LILLY HAD SEEN the woman in the backyard. She knew the woman had seen her. There was no time to waste. Lilly had to stop the woman before she got in the way of her plan. She looked at the blueprint. There was more than one way out of this room. She opened the closet door. To the right were a pair of tarnished brass hooks. She pulled down the hook on the left, then flipped up the one on the right. Nothing happened. Perhaps she had not done it fast enough. She tried again, quickening the process. She soon heard the counterweight fall, and saw a rectangular plate in the floor slide to the side, leading to a narrow spiral staircase. Lilly took off her shoes, twisted herself into the constricted opening.

She found herself in a corner of the great room. There was classical music playing, and almost a hundred candles burning. She knew she couldn’t risk walking near the main stairs. She knew there was a narrow hallway at the rear of the room, a hallway that wrapped around to the solarium. She stepped into the corridor, turned toward the back of the house, and saw her reflection in a full-length mirror. Or was it? It seemed watery, rippling, like an image glimpsed through ice. She suddenly realized she was surrounded by mirrors, her reflection drifting into infinity. But there was no mistaking that it was not only her likeness she was seeing.

There was a woman at the end of the hall.

NINETY-FOUR

5:43 AM

THE HOUSE WAS ENORMOUS. Jessica passed through a large pantry, stocked floor to ceiling with dry goods. She tried a door off the pantry, perhaps to a root cellar. It was locked. She stepped through the kitchen. The floor was a black-and-white checkerboard tile; the appliances were all older, but highly polished and well maintained.

When Jessica stepped out of the kitchen and rounded the corner into the main hallway, she stopped. Someone stood just twenty feet away. There seemed to be a sheet of glass in the center of the corridor, a glass panel resembling a two-way mirror. Her first instinct was to step back and level her weapon, the classic police academy tactic. She caught herself at the last second.

The glass began to move, to pivot on a center pin. Before the mirror could rotate fully, Jessica realized that on the other side was a young woman in a scarlet gown. When Jessica stepped closer, the mirror stopped turning for a moment, shimmered. For an instant, Jessica’s own reflection was superimposed on the figure on the other side of the silvered glass. When Jessica saw the composite image—a woman with long dark hair and ebony eyes, a woman who, in a parallel world, might have been her sister—her skin broke out in gooseflesh.

The woman in the mirror was Eve Galvez.

NINETY-FIVE

5:45 AM

ALL AROUND HIM, Faerwood began to breathe. Swann heard the sounds of running children, the sounds of hard soles on oak floors, the hiss of a 78-rpm record on a Victrola, the sounds of his father hammering and sawing in the basement, the noise of walls being erected, ramparts to keep separate the warring monsters of madness.

In his mind, he was transported back to the first time he had seen his father perform in front of an audience. He had been five years old, not yet part of the act. They were in a small town in Mississippi, a backwater outpost of a few thousand or so, a Sunday afternoon attraction at a county fair not far from Starkville.

In the middle of the Great Cygne’s opening trick, Joseph looked around the room at the other children. They seemed mesmerized by the spectacle, magnetically drawn to this tall, regal man in black. It was at that moment that Joseph realized his father was part of the world outside the puzzle of his own life, and what he must do to change that.

He looked in the dressing-room mirror. The Great Cygne stood behind him. Joseph Swann dared not turn around. Though he could see and hear and smell the hot damp of the county-fair tent, he knew he had not traveled. He was in Faerwood, in his dressing room. He closed his eyes, wished it all away. When he opened them again the Great Cygne was gone.

As he slipped into his cutaway coat. Joseph recalled the day he had cut his father down from the rope hanging over the roof beam. He recalled the deep red welt at the base of Karl Swann’s throat, the smell of vomit and feces. He had taken him to the back bedroom upstairs, not knowing what to do. When his father stirred, a half hour later, it all became clear to him. The Great Cygne was now trapped in his own device.

As dawn sought the horizon over the Delaware River, as Philadelphia stirred and stretched and rose, Joseph Swann ascended the stairs. It was nearing 6:00 AM, and the greatest of the Seven Wonders.

NINETY-SIX

5:45 AM

WHEN THE MIRROR turned fully, and a pair of wall sconces blazed to life, Jessica took a few cautious steps forward, her weapon lowered. She came face-to-face with the young woman whose image she had seen in the mirror.

“You’re going to be all right,” Jessica said. “I’m a police officer. I’m here to help you.”

“I understand.”

“What’s your name?”

The girl stepped fully into the light. “My real name is Graciella,” the girl said. “Some people know me as Lilly.”

Graciella, mi amor, Jessica thought. It all began to make sense. She recalled the diary.

I still hide. I hide from my life, my obligations. I watch from afar.

Those tiny fingers. Those dark eyes.

These are my days of grace.

“Okay,” Jessica said. She knew who she was talking to. “We have to leave. Now.”

Graciella didn’t move. “This man? This man who lives here?”

“What about him?”

“He calls himself Mr. Ludo, but his real name is Joseph Swann. He killed my mother. Her name was Eve Galvez. I’m going to kill him.”

The girl held up a yellowed piece of paper. It looked like an old blueprint. “I got this from a friend of mine,” she said. “Old guy. Wicked weird, wicked old. He used to be a magician, but his insane fucking son has kept him locked in a room for the past twenty years.” She unfolded the paper. “There are things you should know about this house. Every room has a secret entrance and a secret exit to somewhere else.”

“What are you talking about?” Jessica asked. “Let’s go.”

Graciella handed her the paper—the slight shake in her hands betraying her calm demeanor—then stepped away. “I’m not going with you. I’m not ready to leave yet.”

“What do you mean you’re not ready? Where is Joseph Swann? Where is he right now?”

Graciella ignored the question. “There’s one more trick to come. It’s called the Fire Grotto.” The girl stepped back. She reached out and touched the switch plate on the wall, then touched her foot to the baseboard. “You’ve got to understand. I cannot let this rest. I will not let this rest. I’m going to kill him.”

Graciella kicked the baseboard. To Jessica’s left and right a pair of partitions dropped from the ceiling. She was suddenly enclosed in a six-by-six room. The only light was from the beam of her Maglite.

Jessica was alone.

NINETY-SEVEN

5:45 AM

SWANN STEPPED INTO the great room. On its tattered carpeting walked the specters of the past, the many treacheries of his childhood. On the worn, sturdy furniture reposed his victims: