Season of the Witch

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The nightmare descended on him the day after the burglary.

After leaving Isidore, Gabriel returned home and worked for four hours straight, trying to figure out the information on the disk. If he looked closely enough, surely he would find a clue.

But it was hopeless. It was like trying to read a foreign language. He fell asleep at his desk just as the sun came up, his computer still open on one of the pages of The Promethean Key.

When he woke up, his watch told him it was 9 a.m. His head felt woolly. He glanced at the computer screen and shuddered. Oh, no. He simply couldn't face working on that treacherous, enigmatic text right now. Maybe he should head for the gym. His foot was still sore from the can he had stepped on the night before, but not so much that he wouldn't be able to train. A workout might get his synapses flashing again. Allow him to come back to the document fresh.

He was running at a relaxed steady pace on the treadmill when it happened. One moment he was watching a good-looking blonde with imposing pecs as she assaulted the rowing machine with terrifying ferocity. The next moment he had collapsed, the treadmill rushing along underneath his body at 8.0 mph, dragging him sideways. He was unable to right himself. The only thing he was aware of was that his head had turned into a fireball of pain. And then, nothing.

"I think he's having an epileptic fit." A female voice, sounding apprehensive.

"Give him air." Another voice. A man, trying to sound authoritative.

Gabriel opened his eyes. He was flat on his back. Around him a circle of faces looking down at him. Just like in the movies, he thought. When the hero goes down. His next question should probably be: Where am I?

But he knew where he was. His head hurt fiercely but he was not disoriented. He knew exactly what had happened to him. And who was responsible.

He placed his hands palms down on the floor and pushed himself up.

"Easy there." The man who had spoken before-one of the trainers at the gym-placed his arm around Gabriel's shoulders and helped him get to his feet.

"Are you all right, guy? Should we get you a doctor?"

"I'm fine."

The trainer gave him a dubious look. "Maybe you should sit down, what do you say? I'll get you some water."

He pushed Gabriel onto the seat of one of the weight machines and strode off purposefully in the direction of the water cooler.

Gabriel touched his forehead. It was creamy with sweat, whether from his run or from the pain was difficult to say. But inside his skull a little man had taken up residence. A little man with an enormous pickax, swinging away, digging up soft clods of brain tissue.

"Here you go." The trainer thrust out a burly fist holding a plastic cup filled with water.

"Thanks." Gabriel noticed that a few of the other gym members were watching him from the corners of their eyes. Some looked sympathetic. A few of the men seemed scornful.

Gabriel took a sip from the plastic cup. But even the simple act of swallowing appeared to kick the little man with the pickax into overdrive.

"I think I should go home," he said to the trainer, who was still eyeing him with trepidation.

"Yeah, man." The trainer looked relieved. "Have a rest, OK?"

In the men's changing room, Gabriel removed his gym bag from his locker. But instead of heading outside, he sat down on one of the wooden benches. Leaning his head against the wall, he closed his eyes. Time for a recap. He thought back, trying to slow down the experience in his memory: to recall what had happened one still frame at a time.

Running. The treadmill moving smoothly. The blonde working the rowing machine. Feeling nauseous, not much at first, but with ever-increasing intensity. The sounds in the room receding. Then the extraordinary sensation that a window had opened inside his brain. An aperture, giving access to a massive cascade of images flooding through his mind with the ferocity of an avalanche. The protection reflex kicking in. His brain screaming at him to clamp down. The tidal wave stopping but his head gripped by pain. Pain such as he had never experienced before in his entire life, blowing out his consciousness. His brain crashing like a computer on overload. Blackout.

Mind attack. The same experience that had left Robert Whittington brain damaged before he drowned, and which had killed his old man. And now it was his turn.

She had entered his mind twice before but those had been scans: explorations, fact-finding missions. "Getting to know you" exercises.

This had been no scan. This had been an assault.

For a few seconds he continued to sit quietly, trying to come to terms with the implications. But it was difficult to concentrate. The little man inside his head was still wielding the pickax with great gusto. The little guy must be in pretty good shape: he hadn't slowed down since he started on his mission of destruction. Gabriel knew he should make an effort to get to his apartment, but it was peaceful here and he felt so damn tired. The idea of having to make the journey home seemed overwhelmingly daunting.

On your feet, Blackstone. You can't hide out in the men's changing room for the rest of your life.

Outside the sun was shining. The storm of the previous night had disappeared and there were no clouds in the sky. But it was very cold. Or maybe it was just that he was still suffering from shock.

He had used his bicycle to get to the gym. For a moment he contemplated leaving the bike where it was and taking a taxi home. The way he felt now, a stretcher would not be unwelcome. But it was difficult to find a cab around here, and if he took one, he'd only have to come back for the bike later. Better to bite the bullet. It wasn't that far to his apartment.

He pedaled slowly, keeping well to the left side of the road, traversing intersections with care. Taking no chances. Only a few minutes more and he'd be home. Sanctuary.

And then it happened again. And this time it almost killed him.

One moment he was pedaling slowly and deliberately, keeping his eye on a worn-out MG, whose driver was signaling that he wanted to change lanes. The next moment his entire body was gripped with pain and nausea. The force of it was so great, he almost crashed his bicycle there and then. He swerved violently and a car hooted angrily behind him. For a few agonizing moments, it was as though he had entered a fun house in a carnival. Everything ultrabright. Nothing making sense. The traffic around him frightening chaos. And then someone was emptying a giant container of violently animated images into his brain: the flood roaring through the window in his mind at warp speed, too fast to process; a sick, psychedelic blur.

Clamp down! Clamp down! The nauseating flood of images was arrested midstream, but at the same time a bolt of pain ripped through his head with gut-wrenching violence. Vaguely, he was aware of the bicycle wobbling underneath his hands like a thing possessed-but it seemed to be happening to someone else, not himself. Someone else…

The hissing of giant brakes and the urgent hoot of a bus shocked him out of his stupor. He had strayed into the bus lane-right into the path of an oncoming double-decker.

Gabriel screamed. He swerved his bicycle violently to one side and plowed onto the sidewalk and into a crowd of pedestrians. As the bike went down, he could hear shouts of alarm and anger.

He lay where he fell. He could hear voices, but no one came over to find out if he was hurt. Someone said something in a low, disgusted voice and he thought he caught the word "drunk."

He did not know for how long he remained on his back staring stupidly at the sky. When he finally pulled himself upright, he was a lone island in a river of pedestrians. People were giving him a wide berth, keeping their faces averted as they passed him by.

The bicycle's wheel was bent. He would not be able to ride it home. He started pushing it next to him, an automatic act. He wasn't able to concentrate. Everything around him fragile and impermanent. His thoughts incoherent.

Mind attack.

She was through playing around. He was in her kill zone.

He spent most of the rest of the day in bed. After arriving home, he swallowed a handful of Neurofens and two sleeping tablets. Time enough later to come to terms with what had happened to him and to devise a plan of action. Action was the last thing on his mind right now. All he wanted was relief from the ocean of pain inside his skull.

But when he woke up a full five hours later, his head was still throbbing. Not nearly as badly as earlier in the day, but the pain was there, lurking slyly among the ganglia.

It was only four o'clock in the afternoon, but already the sky was a cold, dirty yellow and the sun was disappearing. His bedroom was gray with shadows.

He pulled the blanket closer around his shoulders and tried to focus.

He needed to decide what to do. Even though his clamp-down reflex was highly developed, he would not be able to continue to defend himself against the kind of battering his mind had received earlier in the day. The second time, on the bicycle, he had felt his brain sag.

Why now? The night of the birthday party he had been at her mercy but she had not harmed him, she had only scanned. So what had changed? What made her decide to go on the rampage?

The Promethean Key. His retrieval of The Key had infuriated her into launching a full-out assault. There was no other explanation. The architectural sketches definitely came from the house of a million doors, but what was the house of a million doors?

He got up from the bed and shuffled over to his computer, clutching the blanket to him as though he were some homeless person.

He started to scroll down the pages, his eyes skimming through the unintelligible symbols and cryptic references. Somewhere in these pages there must be something that would make sense… He stilled his hand.

Memory Palace. Power station = portal.

He stared at the blinking cursor, which was resting on the word "Memory."

Maybe the house of a million doors wasn't a house. Maybe it was a palace.

But a memory palace? What was a memory palace?

No. He was asking the wrong question. The question he should be asking wasn't what, but who. Who would be able to design such a palace of the memory? Who would be able to build this place where a boy could be lured to his death?

The answer lay in the word "memory." And he knew of only one person who had studied the concept of memory with the rigor of a scholar and the commitment of a mystic.

Minnaloushe.

Minnaloushe was the architect of the memory palace. The place in which Robert Whittington had followed a woman who had led him to his death.

He had finally identified her.

Oh, Minnaloushe. Why?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Minnaloushe had murdered Robert Whittington. Had held his head under the water until the boy had choked to death.

Gabriel breathed shallowly. He felt sick.

OK. This was not the time to get emotional. Think.

One question has been answered. Who.

That left why. Why did Minnaloushe kill Robert Whittington?

The answer to this question was tied up with the memory palace. But he still did not know what this was. And until he did, he would be unable to solve the puzzle.

The answer could be just a click away. As he logged on to his favorite search engine, he could feel his heart pounding inside his chest.

"Memory Palace"

The first link he clicked on opened onto the personal Web page of one Adrian Stallworthy. There was no picture of Mr. Stallworthy and his personal details were sketchy, but there was enough information on the page to convince Gabriel that this was a man he would like to meet.

Adrian Stallworthy. Professor in Medieval Codes, Cambridge University. Author of the definitive work on Memory Palaces, Theatres and the Art of Memory. Published 1997, Cambridge University Press.

There followed a long list of journal publications, all of them sounding dauntingly esoteric.

Gabriel glanced at his watch. It was still early enough in the afternoon for a hardworking academic to be in his office.

The professor's office phone number was on his Web page, and sure enough, the phone rang only once before it was answered.

"Adrian Stallworthy." The voice was pleasant.

"Professor Stallworthy, my name is Gabriel Blackstone. I have a disk, which I believe to hold the plans for a memory palace. I was hoping you might be able to interpret the plans for me."

"A memory palace? From which period?"

"Uh…"

"Classical Greece? Middle Ages? Renaissance?"

"No. I think it's a modern-day palace."

A long pause. When he spoke again, the interest in Stallworthy's voice was unmistakable. "If it is, Mr. Blackstone, it would be unique. Why don't you send it to me via an attachment and I'll take a look."

"I would rather not send it via e-mail, Professor." Until he knew what he was dealing with he was not about to let The Key loose on the Internet. He didn't want any stray copies floating around cyberspace. "Maybe we could meet in person?"

"Well." Stallworthy paused. "I could see you in my office, I suppose. How about seven o'clock this evening?"

"Thank you, Professor. I appreciate it. If you could give me your address?"

Gabriel replaced the receiver with a heavy hand. Cambridge. Fifty-four miles through rush hour traffic on the M11. Not an appealing prospect. Especially as he still felt like death warmed over.

Fear suddenly knotted his stomach. What if Minnaloushe launched another mind attack? What if what happened to him this morning on the bicycle happened again while he was behind the wheel of his car? Twisted metal, sirens, flashing lights, ambulances.

Death.

For the first time he thought about it straight up. He could die. She could kill him.

But if he didn't get answers, he would never be safe. She had him in her crosshairs. Without knowing what he was up against, he would have nowhere to run. Know thine enemy.

He could ask Isidore to drive him. It would minimize the risk to himself and to others on the road. And the thought of company was attractive. But he did not want to put Isidore in danger. Letting his friend come with him to Monk House last night had been a stupid thing to do. He didn't want Isidore to surface on Minnaloushe's radar screen. From here on he was going to leave Isidore out of this mess. And for the first time since she had left, he was glad Frankie was out of the country as well.

Now that he had made up his mind to go, he wanted to get on the road as soon as possible. He would drive very slowly, and at the first hint of a scan, he'd pull off.

In the bathroom he washed his face and combed his hair. His eyes were bloodshot. His head hurt. A tiny tick pulsed underneath one eyelid. Just a tremor, but he couldn't seem to calm it down. He placed his fingers on the spot underneath his eye where the nerve was twitching, willing it to stop. But when he removed his fingers, there it was again, the tiniest of movements.

He shrugged into his coat, collected his car keys. But as he pulled the front door shut behind him, he hesitated. He was aware of menace lurking, something lethal hovering in the air.

Instead of taking the elevator-the idea of getting into that confined space was suddenly unthinkable-he chose the stairs.

He couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. The sense of some sly, malevolent presence following him, waiting somewhere in the shadows, was strong and deeply unpleasant. Perhaps it had been waiting for him to leave the safety of his apartment all along.

The hair on his neck was standing up. He continued to walk down the stairs doggedly, looking straight in front of him. The pain in his head was a low, aching throb. His heart beat wildly.

At a bend in the stairs he forced himself to look up. Was there a movement up there? The blur of a white face? Had someone leaned over the railing only to jerk back when he looked up? For a long moment he waited. Nothing stirred. But instead of relief, dread slipped around his throat like a noose. Any moment now he would hear the whisper of a footfall. A hand would come to rest on his shoulder…

And suddenly he was running, running-sprinting down the stairs two at a time. His heart was beating so hard he thought he might pass out. As he reached the lobby, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the hallway mirror and what he saw shocked him: the staring face of a man hollowed out by fear.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The drive to Cambridge took ninety minutes and was completely uneventful. The sense of foreboding, however, did not let up. When Gabriel finally parked his car in one of the city center car parks, his neck was stiff and his back cramped from the continued apprehension.

The professor had given him the address of the college but no directions. After getting lost twice, he was finally steered right by a pretty student. He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes past the hour. He was late for his appointment.

As he followed the girl's instructions, he wondered about the man he was about to meet. Medieval codes. Not exactly a run-of-the-mill specialty even in the rarefied corridors of academia. The man was probably more than a little eccentric.

But Adrian Stallworthy turned out to be nothing like Gabriel had imagined. Instead of the caricature of the academic professor- stooped, balding, nearsighted-Adrian Stallworthy was quite the hunk. He had blue eyes, broad shoulders and slender hips. A photograph of the professor standing in front of a rowing boat, an oar clutched in one fist, explained the impressive physique. Gabriel guessed the man had no trouble attracting female students to his classes.

Stallworthy's grip was firm and his smile genuinely friendly. "Mr. Blackstone. Have a seat." He waved at a battered armchair.

Gabriel sat down. The springs of the seat were drooping and he sank almost to the ground. But once you got the hang of it, the chair was surprisingly comfortable.

On the professor's desk was a scuffed cardboard notice saying, Please switch off your cell phone! Stallworthy saw him looking at it and said apologetically, "Cell phones are my pet hate."

"Understandable." Gabriel reached into his jacket pocket and extracted his mobile. Pressing his thumb on the off button, he waited for the lighted display to darken. "There."

"Thank you." Stallworthy inclined his head.

Gabriel leaned forward and pushed the disk with The Promethean Key across the desk. "If you could explain to me what's on here, Professor, I would be in your debt."

Stallworthy picked up the CD and slid it into his disk drive. "This may take a while."

"No rush."

Gabriel looked around him. Stallworthy might not be your quintessential dried-up academic, but his digs were decidedly conventional. Shabby Oriental carpet with bald spots. Hideous sludge brown curtains. Books everywhere. A replica of this office could be found on any campus anywhere in the world. The room was also distinctly chilly, the fire in the soot-stained fireplace creating more smoke than heat.

Stallworthy made a slight sound. Whether of surprise or incredulity, Gabriel couldn't tell. But whatever it was the professor was looking at, it certainly held his attention.

After about twenty minutes, he leaned back in his chair and looked at Gabriel.

"Mr. Blackstone-I have to confess, I haven't been this excited in years."

"So you do know what it is."

"Something truly unique. Very special indeed." Stallworthy pressed his finger on the button of the disk drive and removed the CD, placing it delicately on the desk in front of him as though afraid it might break.

"Have you ever heard of something called the Art of Memory?" There was reverence in Stallworthy's tone. Gabriel could hear him virtually capitalize the letters A and M.

"I can't say that I have."

"It's a technique that originated with the ancient Greeks. Later, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it became a tool in the hands of alchemists and Gnostics."

Gabriel felt a sense of inevitability descend on him. "A tool. A magic tool, of course."

"Indeed. By practicing the Art of Memory, practitioners were able to amplify their memory skills to unimaginable levels."

Gabriel frowned. "I'm not sure I understand. You mean, their memories were improved?"

"Improved is far too mild a term to describe what happened to these men. Their memories were rocket boosted."

Stallworthy steepled his fingers. "Let me try to explain it this way. We're all born with natural memory. But our memory spans are limited. So we use little memory tricks to aid us. You know how some people make use of mnemonics to help them remember names? Well, the Art of Memory is a very highly developed form of mnemonics. When someone practices the Art, he builds artificial memory in his mind, which is capable of handling infinitely bigger chunks of knowledge than he'd normally be able to absorb. You could almost say his mind becomes computerized, adapting itself to processing vast quantities of information."

Gabriel didn't bother to hide his skepticism. "A computerized mind. Really. How?"

"Well, there are several ways. One way is by constructing a memory palace, of which this is an example. A truly astounding example."

"So how does it work?"

"Well, a memory palace, such as this one, is an imaginary space."

"Like a building?"

"Exactly. And even though it is imaginary, the practitioner who built it will have constructed it very carefully indeed, right down to the exact size of the rooms. Even the correct lighting."

"You said it is imaginary. What do you mean by that?"

"The palace exists only in the mind of the practitioner. It will never be constructed in the real world. It is an architectural space that is embedded in memory. And that's where it will stay."

Gabriel flashed back on the ride. "Inside those rooms… are there objects, images?"

"Oh, yes. Thousands upon thousands of images. Some of these images will be fantastically beautiful, others quite horrendous. As in this memory palace here." Stallworthy tapped the CD with his forefinger. "In some of these rooms are beautiful things such as butterflies and glowing moons. And then right next door, there's a room used as a slaughterhouse. Gutted pigs. Or a self-mutilating monk."

"What do the images stand for?"

"They're symbols. Each one represents a chunk of information. The idea is that the practitioner can walk through the palace, locate the various images and recover the information associated with every symbol. In other words-to use computer terminology again-he is walking through coded space. It is like opening the desktop on your PC and clicking on an icon, thereby retrieving the info attached to the icon. But instead of pointing and clicking a mouse, someone practicing the Art of Memory would be walking through imaginary rooms created inside his own mind. And while he is moving from room to room, he will be accessing images and their stored information in order."

"The order of places, the order of things," Gabriel parroted.

"Exactly." Stallworthy nodded. "That was the rule. Every time the practitioner walked through the palace, he had to access the rooms and images in order. This was very important. Otherwise he'd get lost and the information he tried to access would be scrambled."

Gabriel sat quietly, trying to absorb what Stallworthy had told him. The house of a million doors was an imaginary building. That was what he had accessed during his ride inside Robbie Whittington's mind. The kid had not been on drugs. He had been walking quite deliberately through an imaginary palace inside his head. A palace constructed by an expert on the subject of memory: Minnaloushe Monk.

Gabriel looked at Stallworthy. "You said the images inside the rooms of the memory palace should be either beautiful or horrendous. Why?"

"Simply because visual images, which evoke a strong emotional response, are easier to remember than bland ones. You're more likely to remember a solar eclipse than a lightbulb. Striking images are an aid to memory."

For a moment Gabriel remembered some of the bizarre objects he had encountered inside the house of a million doors. An eyeless monk. Phosphorescent lilies. Bloodied doves. Crucified babies. Pulsating galaxies. Stallworthy was right: those images were hard to forget.

