Triana came back to the shop a week later, this time accompanied by a friend called Kim who also dressed like a post-apocalyptic schoolgirl, it turned out they did acting work together over at Morior Studios. I showed them some magic, then made a start teaching Triana some basic techniques she could practice before returning. I offered to include Kim as well, but she was happy to just sit back and support her friend. I’d wondered if I’d be training them as a duo like Pete did with me and Gary, but apparently not. From then on Triana began coming in alone once or twice a week. 

It was surprisingly easy to divert Ted’s suspicion. He’d recognised Triana from that first visit, but thought that Bob and Stephanie were the custodians. He’d speculated about them bringing in a kid in order to confuse him, which he said was just the kind of dirty trick they’d try, but ironically this made him suspect Triana less and sympathise with her more. I think he had an idea of getting one back at the trinities and disrupting the system by rescuing their child and bringing her over to our side. 

It helped that Triana was an excellent student who mastered everything I gave her to do. She was very interested in the psychological aspects of magic, so we focussed on mentalism and character work to exploit the unnerving feeling of a hyper intelligent child looking right into your soul - I thought that if we made that her act, it would ironically distract from her doing exactly that, using practical illusion techniques to mask her actual powers. But as far as Ted and Lillian knew she was just learning standard conjuring, keeping up the facade of a wide-eyed youngster in front of them. I had to keep myself from laughing sometimes as she feigned innocent naivety minutes after engaging in deep conversation with me during our lessons. 

Another development arose as Ted and I were opening up the shop one Monday morning and Lillian arrived with something to tell us. I knew she’d been off doing a gig at a private member’s club that weekend - when not performing with Ted and I she took some bookings doing her raunchier, more adult routines; sideshow stunts, racy burlesque, stuff with fire, blades and power tools.

“They called it the Mortal Masquerade,” she said. “It was like a big interactive ball where they were all in costumes and masks, they signed up on this big board and then got pulled out of the audience to get killed onstage.”

“Killed?” I asked. “Really?”

“No, not really,” she said. “It was all illusions, some more realistic than others, but it was total horror theatre with actual audience involvement, proper Grand Guignol stuff. I did the guillotine dance, the one that ends with me doing the splits under a falling blade? Well, after I’d finished they brought up a load of people to play the yes/no game in the guillotine. Most of them got their heads chopped off.”

“How did it make you feel?” I asked.

“Actually it wasn’t too bad,” Lillian replied. “There was blood and gore everywhere, but no actual malice. They were throwing themselves into it with big smiles on their faces, and got carried off playing dead when they were killed. And some of it was just silly - they had this game where they were meant to be boiled in oil but all they did was pipe some bubbles through a tub of slime, then lowered someone into it waving their arms going ‘arrghh!’. They were totally buying into it, though, even the silly stuff. At midnight there was this big ceremony where two women came out to music in posh dresses, then they stepped into an iron maiden cabinet to get run through with spikes. When they came out they were pocked all over with blood and got carried out like a pair of freshly killed sacrifices.”

“Who was running it?” asked Ted.

“He called himself Uncle Morbid,” said Lillian. “He had a right hand man called Scott who did all the tech stuff with an assistant that helped me set up.”

“So that’ll be the big boss and the maintainer,” said Ted. “What about the reaper?”

“I didn’t see any obvious candidates. Maybe they were backstage.”

Ted turned to me.

“This is what we’ve been telling you about, Darryl,” he said. “The trinities set up stuff all over to funnel souls through to dying properly, but they’re usually a bit more subtle about it than this. Normally they’d be running office structures, factories, workplaces, not Dante’s bloody Inferno. The worrying thing is, they invited Lillian. They didn’t try to make you join anything, did they, Lillian?”

“No,” she said. “They were all quite sweet and warned me some crazy stuff went on, but it was so ritualistic. That pair of women in the iron maiden, apparently it was some kind of an initiation. There’s another area they go to after they’ve been killed onstage.” 

“Well bloody hell,” said Ted. “So they’ve set it up so people come to them, die and go somewhere else. Did they pin a leaflet to their foreheads as well, in case it wasn’t obvious enough?” 

“Well, I got paid,” said Lillian. “They said they’d like me to perform again, I don’t know whether to stay away or keep an eye on it.”

“See when they contact us again,” said Ted. “They can’t do anything to us if we don’t let them. What do you think, Darryl?”

I thought about what Triana had said about signs from the universe and Ted getting the wrong end of the stick. 

“Wait and see sounds good,” I said.

We forgot about it for a while as we focused on developing the Wonder Emporium. As it stood, the shop was fairly unassuming with a genuine 1920s vintage aesthetic, since its proprietor had actually come from that era. We reorganised the furniture and touched up the shop front so it looked like a doorway to another dimension. We wanted people encountering it for the first time to feel like it was actually there by magic.

There was a small workshop in the back where we built props and illusions, next to a storeroom piled high with assorted stock Ted had collected over the decades he'd spent wandering the post-mortal plane. I was finding stuff in there, still boxed and unused, that I'd only ever heard about from magic historians. Ted wasn't particularly disorganised, but there's no way he could have catalogued all of it, he couldn't even remember what some of it was for. I set aside particularly quirky items for the window display, which Ted thought was a good idea. We organised the shop into sections, to appeal to magicians of all levels, curious beginners and people just looking for party gimmicks. By the time we were done it wasn’t just a shop, it was a little museum, a temple to the art of magic. 

Next we turned our attention to the theatre, which started out as a simple stage, a set of tables and a small bar. There was a kitchen that could be upgraded to catering standard in order to serve food, so we began the necessary renovations and put out a job advert for a chef, which was answered by a talented and amiable woman called Janet. Another of the quirks on this plane is that when you advertise for staff you will get the exact number of applicants required to fill the roles available and they will all be perfect fits - it’s part of how the universe puts spirits where they need to be. Janet was no exception, she sorted out everything we needed to get up and running and over time developed a fantastic menu with dishes named after the greats of magic.

Increased catering meant increased need for catering supplies, so we negotiated a deal with a local retail chain owner who was branching out into business to business wholesale. She came to meet with Ted and Janet one day and turned out to be a dark haired woman with an olive complexion and mischievous smile by the name of Maise. They had a productive conversation and shook hands on a deal, as Maise left she walked past Lillian at the counter, who recognised her as one of the women she’d seen impaled in the iron maiden at the Mortal Masquerade. She told Ted about this, who didn’t know what to make of it.

“It’s none of our business where she goes for fun,” he said, “but it’s an odd coincidence for sure. If she ever tries to talk about anything besides catering supplies I’ll let you know.”

That happened about a month later, when Ted came to talk with me.

“Our supplier Maise just asked me if we can sell her a sawing in half illusion,” he told me. “She says she wants to do it with her partner. Normally I wouldn’t sell something like that to a non-magician, but she’s willing to pay handsomely and has convinced me she respects the art and wants to take lessons to do it properly. This could be a way to find out a little more about the Mortal Masquerade and what they’re up to. We can get her the box easily enough, would you be willing to show her how to use it?”

I was happy to agree, I’d been teaching that illusion from inside and outside of the box ever since I first did it to Gary all those years ago. As for whether Maise was qualified to learn, if Ted thought so that was good enough for me. I was as curious as he was to see what she would bring from her experience at the Mortal Masquerade.