record of any kind.

For some reason, Jessica expected Laura Somerville to be a middle-aged career woman, a real estate developer, perhaps a lawyer. When the woman opened the door, Jessica was surprised to find that Laura Somerville was a rather elegant older woman, probably in her late sixties: powdered and lightly perfumed, classically attired in pleated gray cotton slacks and white blouse. Silver-coiffed and graceful, she reminded Jessica of one of those women who had looked fifty at forty, but would look fifty the rest of her life. Lauren Bacall type.

Jessica produced her ID and badge, introduced herself and Kevin.

“Are you Laura A. Somerville?” Jessica asked.

“Yes.”

“We’d like to ask you a few questions,” Jessica said. “Would that be okay?”

The woman put a hand to her throat. She looked at a point in space somewhere between the two detectives. Her eyes were a clear sapphire. “Is something wrong?”

“No, ma’am,” Jessica said, hedging the truth. “Just a few routine questions.”

The woman hesitated, then seemed to relax, the tension leaving her shoulders. She nodded, and without another word opened the door fully. She gestured them inside, closed the door behind them.

The apartment was blessedly cool. Almost cold. Jessica wanted to spend the rest of the summer here. Maybe the rest of her life. It smelled of jasmine tea.

“Can I get you something cold to drink?” the woman asked. “Soda? Lemonade?”

“We’re fine, thanks,” Byrne said.

Jessica glanced around the small, tastefully decorated apartment. It was a room full of older furniture. In one corner was a hutch full of sparkling figurines; the opposite wall held a long bookcase, crowded with books and boxes that appeared to contain games and jigsaw puzzles.