Gabriel frowned again. "Does this memory palace thing really work? It seems to me as though it would be impossible to remember all those thousands of images-never mind the information attached to them."

"Quite frankly, the modern mind isn't up to it anymore." Stall-worthy sighed. "Our memories have become flaccid because of all the technological tools we use. The photocopier. The Internet. Television. We're using them as props. You told me you're a computer specialist. That must mean you are used to working with information. However-correct me if I'm wrong-your long-term memory is probably quite feeble. Citizens of Ancient Greece and Rome would find your attention span laughable."

The contemptuous tone was unexpected. For a moment Gabriel was taken aback. "Citizens of Ancient Greece did not encounter a tenth of the ideas I'm exposed to every day, Professor," he objected. "Communications technology is making incredible demands on our brains. Personally, I think we are evolving into far more complex human beings than even our grandparents."

"I don't agree." Stallworthy was emphatic. "Modern man is increasingly incapable of internalizing knowledge. Our memories have become shallow. We surf the Internet obsessively but forget what we've read almost as soon as we've read it. Information in newspapers and the TV is fed to us bite-sized for easy consumption. Yes, we do receive enormous doses of information every day. But it's in the one ear, out the other. We never memorize it and make it our own."

"Yet our multitasking abilities are far superior to our grandparents'."

"Of course. But our multitasking ability is a facile skill, allowing us to skim the waves of chaos, not swim through them. We're all born with natural memory. But instead of strengthening that memory throughout our lives-training it the way you would your body in a gym-we allow it to become flabby. Did you know Simplicius could recite Virgil backwards? And that Seneca the Elder could hear a list of two thousand names and then repeat them in exact order? We're talking around 40 b.c."

"Impressive. But that's rote knowledge."

"Maybe. But in the days before the printing press people had to remember everything. Everything. Students listened to their teachers and would pass on knowledge gained by word of mouth. Their memories were muscular."

For a moment Gabriel thought back to a summer's day and two women drinking wine in a graveyard, the sun in their hair. Quoting from a book, which they had not read in years. Their recollection word perfect.

Gabriel looked at the CD on Stallworthy's desk. "So you're saying the person who constructed that building has a good memory."

"Not a good memory. A magical one."

Stallworthy's voice had changed: the reverence was back. "The person who created this memory palace is a magician and a mathematical genius. It is someone for whom the concept of memory is a passion. Do you know him?"

"Her."

"A woman?"

"Yes."

"Really? Now, that's fascinating. All the great practitioners of the Art of Memory that we know of have been men. Trithemius. Fludd. Ramon Lull. Giordano Bruno. Giulio Camillo. Magicians all of them."

"So this woman is a witch as well."

"Oh, yes."

Gabriel closed his eyes. Minnaloushe holding a book with pictures of women burning like torches. Her hands pale, her hair a glistening cloud of Spanish moss.

"You see," Stallworthy leaned forward, his handsome face intense, his words flowing rapidly, "at first the Art was merely an aid to memory-that's how the Ancient Greeks conceived it. But during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Art changed when it fell into the hands of men who were interested in obtaining divine powers."

"You're saying it turned into witchcraft."

"Absolutely. These men-men such as Giordano Bruno and Ramon Lull-built memory palaces that were appallingly complex. They were supposed to hold information about every aspect of the universe-the entire history of human civilization. So the palace represented the cosmos, and the images inside it knowledge of the cosmos. These buildings were really vast information systems constructed according to techniques of numerology and cryptology infused with magic-a kind of mystical mathematics-but still based on the ancient principle of the order of places, the order of things."

Gabriel was struggling to come to terms with Stallworthy's words. "But what on earth did they hope to achieve?"

"Their highest aspiration was gnosis-divine knowledge and universal memory. They believed they could produce a kind of memory machine capturing all the knowledge in the universe."

"Like a universal computer."

"Yes. But a computer located firmly in the mind alone. Wetware. Not hardware. Their ultimate goal was to tap into this mind computer and access all universal knowledge at once. In one single gigantic blast of data."

"Why?"

"Because at that instant of total knowledge, they would experience enlightenment. They would become one with cosmic consciousness. Anima mundi. When that happened, the magus would comprehend divine power. Become godlike himself."

Gabriel stared at Stallworthy. "Madness."

"Divine madness."

"It's not possible."

"Who's to say what is possible? There are reports of alchemists walking on water. Becoming immensely old. Seeing into the future."

"This can't be anything but superstition and mythology. A product of the dark ages."

"Mr. Blackstone, the search for enlightenment is one of the oldest quests of mankind. It is indeed the Holy Grail. Even today there are people all over the world, from different philosophies and widely different cultures, who pursue exactly the same goal. Martial artists partake in shugyo or fearsome rituals designed to break down body and spirit. North American shamans use meditation and drugs to achieve enlightenment. Right at this minute there are people staring at a blank wall or sitting on top of a very tall pole-who have done so for years-in order to expand their consciousness. This may seem ridiculous, even laughable to you, but seekers of enlightenment are willing to sacrifice everything for a moment of true illumination. Everything. Memory artists were no different. But instead of using kung fu or mantras, they drowned themselves in data and built information palaces."

"The whole idea is crazy." Gabriel could hear his voice rising. "There's no way these guys could have carried around universal knowledge inside their heads. I don't care how good their memories were."

Stallworthy shrugged. "Whether any of them actually achieved the goal of universal knowledge is highly questionable, granted. But it's the journey as much as the destination that attracted these men. Just constructing the palaces and embedding them into their own memories was a stupendous feat. Such a highly strenuous journey would inevitably lead to Purgation and Purification of the Self. And as they traveled, they harnessed godlike powers. These palaces were created to mirror the immensity of the cosmos, remember. By trying to wrap his mind around one of those information systems, the magician's mind was stretched and strained-propelled into a divine change of state."

"Transformation."

"Every alchemist's dream."

Gabriel looked out the window. Behind the shiny leaded panes, the sky was sullen.

"Now, I should stress one thing…" Stallworthy hesitated. "Unlike the classical memory palaces, alchemists' palaces were animated by magic. The objects in the rooms weren't just ordinary symbols- they were magic symbols."

"Magic how?"

"The objects inside the rooms were talismanic images. Every single image-whether it is a gutted pig or a butterfly or a monk or whatever-was conceived according to very definite magical formulae. Each object-whether beautiful or horrific-was constructed with one goal in mind. To endow the magician with supernatural power."

"As easy as that, huh?"

Stallworthy shook his head. "True magic is never easy. The magic we're talking about is highly systematized magic. When you read the writings of memory artists, you realize you are in the presence of a different breed of men. Bruno's Shadows is a work of exceptional brilliance. And Lull's memory theater was a massively intricate system of wheels within wheels. His use of symbolic logic influenced Leibnitz's development of calculus. And the Ars Magna was translated by a German philosopher into the programming language COBOL. Some say Lull's memory system is the occult origin of modern computers."

Gabriel looked back to where the CD lay innocently on Stallworthy's battered desktop. "So that," he gestured with his head at the CD, "that is…" His voice tapered off.

"Yes." Stallworthy's voice was quiet. "The Promethean Key is a magical memory palace. And quite the most elaborate one I've ever studied."

Gabriel brought his hand up to his eyes. He was so tired. The room around him seemed edged with white.

"The woman who created this palace has combined the classical Art of Memory with Bruno's Shadows and Lull's Wheels, refining it to the square. Within this palace hide innumerable worlds. Galaxies of information."

"And she's carrying all of it around in her head."

"She's attempting to, yes."

Gabriel was suddenly furious. "Do you realize what you're saying? You want me to believe she's trying to memorize the entire bloody Library of Congress-God knows how many terabytes of information."

Stallworthy didn't flinch. "I'm not sure why the idea should make you angry. This woman is a solar witch in search of transformation, which will lead to enlightenment. Her memory palace is the product of an exquisite mind. I find it inspiring. You, on the other hand, seem to find it frightening."

Frightening? Gabriel almost laughed out loud. A mind that strong, that rigorously trained… and in possession of remote viewing skills. Yes, frightening was probably an apt word.

He reached out and picked up the CD, flicking it over and over in his hand. "Surely this one disk does not carry all the information in the universe." His voice was heavily sarcastic.

"Of course not. But it holds the framework of the memory palace and the codes upon which it is based. The software, if you will."

"Will you be able to decipher all of it?"

"Hardly. It's written in green language-the esoteric language of alchemists and initiates. I don't think I'll ever be able to decode a system like this completely. It is rife with simulacra and encrypted messages. Not to mention the sigils and talismanic images. And the math underlying it all is rigorous to say the least. Besides which, the portal is missing. And without the portal, I can't work the system."

Portal. In Gabriel's mind stirred an echo of that fantastical geometrical space with its symbol-clad walls. Gateway to madness and death.

"What is the portal?"

"It is the heart of the system: the power station, if you will. It drives the entire construct. Inside the portal there is a series of concentric revolving wheels densely inscribed with magic images that can be combined and recombined in ever-changing arrangements. Most of the images will be from ancient Egyptian star lore and star magic. But you need to animate the wheels and get them to turn, otherwise the system won't work. Of course, in order to activate the wheels you also need a password."

"A password."

Stallworthy nodded. "Without the portal and the password, the disk is just a curiosity."

"And with it?"

"With it I would be able to start internalizing this memory palace. Magicize my mind."

"Become an alchemist yourself."

"Yes. An extreme magician." Stallworthy's voice dropped to a whisper. His handsome face was tight with fervor.

But then he suddenly relaxed. Leaning back in his chair, he smiled at Gabriel's expression. "You look shocked."

"I find it amazing that anyone academically trained in the twenty-first century can speak of magic so glibly."

"What else is magic but an attempt to grasp the laws governing the universe and apply them to your own ends?"

"That's not magic. That's science."

"Yes. And alchemy is the science of the soul."

Silence. The only sounds in the room the crackle of the flames and the tiny secret rushes of settling soot.

Gabriel rubbed his forehead. "This password you talked about… you have no idea what it might be?"

"No. Only the designer of this palace knows its true name. And that is locked away inside her mind." Stallworthy shook his head almost sadly. "Of course, even if I did have knowledge of the password, I don't think I would use it."

"Why not?"

"Because walking through such a palace is dangerous. The strain on the mind is stupendous. You can get lost inside, unable to ever return to the real world again. Once you lose the order of places, the order of things, you'll be stranded inside a labyrinth, unable to find entrance or exit. It takes a very highly trained mind to make the journey. An alchemist of the highest order. This is not for the dabbler. It should only be attempted by a magus. Or a witch."

For a moment Robbie Whittington's face came into Gabriel's mind. The sweet mouth and vulnerable eyes. An alchemist of the highest order? A magus? Surely not. And that might have been the problem. Somehow-he didn't know how or why-but somehow Whittington's attempt to walk through Minnaloushe's memory palace had damaged his mind. But why did she then also have to kill him?

Gabriel got up from his chair. "Professor Stallworthy, thank you for your time. You've certainly cleared up a quite a few issues for me."

"Not at all." Stallworthy gripped his hand firmly. "The pleasure was mine. It's amazing to think there is still a genuine practitioner of the Art out there. I rather thought they had ceased to exist. May I ask, how did you come to be in possession of this disk?"

Gabriel hesitated. "It was amongst the personal effects left to me after the lady's death."

"She's dead?" Stallworthy's voice was filled with regret. "I would have loved to meet her. She must have been a remarkable woman."

"Remarkable?" Gabriel paused. Minnaloushe's face was suddenly clear in his mind. Red hair, gypsy mouth, ocean eyes.

"Yes, I suppose you could say that."

As he walked away from Stallworthy's office, Gabriel glanced at his watch. It was already after nine o'clock. The building had gone into after-hour quiet. The corridors were deserted. No clicking of keyboards coming from offices. No voices shouting and laughing. Every door closed. A light breeze was blowing, and flyers rustled quietly on the bulletin boards lining the walls.

At the end of the passageway, he looked back. Even the light in Stallworthy's office was now dead. The professor hadn't passed him in the corridor. He must have taken another way out.

Gabriel pushed his hand into his jacket pocket and extracted his cell phone. Switching it on, he glanced at the lighted display. Two missed calls. Both from Isidore.

The first time around, his friend hadn't left a message. But the second time, he had. "Gabe. Call me…"

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Isidore replaced the receiver without leaving a message on Gabriel's cell phone. It was rare indeed not to be able to contact Gabriel on his mobile. Highly irritating. Isidore had a pressing need to talk to Gabriel right now; right this minute. He had some fantastic news to share.

Isidore felt very pleased with himself. Sometimes he was amazed by his own brilliance. Like today.

He dialed Gabriel's cell phone number again. Once more he listened to his friend's recorded voice informing him that he was not available to take the call. This time he decided to leave a message.

"Gabe. Call me. I have interesting news. No, I have stupendous news." Isidore hesitated. Should he just come right out and tell Gabriel what it was? But then he decided against it. It was best if he talked to his friend in person and explained how he had arrived at his conclusions. Besides which, he felt pretty damn good about cracking this little riddle and would like to spin out his moment of glory. So he merely added mysteriously, "Beware the crow…"

With this tantalizing clue, he rang off, smiling all the while. No question about it. He the man. Admittedly, cracking the puzzle hadn't required great deductive skills on his part. He had been surfing the Web rather aimlessly and had happened to scroll through a list of animal totems. And hey, presto: the answer was staring him in the face.

He swiveled his chair around to face his computer, his smile disappearing. He was worried that someone had been hacking into his machine. The cloaking device used by the snoop was pretty damn good but there were telltale signs. What he couldn't figure out was if his visitor had been merely curious, obeying the hacker's code of looking but not touching, or whether his system had in fact been compromised.

Earlier today he had stripped his system bare but found nothing wrong. Besides, most of his software was stashed in the university computers at the London School of Economics. It was his file transfer protocol site. Not that the people at LSE knew anything about this, of course. It was strictly under the wire. But it was a great hiding place, and it was highly unlikely that the snoop would have been able to track down any of his stuff. Without the FTP address, user name and pass code, his visitor would get nowhere.

But Isidore still felt uneasy. There were very few hackers around who were skilled enough to hack past his firewalls.

He sighed and decided to make himself a cup of cocoa. As he waited for the milk to heat, he picked up a small circle made of iron, which he had discovered stuck in the fold of the seat of his orange armchair earlier today when he had made a halfhearted stab at cleaning his apartment. The circle was quite heavy. He had never seen it before and rather thought it might have fallen out of Gabriel's pocket last night when his friend had been drying his feet.

He turned the tiny object over in his hand a few times. It didn't look like much. Probably worthless. Yawning, he lifted the lid on the garbage can and tossed it inside where it disappeared among yogurt cups, take-out empties and soggy tea bags.

He carried his mug of cocoa with him back to his computer. It was high time he visited his favorite MUD again. He hadn't visited the land of Dreadshine for over a week.

He knew Gabriel found his addiction to Dreadshine a little sad. And he supposed his friend was right. Instead of face-to-face contact in the real world, he preferred forming relationships in the anonymous, mapless world of cyberspace. And Dreadshine was where he felt most at home.

Dreadshine was a text cyber world filled with castles and knights, damsels in distress and deeds of valor. Every member of this online community had adopted a character, which they had invented themselves and which probably had very little to do with the kind of person they were in everyday life. Isidore himself had assumed the persona of the court clown and this was his handle as well. In Dreadshine he was known as Jester. No one knew his true identity. No one knew his real name. Which is the way it usually is in cyberspace. In cyberspace everyone wears a mask.

He logged on to the Dreadshine site, but before joining the rest of the gang in the castle's banqueting hall, he made a little detour to visit a friend who lived in the dungeons.

Or rather, who used to live there. Razor was a one-eyed cripple who had been tortured by evil monks when he was a child. His hideous appearance caused him to hide himself away in the dank garrets of the castle. Razor had been Jester's friend for a long time, and they had slayed many dragons and evildoers together.

But a few weeks ago, Razor had been killed in an online battle with a demonic gremlin. The combat rules of Dreadshine were strict. If you lost a battle, you had to pay the price and your life was forfeit. Razor had lost and had been ceremoniously buried by the other Dreadshine residents. The light in his garret was now switched off and a message posted for all members to see: "Razor's house is dark." This phrase was always used when a member died. The garret where Razor used to live was left intact, though, and sometimes Razor's friends would go there to pay their respects to his memory: light a candle, leave a bottle of beer.

As Isidore approached the garret, he was surprised to find someone there already. A woman-and obviously a new member. He did not recognize the name. Lady in Green.

He should probably introduce himself.

Hi, he typed.

I'm Jester.

I know who you are.

Have we met?

No, but your fame goes before you.

Isidore smiled. She was flirtatious. This was going to be fun.

Please, he typed politely, would you tell me what you look like?

I am a seductress. I wear a mask but my eyes are magnificent. The fragrance of pomegranates lies in my bones. I am shame and boldness. I am knowledge and ignorance.

Wowza. Isidore blinked. This was one hot babe. His hands hovered over the keyboard.

Jester has fallen under the spell of the Lady in Green and wishes to spend time with her.

In that case look into my eyes, Jester. Tell me what you see.

I see mystery. And tantalizing secrets.

And what do I have on my shoulder?

Isidore hesitated. How to answer this one?

What would you like me to see? Do you see the crow?

Crow? He frowned. The next moment a steel vise gripped his head. His brain sliced open and a massive torrent of images rushed into his mind at lightning speed. He screamed. The pain was excruciating. His skull was on fire. He grabbed his head with both hands as though he might shield his brain from the relentless assault. But to no avail. His brain was being pulped by the weight of data rushing into his mind at warp speed, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

The last sensation that flitted across his mind before every thought was extinguished was one of disbelief. On the screen in front of him, letters were appearing:

Jester's house is dark…

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Isidore was to be buried in the churchyard of the village where he grew up and where his parents still lived.

Gabriel had taken the train. He couldn't trust himself behind a wheel any longer. He was shivering constantly and he was unable to keep his hands still. When earlier this morning he had introduced himself to Isidore's parents, he had twitched and jerked like a junkie in need of a fix. What their impression was of him, he hated to think.

In the past three days he had experienced five mind attacks. He had come to recognize the signs. The humming in the air. The nausea. His skin stretched tight over his scalp. And then the window opening inside his mind, the toxic avalanche of images and information ripping through his skull like soft-nosed bullets carelessly tearing apart the tissue of his brain. He was now able to anticipate what was coming and was usually able to clamp down before the window fully opened. But the blocking action itself always increased the pain inside his head. Every time he clamped down, it felt as though his skull was about to explode.

The last assault had happened only a few hours before, when he was busy shaving. The window inside his mind flying open. His hand with the razor jerking, leaving a thin but burning gash on the taut skin of his jaw. For an agonizing moment he simply stood there, allowing the avalanche of information and images to stream through his brain. Then, with a tremendous force of will he clamped down, and in doing so, he felt something inside his head give. He must have blacked out briefly. When he came to, retching over the washbasin, he looked at his mirrored image and his one eye was filled with blood.

If only he could keep his hands quiet. In desperation he tucked them under his armpits and tried to concentrate on the words of the minister, a diffident man with shy eyes. He was young, probably too young to have known Isidore himself when he was a boy attending church with his parents. The mourners, on the other hand, were almost all elderly: obviously acquaintances of the mother and father. Isidore did not have many friends. Correction. Isidore did not have many friends in the brick-and-mortar world. In cyberspace, his friends were numerous.

Facing Gabriel, on the other side of the grave, was Isidore's mother. She was weeping quietly. She was heavily powdered, and her crimson lipstick was bleeding into the furrows of her lips. In her youth, she would have been a great beauty. Her husband, who was standing next to her, had his eyes closed. His lips were moving soundlessly in prayer. He had his son's high forehead and thin, aquiline nose. Watching him, Gabriel knew what Isidore would have looked like in another thirty years.

After the funeral there was to be a reception, but his mind balked at the thought. He would take leave of Isidore's parents and head for home.

"Mrs. Cavendish…"

Isidore's mother looked up at him with tear-filled eyes.

"I just wanted to say good-bye." His hands were still twitching. His head was bobbing like a crazy man's.

If she noticed anything amiss, she did not show it. "Thank you." Her voice was heavy with tears. "And thank you for coming."

"I just wanted to say…" He stopped. What did he want to say? I'm sorry for causing the death of your son? Or, If not for me your son would still be alive?

Isidore had died of a massive stroke. Unusual in someone so young, the doctor had explained to Gabriel, but not unheard of. A brain aneurysm can be present from birth and lie undetected like a stealth bomb. He had listened to the doctor, nodding his head in agreement, all the while knowing what had really happened. An intruder had entered his friend's mind. An assassin. A killer who had torn Isidore's mind apart with the brutality of a butcher.

He looked into the sad eyes of Isidore's mother. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."

She touched his arm briefly. "Thank you. And God bless. I know Francis counted you as his best friend."

In the train, on the way back to London, Gabriel closed his eyes, but he couldn't keep the tears from running down his face. He knew he was attracting curious glances, but he was past caring. Memories of Isidore washed through his mind. Isidore in his flip-flops and swimming trunks, mixing mai tais and listening to island music in deepest midwinter. Isidore hacking code, concentration sculpting his face into a serene-looking mask. Isidore singing "Oh for the wings of a dove" with pitch-perfect intonation. Isidore. His friend.

His friend who had died because of him.

Oh, God.

If only he could speak to Frankie. He wished desperately for her presence. In a world in which nothing made sense anymore, he needed her aggressive sanity. But he had been unable to track her down. She might go somewhere warm, she had told him the last time he saw her. But she hadn't left word on where the sun was. And she wasn't answering her cell phone. He had left countless messages since Isidore's death.

He was falling into a light doze, flickering in and out of consciousness. The rhythm of the train was soporific. Clickety clack, he thought. Just as in his Tootle Tank engine book when he was a boy. Clickety clack.

Vaguely, he was aware of a woman taking the seat opposite him. She was petite and had long blond hair. Her head was bowed, she was reading a newspaper.

Clickety clack… clickety clack.

She shook the pages and folded the newspaper neatly along its creases. Her fair hair was hanging over her forehead, covering one eye. She lifted her head and brushed the hair away with a slim hand. And looked straight at him.

There were cobwebs in her empty eye sockets. The flesh along her jaw was green with decay.

Melissa Cartwright. Catwalk model. Trophy wife of Sir Stephen Cartwright. Kidnap victim.

You let me down. Her mouth moved and he glimpsed her rotting teeth. You let me down. A tiny black spider dropped out of one eye socket and ran across her lap.

Clickety clack. Clickety clack.

No. He tried to speak, but his throat worked uselessly, no sound passing his lips.

Yes. Just as you let him down.

The head with the ghastly eye sockets looked at a spot somewhere on his right. As in a trance, Gabriel turned his head in the same direction.

Isidore…

His mind blacked out in horror.

When he came to, the conductor was shaking him by the shoulder.

"Waterloo Station. Last stop, sir. Time to wake up."

Gabriel looked stupidly around him. The compartment had emptied. The seat opposite him was empty. As was the seat beside him. He was the only one left.

He was feeling so cold. He stepped out of the brightly lit compartment onto the platform, and his back was gooseflesh. It was just the cold, he told himself. Just the cold.

As he took the escalator up, he kept glancing over his shoulder. The third time he spotted her. Black coat, blond hair. Cobwebbed eyes.

He started to push his way past the people in front of him. But it felt as though his legs were caught in quicksand. He tried to take the steps two at a time, but he could hardly move. His breath was leaving his throat in a ragged whistle. Again, he glanced behind him.

She had disappeared.

The taxi rank. He needed to find a cab to take him home.

The cab pulled up to the curb, the yellow sign glowing. As he opened the door and ducked to get inside, he spotted her reflection in the window. She was right behind him. If she stretched out her hand she would be able to touch his shoulder.

A strange sound escaped his throat. He fell into the cab and slammed the door shut behind him. The driver looked at him with surprise.

Just a hallucination. Your mind playing tricks. Keeping his eyes resolutely away from the window he gave his address to the cabbie, who was now watching him with open suspicion.

She's messing with your mind. She's planting these images of Melissa Cartwright and Isidore into your brain like toxic seeds. Don't allow her to do that.

Her.

Why couldn't he say her name?

Whenever he thought of her, he used the words "killer," "assassin," "intruder." It was as though by not saying her name, he could avoid the truth.

Minnaloushe.

Face it. Deal with it.

And work out how you're going to tell Morrighan that her sister was responsible for the death of three people.

At his front door, he fumbled for his keys. Once inside his apartment, he would be safe.

He flicked on the light switch. The living room was empty.

Except… the wind chimes hanging from the ceiling in that quiet, wind-still room were swaying gently. As though someone had passed by close enough to stir the air.

No. It was just a trick.

So cold. He looked at his hands and they were shaking. Had they ever been still?

He walked into the bathroom and turned on the taps of his bath. He took off his jacket and his shirt. Steam was starting to fill the room, pearling down the mirror like tears. His own face, pale with eyes unfocused, looked like the face of a person drowning.

Something stirred behind him. Hazily swimming into his vision was the face of a woman with hair like blond seaweed. The flesh of her face decomposing, soft as a sponge.

He screamed. He sprang to his feet, in his haste slipping on the bathroom mat. Running out of the room, he slammed the door shut behind him. His fingers gripped the knob of the door firmly, as though trying to keep whatever was inside the bathroom from coming out. He stared at his hand. Any moment now, the knob would start to turn inside his palm… Any moment now.

Nothing happened. From behind the closed door he could hear the water flowing from the taps.

Still he waited. The water continued to rush from the taps. How long he stood there, holding on to the knob with all his strength, he did not know. Water seeped underneath the bathroom door onto his feet, but he did not move.

Someone was watching him. He turned his head, stiff as a doll, and looked behind him.

Against the wall hung Minnaloushe's African mask. The wooden face with its empty eyes and empty smile. Protection against witchcraft.

His stomach heaved miserably. Swinging his arm, he struck the mask from the wall. It fell to the floor with a crash. A crack ran through one eye socket. The mouth was still smiling.

The doorbell rang. The sound paralyzed him, froze him to the spot. He glanced at the door fearfully. He suddenly thought of Isidore, buried only that morning, resting in his coffin in dank soil. Maybe his friend wasn't in his coffin. Maybe he was standing outside the front door right this minute, his hand raised to press the bell once more.

The bell rang again. After a few moments someone pounded the door with a fist. "Gabriel?" Frankie's voice was muffled. "Are you there?"

He scrambled to the door and unfastened the door chain with fingers that were weak from eagerness and recent panic.

"My God." Frankie's voice was appalled. "What's happened to you?"

CHAPTER THIRTY

The MRI scan looked like a work of art. A creepy work of art, but still art.

"Lovely, isn't it?" The man on the other side of the desk was beaming at Gabriel as though he had the same thought. "The detail is stupendous."

Gabriel looked back at the scan, which was clipped up against a light box. He still couldn't believe he was staring at his own brain. It looked like a splayed white mushroom floating in a well of black ink.

Next to him, Frankie moved her chair closer to his and took his hand in hers. She had hardly left his side since she found him in his apartment the night before. And it was her doing that he was now sitting in the office of one of the most eminent neurologists in Britain.

Earlier that morning he had undergone an MRI scan. Gabriel knew that a scan-even a private one-usually took time to schedule, but Frankie had gone into overdrive. She had taken one look at his bloody eye and the shaking hands and had called the consultant who had attended her husband while he was still alive. He, in turn, had made them the appointment with the neurologist. Gabriel had no idea what other wires were pulled, but within one day he had been scanned, prodded, examined and called in to learn his fate.

The neurologist, who went by the cheerful name of Horatio Dibbles, placed two plump hands on his desktop and looked at Gabriel with eyes that were colored angelic blue.

"Mr. Blackstone. We have good news and not such good news." Gabriel half expected the medic to ask him which he wanted to hear first, but Dibbles continued without pause. "You have suffered a transient ischemic attack."

"A stroke?" For a moment Gabriel thought of his uncle Ben who had collapsed with a stroke at the age of forty and afterward had spoken with a tongue that seemed dipped in tar, dragging his left leg behind him like a useless piece of wood.

"A temporary stroke. Now, the symptoms of a TIA are the same as for a full-blown stroke, you understand. Vision can be affected. Also behavior, movement, speech and thought. Mental confusion is quite common."

Mental confusion. No shit. Melissa Cartwright's wasted face washed into Gabriel's mind.

Dibbles coughed discreetly. "A TIA's symptoms are temporary. The majority clear within an hour. Although they can sometimes continue up to twenty-four hours. But what is important to remember is that in most cases permanent damage is unlikely."

"So what's the not so good news?"

"Well, you have to realize you've had bleeding in the brain. In the artery of your brain there's a weak spot, an aneurysm. It's like a small balloon or a worn spot on the inner tube of a tire and it leaked. What concerns me is that you seem to have had repeated leaks. Each time the leak has healed itself and the bleeding has stopped. But repeated leaks in the brain are not good news."

"Is it treatable?" Frankie leaned forward, her face anxious.

"Usually if an aneurysm is identified, it is repaired with microsurgery and removed. But obviously we need to run more tests." He looked back at Gabriel. "I would like you to book into hospital so that we can get to the bottom of this. Find out what's responsible for these repeated leaks."

Not what, Gabriel thought. Who.

The neurologist seemed concerned by his silence. "Mr. Blackstone-"

"It will have to wait."

"Wait?"

"Yes. I'll be in touch with your office at a later date." Gabriel pushed his chair backward and started to get to his feet.

"This is highly unwise." Dibbles had lost his cheerful smile.

"I understand. But right now is not a good time."

Dibbles looked at Frankie. "Mrs. Whittington, I cannot stress strongly enough how important it is that Mr. Blackstone submit himself for observation."

Frankie got to her feet as well. "I'll talk to him, Dr. Dibbles. I promise we'll be in touch very soon."

The expression on Dibbles's face made Gabriel wonder if he was going to try to restrain them physically. Maybe the man had some kind of silent alarm under his desk that, at a touch, could summon an army of brawny nurses with straitjackets and needles at the ready.

But then Dibbles sighed. Folding his plump hands deliberately, he said in an emotionless voice, "I cannot force you to commit yourself to this hospital, Mr. Blackstone. However, please know that the next attack could be a full-blown stroke. It can lead to paralysis."

He paused, rearranged his hands.

"Or death."

"Cheers." Gabriel clinked his glass against Frankie's a little too emphatically.

He brought the glass to his mouth and drank deeply. It was a full-blooded Cabernet and the tannin burned his tongue. Drowning his sorrows in alcohol was probably not the wisest course of action, but he was beyond caring. Frankie was sitting in one of the leather club chairs in his apartment. She looked shattered.

He didn't even want to think what he looked like. He was now consciously avoiding mirrors. Whenever he looked into the mirror, his grandfather's face stared out at him. His grandfather on his deathbed. But it wasn't merely the fact that the sight of his own face was a real downer-ashen skin, bloodshot eyes-he was also afraid of seeing a shadow fall across the door behind him, a flaccid hand beckoning. He didn't know what was worse: the mind attacks or the hallucinations.

"How are you feeling?"

"Not bad." He had a splitting headache, but these days he always had a splitting headache. It was starting to feel normal. And the pain from the headache was as nothing compared to a full-blown mind attack.

As if reading his thoughts, Frankie said, "Why hasn't Minnaloushe launched another attack? The last one was two days ago."

"Maybe she's tired. Maybe she needs a rest period herself in order to juice up." He shrugged, took another sip of wine. "Who knows? But launching an attack probably takes something out of her as well."

"God, I hope so." Frankie's voice was savage. "I hope it's really painful for her. The bitch."

Gabriel winced at the word. Strange how he wanted to protest Frankie's use of the epithet. Which was pretty damn pathetic no matter how you looked at it. Minnaloushe was hell-bent on destroying him and here he was feeling squeamish when Frankie called her names.

But he had to be honest. The idea that Minnaloushe was a murderer still felt wholly unreal to him.

He remembered what she had looked like the night of her birthday. A figure from a religious painting. One of those beautiful women with slender wrists and radiant eyes, who inhabited the canvases of the old masters. A worshipful Mary Magdalene or a righteous Judith. Her skin bathed in light, shadows in her hair and at the corners of her mouth.

He was grieving, he suddenly realized. Grieving for lost innocence. But he was being foolish. He couldn't afford the luxury of grieving. If he didn't toughen his mind where Minnaloushe was concerned, it would be the end of him. She was sure to exploit his every weakness, and for his own sake, he had better shape up. For his own sake and for Morrighan's. She might be in danger from her sister as well.

Which brought him to the most important question: How to protect Morrighan?

He had a horrible feeling that Morrighan was in imminent peril and in need of his protection. If the danger had been physical, he would have backed her against Minnaloushe any time. Physically she was by far the stronger and the more agile of the two. But the danger wasn't physical. It was more insidious. And here he was, his brain leaking like a punctured tube, in pretty poor shape to assume the role of shining knight on a white horse.

Morrighan. How to warn her? How to protect her?

Frankie picked up the bottle of wine and filled her glass again. Gabriel waved the bottle away when she offered it to him. He was on to his third glass already.

"Frankie…"

"Yes?"

"I'm very grateful for everything you've done so far. But I want you to go home now. And I want you to stay as far away from me as you can."

"What are you talking about?" Frankie was scowling.

"I mean it. I'm bad news. You know what happened to Isidore. I don't want the same thing to happen to you."

"Oh, shut up, Gabriel." Frankie didn't even bother to raise her voice. "If it weren't for me, you wouldn't be in this mess. So just shut up."

"Frankie, I really think-"

"I refuse to discuss it any longer." Frankie set her mouth firmly. Her expression was mutinous. "Back off."

He backed off. For now.

"Let's make dinner." Frankie got to her feet. "And then we can talk about what to do next."

While Frankie boiled water for the pasta, Gabriel took tomatoes, salad leaves and parsley from the fridge. Placing the vegetables on a chopping board, he removed a gleaming knife from the knife stand. Global. The best. He had picked out this knife set in Diver -timenti kitchen shop in Knightsbridge only a few months ago. An old girlfriend of his had been with him at the time. But he couldn't remember her name. Kathy? Carol? He tried to concentrate, but his head was splitting.

The heft of the knife fit comfortably in his hand. The blade was razor sharp. Chop. Chop. It sliced easily through the stalks of parsley.

His head was really hurting. He squinted at the chopping board. Chop. Chop. His fingers were pressing down on the parsley stalks, and for a moment the thought entered his mind that the tips of his fingers looked like vegetables as well. Like pale, smooth mushroom caps. Button mushrooms. The thought was funny, somehow, and a little giggle escaped his lips.

"Gabriel? Are you OK?"

"Sure." He didn't look up from the chopping board. The movement of the knife slicing through the green stalks underneath his fingers was mesmeric. Chop. Chop. White and green. White for his fingers. Green for the parsley. Chop. Chop. The knife edged closer to the tips of his fingers. Maybe red and green would be a better color combination than white and green. Red like blood.

Chop. Chop. He stared at the gleaming knife, at the blade edging closer and closer to his ringers. Just as the blade of that hunting knife had edged closer and closer to Melissa Cartwright's throat. Red like blood. Red like blood…

"Gabriel!"

Frankie's scream broke through the daze. The next moment she had wrenched the knife from his grasp and her hands were on his shoulders and she was shaking him.

"What the hell are you doing?"

For a moment he stared at her speechless. Then he started to cry. He leaned against the kitchen cabinets and threw his head back and wept with open mouth and open eyes.

Frankie did not try to hush him. She simply waited. Only when the last shuddering sob had left his mouth did she speak.

"I want us to talk to Alexander."

"No!" Gabriel jerked upright. "Yes. It's time."

"I'm not going, Frankie. He will not have forgiven me for Melissa. I can't do it."

"Yes, you can." She paused and repeated again. "It's time."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

She had been practically beheaded. Around her neck shredded tissue, and the great vessels from the heart exposed. The severed trachea white among the clots of blood. Her head was tilted backward but propped against the wall, as though she were lazily keeping watch.

Melissa Cartwright. Beauty queen. Glamour wife of Sir Stephen Cartwright.

Dead eyes should be empty of expression but hers were not. A horrible knowingness was in her gaze. Her left eyelid drooped flirtatiously. As though she couldn't help herself, Gabriel thought. Flirtatious in life. Flirtatious in death.

With a strange sense of detachment he saw that the front of her cream evening dress was soaked. She had bled out. The knobbly sequins of the bodice made the wash of blood look like crimson vomit. Her hands were resting on her lap and tied together with wire; white bone pushing through the slit skin. But she must have put up a fight. Some of her nails had snapped so violently, they had broken off right into the quick. Her long dress was rucked up, exposing her inner thigh.

"She's not wearing knickers," a voice said behind him. One of the detectives, talking to a female colleague.

"Probably didn't have any on to begin with. That tight a dress, you go commando." The female officer was smiling.

"Still looks like a sexual assault to me."

The woman shrugged, bored. "Let's wait for the vaginal and anal swabs."

Behind him, someone sobbed. Sir Stephen Cartwright was holding his hands to his face. Next to him stood Alexander Mullins. The two men had plastic covers around their shoes and were swaddled in white protective overalls, just like Gabriel himself. Like ghosts, Gabriel thought. Ghosts visiting the dead.

Mullins's eyes were filled with rage. "You don't belong here, Gabriel, but I wanted you to see for yourself. You could have prevented this from happening."

Gabriel tried to speak but his throat was tight.

"First you lied. And then when you could have helped, you refused to slam the ride because you were feeling… petulant." Gabriel winced at the contempt in Mullins's voice.

"Get out." Mullins's voice shook. "Get out now."

Gabriel looked back at the body. A smell was seeping from it. Oxidized blood. Urine. Feces. He knew that smell was going to stay with him. It would leach into his memories.

Memories. With time they grew blurred. As though they had been stored on a disk that became corrupted, throwing up a treacherous density of fragmented code whenever you tried to access the data.

But some things you never forget.

Gabriel would always remember the look on Alexander Mullins's face the day he told the viewers at Eyestorm that they had been retained by Sir Stephen Cartwright to assist in solving his wife's kidnapping.

"Stephen and I are friends," Mullins said, his face for once animated. "This case is personal. We all need to work together." He turned his head deliberately toward Gabriel, and the young man knew what that look meant. Shape up. Fall in line. Be a team player.

Except that being a team player had never suited his MO. When you slammed a ride, it was just you and your target. There was no room for group hugs or inspirational chats. Huddling together with other RVs, sharing information, talking things over, opening up- was all wasted energy. Besides, Gabriel enjoyed pitting himself against his colleagues. He always won and didn't they just hate it.

Melissa Cartwright was a supermodel and her violet eyes had smiled from the pages of dozens of fashion magazines, at Gabriel and millions of others. A psychopath by the name of William Newts must have thought her smile was meant for him only. By the time Sir Stephen enlisted their help, his wife had been missing for three weeks and the media frenzy was intense.

Gabriel was excited. A success would be bound to impress Mullins.

