I shivered from the cold air of the city morgue. Two days had passed since I cracked the case, and I imagined Yasmin called me here because she caught the imposters attempting to collect the money. Instead, we stood over the body of Not-Nina.

  “That’s her,” I said. “How did she die?”

  Yasmin shuffled her feet. “In an unusual manner.” Her brown eyes met mine. They were softer than I remembered. “She was cooked from the inside out, with no signs of radiation.”

  The room seemed to shrink around me while I held my breath.

  “I’ve only heard of this with four victims. One being your wife.” Yasmin covered the body. “I don’t believe in coincidences. Her going to you…” She shook her head. “You’ll need time for the shock to wear off. Then, we will talk. Somehow, a connection between you and this woman exists, and I don’t think it’s my Yelp review.” She turned to walk away, but glanced over her shoulder before exiting the room. “I took it down. The review. If that matters at this point.” Then she disappeared.

  “Oh, snap,” Junette said. “Did the same man kill both your wives? Plus, Frenchie and Psycho Cinderella?”

  We left the morgue and hiked back to my suite in silence. Once there, I said, “Meet me in my office.”

  “Your office?” Claude asked.

  “Come this way, Frenchie” Junette said.

  I closed my eyes and envisioned myself floating through the fog to my conjured mansion. Torches flickered on the walls beside me as I moved. Junette’s voice echoed ahead, followed by Claude’s. As I continued, I ran my hand across the wall. It felt as real as the drywall in my suite.

  Turning the last corner, I strolled into a shelf-filled room. Volumes of books covered every inch of wall space. A large oak desk sat to the right. Junette slumped in a chair while Claude stood next to her. I moved behind my desk, then motioned to Claude and said, “Have a seat.”

  “She’s sitting in the only one.” A light brown leather chair appeared next to Janette’s matching chair.

  Claude grinned. “I’ll never get used to that.” As he sat, he locked eyes with me. “Nice to meet the man behind…” He glanced around. “…All of this.”

  “Claude, you can join your wife in the afterlife. I can release you.”

  “I never bought into the whole afterlife thing,” Claude said. “You have good instincts, but need training in interrogating and reading body language.”

  “Are you changing the subject?”

  “Both Nina and I believed in dedicating our lives to helping people. I think I’d do more good by assisting you than moving on to nothingness.”

  “If he takes cases instead of obsessing over…” Junette stopped talking.

  “I’ll take more clients if you help me figure out who’s responsible for our wives’ premature demise.”

  “Where do we start?” Claude asked.

  “First, I need alone time to think, get some rest, and take a long hot shower.”

  “We can’t just leave,” Claude said.

  “He’s going to lock us in our rooms and shut off communication.” She crossed her arms. “How long this time, Lud?”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Less than a day.” I grinned. “If you prefer, you can keep each other company.”

  “A break from Frenchie sounds good.” She glared at him. “He believes he can get up in my head.”

  “I was simply explaining how you push others away with the fa?ade of an attitude.”

  “You want to see a fa?ade.” She drew her hand back as if to slap him.

  “We all need some solitude.” I led them down the hallway. Their rooms sat across from each other, four doors down from my office. First, I escorted Claude into his room. I pulled a keyring from my pocket. “I’m going to lock you inside. You don’t get claustrophobic, do you?”

  He shook his head. “May I ask why the key is necessary?” After pausing, he added, “If this is all inside your head, shouldn’t you be able to envision the door locking itself?”

  I grinned. “You’re very astute. Everything you see is essentially a prop. Your room doesn’t really exist, but creating it helps to define the space in my mind that separates your thoughts from my own. I could envision synapses in my brain firing off to lock away your space, but creating the lock is like programing a shortcut on a computer.”

  He nodded and stepped inside, not looking back when I locked the door.

  As I turned, Junette stared at a crack. “Looks like the walls when my house settled.” She raised her eyebrows. “This wasn’t here before.”

  I placed my hand on it and closed my eyes. It faded away. “No need to worry.”

  “That pentacle will draw the attention of the wizards. They sniff them out like truffle pigs.”

  “I have a hiding place shielded from their magic.” I sighed. “Investigating would have been much easier with it around my neck.”

  “You haven’t checked on Simone in a few weeks.”

  “I’ll call your niece and make sure everything is okay.”

  “Can we visit her after you take your break?”

  I nodded. She crept into her room and pulled the door shut. I locked it. Then stopped and took a deep breath before hustling deeper down the hallway.

  The last thirty feet didn’t have any doors, but led to a dead end with a single torch. I reached up and tugged on it. To the right, the wall slid open. It closed directly after I entered. The dark room had a large metal door with a monitor affixed to the wall. As I approached, I opened my eye wide and centered it above the screen. A red light flashed into my cornea and the word match appeared, along with buttons labeled one through ten. I entered my nine-digit password.

  After a beep, a familiar click sounded inside the door. I pulled the heavy metal toward me and stepped into a small hallway. A single gate sat at the end. I pulled a necklace from beneath my shirt. Three keys dangled at the end of the thin chain, each fitting one of the locks. After unlocking them, I pulled the gate open and finally stepped inside.

  A large man with a black mustache running from his lip down both sides of his chin looked up from the book he had been reading. “You finally have time for me?”

  I glanced around the overly lit room. Paintings of samurais hung on every wall. Marble pedestals ran every few feet below the paintings, each with a vivid vase or ancient pottery occupying the top.

  “Sorry, Tungee. I was wrapped up in a case.”

  “Move not unless you see an advantage.” He raised his eyebrows. “How does your case help you find the man who took your wife?”

  “Not directly, but…”

  “Do you assume the wizards aren’t planning a move against you?” He stood up. “First, they banish your mentor, and then they refuse to find your wife’s killer. Somehow, you miraculously walked away from training, a feat no man has lived to talk about.”

  “I’ve been careful.”

  “What did I tell you after you helped me escape? We will defeat them if we are smart.” He pointed at the book he had been reading. “Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby, you can be the director of your opponent’s fate.”

  “I know the Art of War. It wouldn’t be available for you to read if I didn’t already memorize every page.” I shook my head. “What have I done to upset you now?”

  “You put yourself in the spotlight by using unsanctioned magic.”

  “How did you know I…”

  “Please. Do you expect your walls to keep me from sensing the lwa protecting you? Have I grown so weak that I can’t sense the vibrations the pentacle caused? When you left, they forbade you from using even the magic taught by me.” He pointed to a crack running across the wall, similar to the one outside Junette’s room. “You absorbed another, haven’t you?”

  “He’s good at reading body language and conducting interrogations.”

  Tungee chuckled. “Once you perfect absorption, you’ll surpass any techniques he uses.”

  “I want to finish my training.”

  He paced with his hands locked behind his back. “I trained for decades before truly grasping the full potential of absorption. You expect me to teach you in a few years. But you don’t want to put in the time.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “First, if you are insisting on trying to hold the three of us, you must learn to improve the fortified sections.” He walked up to the crack and punched it. A chunk of drywall fell to the ground. “Men have gone mad keeping souls too long. If the barriers erode, their thoughts and memories will mix with your own. A man that doesn’t know himself can’t exist.”