Thunder rumbled above. A second later, Byrne heard the thunder on the cell phone. The killer was not in Atlanta. The killer was in North Philadelphia.

“Did you see the clock tower?”

“I did,” Byrne said. “Nice trick.”

The man drew a short breath. There was a nerve here somewhere. Byrne had found it. The first crack.

“Trick?”

“Yeah,” Byrne said. “Like that stuff we used to see on the commercials during those late night horror movies. Remember those? The deck of cards that turn into all aces. The multiplying little foam bunnies. ‘Tricks anyone can do,’ the guy said. ‘Magic is easy, once you know the secret.’ I bought that cheap plastic wand that turns into a flower. It fell apart.”

There was a long moment of hesitation. Good and bad. Good because Byrne was getting to the man. Bad because he was unpredictable. And he held all the cards.

“And this is what you think I’ve done? A trick?”

Byrne glanced at Jessica. She twirled a finger in the air. Keep him talking.

“Pretty much.”

“And yet you are there, and I am here. Between us, pretty maids all in a row.”

“You have us there,” Byrne said. “No argument.”

“The question is, can you solve the puzzle in time, Detective? Can you save the last two maidens?”

The man’s composure was back.

“Why don’t you just tell me where they are, and you and I can meet somewhere, work this out?” Byrne asked.

“What, and give up show business?”

Byrne heard a loud hiss, a crackle in the connection. The storm was moving in.

Jessica took out her pad, wrote on it, dropped it on the car.

It’s a land line. We have him.

“By the way. You said the puzzle was a bird. What sort of bird?” Byrne asked.

“The sort that can fly away,” the killer said. “Can you hang on for a second? I have to produce a flower.”

The man laughed, and the line went dead.

SEVENTY-NINE

2:38 AM

THE ADDRESS WAS a small, run-down florist on Frankford. A half dozen sector cars arrived at the same time. Four departmental cars, eight detectives, Jessica and Byrne among them. In less than a minute they flanked the stand-alone building. It was dark inside. When Jessica and Byrne went around back, they saw the back door wide open. With plenty of probable cause to enter, they did.

Soon the small building was clear. No one was inside. The team stood down.

In a small back room, which doubled as an office and a prep area, was a huge oak desk and an old style desk phone. The receiver was off the hook, lying on its side.

Next to the phone, a flower.

A white lily.

THE OWNER OF THE SHOP, a man named Ernest Haas, looked like he was going to vibrate to death. Despite the number of ADT stickers on doors and windows—stickers he readily admitted he had color-copied and put on the windows, hoping they looked authentic enough to fool burglars—he had no security system, no cameras. They had rousted him and his wife in their small apartment over the shop. Ernest and Ruth Ann Haas had no idea what was going on just below them.

The killer had simply picked the lock on the back door and used the phone. There were myriad prints on the receiver and glass doors that led to the cooler containing the lilies. They had been dusted and rushed back to the crime lab.

Before leaving the Jefferson Street scene Byrne had contacted the communications unit. The phone number “David Sinclair” had given him was a disposable cell phone. Untraceable. Byrne had also given Tony Park the information on Sinclair’s publisher. Park was tracking it down now.

JESSICA AND BYRNE STOOD on the corner of Frankford and Lehigh. Byrne’s cell rang. It was Hell Rohmer.

“I’ve been monitoring the GothOde page. There have been another four hundred viewings of the last video. This thing has gone viral. There’ve also been a few comments, mostly nutcases. What’s new, eh? I’m not sure this one guy who posted is any different, but he responded to the ‘here’s a clue’ line.”

“What was it?”

“The commenter on the page wrote ‘Begichev and Geltser? Swan Lake? This guy rox!’ It was signed phillybadbwoi. I looked it up. He was right. Begichev and Geltser collaborated with Tchaikovsky on Swan Lake. And the lead part in the ballet?”

“What about it?” Byrne asked.

“Her name is Odette.”

AT 2:50, IKE BUCHANAN’S CAR drove up in front of the florist shop.

Arthur Lake stepped out. He had a handful of e-mail printouts.

“I’ve contacted a number of my colleagues,” Lake said. “The man in the video is known by reputation to some of my contemporaries here in Philadelphia. I’ve only been in the city about five years. I’m afraid I’d never heard of him.”

“What did you learn?”

“Well, for one, as I suspected, this is someone mimicking the look and style of another man who performed in the fifties and sixties. That magician himself would be much, much older now.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Not his real name. I have a call in to a man who might know. Onstage he went by the Great Cygne.”

The man pronounced the word seen-yeh.

“And this older magician was from Philly?” Byrne asked.

“I believe so, although I could not find any specific information on that.”

Lake handed Byrne a faded color image of a tall, slender man in a cutaway tuxedo. “This is the only photo I could find. It was downloaded from a German website.”

Byrne reached into the car. He took out a pair of photos he found in Laura Somerville’s strongbox and compared them to the downloaded photograph. They were identical.

“Rumor was that the Great Cygne was a little unstable,” Lake said. “And that he was pretty much shunned by the community at large.”

“Why is that?”

“Years ago he invented an illusion called ‘The Singing Boy’ and sold it to a number of top magicians—claiming exclusivity to each of them—for a great deal of money. When word got out, he was persona non grata in magic circles. No one really saw him after that, I gather.”

“The Great Cygne. Can you spell that for me?” Byrne asked.

The man did. It hit Byrne like a sledgehammer.

“If I’m not mistaken,” Lake continued, “in French, the word cygne means—”

“Swan,” Byrne said.

Swan Lake. The puzzle is in the shape of a bird.

“He’s building a swan.”

EIGHTY

2:55 AM

LILLY SAT IN a chair in the candlelit room. The old man stroked her hair, his fingers ice cold. A few moments earlier she had heard something loud—it might have been a slamming door or a backfire—but she dared not ask about it.

She had never been more frightened in her life.

When she looked up at the old man, he was staring at her.

“Who are you?” she asked.

The man looked at her as if she were crazy. He put his shoulders back, lifted his chin. “I am the Great Cygne.”

“You called me a name before. What was it?”

“Odette, of course.”

“And what is this place?”

Another incredulous look. “This is Faerwood.”

“Do you live here?”

The old man got a faraway look. For a moment it appeared as if he might be falling asleep. Then he told Lilly an incredible story.

He told her that his real name was Karl Swann, and that he was once a world-renowned magician, student of the masters, mentor to the greats. He told her that many years ago he’d had a mishap during one of his stage illusions, and accidentally hanged himself. He told her that his son, Joseph, had kept him in this room for more than twenty years, but now he was much better, and was ready to perform all over the world again. He told her that this night would be the Great Cygne’s greatest triumph, something called the Fire Grotto.