The relationship between Gabriel and his mentor was bumpy. Gabriel knew Mullins admired his viewing skills, and the old man had once admitted that in his thirty years of studying remote viewers, he had never encountered an RV with greater ability. But Gabriel also knew Mullins considered him arrogant and a loose cannon, and his reluctance to work as part of a team was a continual bone of contention.

For his part, Gabriel thought Mullins overly cautious and sometimes outright punitive. Still, much as he hated to admit it to himself, he sought Mullins's respect in the way a son would seek approval from an emotionally reticent parent.

Maybe the Cartwright case would be a turning point. If he could bring Melissa home safely, the old man would be forever in his debt.

"What's wrong?" Frankie switched on the bedside light. The glow was feeble, leaving the corners of their tiny student apartment in shadow. Outside the window, the town of Oxford was asleep.

Gabriel sighed and plucked irritably at the bedsheet. "Nothing. Go back to sleep."

"No." Frankie pulled herself upright. "It is one o'clock in the morning and you're still awake. And I've had it with your bad temper. You've been impossible to live with for the past week. Tell me what's up!"

Gabriel stared at her sullenly.

"Gabriel, you and I are in a relationship. Re-la-tion-ship. That means you get to tell me what's bothering you and I get to listen and tell you it's OK and not to worry. And then maybe we can both go back to sleep and get some rest without you tossing and turning all night long and behaving like an ass the next morning."

If only it were that simple, he thought, looking at her flushed face. He suddenly felt close to despair.

"Gabriel?"

"The ride. I don't think I can do it anymore." He had difficulty uttering the words. His lips felt weirdly numb.

Frankie frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm having trouble slamming the ride, Frankie. I think… I think, I may be losing the fire." Mullins had warned them. Remote viewers sometimes burned out and lost their gift. It happened to the best of them. Had it happened to him?

Frankie sighed impatiently. "Gabriel just because you struck out once-"

"Three times."

"-three times, does not mean you're losing it. You're just not seeing clearly yet."

"Frankie, I'm not seeing at all."

"But you identified three locations. You said you were sure. Alexander even called the police to check them out."

"I made it all up."

"What!"

"I… I just thought, if I could buy some time…"

Frankie's face was stiff with shock. The look in her eyes made him turn his head away. Every RV's work included speculation and conjecture, but it was of vital importance that a viewer should not embellish what he had accessed during the ride. Never pretend. Never lie. It was a mantra that had been drilled into their heads by Mullins during basic training. Gabriel had always kept the code. Until now.

The words tumbled from his lips. "I don't know what's going on. I can feel myself starting to cross over, the ride taking me. But then it stops. As though a door had been slammed in my face. Total block."

"You have to tell Alexander."

"No, not yet. It could still work, Frankie. I just need more time. I know I can work past the block somehow."

"If you won't tell him, then I will." Frankie's voice was implacable.

"You'll betray me like that?"

"For God's sake, this is not about you and me! A woman may die!"

The expression on her face made him flinch. "OK." He started pulling on his clothes. "OK. I'll go see him right now."

At the door he stopped and turned around. She was watching him and her hand was covering her mouth, giving her an alien, guarded look.

Frankie's reaction, however, was nothing compared to Mullins's rage.

"I am not surprised that you did not have the moral courage to own up to your problem earlier, Gabriel. It is always about you, isn't it? You and your vanity. Mrs. Cartwright is incidental in your scheme of things. You don't care about her. You just care about not looking stupid."

"Alexander, I am so sorry."

"No, you're not. You're just sorry you had to tell me about it."

"Please, just listen-"

"I blame myself. I bought into this ego trip of yours by thinking only your viewing was worthy. I neglected the team, did not give the reports of the others the same attention. You've lost us time, Gabriel. Time we could have spent exploring other avenues. And now we've lost the trust of the police as well."

Gabriel had no answer.

"I want you to leave."

Gabriel left. Back at his apartment, Frankie was nowhere to be seen. Without even removing his clothes, he fell into bed.

But it wasn't until shortly before dawn that he finally started to sink from wakefulness into sleep. And as he began to drift, he felt his inner eye opening. He was about to slam a ride.

He felt the soft tug of the ride. Let go. Let go. Cross over…

He hesitated.

Let go. Cross over…

Why should he? Mullins had kicked him out. And chances were he'd simply get blocked again. Why put himself through that kind of agony?

Let go…

No. He clamped down on the impulse, shutting his inner eye with ease. He was finished with Eyestorm. Such a relief, he thought. Such a relief to know that this part of his life was done with.

As he turned over and pulled the blankets over his head, he noticed the dark sky outside his window beginning to stain with palest light.

Melissa Cartwright's body was discovered eleven hours later in an outhouse on a farm in Yorkshire. She had died in the very early hours of the morning.

Shortly after sunrise.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

"Gabriel, wake up." Frankie's hand was gently shaking his shoulder.

He lifted his head from the car seat and winced. He had fallen asleep during the drive to Oxford, and his neck now had a painful crick at the base. His forehead felt numb and cold where it had pressed up against the frosty windowpane.

He opened the car door and the coldness of the night air was a shock. As he stepped out, his breath left his lips in a ghostly cloud.

For a moment he stood quietly, looking at the house in front of him. With the exception of a brand-new shed in the garden, the place looked exactly as it had thirteen years ago.

Frankie slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. "Come on."

As they walked up the garden path toward the front door, an outside light went on and the door opened. A tall figure dressed in a worn velvet smoking jacket, flannel trousers and Nike sneakers stepped onto the porch.

Gabriel stopped walking. For a moment it was quiet. Then the man on the porch made a gesture with his hand. "Come in." He turned around and walked back into the house. After a moment's hesitation Gabriel and Frankie followed, closing the front door behind them.

Inside the house nothing had changed either. The flocked wallpaper in the entrance hall was immediately familiar. And the living room was still stuffed with porcelain knickknacks-winsome shepherdesses and pink-cheeked angels-and stacks of books and magazines. The low-wattaged bulbs inside the dusty fringed lamp shades bathed everything in a tired yellow light.

But if the house still looked the same, its owner did not. Alexander Mullins had aged. His skin was raddled with fine lines. His hair had thinned considerably. He made a clicking sound with his tongue and moved his mouth, and Gabriel realized with a sudden shock that Mullins was wearing an old-fashioned set of false teeth.

The eyes behind the cat's-eye spectacles, however, were still glacial. And the voice, even though it had lost none of its upper-crust plumminess, could still sound biting.

"Well, you're here. What do you want?"

Gabriel left the talking to Frankie. She did a good job, listing the facts of the situation chronologically and methodically, sanitizing the narrative of emotion and speculation. Just as Mullins had taught them to do at Eyestorm all those years ago when summing up a case. This was one student who had taken the training to heart, Gabriel thought wryly. No sloppy asides or personal prejudices clouding the issues. Mullins should be pleased.

When Frankie had finished, Mullins turned his eyes to Gabriel.

"So what is it you want from me?"

Frankie leaned forward in her chair. "Alexander-"

He silenced her with an abrupt gesture of his hand.

Gabriel spoke, his lips stiff. "I suppose I'm looking for help."

"Help." Mullins's voice was quiet.

Silence. Gabriel found that he had balled his hands into fists. He relaxed his fingers with an effort.

"Well, I'm sorry, but there is very little I can offer." Mullins paused. "I have never come across an RV like this woman before."

This woman. Minnaloushe. Fallen angel.

"It is clear that this woman's RV skills are exceptional," Mullins continued. "In all my years of research I have never personally encountered an RV who is able to inflict physical damage on someone else simply by using her viewing skills." He frowned. "This is truly extraordinary. I don't know what the explanation is."

"The explanation is she's a witch." Gabriel's voice was harsh.

"A witch." Mullins uttered the word with disdain.

Gabriel tried to keep his voice calm. "Yes. She is an extreme magician. She has taken her natural talent-remote viewing-and amplified it into a deadly weapon."

"And how did she manage to do that?"

"Through her practice of alchemy. Of high magic."

For a long moment it was quiet in the room. Then Mullins made a gesture with his hand as though pushing away something unpleasant.

"I'm afraid I do not feel equipped to follow you into these esoteric realms. I suggest we deal with the facts as we know them. A remote viewer is apparently able to use her viewing skills to create an abnormal pathology in a healthy brain. I have never encountered this before and therefore I have no data to share. And no magic bullet."

"There must be something we can do." Frankie's voice was low.

"Well, let's break the problem down to its basic components. Question: Is there a way to deny the attacker access to Gabriel's mind? Answer: Yes. He can block the scan. Second question: Is this a sustainable defense? Answer: No. When blocking, he sustains physical trauma."

Gabriel shrugged. "So I'll simply have to come up with another defense."

"There is nothing simple about that." Mullins took off his glasses, rubbing the lenses against the sleeve of his jacket. It was a mannerism Gabriel remembered well: an indication that Mullins was concentrating, focusing his intelligence on the topic at hand. He supposed he should feel grateful that the old man was at least intrigued enough by the situation to give the problem serious attention. This was what Frankie had bargained on. She had counted on Mullins's curiosity outstripping his personal animosity.

Mullins repositioned the glasses back on the bridge of his nose. "Explain to me what one of these mind attacks feels like." He turned his cold eyes on Gabriel's face.

"Sensory overload. That's what it feels like. It feels as though someone is tipping a giant garbage truck of violently frenetic images and sounds into my mind. As though an avalance is sweeping through my brain. And it happens so fast, I can't make out anything- the information is not discrete-the images all blur together. And it doesn't stop. It feels as though there is no end to it. And then, when I clamp down, my head feels as though it is about to explode. The pain is… severe." "Excruciating" was probably the better description, but he knew Mullins would find such an extravagant word distasteful.

It was quiet for a few moments. "The memory palace," Mullins said slowly. "It seems to me the answer lies there. As I understand it, this memory palace is really a vast depository of data."

"Yes." Gabriel nodded.

"It is my belief that she is channeling the contents of the memory palace into your consciousness by using her remote viewing skills."

Frankie entered the conversation. "You mean she's dumping everything inside her own head straight into Gabriel's?"

"Exactly. Her mind is obviously strong enough to contain all of that data. Yours," he looked expressionlessly at Gabriel, "is not."

A tense moment of silence. Mullins continued. "The obvious answer to the predicament is to destroy the memory palace. But how that is to be accomplished, I don't know."

"Maybe Gabriel can scan her," Frankie said. "Enter her mind."

"And do what? As far as I know he is not-what is it you called it-an extreme magician himself." Mullins smiled without humor. "So what would his weapon be? He doesn't have any information overload to dump into her mind. The flow only goes one way. The only thing that might happen is that he'll end up getting lost inside the palace, unable to find his way out again."

Mullins did not elaborate. He didn't have to. Getting lost inside the labyrinth of another mind was every RV's personal fear. Sometimes-not very often-an RV would find himself unable to sever the connection between his own mind and the host mind. This was very bad news. You could end up in a coma, stuck in the twilight world of psi-space: betwixt and between. It happened very rarely, but it did happen. RVs understood the risk, but because the statistical probability of it happening was tiny, it was not something they dwelled on obsessively. But the knowledge was always there. In this case, the odds of something going wrong must be pretty good indeed.

The bleep of a tiny alarm broke the silence in the room. Mullins touched his wristwatch. "Time for my medication." He pushed his hands down on his knees and got to his feet with difficulty. His body language made it clear that the meeting was over.

"Alexander, if you think of anything else…" Frankie's voice was without hope.

"Of course." Mullins's tone was courteous but the words sounded empty.

As he opened the front door for them, he turned to face Gabriel directly. He was standing so close, Gabriel could smell the man and it was an old man's smell. Mullins's eyelids were sagging and a watery pink in color. The signs of aging were shocking, somehow. He had always thought of Mullins as omnipotent.

He had loved this man once, had craved his approval. Gabriel knew he had arrived at Mullins's doorstep tonight with the expectation of finding salvation. Mullins would know the answer and bring an end to the nightmare. And Mullins would forgive him for Melissa Cartwright, the way a parent forgives a child unreservedly.

"I don't know if you've changed, Gabriel. I hope you have." Mullins worked his mouth, and again Gabriel saw the outline of dentures moving against the thin lips. "If you're going into battle against this woman, there will be no room for infantile self-indulgence. And this time you can't walk away."

Gabriel flinched.

"You were a member of a team once. But you considered yourself too strong for the team. You could have asked for help, but no, not you-you were the Lone Ranger. All that macho swaggering… and look where it got you, where it got Melissa. If you had come to the group with your problem, we might have been able to help you clear the block. But that would have been too demeaning for the great Gabriel Blackstone. And then, when you could have made amends, you didn't. If you had allowed yourself to slam that last ride-who knows what it might have revealed?

"You've always winged it, Gabriel. You've always trusted to talent. Well, this lady is not just talented. She has a trained mind."

A pause. "Frankly, I don't think you stand a chance."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The trip back to London was accomplished in near silence. Frankie's face was deeply fatigued and her hands gripped the steering wheel slackly.

When they stopped in front of his apartment building, she turned to Gabriel.

"Are you sure you don't want me to stay with you? I still think you shouldn't be left alone."

"I'm OK." He did actually feel a little better. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but it did feel as though the throbbing headache, which never seemed to let up these days, was easing somewhat. Not enough for him to do cartwheels, mind you, but enough to give relief. He didn't know why Minnaloushe was laying off, but he was grateful for the reprieve. Maybe she had given up on the whole thing. Now, that, he thought wryly, was wishful thinking indeed. When was he going to accept that Minnaloushe had no feelings for him? When was he going to replace the Minnaloushe of his memories with the cold-blooded killer she was?

He glanced at Frankie. To his horror he saw a tear fall from her eye.

"Oh, darling, no." He gently wiped the tear from her cheek with his thumb.

"I'm scared. I'm so scared for you. Aren't you terrified? You must be."

"We're going to find a way out, Frankie. I firmly believe that." Which was a big fat lie, but this was not the time to own up to the fear. "Don't cry, Frankie. Don't cry."

She said, eyes still brimming, "I'm sorry about Alexander. You were right: we shouldn't have gone. It was a total bust."

"No, that's not true. Alexander did manage to explain the mechanics of what is happening to me… even if he did it in his usual mordant style."

"What do you mean?"

"The memory palace. I think he's right, Frankie. I think all this stuff Minnaloushe dumps into my brain during a mind attack is information contained in the memory palace. I never thought of it that way, but it's the only thing that makes sense."

"So we need to shut down that palace."

"Yes. Too bad Alexander could only identify the problem, not solve it."

"He is still so angry." Frankie swallowed. "I never thought he'd still be so angry."

"He hasn't forgiven me yet. But he's right, Frankie. For years I've told myself I am not to blame, but the truth is if I hadn't been so arrogant she might still be alive. And if only I had allowed myself to slam that last ride, I might have accessed information which could have led us to her before Newts cut her. But I stopped the ride from happening because I was… sulking."

"You've changed." Frankie spoke slowly. "And I don't just mean this belated mea culpa. It's more than that. I've noticed it these past few days. Something has happened to you-something good. You used to be heartless, in a way. Always charming, but there was an indifference in you. A coldness."

He tried to smile. "Maybe you misjudged me."

"No. Something happened to you, which has changed you to the core. Who knows?" She sighed. "Maybe we have the sisters to thank for that."

"So it wasn't all in vain." His voice was wry. "I shall die a better man."

"Don't you dare talk about dying! I can't bear to lose someone else I love." She took a deep breath. "We're not done yet. We have one option left. What if we went to Morrighan? Tell her what we know. Ask for her help. If anyone can get through to Minnaloushe it would be her. She may not want to believe Minnaloushe is a killer, but it's worth a shot."

"She'll believe us. The diary told me that. The last entry I accessed made it clear she was having serious suspicions about her sister."

"So what are we waiting for?"

Gabriel hesitated. "I don't want to place her in danger. If Minnaloushe thinks Morrighan has turned against her, who knows what she'll do? I'll have to talk to Morrighan at some point. But I want to make very, very sure she's safe first."

"You're in love with her, aren't you?" Frankie said suddenly.

"Who?"

"Morrighan. You're in love with Morrighan. When you talked about the diary, your entire face changed."

"She's a very gifted writer."

Frankie offered a sad smile. "You're such a romantic, Gabriel. I've always said so, despite that hard-ass swagger you cultivate so assiduously. Look at you, falling in love with a woman because she writes a diary. It sounds almost medieval. Like the chaste passion burning between a lady and her knight who can only yearn from afar.",

"It must look very stupid to you."

"No, it's wonderful." A pause. "If only it were me."

The silence in the car was suddenly tense.

"Frankie…"

"It's OK, Gabriel. I've accepted that I'm not the one you love anymore."

"I do love you."

"And you always will. But I can't compete with a woman like Morrighan Monk. I'm slippers and hot cocoa by the fire. Morrighan is an adrenaline rush." She smiled again; a smile full of sorrow. "But I want you to know that when you get tired of always being on a high, I'll be waiting. Adrenaline rushes are hard on the body."

Gabriel put out his arms and drew her close to him. For a long time they sat like that simply hugging, not speaking. What was wrong with him? He and Frankie were meant for each other. When she returned to his life, it had seemed to him as though they had been given a second chance. But that was before he read the diary. The diary had bewitched him.

Frankie stirred against his chest. "What are you going to do now?"

"Get some sleep. I don't know why Minnaloushe is laying off, but I should probably grab sleep while I can. But first-there is one thing I need to check out."

"What?"

"It may not be important. But if it is, I promise I'll call you." He stroked her hair. "Whatever happens, Frankie, I want you to know I am so grateful to you."

"I know." She smiled lopsidedly. "So get out of here.- Get some rest."

Watching her drive away, he started to walk toward his apartment building. There was indeed something he should have checked out long ago. He was surprised that he hadn't followed up earlier. He prided himself on being meticulous: his success as an information thief depended on it. In his defense, it was probably fair to say that he had had rather a lot on his mind over the past few days. Like brain bleeds. Like death.

As he stepped into the elevator and punched the button for the top floor, Gabriel removed his cell phone from his trouser pocket. Pressing the call log button, he scrolled down to the last message he had received from Isidore and pressed playback.

He brought the cell phone up to his ear. The sound of Isidore's voice, so immediate, so alive, caused his heart to contract painfully.

"Gabe. Call me. 1 have interesting news. No, I have stupendous news." A sepulchral laugh. "Beware the crow…"

The elevator shuddered to a halt. Gabriel shoved the cell phone back into his pocket and took out the keys to his front door. A strange urgency had taken possession of him.

The apartment was in darkness, but the neon glow outside his windows was strong enough to allow him to walk to his desk without switching on any of the lights. Without even pausing to take off his coat, he slid into his work chair and tapped the keyboard.

The screen saver disappeared. He logged on to the search engine and typed in one word only:

Crow

Results one to ten of 3,920,000 filled his screen.

3,920,000? Good grief.

He tapped the New Search button again.

"Crow" AND "Magic"

The first ten entries of a mere 514,000 possibilities came up.

This was not going to be easy. Absentmindedly, he stared at the objects on his desk, bathed in the computer screen's lunar light. The damaged African mask was lying in his out tray. He couldn't remember placing it there. But then his memory was pretty shot these days. The face seemed oddly rakish with its grinning mouth and the wide crack running like a battle scar through one eye socket.

He placed his fingers on the keyboard.

"Minnaloushe" AND "crow"

0 results found.

For a moment he hesitated.

"Morrighan" AND "crow" The screen flipped over.

Morrighan: Irish mythology. Derived from the Irish Mhor Rioghain meaning "Great Queen." In Irish myth she was the goddess of war and death. She offered herself to those warriors she had chosen and if they accepted her they were victorious in battle. Those who refused her died. A shape-shifter, she often took the form of a crow.

