“What do you mean you’re not going through with your art show?” Tempest stood in front of Gideon’s dragon-mouth mantel carving with her hands on her hips. She raised an eyebrow at him.
“It wasn’t my art that caused Trina to recommend me to Tansy’s gallery.” Gideon looked into the unlit hearth, avoiding her gaze. “She only did it to ingratiate herself with Morag and me, since we’re in your inner circle.”
“Your art is truly magical, Gideon. It wasn’t only Trina. My grandmother was also showing photos of your sculptures to gallery owners.”
“But Trina was the one who really pushed the idea on Tansy,” Gideon insisted.
“Gideon. Sometimes you just have to accept a bit of luck. Hold the show. See where it goes from there.”
He looked up from the fireplace and finally met her gaze. His eyes were still tired, and his face thinner than it should have been, but his smile was genuine. “I’m starving. How about we get out of here and grab some food at Veggie Magic?”
“As long as we can slip out without seeing Reggie.”
“He’s a good guy, you know.”
“That’s exactly why I don’t want to see him right now. Because I’m starving too.”
Gideon’s neighbor Reggie, who Gideon publicly acknowledged had taught a luddite how to use a cell phone for their streaming video, was getting a big bonus at work because of how many new customers he was bringing into the cell phone store.
“He wouldn’t stop thanking you when I came over,” Tempest said. “I’d like to leave before we die of hunger.”
After lunch, Gideon left for the gallery to see through the finishing touches of his show, which he agreed not to cancel, and Tempest headed across the Bay Bridge to meet Sanjay for coffee before seeing Ivy’s lecture that night.
“This one might be my favorite.” Sanjay held up a beautifully illustrated sticker of a man with olive skin and big brown eyes wearing a bowler hat with flowers of all kinds springing from its band. “At least it’s my favorite of the ones that arrived today.”
Now that Sanjay’s fans knew how much he appreciated fan artwork, he was receiving dozens of beautiful pieces of fan art. He was making a collage with the art, which he planned to make as the backdrop of his upcoming stage shows so that audiences would see it as they filed into the theater.
After drinking exquisite, if overpriced, coffee in Sanjay’s neighborhood, they headed to the Locked Room Library together.
“Standing room only.” Sanjay let out a low whistle. “Nicely done, Ivy Youngblood.”
He and Tempest stood in the back and listened as Ivy delivered an expert talk on classic detective fiction.
After the lecture, the enthusiastic audience had so many questions that the trio had to eat a late dinner, but none of them minded. Ivy shared that she’d just heard that an essay she wrote on impossible crimes would be published in a student publication. She only had a few more classes to take to finish her bachelor’s degree, and she was excited to be applying to master’s programs in library and information science.
When Tempest got home that night, she went to the tree house and accepted a warm mug of turmeric milk from her grandfather, while her dad filled her in on what was happening with the mentorship program. Darius’s high school student mentorship program, which had been in danger of fizzling due to the bad press surrounding Secret Staircase Construction, was back on track and had more students applying than it could handle, so he’d added a second cohort. To keep it manageable, he decided that the students would focus on building various magical cabinets and booths for a summer festival coming up in Hidden Creek.
Secret Staircase Construction also had more job inquiries than they could handle, so they were able to take jobs where they could add the most value for clients who wouldn’t mistreat or sue them. Even after making referrals to local contractors they trusted, they still had a waiting list that filled at least the next year.
The following week, they got news that Detective Rinehart had resigned. It was embarrassing that Officer Quinn had taken a bribe to make evidence disappear on his watch and that he hadn’t seen fit to call in a larger team of law enforcement when he should have.
Former detective Blackburn was asked if he’d be willing to come out of retirement. He’d retired early, disappointed that he’d never solved the case of Emma Raj. But now that he’d learned he hated retirement and he and Tempest had worked together to solve the case that had plagued him, he accepted the offer to be a detective once more.
Moriarty hadn’t been seen since that night at the theater. Tempest hadn’t heard from him since that phone call, and the number he called from had been disconnected. Catriona was remanded to await trial without bail, and between her confession, the live stabbing of Nicodemus, and all the witnesses, there was no chance she’d ever get out of prison.
The only thing that hadn’t been explained was who had left the fake axe hanging in the theater. The two teenagers swore they had only dropped ghostly pieces of gauze from the catwalk for their filming; Catriona had admitted to thrusting a sword through the door to kill Julian, killing Brodie when he tried to blackmail her, and fueling rumors at the theater to confuse things; and Nicodemus’s explanation of the two booby traps he set made sense for his goal of having his career go out with a sympathetic bang. There couldn’t really be a mischievous theater ghost, could there? Perhaps there were some things she’d never know, and that was okay.
Tempest’s manager, Winston Kapoor, was fielding dozens of requests for her to return to the stage, but she’d found her new stage creating architectural misdirection. She’d still perform a farewell show, as promised, which would be a version of the true story she’d told, but with illusions she’d been working on in her notebooks. Her identity wasn’t tied to her career, plus she could be more than one thing. The most important thing was that she finally knew what had happened. Her mom and aunt could be laid to rest, and her family could put the Raj family curse behind them.