The Spettacolo was already in full swing by the time Nikki and I showed up at the front door of the Palazzo Mystere. The palazzo occupied an unusually large section of real estate down a winding side canal off the Grand Canal, not appreciably far from the Casino of Spirits. We could see the elegant white stone building rising behind the walls, illuminated with what looked like industrial-strength lights, and we could hear the music from half a block away.
It sounded like we’d arrived at the circus. The doorman greeting people in front of the imposing iron gates was wearing a suitably staid top hat and tails, but his cravat was bright pink and his waistcoat a garish green. Inside the courtyard, fireworks burst above the walls, and there were cheers and laughter audible over the brightly playing calliope music. By the time we’d reached the front door, there was only one couple in front of us, both of them in identical costumes of dead white, including white tricorn hats and short capes over long body-fitting shifts. They were approximately the same build. They would be impossible to tell apart unless they were standing right next to each other.
No one would have that difficulty with Nikki and me. She stood in a new pair of platform riding boots, these in crimson red, a color that contrasted dramatically with her deep black robe and black-and-gold mask. Her red hair flowed magnificently beneath her tricorn hat and long crimson satin gloves. I’d traded up as well to a feathered cape of white and silver, my silver hat and white mask making me look like a walking incarnation of the ill-fated invitation that had summoned me here. I’d asked Signora Visione if there was any significance to that, and she’d stared at me like I was a lunatic. Helpful.
The guardian at the gate didn’t bother asking us who we were, merely checked something off in his ledger book and stood to the side. I wondered at that, and as we walked by, eyed him with my third eye. And blinked.
His own third eye winked right back at me.
“C’mon, c’mon, you’re ruining our entrance,” Nikki complained, reaching back to hustle me along. Once through the imposing door, there really wasn’t anywhere else to go but down a long red-carpeted walkway, flanked by tall, skinny vases of sputtering sparklers. The circus theme continued into the surprisingly large courtyard, with colorful tents set up every few feet, the smell of popcorn and cotton candy in the air, and even a straight-up menagerie of animals ringing the space. That part had to be an illusion, but it was a very effective illusion.
We reached the end of the walkway, and a harlequin dressed in all the colors of the rainbow hustled up, carrying a tray of champagne flutes. “Welcome! Welcome, Benvenuto!” she sang out as we took our glasses, then she twirled off. I noticed several other similarly dressed women and men moving through the crowd, clearly the waitstaff of a supremely indulgent catering group.
“Justice Wilde, Miss Dawes.”
I’d seen the prelate enough times to recognize him when he strolled up to us, even though he’d changed his austere attire of the night before last to a midnight-blue cloak and hat that offset his stark white plague doctor mask. I glanced around to see if anyone had paid attention to him calling us out by name. Once again, it sort of defeated the purpose of costumes if people knew who you were. But that didn’t stop anybody from wearing costumes, clearly. Even the illusionary menagerie animals wore masks.
“You honor us with your presence.”
“I get the impression it’s the most sought-after invitation in town,” I said.
“We like to think so. I understand you also paid a visit to our local police today, as well. Did you find what you were searching for?”
I didn’t need to hide my surprise, given the advantage of the mask, but I worked to keep my voice steady. “The magicians don’t have a mark on them,” I said. “I assume you already knew that?”
“That and, I have come to be informed, they are missing enough of their internal organs to produce an unreasonable supply of Nul Magis.” The prelate nodded. His mask’s mouth was tilted up in a benign smile, belying the darkness of his words. “Valetti informed me of this a short while ago, having recently gotten word himself. He’s…understandably distraught.”
“Why’s that?” Nikki asked, while I gritted my teeth behind my own mask. Exactly how many Connecteds were working in the morgue today? “From what I could tell, the count didn’t have much use for Greaves and Marrow. And he already knew that they’d been stuffed into wine barrels.”
“Killing is one thing. Any fool can kill another human. But that these two supposedly low-level magicians were targeted by the butcher raises three issues. The first, the butcher is not only targeting children—perhaps isn’t targeting them at all. The second, Greaves and Marrow were clearly far more advanced than we thought they were for the butcher to make them his target. And three, the butcher is taunting us with his invincibility.” As he spoke, the prelate tilted his head, his dark eyes gazing at me through the mask. “I understand that you were brought here to solve this problem, Justice Wilde. It would seem we need your assistance more than ever. And soon.”
“With respect, we’d barely gotten off the plane when these magicians were murdered—” Nikki pointed out tartly, not missing the censure in the prelate’s words.
“Of course, of course. Not a criticism, merely an observation. But we are now up to three murdered magicians, as well as the assassins and Count Valetti’s man. The two most popular events of Carnevale are over the next few days. It would seem time is short for us to stop more bloodshed.”
The calliope music changed, and the prelate glanced up, murmuring his apologies as he moved off to rain on someone else’s parade. I scanned the crowd in his wake, seeing the profusion of blue-white Connected magic, and…I frowned. Golden circuitry too? Were there more Council members here than Kreios?
“Well, he’s a barrel of laughs,” Nikki muttered. We were on the move as well, naturally shifting to the edge of the crowd, closer to the illusionary menagerie of animals. There were already far too many people crammed together outside the Palazzo Mystere, thronging the streets of Venice for Carnevale. This courtyard, with all its sparkling lights, raucous music, and riotous colors, seemed far too oppressive on top of that, the Spectacle its own affront against us.
“He’s not wrong,” I shrugged. “We haven’t done our jobs yet.”
“Dollface, we’ve been here three days. You’ve barely had time to get over jet lag, let alone solve a crime that’s befuddling what’re supposedly the greatest magicians on the planet. There’s more we have to learn about all this.”
“Yeah, maybe—”
“Justice Wilde!”
The voice was so small, so pathetic, that I instinctively looked down, expecting there to be a child at my feet. There was a diminutive figure, all right, but it wasn’t a kid. “Budin?”
“What in the—” Nikki began, but the man crouching behind the potted plant hissed at us.
“Don’t look at me!” he cried. He was no longer wearing his jester costume, but instead was in a nondescript black tricorn hat, bauta mask, and black cloak. The very simplicity of his outfit conspired to make him stand out. That and the fact he was crouching in the foliage. “They’re all around me. They know. I’m in danger, and you have to save me!”
His words were too close to Balestri’s, and I stiffened. “You’re going to have to stand up, Budin, or this isn’t going to work. You’re safe now.”
I added that last bit almost as an afterthought, but it seemed to have a galvanizing effect. “Oh, thank God.” Budin stood and threw his arms around me, hugging me tight.
“Whoa, whoa, now, you’re okay, you’re okay.” As I looked down at him, my third eye engaged, and I noticed the complete change in his circuitry. “Well, not completely okay. What are you on, Budin? Have you been drugged?”
“I took it,” he said, pulling back, his eyes flaring wide behind his mask. “I had to know—I couldn’t let them creep up on me unaware! And it happened exactly how the Black Elixir said it would.”
I snapped my gaze to Nikki, and she looked hard all around us. “There’s an empty tent down to the left. I’ll get food or whatever. You got him?”
“I got him.”
Budin whimpered and clung to me as we turned.
“Dude, pull it together and walk like an adult,” I ordered as Nikki strode away toward the buffet. “We’re going to sit down away from all the people, and you’re going to tell me what you saw.”
“No.” Budin straightened suddenly as if he’d been shocked. His head swiveled on his neck, his gaze darted everywhere. “If they see me with you, they’ll know. They’ll know! I have to hide. But you must know what I have learned.”
“I have to know,” I agreed, wishing that Nikki hadn’t disappeared so convincingly into the crowd. “Tell me right here, then. You’re safe.”
“Safe…” He nodded three, then four times, drawing in a ragged breath. “The drug said that my palazzo wouldn’t be safe, but this isn’t the first time I’ve been threatened. I have cameras, guards, dogs. Only the first proved helpful. But not their fault, not their fault…not when what came…”
“Focus, Budin,” I said as his words trailed off. “I need you to tell me what you saw.” I glanced around again, taking in the riot of colors. The circuits of energy dashing around the courtyard of the Palazzo Mystere were all rushing at full tilt, it seemed, exactly what you’d expect at a party full of magicians.
Budin gave a wet cough. “I went into my safe room and took up watch. I could see everything, every room, every window, every door. No one knows that I have built such a modern room in my ancient home. And sure enough, they came.”
He swiped for me again and missed, so he contented himself with clasping and unclasping his black-clad hands, giving the effect of someone deeply under the influence—but of what? Black Elixir still? I refocused my attention on him, but I couldn’t tell anything in the chaos of his neural circuits.
“Who came?”
“Ghosts,” he said, the word almost a keening wail. “They flooded into my home, past my guards, past my dogs, wraiths of shadow and death.”
“Actual wraiths.” The work of an illusionist? I thought of Balestri again, and the illusion of the Red King speaking through him. Someone was showing off, flexing his magical muscles.
“Were they carrying anything? Knives? Guns? Anything like that?”
“No.” He shook his head forcefully. “I should have waited, but I panicked. Sounded the alarm. The men rushed to my aid, dogs baying, but the wraiths disappeared. Of course, there is no longer any sight of them on the camera feeds, but I saw them. I did!”
“I believe you—”
Budin reached into his cape and pulled out a small cap in a plastic bag. “And then I found this in the kitchen. I hadn’t even been watching that room but, but…”
“You were distracted.” I took the bag and studied it. “What’s this from?”
“It’s a cap from an apothecary’s vial. It’d rolled behind a stoppered bottle of wine. I—I had already poured myself a glass from that wine, and it was sitting on the counter.” He turned at me with enormous eyes. “They poisoned my wine.”
I was able to hide my grimace of disbelief. “Signore Budin, you can’t know that for sure.”
“I can,” he said, shaking his head. “And to confirm it, I gave the wine to il Diavolo. He will tell you. He now most certainly knows I am a far greater magician than Signora Chiari.”
“You gave it to Kreios? To test?”
“They’re coming,” Budin batted me at the arms, and I turned, finally seeing Nikki heading our way. “You must save me, you must—”
I heard the strange sound a moment before the flash of silvery light shattered across my vision, and I didn’t breathe, didn’t even think, I merely reacted. With my hands already moving to fend off Budin’s panicked assault, I jerked my wrist upward and felt the sting of the dart as it buried itself in the back of my hand. I flinched, feeling the injection push through fabric and skin and into my bloodstream as Budin froze in front of me.
“You will save me,” he gasped, his eyes so wide, I thought they’d roll back in his head.
Though he hadn’t been struck, Budin collapsed to the ground in front of me with a bleat of terror even as my own sight swam, my body feeling…strangely slack. Loose. Not right at all. A flower of unyielding darkness blossomed deep inside me, and I felt myself tipping backward—
Then I was caught in a pair of warm, strong, strangely familiar arms.
“Now, now, my dear Sara Wilde,” purred the Devil in my ear. “You die on my watch, and there will be hell to pay.”