For a moment he felt as though all the breath had left his body.

Morrighan. Not Minnaloushe.

Morrighan was the woman he had encountered in the house of a million doors, a black crow her constant companion.

Morrighan was the killer.

"I've been waiting for you." The whispered words came from directly behind him.

He swung around. From within the deep armchair scarcely three feet away, a figure lifted her hand and the tall swing lamp next to the chair blazed to life. The light fell on the woman's hair.

Red hair.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The hair fell down her shoulders like a burning waterfall. Her face was pale.

Minnaloushe. The voice in the diary.

His love.

And it suddenly made immediate sense. No wonder he had had such a difficult time coming to terms with the idea that Minnaloushe was the killer. It had never felt right. His internal compass had tried to tell him he was looking in the wrong direction.

She stepped closer and glanced at the screen. "So you figured it out. I knew you would."

"Morrighan killed Robert Whittington."

"Yes."

"And his father. And Isidore."

"I'm sorry, Gabriel. I'm sorry for everything. Your friend-" She brought her hand up to her mouth. "I'm so sorry about him."

"Morrighan is the remote viewer."

Minnaloushe nodded. Her eyes seemed haunted.

"Who is the architect of the memory palace?"

"I am."

"Then I don't understand."

"I'll explain it all. But first, just hold me. 1 need you to hold me." She stepped forward until she was standing right in front of him. This close he could see the texture of her skin and the delicate laughter lines at the corners of her eyes.

She placed her hands hesitantly on his chest. He did not respond.

Like a young girl she stood on tiptoe and kissed him chastely on the cheek.

His breath caught. But still his arms hung like lead at his sides, as though he were caught in a spell.

She stepped back and brought a trembling hand to her lips.

Silence. Then she said one word only and he heard her voice break: "Please."

The spell broke. He reached out and pulled her roughly toward him.

He made love to her-the two of them wrapped in a cocoon of light, the edges bleeding into the dark shadows of the room.

He ran his thumb over her feathered eyebrows, across the sweep of her cheekbone and down to her chin.

She was his.

He touched her body, in awe. She was his to touch and feel and enter. The idea of it was almost too much for him to grasp. He had read her diary and he had fantasized. But the woman of his imagination had been as insubstantial as air. And now, when he had least expected it, here she was-glorious flesh and blood-her pulse racing beneath his fingers. Her eyes were languid. Her mouth was slack. As he touched her mouth, she opened it slightly and against his finger he felt the moist inside of her lower lip.

He picked up the spill of hair and kissed the nape of her neck. She smelled of attar of rose. He flicked his tongue across her breastbone and pressed his lips to the pampered skin in the hollow of her throat.

Everything about her body was amazing. The pale half moons of her nails. The underside of her arm gleaming like mother-of-pearl. The subtle slope of her shoulders with the skin so soft when he touched it he wondered if his hands were not too rough. At the base of her spine the Monas embraced by a red rose. Drops of blood beading on its spiked thorns. Pleasure. Pain.

Lifting her arms above her head, he licked the exposed hollows. His mouth traveled slowly down the entire length of her body: tracing the sculptured outline of ribs, the lovely rounded hip and long, smooth thigh. Around her ankle she wore a delicately linked anklet made of gold. It flicked bright in the gloom. He took her foot in his hand, kissed the raised arch, the pink rounded toes.

In his life he had loved one woman: Frankie. There had been other women, of course, and he had usually felt great fondness toward them. But as he looked at the woman who was now lying in his arms, staring up at him with eyes like bright water, he realized that of all the women he had known, he had adored-truly adored-only one.

He could be consumed by this woman. He could lose himself in her, lose his identity. The intensity of what he was feeling was overpowering. He might burn up in the boiling, spinning heat. But he did not care. How many people ever got to experience what he was experiencing at this moment?

He kissed her eyes, her nose, her lips, cupped her face in his hands. He stroked her fingers one by one. As he entered her, he immediately slipped inside her so deeply. Where did her flesh end? Where did his begin?

He sensed a purr coming from deep within her throat. Her fingers tapped against his shoulders. And then he felt her grip tighten and her nails cut sharply into the skin of his back. As he lost control he felt her shudder underneath him and he was gripped by a primitive sense of triumph. Wrapping his arms around her, he held her so tightly that she made a muffled sound of protest and laughter.

Pushing him away from her, she coaxed him onto his stomach. As she lowered herself on top of him, he could feel her breasts soft against his back. Her arms were resting on his; their fingers intertwined.

For a long while they stayed like this, not moving. Against the sensitive skin of his neck he felt her breath as it left her mouth gently. Her breathing slowed. She was asleep.

If only they could stay like this. In this safe room, inside this warm bed. The clocks stopped. No tragedy. No danger.

She stirred and made a soft whimpering sound. Her arm reached past him to the bedside table, and she turned the alarm clock toward her in order to see the time.

"It's very late."

"Or very early." He smiled and suddenly turned over and flipped her onto her back.

She gave a small shriek and laughed, clasping her hands to his shoulders. Propping himself up on one elbow, he pushed the heavy hair from her forehead.

She will age well, he thought, looking down at the lovely face underneath his hand. The intelligence in her eyes will remain undimin-ished; the beautiful bone structure as fine. The laughter and wisdom and quicksilver playfulness will not fade, nor that strange, wonderful luminosity that envelops her very being.

"Minnaloushe."

She smiled at him. Her smile was the smile of a woman who had made love and was now feeling satisfied and intensely feminine. She rolled her head on the pillow, pressing her face into the soft down, and stretched.

"Minnaloushe… will you tell me what happened?"

She stilled the movement of her body and he felt her muscles tense.

She turned her head toward him and he saw the sheen of her eyes. For a long moment there was quiet between them.

Then she said, "I will tell you everything."

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

"Why did Morrighan murder that boy?"

Minnaloushe had moved to the far side of the bed. She was hugging herself, the line of her shoulders taut. The empty stretch of bed between them seemed to signify a mental, not just a physical, divide.

He tried to make his voice sound less accusing. "Why, Minnaloushe?"

"Morrighan was worried Robbie might betray her. That once I knew, I would stop building the memory palace."

"Knew what? And why is that bloody palace important enough to kill for?"

"It is the ultimate prize, Gabriel. Within its walls lies enlightenment. Behind its doors lies knowledge of the great secrets. People have killed for far less…

"My mother's death." Minnaloushe was nodding. Bright tears stood in her eyes. "That's where it all began…"

When Jacqueline Monk died at the age of fifty-three, her brain was a tangle of protein plaques interspersed with soft spots where the tissue had simply given way. She was still a beautiful woman but Alzheimer's had erased her memory and her personality. The sight of her two daughters standing at her bedside was the last impression she had before her breath finally left her body, but the image of the weeping girls made little imprint on her emotions. She did not know who they were.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead tells that the last thought at the moment of death determines the character of the next life. Looking into her mother's lost eyes, sixteen-year-old Minnaloushe Monk felt her heart break. Her mother's final thoughts… what could they be?

For the young girl, whose interest in mysticism was already highly developed, her mother's loss of memory was profoundly traumatic. Memory, Minnaloushe came to believe, was what set man apart from all other living things in creation. Without memory you have no sense of self. Without memory you cannot remember the road you've traveled-can gain nothing from the present life. Even at such a young age, she began to study the concept of memory with a driving hunger.

As time went by, her studies took on an even wider spiritual significance. Not only memory, but knowledge itself, was now the object. Perfect knowledge, which could lead to direct contact with God.

Gnosis.

It is twenty years ago. Minnaloushe Monk is seventeen years old. Outside the window, it is night. Lamplight pools on the pages of the book she is reading.

The founding of Gnosticism, or religion of knowledge, is widely credited to the miracle worker Simon Magus, who was branded the "father of all heresies" by his enemies. Gnosticism became a reviled practice, considered a dangerous, heretical sect in orthodox Christian circles. But even before the birth of Christ, Gnostic ideas had already surfaced in the Egyptian mystery cults and in Buddhism, Taoism and Zoroastrianism. The idea that man may gain insight into the secrets of God by striving for ultimate knowledge is an old belief.

A movement at the door draws her attention away from the book. Morrighan has entered the room. Minnaloushe watches her sister walk over to the CD player, and a few seconds later, the sound of violin notes fill the air. "Andante Cantabile." Tchaikovsky's String Quartet no. 1, opus 11. It was their mother's favorite piece.

Minnaloushe watches warily as Morrighan lowers herself into an armchair. She is always wary where Morrighan is concerned, has long since given up on the idea that the two of them could be close. How sad, she thinks, looking at Morrighan's face-the elegant cheekbones, the black hair smoothed into a sleek French twist-to look at your sister and know that you have absolutely nothing in common with her.

But tonight Morrighan seems unsure of herself. In fact- Minnaloushe surprises herself with the word-she looks vulnerable. Maybe because today is the first anniversary of their mother's death. Earlier, when they had taken flowers to the grave, she had noticed tears in Morrighan's eyes.

"You're leaving for school tomorrow?" Morrighan nods at the volumes stacked up on the desk.

"Yes." Minnaloushe quietly closes the book in front of her. Let Morrighan think she was busy with schoolwork.

"I'll drive you."

"No need. I'll take the train."

"Please. I want to."

Curious… and unexpected. But Minnaloushe nods. "Thanks."

For a while they are quiet. Then Morrighan leans forward and says the words that change the relationship between the sisters forever.

"Minnaloushe, I have a secret to tell you."

If the death of Jacqueline Monk represented a turning point in the life of her younger daughter, it was only fair to say it had a similarly powerful impact on her eldest. At the time, black-haired Morrighan Monk was seventeen years old. For five years she had belonged to a secret society of teenaged girls: a pseudo wicca coven where the members talked about goddess, lapis, magic, boys and MTV with equal enthusiasm. Morrighan's revelation that she was descended from the great wizard John Dee conferred on her special status in the group and gave the young woman a strong sense of identity.

It was during this time that she also made a discovery about herself, which at first alarmed and then delighted her. She had a secret muscle inside her brain, which she could flex almost at will. It allowed her to "see" inside the minds of others. She was wise enough to know that such a gift would breed fear rather than admiration in her classmates and decided to keep this knowledge, unlike the story of her ancestry, to herself.

But the discovery of her gift fueled her interest in magic. Remote viewing, she was convinced, was essentially a magical act. After her discovery, the magic lite of her wicca coven no longer satisfied her, and she embarked on a serious study of the occult. Her main interest was talismans: ordinary objects turned into tools of magic through precise magical rules. Her talismanic knowledge would become all-important later in her life, as would her gift of remote viewing.

Most viewers discover their gift in childhood and share the discovery with a parent, a sibling or a close friend. Morrighan did not. It was a skill she relished, played with and refined. But kept deadly quiet. She was not about to let on to anyone. Least of all, her sister.

But then her mother died. On the first anniversary of the funeral, Morrighan found herself saying: Minnaloushe, I have a secret to tell you. The confession wouldn't have been made if she hadn't been grieving. Afterward, she fully expected derision from her sister. Instead, she found wholehearted acceptance.

Up till that moment, the sisters had not been close. They were jealous of each other and had little in common. Minnaloushe was the cerebral one, Morrighan the athlete. They grew up at separate boarding schools and saw each other infrequently. But on that evening, with the scent of their mother's roses drifting in from the garden and violin notes stirring memories of childhood, the sisters had the first openhearted conversation with each other they could remember. And they made a surprising discovery. Far from not having anything in common, they realized they were both mystics. They were approaching their goal from different directions, but they were on the same journey. A journey, which over the years, would metamorphose into a project that was vastly ambitious.

The project-or game as they referred to it in an attempt to make the enterprise seem less daunting-would eventually consume the women and become the driving force in their life. To seal their pact, they adopted John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica as their personal sigil. It was the perfect symbol for the game.

Sibling rivalry was set aside. Each brought to the game her own special talent. Minnaloushe contributed a prodigious intelligence and a creativity that was genius. Morrighan's input was her knowledge of the occult. Eventually they would also draw on her talent as a remote viewer.

Together the two sisters aimed for the ultimate prize: Anima mundi. A moment of blinding illumination when they would understand the great secrets of the universe.

The way to achieve this was through building a house of a million doors. Memory was key.

In the course of her studies Minnaloushe had come across the work of such memory artists as Giordano Bruno, Giulio Camillo, Ramon Lull and others. The ingenuity, the erudition and the mind-blowing occult philosophy that lay at the heart of their memory systems took Minnaloushe's breath away. If man's mind truly was an incomplete reflection of the sacred mind, then these men's minds were approaching the divine.

It was a state of mind actively sought by the sisters themselves.

And so, over a period of twenty-two years, they built a memory palace the likes of which had never been seen before. Minnaloushe was the architect and the gatherer of information. Her mathematical skills were crucial to the design of the system. But Morrighan was the one who brought magic into play. Using occult rules, she turned the memory images inside the palace into potent talismans.

Brick by brick, door by door, object by object, the two sisters attempted to create an information system encapsulated within the gray white grooves of the brain alone: a system as wide as the universe, as deep as the human spirit.

They called it The Promethean Key.

But then something went wrong.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

"Robbie." Minnaloushe paused.

Here it comes, Gabriel thought. Finally.

"We should never have allowed him to play the game."

"You deliberately targeted that boy." Gabriel knew his voice was harsh, but he couldn't help it. Robbie must have been such an easy touch for the women. He could imagine the boy being dazzled by the sisters, dazzled by their world…

"Gabriel, I want you to understand that we did not seduce him." Minnaloushe's voice was urgent. "Unlike you, Robbie was already a searcher."

"You must have known he was not up to the task, that he would fail."

She shook her head violently. "Failing or succeeding is not the point. Playing the game is like striking at a block of granite the size of the universe, releasing sparks of divine fire. Simply catching sight of the sparks is prize enough. Robbie understood that. He knew he could never hope to achieve the level of mastery of which Morrighan and I are capable. Except…"

"Except what?"

"About a year after Robbie started working on the Art, Morrighan had an epiphany." Minnaloushe's voice was taut. "And she changed the game. She decided to transfer bits and pieces of the memory palace from her own mind into Robert's consciousness using her remote viewing skills. So what would normally take years would be accomplished within a matter of minutes. With every information transfer, Robbie's memory would expand exponentially. A quantum leap forward every time."

"And it worked? "

"Yes. At first it worked brilliantly. We had some doubts in the beginning, you know. Transformation isn't fast food. You can't just order it like a burger." She gave a ghostly laugh. "Just plonking the palace into Robbie's mind without effort on his part would have defeated the object, to say the least. And it would have been dangerous in the extreme. His mind could have collapsed like a heap of rubble. So at first, Morrighan transferred only fragments-only a very few rooms at a time-and then Robbie had to figure out the order of places, the order of things himself. To put it very simply: he would have to fill in the blanks on his own, connect the dots without assistance. As I say, at first it worked brilliantly. It was as though the process fed on itself. With every transfer, the size of the subsequent data package that could be carried over increased enormously. More and more knowledge could be transferred at a time. It was fantastic. After every transfer, Robbie's memory skills increased exponentially."

"And then?"

"The burden became too heavy. Robbie couldn't filter any longer. He was like a constantly absorbing sponge, but the fibers were starting to unravel. There were clear signs. He was turning into an insomniac. And when he did sleep, he had dreadful nightmares."

"Why didn't he stop?"

"Robbie was addicted. Despite the side effects, he craved the rush."

"Why did you allow it to continue? Weren't you concerned?"

"Of course I was. I told Morrighan to slow down the data transfer. But without my knowing, she actually speeded up the process. Robbie was all for it. And because they knew I wouldn't approve, he and Morrighan kept the whole thing a secret from me."

"Things got out of hand."

"Things got badly out of hand. But, Gabriel, until very recently, I had no idea how badly. I knew Robbie was having problems. But I also thought he was beginning to have doubts about the game itself. I was always concerned that he wouldn't have the kind of mental toughness required for the Art. I knew if we slowed down the data transfer, there was a real chance he might become frustrated and drop out. Of course, I didn't realize the data transfers had increased and were feeding his addiction.

"Robbie disappeared while I was on a business trip to Ghana. When I got back and found him gone, I believed Morrighan when she said he had given up on the game. I was devastated that he had simply left without saying good-bye, but it fit. Robbie has a history of taking off without leaving word if things didn't work out for him. Even his father acknowledged that. So I accepted Morrighan's explanation without question."

"So what really happened?"

For a few moments she was silent.

When she spoke again her voice was hardly audible. "Morrighan decided to take Robbie into the portal of the memory palace. That should never have happened. Robbie was still an initiate of the first level, Air. He was still studying only the preliminary secrets. He was not yet a zelator. Only zelators are permitted to approach the Fire. By taking him into the portal, Morrighan broke the rules. For Robbie, it was catastrophic. Entering the portal led to a massive overload of data. His brain crashed."

"He had a stroke."

"It seems likely."

"But that's not what killed him."

"Oh, God." Her fingers gripped the sheet so tight, the knuckles stood out white.

"He drowned. Why was he in the pool?"

"Robbie loved water. We discovered his mind was at its most receptive when he was swimming. Especially at night. I don't know why-something about the rhythm of the exercise, the dark water-whatever it was, it was conducive to the interfacing of his mind with Morrighan's."

"So she interfaced with him while he was swimming. Overloaded his brain. But I still don't understand why she had to drown him, for God's sake. He was still alive."

"The overload wasn't deliberate, Gabriel, I'm sure of it. Morrighan didn't want to hurt Robbie, but she miscalculated. She pushed too hard. And when Robbie suffered the stroke, she was petrified that I would find out and terminate the game."

"Are you saying she deliberately drowned that boy to keep his stroke a secret from you? So you wouldn't stop building the palace?"

"Yes."

"And the body?"

"She buried it. She won't tell me where."

He stared at her in horror. "When did she tell you all this?"

"Earlier today. When she was drunk."

"I've never seen Morrighan drink more than a single glass of wine."

"A single glass of wine with a little bit of added something can pack a punch. And Morrighan isn't the only one who can mix a potion, you know."

For a moment Gabriel was quiet. Then he leaned over and switched on the table lamp. He wanted to see her expression clearly.

"The two of you gave me a potion the night of your birthday, I know that."

She wouldn't meet his eyes. "Morrighan insisted on it. You see, she found the missing photograph of Robbie when she snooped around in your apartment. Around the same time, we also discovered you had hacked into our computer. When Morrighan found the picture she was extremely upset. I couldn't quite understand why, but now it makes sense: she was worried that you were suspicious about Robbie's death. She wanted to know what you were up to. She had tried to scan you before, but you always managed to block, so the potion was necessary to get past your defenses. I now realize she wanted to find out exactly how much you knew about Robbie's murder. As for me, I simply wanted to know why you were interested in the diary."

He looked at her profile: a cameo of the greatest delicacy. "It was your diary that made me fall in love with you."

She smiled, kissed the palm of his hand. "Yes."

"My recollection of the night of your birthday is rather… jumbled. Did we actually…" He paused, feeling suddenly foolish. "You know, did we make love? And, was Morrighan involved as well?" The words came out in a rush.

She blushed. He could see the red creeping up her neck.

"Gabriel-"

The phone rang stridently, the jangling sound making his nerves jump. He picked up the receiver.

"Let me talk to Minnaloushe."

The voice was cool as silk. Morrighan. In his mind's eye, Gabriel saw the beautiful heart-shaped face. The blue black hair. Azure eyes.

"Morrighan-"

"Just do it, Gabriel. Let me talk to my sister."

Without another word, he gave the receiver to Minnaloushe, who was already reaching for it.

The conversation was short. On Minnaloushe's side it consisted of a five words only. "Yes." A few moments of silence. "I'll be there soon."

