“My only wish is to see the joy I have been given passed on,” Corcoran said. “Now. Before we drag this out any further. Please. Sign the paperwork we’ve prepared.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Tremblay said.
I banged against the door again, and again Tremblay paused.
“Did you hear that?”
I banged again.
“Sounds about like a rat problem,” past Vic said.
I wanted to scream. I tried to bunch myself up, but all I could hear was the scratching of ink on paper, and then that same golden glow again.
“God forgive me,” Tremblay said. “I cannot pass up partaking of your mysteries, my Lord!”
There was the sound of flesh dividing and parting, and a terrible thumping, beating noise. Corcoran was breathing heavily, laughing hysterically. I banged again with my shoulder against the closet door, and then it moved, and I spilled forward, face angled up, laundry knocked off my mouth.
Tremblay in his brown suit was there, his own heart pulsating from what looked like a massive spiked knitting needle in his own hands. The whole room was awash with the glow. He leaned forward, a bizarre look on his face, and then plunged the whole stake into the open safe door under his desk.
There was an explosion of noise—the swirling of white dust, and Corcoran’s laugh was becoming more and more of a wheeze, more faint and less insistent, and then suddenly the Illusionist began to turn into naught but ash. Tremblay’s hands gripped dead air for some time, before he pitched backward, a trickle of blood from the wound in his chest.
Past Vic stared down at me.
“See what you wanted to see?” he asked.
He bent down and untied me.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Corcoran was passing on the torch,” Vic said. “Tremblay was up to no good. He was a spiteful man. Greedy, selfish. The Duke’s too stupid to know what was going on. Tremblay was behind the opium push into China. He had me plant that black book in the Duke’s things. Tonight was supposed to be Tremblay getting even; instead, we’ve turned the tide.”
“What happened to Corcoran?”
“He was a Lich,” Vic said. “He taught me most of what he knew about the mystic arts. We met up a few decades back. He taught me a lot of what he knew, but the curse of the Routshammer digs deep, and the only way out of it is to give it away or to have someone else pull it clean.”
“So this was all a game,” I said.
“No,” Vic said. “This was righting a series of wrongs. The Widow Foster will finally have her daughter back. The Duke gets healthy investments again. Corcoran gets his freedom.”
“And what do you get?”
“Money,” he said. “Money, and some social standing. You may not know this to see it, but high society hates men like me. Poor people, you know.”
“Boy, you really weren’t kidding, then,” I said, and then I paused.
“Weren’t kidding about what?”
“It’s nothing,” I said.
He drew nearer to me, bending down, and grabbed me by my shoulder.
“Why do you have that?” he asked.
“Help me out of this chair already,” I said. “Have what?”
He untied me and jerked my head gently to the side.
“This birthmark,” he said. “Why do you have this?”