She replaced the receiver slowly. "I have to go."

"No." He pushed himself upright, alarmed. "It's not safe for you."

"Gabriel, I can't hide. And remember, I'm immune to a mind attack."

He relaxed a little. That was true, he supposed. There was no way the architect of the memory palace could be in danger of an information overload herself. But still…

"Morrighan says she wants to talk."

"Talk?" His voice rose. "There's nothing to talk about. She's a killer. She killed three people-one of them my closest friend. She needs to be brought to justice."

"And how do you plan on doing that? Turn her over to the police? Do you really think they're going to believe all this stuff about memory palaces and information transfer? And where is Robbie's body buried? Forget about justice, Gabriel. All I'm interested in is getting Morrighan to stop the mind attacks against you. And I don't want her to recruit someone else to play with. She's already talking about looking for someone new." Minnaloushe paused. The expression in her eyes was despairing. "She thinks this is why she was blessed with remote viewing powers. That God wants her to introduce gnostic disciples to the palace through mind-to-mind transfer. She's obsessed."

"And what if she doesn't want to listen to reason?"

"She has to. Otherwise…"

"Otherwise, what?"

"Nothing." She shook her head and slid out of the bed, the sheets falling away from her. "The fact that she wants to talk is a positive sign."

He watched as she picked up her clothes from the floor and pulled her black sweater over her head, shaking her hair loose. Despite the jeans and the pullover, she looked more than ever as though she had stepped from a Pre-Raphaelite painting. A pale-skinned, fiery-haired heroine from a Rossetti narrative. Mysterious. Powerful. Deeply sensual.

She reached into the pocket of her jeans. "I wanted to return this. Here, it belongs to you."

It was the locket, cool against his palm.

"When we gave it to you, you said you would treasure it always. Remember?"

"I remember." He noticed the silver linked chain was still broken where he had torn it off his neck the day after her birthday. The day everything started going wrong.

A feeling of dread took hold of him. "Don't go, Minnaloushe. She's dangerous.".

"She can't hurt me."

"I don't care what you say. I don't trust her."

"Morrighan is sick, Gabriel, but how can I hate her? And you and she are so alike. Your remote viewing powers make you both so incredibly special. I look at the two of you and I see the future."

"Stay with me. Please, please stay with me."

"Shh." She leaned forward and placed her lips against his. For a moment he resisted, then he lifted his arms and placed them around her shoulders. He wanted this moment to last forever, with the soft, heavy weight of her body in his arms. But even as he kissed her, Gabriel felt lonely.

He pulled away and placed a hand on either side of her head, looking into her long-lidded eyes. What lay behind those eyes? Sensations and images and worlds he could only guess at. He loved her. He had read her diary and had immersed himself in her most private thoughts. But even if he lived with her until the day of his death, she would remain an enigma. Ultimately unknowable. Her adventures of the mind too vast for him to share.

"Take care of yourself."

"I will." She nodded. "Stay by the phone."

His eyes followed her as she walked to the door.

"Minnaloushe."

She hesitated, stopped.

"Look at me."

Slowly she turned around to face him.

"I love you."

Her face lit up and she gave him a smile of such sweetness, his heart ached. And he knew he would never forget this moment. The night pressing dark against the window. The glow of the table light throwing shadows against the wall. The woman in the door with her luminous hair and pale face looking like an angel.

"And I you." Another smile and she was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The phone was ringing.

Gabriel jerked awake. Outside his window it was day, but the sky was miserably gray. How long had he slept for?

He grabbed the receiver. "Minnaloushe?"

For a moment there was silence. Then Frankie's voice came on the line. "No. But it looks as though we won't have to worry about that bitch anymore, Gabriel."

As he drew in his breath in protest, he suddenly realized Frankie knew nothing of what had happened between him and Minnaloushe the night before. She still thought Minnaloushe was the killer. He pushed himself up on one elbow, tried to focus on her words.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean she's dead."

The breath left his body in an explosive gasp. The room tilted and actual physical pain gripped his chest. He tried to speak but the words refused to come.

"Yes," Frankie continued happily. "I couldn't believe it when I opened the paper. Go check it out. It's in the early edition of the Evening Standard. Apparently she fell down the stairs at her house and broke her neck. Poetic justice, wouldn't you say? Gabriel, are you there?"

He did not bother getting dressed. He threw on his coat and pulled his boots over his bare feet. His hands were shaking so badly, he was unable to tie the laces, and in the end he simply pushed the ends into the ankle flaps. As he ran down the stairs, he found himself silently saying one word over and over again: No. No. No. Maybe Frankie had it wrong. Maybe Minnaloushe had only been injured. No. No.

The teenager behind the counter at the newsstand stared at him as he snatched the paper and dropped a five-pound note on the counter. He left the shop not waiting for change.

The report was at the bottom of page 12 in the Londoner's Diary section and consisted of two paragraphs only.

FATAL ACCIDENT TAKES LIFE OF WOMAN Minnaloushe Monk (36) died instantly in the early hours of the morning when she suffered sudden loss of respiratory function after falling down the staircase of her house in London, Chelsea, and fracturing her neck. Ms. Monk was well-known for her contributions to various philanthropic concerns. Her sister, the well-known adventure sportswoman Morrighan Monk, witnessed the accident and is being treated for shock.

Every day about 1000 falls take place on stairs or steps in the United Kingdom. Three or four of these will be fatal. There are many reasons why falls happen, but the main contributing factors are thought to be poor eyesight, poor lighting or the use of alcohol.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The sky was gray with intermittent rain.

He was shivering violently and his face felt raw from the cold. He had been standing on the street corner for almost an hour. But the thought of leaving did not cross his mind. All his attention was focused on the big redbrick house on the other side of the road.

It was five o'clock in the afternoon and dusk was well advanced. Most of the houses in the street showed lighted windows, but the rooms in Monk House were dark. On the porch, the big tubs filled with blue chrysanthemums appeared neglected, as though no one was around to pay attention. The shallow steps, usually swept clean of leaves and debris, were dirty. A chocolate wrapper was trapped in the wrought iron work of the front gate, which was half open. The house seemed deserted.

But Gabriel knew it was not. It was occupied. He sensed it.

He sensed her.

The cold was intense. He became aware of his arms and legs cramping as he unconsciously fought against the shivers running through his body. A few fat raindrops fell on his face. The wind plucked at his scarf.

Blowing onto his frozen hands in an attempt to warm them, he quickly crossed the street and pushed the garden gate open to its fullest extent. He took the front steps two at a time. Without giving himself more time to think about it, he pressed the doorbell.

He waited. Nothing stirred.

The heavy velvet curtains in the downstairs window were open, the window only covered by the old-fashioned net curtains. But the two lacy panels did not quite meet in the middle, and through the gap he was just able to make out the room and, farther back in the passage, a glimpse of the elegant curve of the staircase.

For a moment the memories came flooding back. His first legitimate visit to Monk House. He was standing at the foot of the staircase, admiring its graceful proportions. Next to him Minnaloushe, cool and lovely in a summer dress. And he remembered her exact words. I love staircases, she had said. I won't be able to live in a place without one. I believe they're essential to anyone wanting to live an interesting life.

For a moment he closed his eyes, the pain of the memory so intense, he found himself involuntarily touching his chest. And on the heels of this memory, another image. A woman falling backward down the stairs, arms like pale petals grabbing uselessly at the banisters to stop her fall, rolling, rolling downward-a flurry of legs, arms, red hair, white neck angled crazily.

He opened his eyes and breathed shallowly. Turning away from the window, he placed his finger on the doorbell once again, pressing down and holding it for a full five seconds.

Nothing. Everything was quiet.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she had deserted this place, after all.

Something stirred at the periphery of his vision. He turned his head.

She had pushed one of the white net curtains to one side, and the darkened window now formed a perfect frame, as though she was putting herself on display. Pale face, pale dress, pale hands. Her hair a black snake falling over one shoulder.

She watched him expressionlessly from behind the pane of glass.

He wasn't sure she would be able to hear him through the window so he raised his voice.

"Morrighan, open the door!"

The movement of her head almost imperceptible.

"Please. I need to talk to you."

Nothing. No reaction. Her eyes black hollows. Behind the pane of glass she appeared as motionless as any exhibit in a museum.

"Damn you!" The anger boiled up in him, rising through his body like fast-burning acid.

She pressed her palm against the window. Her hand looked like a white moth. The gesture reinforced the idea of something on display. What did it mean: Stop? No further?

She was mouthing something. At first he did not comprehend but then he realized what she was saying. An accident. It was an accident.

"No!"

I never touched her.

"I don't believe you!"

She moved her shoulders indifferently. She didn't care.

"It does not end here." He didn't know if she could hear him. He raised his voice again. "It does not end here!"

He felt something touch him: a bolt of menace from her mind directed straight at him. An unambiguous warning. It had the impact of a physical blow, pushing him backward so that he almost fell.

Shocked, he steadied himself by placing his hand against the wall. It had felt as though she had reached invisibly through the window and punched him with great force in the chest. He had never experienced anything like it before.

Don't make me come after you. She mouthed the words slowly, precisely. Her eyes black as space.

She turned to go. For a moment he saw her profile: the profile of a huntress.

Then the curtains dropped, and the house was quiet once more.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

London was in the grip of a deep freeze. It was the coldest December on record for twenty-five years.

Irritable shoppers rushed past with inwardly focused eyes. Shop windows were rimmed with fake frost and tinsel. Carols floated from hidden speakers, the same songs repeated with demonic regularity. Gabriel had never liked Christmas, but it seemed to him as though this year the forced jollity of the season was verging on the grotesque. Underneath the froth and mirth of end-of-year festivities, mince pies and jolly Santas lay a heart of ice, a seeping darkness.

He felt removed from it all: his mind cold, his heart cold.

In the dead of night she visits him. He opens his eyes and there she is next to the bed, looking down at him where he sleeps. Her red hair a cloud of light. Her pale shoulders smooth and glowing. Bringing her forefinger to her mouth, she places it between her lips, then touches herself between her naked thighs.

Sweat breaks out on his skin. He reaches out and pulls her down onto the bed with such force that she cries out. As he enters her, she tilts back her head and closes her eyes. He thinks he might hear the blood-hot and exuberant-pulsing through her veins.

But as he touches his hand to her breast, searching for the strong beat of her heart, she is turning into a ghost-her body becoming ephemeral, insubstantial-slowly fading from his grasp. One moment he is still holding on to flesh and blood, the next she has disappeared from his disbelieving fingers. A dream woman. A woman created from longing and want and memories.

The days passed, but time had lost all meaning for him. His computer stood untouched. He rarely answered his phone.

Minnaloushe. I had just found you. How could I have lost you?

New Year's Eve. Fresh snow on the ground.

Gabriel watched the pale flakes swirling in the darkness. The streets were deserted. The icy weather had driven even the most determined reveler inside.

He looked back at the book in his hands. He had been trying to read, but the black letters stared up from the page, the words meaningless. He closed the book and pushed it away from him.

The wind threw snow against the window. The refrigerator made a small tired sound. Silently the green neon light outside pulsed against the wall of his study, staining the desk with intermittent streaks of light. He hadn't used that desk in weeks, and he could see a layer of dust gleaming on the surface of his closed laptop. When was the last time he had logged on? He couldn't even remember.

For a moment he hesitated, then he stood up.

The laptop's hinges felt stiff when he opened the lid. Pressing the on switch, he waited for the machine to boot up.

Outside the window the drifting snow was thickening into a fast-falling blur. Opaque, smothering.

It was so quiet. You could think you were alone in the world.

The screen flashed blue and filled with icons. Mechanically he moved the cursor to the in-box and clicked.

Ninety-seven unopened e-mail messages were waiting in his in-box.

He scrolled slowly down the list, his mind dull. Some of the names he recognized; others were new: prospective clients, most likely. He did not open the messages, simply dragged the cursor down the list.

His breath caught. Adrenaline sluiced through his body. With burning eyes he stared at the screen.

The entry date was three weeks ago. The subject line was empty. The sender's e-mail address read: Minnaloushe@Monkmask.co.uk.

CHAPTER FORTY

My clearest love,

I have set this e-mail to a time switch. With tuck you will never receive it because I shall be around to disable the switch before its release. But if things go wrong, this e-mail and its attachment will be delivered to you at a pre-specified time. If you are reading this, then I am in all probability dead, and you are mourning me.

After leaving you earlier tonight I went to talk to Morrighan. I was hoping I could negotiate with her for your safety and I also hoped she would give up on her insane compulsion to draw more disciples into the game. But Morrighan is threatening us and for the first time I am scared.

She wasn't always like this. Somewhere inside of Morrighan hides my brave sister who believes in passion, creativity and beauty. Tomorrow, when I talk to her again, I will try to find this sister I admire so greatly.

If I fail… we must go into battle.

Morrighan has become so powerful, Gabriel. You have no idea how the memory palace has enhanced her viewing skills. They used to be confined to wetware only, but lately she has moved beyond mind-to-mind manipulation and is now able to manipulate inanimate objects in the real world as well. I thought it was amusing at first-you know, watching her switch the TV off and on from across the room, starting the microwave or coffeemaker. But who knows where her skills can take her, eventually?

So we have no choice. We have to make her forget.

If we can make Morrighan lose her memory of the order of places and things, she will be adrift-mapless-condemned to wander the halls of the memory palace with no hope of escape.

There is a tradition in the Arcane schools that every seeker of en-lightenment should have a secret name given to him by a teacher. As we did not have a teacher, I gave Morrighan her name and she gave me mine. Morrighan's secret name is a very old one and it means "Knowledge of God." It is also the password to the portal.

A secret name is very potent. It is keyed to magic numbers and marks the searcher's destiny. The owner of such a name must meditate upon his name constantly but should never speak it out loud. By keeping it silent, he preserves the name's vibration intact and it gains power. If the searcher gives voice to the name, it becomes worthless.

I am going to reveal to you Morrighan's name. You must enter her mind and make her say her name out loud. When she does, the name will be stillborn and she will lose the order of places and things. She will be hopelessly lost. No longer a witch.

I have written a spell which I have based on fragments of old gnostic texts. You will memorize this spell and release it. It is highly magicized code and it will act like a virus destroying Morrighan's inner resonance, her inner strength. It will compel her to first speak the magic numbers that are integral to her name, and then the name itself. She will try to resist, but she will fail. My code will defeat her.

What is all important is that you release the spell inside the portal itself. It will not work in any other part of the palace. It is only in the portal where Morrighan is vulnerable.

I am condemning my sister to walk through the palace of her own mind endlessly. I do not know how heaven will judge me for this. But I know heaven will not forgive me for what I am asking of you-my love, my heart. Please know that if I had remote viewing skills, I would have entered Morrighan's mind myself. But I don't. You are all I've got.

Morrighan will probably lead you to the portal herself, just as she did with Robbie. But how do you get out again? If the spell works, she'll be lost herself.

And, therefore… so will you.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

"It's impossible." Frankie sounded aghast.

Gabriel placed his finger on the down arrow of the keyboard and watched the fragments of text scroll past.

"Gabriel, you can't seriously consider going ahead with this. It won't work."

"If Minnaloushe says it will work, it will work."

"But look at it-it's gobbledygook." Frankie stared at the sentences on the screen.

I am the whore and the saint. I am the wife and the virgin.

"What the hell does that mean? It sounds like porn." Gabriel gave a short laugh. "Quite the opposite. According to Minnaloushe's notes, those lines are from a gnostic tract describing the perfect mind. And these lines here," he pointed to another section on the screen, "are based on fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls and ancient Mandaean writings." "But what does it mean?"

"I don't know, Frankie. It's coded language. A spell." "And it will make Morrighan say her secret name?"

"Yes. First the numerology of her name and then the name itself."

"This is all crazy." Frankie looked sick. You have to walk through the palace and somehow find the portal. Then, if you do manage to get there, you have to release this spell. How are you going to do that if Morrighan decides to open the door inside the portal and your brain gets pulped?"

Gabriel was silent.

"And that won't be the end of it." Frankie was thoroughly unhappy. "Assuming you survive your little adventure inside the portal, you then have to find your way out of the palace again. Which might be just a little difficult considering Morrighan's own mind will be scrambled egg by this time."

"I have no choice, Frankie."

"There's always a choice."

"No."

"I know why you're doing this. It's about revenge. You want to hurt Morrighan for what she's done to Minnaloushe."

He didn't answer.

"Revenge is the worst possible motive."

"It works for me." His voice was harsh.

"Gabriel-"

"It's not only revenge, Frankie. Do I want Morrighan to pay? Damn right I do. But it is not that simple. Morrighan is out of control. I'm the only one who can stand in her way. I know this is going to sound as though I've found religion, but for the first time in my life I feel as though my remote viewing powers were meant: not merely an accidental gift. If Morrighan isn't stopped, who knows what she'll get up to? And she'll be looking for someone new to train. Someone who will get hurt. I can't let her."

"You'll get lost. You're bound to. Think about it, Gabriel. Really think about it. Imagine the horror of walking endlessly through a labyrinth from which there is no escape."

"It won't happen."

"How can you say that!" She was shouting.

"I have a secret weapon."

Frankie stared at him in bewilderment.

"You."

They were lying in bed, hand in hand. The curtains at the windows were drawn. The door was shut. The darkness inside the room was all but absolute.

"Ready?"

Frankie's fingers tightened on his. "Yes."

"OK. Go."

Gabriel closed his eyes and willed his breathing to slow. He was doing his best to keep his body completely relaxed and to clear his mind of emotion. If he was too tense, he would involuntarily block Frankie when she tried to enter his mind. He needed to open up his inner eye and keep it slack. Clouds. Think of clouds. Clouds floating, weightless…

He sensed her tentative probings. She was hesitant, timid. But it felt instantly familiar. A soft, fragrant summery breeze. They used to scan each other often when they first started out. During his training at Eye-storm he had acquiesced to Mullins's scanning exercises, but he had never allowed any of his fellow RVs full access. He had never allowed his inner eye to slacken fully. Even with Frankie, he had held back.

But not tonight. For the first time in his life, he was about to place his life in someone else's care. No more going it alone. Frankie would be the first person to walk through his inner eye unimpeded.

Not the first person, he reminded himself. Morrighan had been the first. He shivered as he remembered the insolent confidence with which she had moved through his thoughts the night of Minnaloushe's birthday. That heavy musk and frangipani fragrance descending over his brain like a fog, his limbs growing weak, his groin tingling, the pleasure centers in his brain roughly stimulated so that all he wanted to do was give himself over to her completely…

He shuddered again and tried to concentrate on Frankie. Frankie whose signature was summery fresh, her presence inside his mind like a breeze. But it was so fragile, he thought, suddenly despairing. The thread was so tenuous-would it hold?

It had to hold. Frankie was the ace up his sleeve, the only way he could outwit the most ruthless opponent he had ever faced. Frankie was his one chance of navigating his way back through the house of a million doors. She was to be his anchor. With his mind tethered to hers, she would bring him back to safety. An Ariadne's thread leading him out of the maze. Assuming, of course, that he managed to survive whatever it was Morrighan had waiting for him inside the portal and if the aneurysm inside his brain tissue didn't suddenly spring a catastrophic leak.

Relax. Calm yourself. His heartbeat had speeded up again; he needed to slow his breathing. He tried to slacken his neck muscles, which had tightened in nervous anticipation.

He had spent the last hour memorizing Minnaloushe's code. He had sweated like a schoolboy cramming for an exam: the most important exam of his life. The text covered not even half a page, but he still had a rough time of it and was shocked at how weak his memory was. The mental strain to commit those lines to memory had been sobering. No mouse with which to point and click. No prompts, no icons to guide him. Just his own ability to internalize the information and draw on it at will.

Frankie was fully inside his mind now. Her hand inside his was still, and the grip of her fingers had loosened. Darling Frankie. Dapper, galant. The idea of going into the palace with him was deeply daunting to her; he knew that. But when he had asked her if she would follow him inside, she never hesitated. Such unconditional love-he felt humbled. Their destinies have always been linked, Frankie's and his. And they were about to embark on their longest journey…

His inner eye was now completely slack. It was time to interface with Morrighan. Would she accept him? But on that score he needn't be worried. She would accept him. Oh, yes. She was probably waiting for him already.

His right hand held Frankie's. His other hand was clutched around a locket. A locket with one black curl and one red. Red hair. Minnaloushe. For a moment sorrow washed through his entire body.

No time for grief now. No time for tears. Inside the locket was also a curl of the deepest black. Black as coal. Black as the feathers on the wings of a crow. The crow that was watching him with one beady eye. The bird so close to him, if he put out his hand he would be able to touch it.

For a moment the bird tilted its head quizzically, watching Gabriel as though debating on how to react to the intruder. But then it moved its weight from one leg to the other and started grooming its feathers.

He was inside. He was deep, deep within the palace.

Gabriel looked around him. He was standing in an enormous hall made of stone. The place had run to ruin. The tall windows, the delicate tracery of the frames still intact, were broken. There were holes in the thick walls, gaping squares of blackness, and the sweeping stone buttresses were crumbling.

There was a sound in the air. A wail. A long, falling cadence, the sound unbroken, like a frozen waterfall. He recognized it for what it was. He was listening to the sound of a mind in distress. Morrighan was grieving. He wasn't the only one who was feeling the pain of Minnaloushe's absence.

A movement at the corner of his eye made him turn around sharply. But it was only the crow. It had taken wing. It was flapping its way across the room and was heading for the open door and the passage beyond. After a moment's hesitation, he followed.

He stepped out into the stone passage. It was not really a passage, but a kind of mezzanine, bordered by a thin black railing. He placed his hand on the railing and his stomach felt suddenly hollow as he gazed down the vertiginous depths of a central shaft plunging to unimaginable depths.

The mezzanine on which he was standing was only one of many. From where he stood he could see the floors above and below: mezzanines, concentric tiers and galleries spiraling dizzyingly upward and downward, creating a disorienting distortion of perspective. And doors, millions of doors opening ceaselessly into the remotest distance: mystical replication.

For a moment his mind buckled under this visual onslaught. So many doors and no map. The previous two times that he had walked through the memory palace he had been looking through Robert Whittington's eyes. Every time he opened a door, he had been guided by Whittington's knowledge of the order of places and the order of things. But this time he had not interfaced with the boy's psi-space. This time he was on his own, walking through a mind that was hostile and cold. He had no idea where he was or how to continue. He did not know which doors to open and which to leave alone. He had no idea how to find the portal.

It didn't matter. He closed his eyes tight, shutting out the hallucinatory image of infinite doors. It didn't matter. Morrighan was sure to guide him to the portal herself. That was where she wanted him to be because that was where he would be at her mercy. He could choose any door at random and wander through this labyrinthine palace at will. She would find him.

He waited, his hand on the railing, expecting at any moment to sense her signature-that heavy scent of musk and frangipani-but there was nothing. The only signature inside his mind was Frankie's-faint, ghostly-like a shadow shimmering across a pane of glass. And again he wondered: would it hold?

He opened his eyes. The crow was sitting about three feet away from him, perched on the railing. The tiny eye stared at him pitilessly. Maybe he should follow the crow. Maybe the crow was to be his guide. But even as he made to move toward it, the bird lifted its wings and sailed soundlessly over the edge of the railing, plunging down, ever down, until the crescent of its black wings got lost in the shadows far, far below.

No guide then. Gabriel straightened. Well, a journey started with a single step. He turned the handle on the door nearest to him.

So many doors. You could go mad simply from the idea of so many doors. And as he walked from room to room, that eerie frozen wail was becoming ever more pronounced. The deep melancholia, the ice-cold anguish was overwhelming.

It seemed to have affected the physical environment as well, turning it into a weird broken-down building site. He found himself walking up staircases that hung suspended in space, leading nowhere. Winding corridors ended in blank enigmatic walls. Many of the doors opened not into rooms, but onto nothingness, so that he would step through, and find himself teetering vertiginously on the edge of empty space. And when he did enter a completed room, the proportions appeared distorted. The walls buckling, the ceilings pulled askew. The windows drooping deliriously in their frames.

And he was troubled by an indefinable sense of something missing. He couldn't figure out what it was. But then it hit him. The rooms were completely empty. There were no objects, no figures behind the doors. Where were the talismanic memory images that should have populated these rooms?

In his first two rides, every room he entered had been occupied-butterflies, blind monks, bloodied doves, giant marbles, lashless eyes-millions of potent images, meticulously conceived. But the rooms through which he was wandering now were bare except for fallen masonry. In some rooms the brick walls were raw and unplastered, as though builders had left the premises prematurely. Why?

But even as he wondered, the answer came to him. These rooms had the appearance of being unfinished because that was exactly what they were. This was a work in progress. Minnaloushe had been building this space, but she never had the chance to finish it. And Morrighan was unable to continue without her sister's help. The anguish Morrighan was feeling was not just for her sibling's death. It was also for the worlds that would remain undiscovered now that Minnaloushe was no longer there to help her sister conceive fresh horizons.

The wail was increasing in intensity. An unceasing sob. It chilled him to the bone. He was approaching a door with thick strap hinges and a highly chased lock affixed to the timber. He placed his hand on the doorknob and the door swung open.

This room was not empty.

It was a big room, a very big room. The floor underfoot was covered by rotting leaf litter. The walls were plastered, and he was able to see the shadowy outlines of faded frescoes. Vines curled riotously across the beams in the roof space, and climbing roses drooped from flexible stems. There were several trestle tables overladen with seed trays, pots and garden tools. In the air hovered the sweet stench of decay. Several narrow windows, obscured by foliage, lined the walls. A gaseous green light filtered through the dirty panes.

Something sweeped past his elbow. A black shadow. The crow had returned. It descended on something in the far corner of the room and perched itself on top of two humplike objects covered by what looked like sacking. From where Gabriel stood, he couldn't see what they were. The light wasn't strong enough.

Hesitantly he walked forward. Something told him that he did not want to go any closer, would not want to see what was underneath the sacking. He took another step forward. A sense of foreboding hammered at his brain. No, no.

He put out his hand to remove the hemplike cloth and the crow screeched. It flapped its wings in agitation. No, no.

The wail was now deafening. His fingers gripped the cloth and it started to slide off the objects, caught for a moment. With a determined gesture he ripped the entire length of it clean off.

Minnaloushe's body was covered with flowers. Big, white, star-shaped flowers, the likes of which he had never seen before. They were growing from inside of her body; the thick stems were sprouting from deep within her flesh, pushing vigorously up through the skin. The flowers gleamed with health and vitality, every petal perfectly formed. Her eyes starry white chambers, her mouth hemorrhaging snowy blooms. Her hair shot through with tender shoots of green.

Next to her was Robert. Red flowers for him, not white. Red as the fiery petals on the humpback tree shading the swimming pool at Monk House. And suddenly Gabriel knew where Morrighan had buried the boy.

He staggered back.

Gabriel…

His name uttered like a sigh. Like the wind blowing through leaves. The sound made his palms go clammy. It came from behind him.

The sigh solidified into a whisper. Ga-bri-el. A soft, drawn-out whisper-three syllables.

"Ga-bri-el…"

And the air was heavy with the scent of musk and frangipani.

She was dressed exactly the same as when he had encountered her in his first ride. A long dress made of velvet, black but not black, the luscious fabric shot through with emerald thread so that when she moved, the folds of her dress gleamed with light. The sleeves were tight fitting as was the bodice, the dark color accentuating the pallor of her skin. The neckline was delicately pleated and very low cut, and he could fully see the tattoo of the Monas on the soft swell of her breast. From her neck dangled the pendant with the letter M.

But her true black hair was uncovered, the hood of the cloak turned down. She was not wearing the mask. And why should she? They knew each other now. Oh, yes, they knew each other. No need for subterfuge. No need for hide-and-seek any longer.

Ga-bri-el… She lifted her hand. Beckoned.

He looked away from her and down at the blooming bodies at his feet. Robert bleeding fiery petals. Minnaloushe's skin looking like alabaster: transparent but shot through with shadows. Underneath the fine pallor lay patches of decay, but still the flowers blossomed with heedless vigor. A bizarre marriage of fecundity and death. A grotesque image conjured up by Morrighan's mind to keep her sister alive in her memory.

He stretched out his hand tentatively, mesmerized by the sheen of the white petals.

Don't do that.

He looked back at Morrighan. Her blue eyes glowed. Her crimson mouth was fire.

Leave her. Come with me.

Bitch! He was suddenly suffused with fury. Murdering bitch! He lunged at her. She sidestepped-a slight movement. He was punching at air.

A glimmer of amusement came through from her. And he sup-posed it was ridiculous. He could pick up that sharp-edged trowel from the table and push it into her body and nothing would happen. In this universe created by her mind he was impotent. It was only inside the portal that he'd be able to wreak destruction and turn this palace of the memory to ruin.

That is, if he survived.

A feeling of futility swept over him. Maybe he should simply stay here. Stay with Minnaloushe. He was never going to be able to escape this labyrinth anyway.

Come. Impatient now.

No.

Come.

He shrank back.

Something nudged at his feet. He looked down.

The entire floor was covered by rats. A heaving, seething mass of squealing, shuddering bodies, evil eyes, whiskers, teeth sharp as razors. His shoes were covered with rats; the rodents were jostling against his ankles.

He looked up. Morrighan had disappeared. She had left him alone with his nightmare.

This is not real, he told himself despairingly. This is just a memory image. Just something conjured up by Morrighan's mind. Not real. But the next moment one of the rats fell down on him from one of the trusses in the ceiling space. He could feel the plump weight of the rodent as it slapped onto his shoulder, the claws scrabbling and then hooking into his skin. The next moment the animal had sunk its yellow teeth into his neck. The pain was intense. He tugged the rat off his neck and threw it away from him, shuddering with revulsion. He stumbled toward the door, kicking at the fat bodies crowding his feet. The door. Escape.

He fell out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

She was waiting for him outside. Come.

He followed.

In the bed inside the loft apartment Frankie moved restlessly, her head shifting on the pillow from side to side. Vaguely she realized that her heartbeat had sped up enormously. She was suspended in a twilight world where her mind was interfacing with that of the man who was lying beside her, now oblivious to her presence. The link was tenuous; she was receiving only fragments of images and emotions. And a few moments ago, she had received a burst of emotion so violent that the link had almost severed completely, the turbulent static of his thoughts just about wiping the scan clean.

It was better now. She was picking up the pattern again. A corridor silvered by moonlight. Quick steps. The shadow of a woman sliding sinuously along a curving wall…

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

He was following her shadow. She moved quickly, always staying a few steps ahead of him. Once or twice he had lost sight of her completely as they sped down a long, winding corridor, but each time her shadow had stretched behind her, a dark shape on the moon-stained wall, lengthening and contracting, showing the way.

They were now once more traveling through a populated section of the memory palace, the unfinished building site of Minnaloushe's imagination swallowed up somewhere far behind them.

The rooms through which they traveled at present were all filled with mystical objects. A man with the head of a baboon stared at him dispassionately. A white horse neighed madly and tossed its blood-soaked mane. In one room his astonished eyes saw that he was walking on water. Deep down below him were millions of drowned books, some closed, some twirling slowly with pages spread open in fanlike beauty.

He knew that these were talismanic images-magical images- but he had no comprehension of what information they represented. He was walking through these halls of knowledge without any understanding. It was simply a disturbing, alien world.

And he was lost. He had no idea how many doors she had opened, how many rooms they had traversed. He had lost track of the number of images they had encountered. He didn't care. He would never be able to remember the way back. All he was interested in now was reaching the portal. And he had no doubt that was where she was leading him.

He kept his eyes on her moving form. She had a lovely way of carrying herself, every step graceful but hinting at the power and strength gathered in the fine muscles. Her hair was upswept, allowing him to see the slender stalk of her neck. Her profile was pure. She was a beautiful creature.

And she was a warrior. Strong. Sleek. On guard. Ready to go into battle. Mhor Rioghain. Great Queen of war and death. He was no match for her. Even Minnaloushe had miscalculated her sister's ruthlessness.

Why had Morrighan in the end decided to kill Minnaloushe? An accident, she had said. Not planned. Only Morrighan knew if this were true. Morrighan had needed Minnaloushe to help her build the palace. But maybe jealousy and paranoia had come together in one devastating moment of lethal rage.

Two warriors. Minnaloushe's mind had been the subtler, Morrighan's the more ferocious. Minnaloushe had delighted in practicing mental judo, using her adversary's strength against her. Morrighan's mind cut like a katana. A few well-placed sword strokes demolishing the whole with ruthless precision. No ambiguity.

And in the end ruthlessness had prevailed. Or had it? If he could reach the portal and release Minnaloushe's spell, she might well be the final victor.

He was aware of a hum in the air. He had heard this sound before. He knew what it signaled. A tremor ran through his spine.

In front of him, Morrighan had stopped. She placed her palm against an uneven stone set into the smoothness of the wall.

The wall slid to one side.

The vast room was as he remembered it. As he had dreamt it.

The portal. It had haunted his sleep for so long. Now that he had reached it he felt strangely calm.

Her link with Gabriel was fragile. At times Frankie would see clearly and the emotions she picked up from him would be true, but then the scan would break up and she'd see only fragments, incoherent images. But as he entered the portal, her first impression was as detailed as an etching: a vast space with slowly revolving stone walls densely encrusted with mysterious sigils and fantastic signs. She had never been inside this space before, but she recognized it immediately. Gabriel had talked about it so often.

All these symbols, she knew, could be combined and recombined into infinite patterns of code. This was the heart of the memory palace; the power station driving the entire structure. Above the massive circular walls the domelike ceiling floated insubstantially, bathed in light.

And then there were the thirty doors. They formed a semicircle and looked innocuous. But behind one of those doors lay pain and insanity. Open it and an information overload would burst through your brain like water breaking through the wall of a dam.

For a brief moment she remembered the aneurysm nestling inside the soft tissue of Gabriel's brain, a grenade waiting to explode.

She sensed the awe, the fear now starting to coat Gabriel's thoughts. It seeped into her own consciousness like ink absorbed by blotting paper. But part of her mind was cool, an outsider looking in. And she was concerned: Where was Morrighan? She wanted Gabriel to find Morrighan, but his focus had slipped away from the woman. He was fully absorbed by the idea of the portal itself. And with the horror lurking behind one of those doors.

Gabriel was looking upward at the ceiling high above him. He turned on his heel. The illuminated dome spun with him. It made Frankie dizzy.

The scan was breaking up again. One moment the spinning ceiling, then a distorted glimpse of the phantasmagorical symbols on one of the walls rushing past her uncomprehending eyes like an animated frieze.

Where was Morrighan?

What secrets did this chamber hold? What magic?

Gabriel looked up, and the dome of the ceiling above his head was filled with celestial light.

You had your chance to understand. You did not take it.

He whipped around. He had forgotten about Morrighan. She was standing barely a foot away. Her signature was suddenly overpowering. Musk. Frangipani. Curiosity. Intense excitement. Powerful chemicals rushing through her brain, sparking a reaction inside his own mind as well.

Death's fingerprint is in our DNA. It sets our fate. The grave is journey's end for all of us. But the memory palace-oh, Gabriel. The memory palace transforms the journey from drudgery to ecstasy. Once you've tasted the rush of the memory palace, the ordinary life is a withered flower.

A part of him realized that she desperately wanted him to comprehend the magnificence of her creation.

He gestured at the gigantic stone walls with their enigmatic symbols. "Was this worth killing for?"

Is becoming a magician not worth everything?

She placed her hand on his shoulder and drew even closer. He could feel the heat from her body. A small, shameful part of his mind was reacting to her physical closeness. Her thigh brushing his. The soft swell of her breasts. The pale skin accentuated by the bruise of the Monas: a rough kiss made visible. The urge to touch his fingers to that highly erotic bruise was overwhelming.

"No." He tried to move away from her. "Minnaloushe-"

Minnaloushe? As if the name were a foreign word and she was inquiring as to its meaning. She tightened her grip on his shoulder. Minnaloushe was faint of heart. But you and I are the same: we crave the thrill. We ache for it.

We crave the thrill. She understood him well. For him too, risk had always been the ultimate turn-on. And risk had its rewards. In his own life risk had usually paid off. But if he miscalculated this time…

He looked into her blue eyes and knew he was looking death in the face. She was lethal.

Behind her shoulder he could see the doors lined up. One of those doors was the entrance to Pandora's box. If it opened, he would probably not survive the onslaught.

He pushed the thought aside. Time to act.

Deliberately he placed one hand against her breast. Her skin was as soft as he had imagined it would be. He placed his other hand behind her head and drew her face to his. His fingers moved inside her hair, loosening it so that it fell to her shoulders in a dusky cloud. As he touched his lips to hers, her eyes remained open, locked with his. Blue pools fringed by inky lashes. They told him nothing.

He tightened his grip in her hair. "You are insane."

I know. A ripple of amusement from her. Exciting, isn't it?

Pain shot through his lip. She had bitten him. He tasted blood.

He pressed his fingers against her breast with such force, he knew he was hurting the tender flesh. But her mouth softened and he could feel her tongue moving gently. Her breath was sweet. Gabriel. She whispered his name like an incantation. Gabriel.

An incantation. A spell. But he had his own spell. It was time to set it free.

He placed one hand against the small of her back and the other around her shoulders and drew her to him even more firmly. She did not resist. For the first time her eyes closed, shuttered by a languorous sweep of lashes.

Her body so soft, so slack, but a rippling coming from deep within her. A slow smile crossed her face.

He struggled to focus. Concentrate, Gabriel. It is time to remember. Remember…

When I entered the House of Blood and Air

I saw the dusky portal

I saw the princes of the dark dwelling

The fragments of text floated through his mind. Minnaloushe's magic code.

I saw men of arms buried in black graves and my name is…

Morrighan's eyes flew open and he felt her mind snap back in alarm. NO!

He tightened his grip on her shoulders. "What is your name, Morrighan?"

She was shaking her head back and forth.

"Say it!"

Twenty-two. The word left her lips in a moan. My name is twenty-two.

You breathe your name In my ashen ear And pen secrets on my soul I am the whore and the saint 1 am the wife and the virgin And my name is…

She lifted her hand and her nails raked fire across his cheek. Without hesitation he slapped her across the face and slammed her body against the wall. The breath left her lips in a painful gasp.

"Say it!"

He had never seen such hate in anyone's eyes. She was trying to fight the compulsion; he could see the muscles in her throat contracting. But the words left her mouth as if of their own volition.

Seven. My name is seven.

Almost finished. Only a few more lines…

Like the speckled wolf I will travel by your side Like the charcoal crow I will wing the soil

She was weeping and her crying was silent and fierce. Snail smears glistened on her cheeks. She collapsed in his arms, deadweight, and as he let her go, she sank to her knees. Her head was bowed, the black hair parted, and he glimpsed the nape of her neck, vulnerable. Reaching down, he cupped his hand under her chin, twisting her face around. She looked at him with drowned eyes.

Please, Gabriel. Don't do this. It's not too late. You can still take my hand and we can travel together. Forget about… her… You used to love me too. Don't you remember?

She stared at him with those blue eyes, and images of their summer together spooled through his memory. Morrighan, her lovely mouth aglow, smiling at him as they dance at Minnaloushe's birthday. Morrighan sitting in the peacock armchair, her eyes closed as she listens to the notes of a violin. Morrighan working in the garden. Her dress is bunched up above her knees; there are dark patches of sweat under her arms and her thin blouse is clinging to her breasts. She is humming underneath her breath. She is happy.

But then another image. Morrighan standing in a window, framed like an object on display, her eyes dispassionate. Behind her shoulder the curve of a staircase…

He stepped back from the woman at his feet. As the last lines of Minnaloushe's spell slotted into his memory, Morrighan's lips pulled away from her teeth. Pink tongue glistening. Eyes like space. Her hair black seaweed.

Speak not, I

Dead are my lips, my cut lips

But my name, my whole perfect name is…

Her lips moved painfully:

My name is Eldaah.

It was over. He closed his eyes briefly.

The next moment she screamed. It felt like a steel needle lobbed into his brain. One of the doors flew open. An avalanche of information rushed through the opening with a sickening roar. It swept him off his feet as though he were a matchstick in the path of a hurricane.

He had become a fleck of dust in a storm of blinding movement and was being propelled forward with such unimaginable force- with such speed-that the objects he encountered along the way dissolved into a demented visual landscape: chaotic, dissonant, like a reel of film edited by a mind no longer sane.

Images beautiful and profane stared at him from the chaos. A figure, its spine encircled by the sinuous form of a snake, flashed briefly past him, followed by a boy dressed in flowing robes, a book to his chest, one finger against his lips as if admonishing Gabriel to silence. A child, its chest ripped open, was cradling its pulsing heart in its own two hands. Gabriel stretched out his hands toward the child, but the next moment it had disappeared and he was teetering on the edge of a precipice, and far down below him was an entire city submerged under ice, and he could hear the voices of angels screaming. Birds fell from the air with crushed beaks and torn wings.

Control the input! Keep it clean! His defenses were crumbling. His eyeballs were straining inside his head. His body was disintegrating under the impact of the sensory overload. And still it continued, the images pouring into his mind, his skull shuddering with noise and turbulence. And among the madness and confusion the crow-grown immensely large-flying past him in a mighty rush of air.

And now he was inside a vast, many-tiered chamber spiraling downward into blackness. One moment he was looking down into this labyrinth and the next he was falling, falling down the wide vertical shaft, getting closer and closer to the blackness beneath him. Doors-millions of doors-spinning past the edge of his vision. His mind struggling for a fingerhold, scrabbling for something with which to anchor his sanity. Frankie. He could sense her anxious probing, but it was so faint, so faint, like fingers tapping against glass. Oh, God, he couldn't hang on any longer. He couldn't process-

Sudden quiet. The silence of infinite spaces. Then he heard her voice. Gabriel. The word a desolate moan.

I am lost… A whisper traveling down the long corridors, bouncing off the steep walls, echo upon echo. Lost… Lost… Lost… Gabriel… Don't leave me here…

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

The smell was the first thing he registered. Disinfectant. And then the green dusk of a hospital room. He was also aware of a gentle clicking sound against the windowpane. Rain?

He was hooked up to monitors. There were tubes stuck in his arm. He touched his hand to his forehead, and his fingers recognized the gauzy feel of a bandage.

Slowly his eyes traveled around the room. A Formica nightstand. A matching dresser. A chair with a crumpled blanket, tossed to one side as though someone had vacated the chair only recently. There was a paper cup on the nightstand.

He saw all of this without any sense of curiosity. For a while he simply lay there listening to the rain tapping against the window. He closed his eyes.

When he woke up again, the room was bright with light. On the seat of the chair next to the bed, the blanket was neatly folded.

The light hurt his eyes and he closed them again quickly.

"Gabriel."

He turned his head on the pillow-wincing at the pain skewering through his neck-and peered through slitted eyes at the figure standing on the other side of the bed.

"Gabriel. Look at me." Frankie brought her face closer to his. "Hey, you." She was smiling.

"What…" His voice was a croak. Behind Frankie's shoulder, a nurse in a navy blue uniform poked her head around the door for a few seconds before disappearing again.

He tried again. "Am I OK?"

She was still smiling. "You will be. Are you thirsty? Do you want some water?"

"How long have I been here?"

"Five days. Three days in intensive care. You've been drifting in and out a number of times."

"I don't remember."

"Well, you've been mostly out of it. Are you in pain? Shall I call the nurse?"

"No." He moved his shoulders awkwardly against the propped-up pillows. Now that he was actually able to focus on his surroundings, he didn't want to be drugged up. He wanted to know what had happened.

As if anticipating his next question, Frankie said, "Dr. Dibbles will be here soon to explain everything to you. It was a close call. The brain aneurysm ruptured and they had to operate. But you'll be OK."

"Good to know." His thoughts were cotton wool. He tried to concentrate on Frankie's smiling face. "What about you, Frankie? Are you OK?"

"I'm one hundred percent. Although I did come out of that ride with one hell of a migraine, I'll tell you that. But I'm all right now."

"No bad dreams, huh?"

"No dreams whatsoever. I can't even recall the ride at all, to tell the truth. I have no memory of it. Nothing, not even fragments. It's as though the slate was wiped clean. Weird." She hesitated. "And you? Do you remember anything?"

An image flickered through his mind. A dizzying replication of doors and winding corridors. A woman's voice whispering, the sound fragmenting into a kaleidoscope of echoes: Don't leave me here…

He felt suddenly very tired. "I remember."

"She's here, you know."

"What?" He stiffened and his stomach knotted involuntarily.

Frankie nodded. "Four doors down."

"Why?"

"She's in a coma. But they don't know why." Frankie watched him steadily. "There was no physical trauma to the brain. No brain swelling or brain bleeding. Not like with you. She's simply… unconscious."

"How did she get here? Did you-"

"Not on your life." Frankie's voice was emphatic. "I wasn't even aware she was in the hospital. Apparently the cleaning lady discovered her unconscious and called for an ambulance."

"How do you know all this?"

"By chance. Morrighan has a cousin who came to visit. We met at the coffee machine and she and I made friends."

Frankie smoothed the hair from his forehead. "But don't worry about any of this stuff right now, sweetheart. You should rest."

"I suppose so." His voice sounded exhausted even to his own ears.

Frankie leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "Go back to sleep. We can talk about it later."

He placed his hand on her wrist, holding her back. "Frankie… thank you."

"Oh," she smiled again. "You're welcome."

"No. I mean it. I owe you everything." Tears came to his eyes. "When that door flew open, I started falling… falling into darkness. And that's when I felt your mind reaching out to mine, hooking on. You saved me."

"Shh. Go to sleep."

He closed his eyes obediently. Frankie's voice came as though from far away. "Everything is going to be fine now. It's all over."

That evening he went for a walk. He was hooked up to an intravenous drip on wheels, and he had to drag the entire contraption with him. The wheels made an unpleasant squeaking sound on the linoleum.

He shuffled down the corridor using baby steps and feeling like an old man. He was not in pain, but he was so weak. The idea that his muscles would regain their former strength seemed almost inconceivable.

It was late. The evening meal was long finished and the last visitors had left. The wide corridor down which he was moving was empty. He could hear the sound of a television set coming from one of the rooms behind him, but most of the rooms leading off the passage were darkened.

Four rooms down, Frankie had said. He stopped just inside the doorway.

The room was only dimly lit, but there was enough light for him to see. Her face was pale in the gloom. Her hands rested flaccidly next to her body. She did not look sick. If it weren't for the wires and machines you would have thought her asleep.

Hesitantly he moved closer to the bed. She was very still. He could hardly see the movement of her breast as she breathed. Her eyes did not roll inside the lids. Her fingers did not twitch.

Was her mind still as well? That beautiful, corrupted mind?

She had approached life as though it were a blood sport. She had been a warrior. Now she was a sleeping princess. But no prince would be coming to her rescue.

Don't leave me here…

Her desperate plea would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Where was she now? Was she walking through endless passageways? Was she desperately searching for a clue, a sign, something that might make her remember the order of places and the order of things? The knowledge of it was a shadow on his heart. It was diabolical. To search for order and find only confusion. To know the horror of being lost forever.

They had joined in a battle of the minds, the two of them, but he felt no victory. He felt only loss and a profound sorrow.

"Morrighan," he whispered.

The lovely face remained completely blank.

"Forgive me."

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

He remained in the hospital for another twelve days, and he did not make the journey to Morrighan's room again.

Not until the day he checked out.

Frankie was at his side, her arm hooked through his, his overnight bag in her other hand. He took a last look at the hospital bed in which he had spent so many hours. He would not miss it.

It was visiting hour, and the corridors were filled with people looking either anxious or relieved. As they walked down the wide passage, he was deliberately keeping his eyes straight in front of him, not looking left or right. But from the edge of his vision, he knew they were approaching the door that led to Morrighan's room.

He stopped. "I must go in."

Frankie was reluctant. "That's not a good idea."

"It's something I have to do." He pulled on her arm.

As they entered the room, a plump woman dressed in a mustard-colored tweed suit got up from the chair next to the bed.

She nodded at Frankie. "Hi, Frankie."

"Hi, Lisa." Frankie spoke gently. "How are you doing?"

"All right." The woman smiled, but the smile did not dispel the resigned sadness from her face. "Is this your friend?" She looked at Gabriel.

"Yes. He's being discharged today, I'm happy to say."

"That's great news. I'm Lisa Duval, by the way. Morrighan's cousin."

"Pleased to meet you." They shook hands briefly. Her palm was moist. She had not inherited the beauty gene so blazingly obvious in her two cousins. But her eyes were kind.

He had been avoiding looking at the bed, but now his eyes drifted toward the figure lying there. His breath stalled.

Morrighan no longer looked like a sleeping princess. In some indefinable way she had aged. Her skin looked chalky and grayed. The black hair was pushed back in a no-nonsense fashion behind her ears. The hair seemed lank.

"How is she doing?" Frankie was actually whispering.

"Not good."

"Maybe she'll get better." Frankie sounded awkward.

"No." Lisa Duval shook her head. "Morrighan scored very low on the Glasgow Coma Scale."

"The Glasgow Coma Scale?"

"It is a standardized system used to identify the degree of brain impairment." There was a parrotlike quality to Lisa's response. She had obviously been talking to the men in white coats. "Morrighan's total score out of fifteen was very low."

"So the doctors-"

"The doctors don't know anything." There was a quiet vehemence in Lisa Duval's voice. "They still don't understand what happened to her. There's no physical reason for her coma. It's a mystery." She dabbed angrily at her eyes. "Excuse me. I think I need to go to the bathroom. But very nice meeting you." She held out her hand to Gabriel again. "And good luck."

He shook her hand numbly.

After she had left the room, it was quiet between him and Frankie. They didn't look at each other.

The hospital sheets were folded neatly cross Morrighan's stomach. Her arms were by her sides. Her hands were large-out of proportion to the rest of her body. He had never noticed that about her before. The nails seemed tinged with blue. Large green veins stared from the skin.

"We did this to her. Minnaloushe and I."

"You had no choice."

"There's always a choice. You said so yourself."

"Morrighan brought it on herself, Gabriel. You have to put this behind you now."

"I have to do one more thing."

Frankie looked at him questioningly.

"Do you think Monk House is empty?"

Her voice was wary. "I suppose so. Why?"

"I need to get in there."

"What!"

"I need to download The Promethean Key."

"I thought you had a copy. The one you showed Professor Stall-worthy."

"That copy is imperfect, remember. I never managed to download the code for the portal. I need the whole thing."

"Why?" Frankie's eyebrows were high against her forehead.

"I'm just interested." He realized how evasive he sounded.

There was a long silence. "You're lying." Frankie's voice sounded utterly disbelieving. "You want to become a memory artist yourself. That's what this is about."

"Don't be absurd." But Gabriel was unable to meet her eyes.

"Gabriel. Talk to me. What's going on with you?"

He searched for an explanation. "You remember I told you about that guy in the creepy magic shop? The one who gave me the amulet?"

Frankie nodded.

"Well, he told me that one can become addicted to madness. Develop a taste for it. He said once you start walking down that road there is no turning back. You start craving the rush. At the time I had no idea what he was talking about." He paused. "I do now."

He looked into Frankie's eyes and he saw the incomprehension. How to explain to her that ever since the last ride, he had felt an insatiable hunger to experience the rush of the memory palace again? How to explain that ever since he had woken up from the operation, life seemed unbearably stale? It felt as though his senses were dulled.

Colors were not as bright. Sounds not as resonant. A layer of dust coating every object.

Frankie seemed almost relieved at his stumbling explanation. "It's only the aftermath of your surgery, Gabriel. Of course things will look flat and miserable to you after what you've been through. You're tired. Give it time. You'll bounce back."

He shook his head. The malaise he was suffering from went much deeper. The ride had been frightening-the most frightening experience of his life-but it had marked him. The world around him now seemed deeply pedestrian. Utterly banal.

As he looked at Morrighan's still figure, he had a vivid memory of her standing inside the portal, vital and glowing, describing to him the magnificence of her creation. Taste of it, she had said, and ordinary life can never again satisfy you. And she had smiled, triumphant.

Only now did he know what she meant. And for the first time he understood-truly understood-the restless hunger that had driven Robert Whittington to join Minnaloushe and Morrighan in their quest for transformation. He had caught the sickness as well. It burned steadily in his blood, and he knew he would never be free from it. He wanted to be a solar magician. He had become a searcher himself.

"I thought I had beaten her."

"You have."

"No. She has infected me." He clenched his hands into fists. "I need to get The Key."

"Gabriel, leave it alone." Frankie's eyes were scared.

"I need it, Frankie. Unless I get The Key…" He stopped. He felt suddenly cold at the idea that he might never feel the rush again. Life would be a desert.

He had to get The Key.

It was within reach. He knew Morrighan's true name: the password to the portal. If he could fit password and portal together, he could feed his hunger. It would be Minnaloushe's gift to him.

His eyes rested once more on the motionless figure. He felt such guilt. But his hunger was stronger.

He looked back at Frankie. "Monk House will be empty. I'll slip in and download The Key from the computer. No one will know."

He took a deep breath. "And then I'll be free."

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

No one will know.

The woman in the hospital bed heard the words. She was in a coma but her inner eye was still alive. It was damaged-but it was picking up input from the brick-and-mortar world around her like a broken antenna. Voices, movement, flashes of color. Brief bursts of information from the real world before she'd sink back once more into the torment of her own mind.

She was in hell.

She was trapped, searching obsessively for a key, a room, the right door-some way to escape the nightmare in which she had become marooned. If she could rediscover the order of places and things, she would wake up. She knew this with every cell in her body. But she had lost her compass. Minnaloushe and Gabriel had made sure of that.

But she still had her inner eye. Minnaloushe had not been able to take that away from her. It was broken, yes, a faulty aerial of the mind, but at times it allowed her a brief escape from the memory palace before she tumbled back into hell, searching, searching.

She had a sense of voices close to her and of bodies standing next to her bed. Her damaged brain realized it was a woman. And a man.

Gabriel.

Her mind shrieked. The shock clamped her inner eye shut and she almost lost the connection. She was slipping back into the memory palace. Rooms, corridors, doors. Endless doors. Three doors to the left, cross the drawbridge…

No! Stop! Concentrate!

I'll slip in and download The Key from the computer. No one will know.

Fury gripped her. She had offered the prize to him and he had refused it.

Refused her.

How to stop him?

He now had the password. If he put the password and the portal together-

Two doors down, one up. Second door from the right…

No, no. Oh, God. She felt total despair. Concentrate, Morrighan. Focus. She tried to calm the hurricane inside her mind.

Gabriel and the woman were leaving. She sensed them moving away. Their voices were growing fainter. Then they were gone.

He was probably on his way to Monk House right now.

Stop him!

If she could stop him from downloading The Key, she would have the final victory. Without The Key, Gabriel would be condemned to a life of aimless searching. He would never feel achievement again. Only hunger.

How to stop him downloading The Key?

How?

She still had her inner eye, but maimed as it was, she would not be able to scan him or get into his mind. He was too strong.

But maybe she could use it another way.

And then it came to her. The solution slipped into her mind like the breath of a ghost.

Her inner eye had always been her own private gift, something Minnaloushe could never fully understand. And her skills had evolved. No longer were her powers confined to the inner world of the skull. Objects in the real world could be manipulated as well. Minnaloushe had not really comprehended how much the memory palace had allowed her remote viewing powers to grow. Which meant that when Minnaloushe created the spell, she had left her sister's RV skills out of the equation.

Her viewing powers were no magic bullet. She knew that. For her, there was no escape: the memory palace would always pull her back into its orbit. She would forever tumble back into the labyrinth of endless staircases and chaotic passages and doors. But maybe, just maybe, she could muster all her strength and focus long enough to allow her inner eye to travel briefly.

Maybe for a brief moment… just until she had time to do what she had to do…

The woman in the hospital bed was completely still. Her breathing was quiet. But her inner eye was roaming. She was going home.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

The windows of the redbrick house were shut tight and the air inside held the odor of neglect. Dust had accumulated on the surfaces.

The house was empty but traces of its occupation were still visible. The velvet cushion on the seat of the big peacock chair held the imprint of a body. A book was facedown on the coffee table. Next to it was a mug half-filled with cold coffee. On the rim of the mug was a kiss left there by the pressure of a woman's lips. A black coat drooped spread-eagled over the back of another chair, its sleeves dangling down the sides like tired arms. The faintest of fragrances clung to the wool.

But the overwhelming smell in the room was of decaying flowers. The stems of roses rotting in stagnant water. Potted plants dying in cracked soil. Even the fleshy petals of the orchids were wrinkling and turning brown. Not enough time had passed to drain them of all their juices and so the smell hovering over the blighted plants was strong and dank. On the shelf above the worktable was a glass box, and inside it the desiccated body of a dead spider.

The workbench held two computers. Here too the dust had settled, a film of particles clinging to the crystal screens. The computers were switched off. Their faces were blank.

A sudden click. As if touched by a ghostly hand, one of the screens lit up. At the same time, deep within the computer's brain a built-in virus started running. The virus had been created many years before by the owners of this machine-a back door in case something went wrong. A precaution they never thought they'd need. They had crafted the lethal code well but they had never seriously considered they might ever have to pull such a deadly trigger. Because, if set in motion, the virus would destroy the work of a lifetime and lay to waste a magical universe.

As if still powered by the same hand, the pages in the document started to scroll down the screen and as they scrolled by, they disappeared-the contents of these pages erased from the memory and from the hard drive of the mechanical host. Forever out of reach of any thief.

Signs, sigils, sacred numbers. Graceful drawings and plans: divine architecture. Enigmatic spells and incantions. Lines of magicized code. An enchanted palace of the memory scrolling implacably- irrevocably-into forgetfulness.

Seven miles away in one of the private rooms in Wing C, Nurse Kendall was bathing the limp limbs of a patient.

The poor woman. Nurse Kendall rubbed the moist washcloth along her charge's finely muscled arm. She was obviously an athlete, but very soon the honed musculature of her body would start wasting away.

Nurse Kendall placed the unresponsive arm back on the bed. Gently she pushed the black hair away from the patient's forehead and touched the washcloth to her face. What a terrible fate. A fate worse than death if you asked her. The consultants were very negative about this one. No fairy-tale awakening was likely to happen here.

Such a lovely face. But as with the body, the beauty would fade quickly now. Although, this morning the patient looked strangely radiant. Her expression was almost one of satisfaction-as though she had pulled off a great achievement. And for one moment, Nurse Kendall even thought the black-haired woman might have smiled.