“A ‘master,’ is he?” Redd said, amused.

Sacrenoir eyed the visitors. “I hope the lack of focus so evident in their persons doesn’t represent what’s within their heads. I need to check on my bones.” The magician hulked over to the stage, where he made a great clatter rearranging femurs and pelvic bones and skulls.

“Master Sacrenoir has never shown much talent for courtesy,” Vollrath said, “especially before a performance. Come, we shall sit at the best table in the house.”

The tutor led Redd and The Cat to an alcove at the left of the stage, separated from the main room by a curtain of heavy black velvet. Within the alcove was a single table.

“We should be comfortable here,” said Vollrath. “We have an unobstructed view of the stage, but if I pull the curtain partway closed, like so, we have complete privacy, as we’re out of sight from the audience. Any refreshments you desire are of course compliments of moi.”

Guests were starting to arrive, and Marcel had hurried over to the catacomb’s entrance to greet them. “Good evening, my pretty friends! Good evening! And how fortunate you are to be at the master’s one and only Paris performance! The event is shortly to begin! You risk the master’s wrath if you don’t immediately take your seats! Also, let’s not forget, there’s a two-drink minimum.”

The guests consisted solely of the wealthy and aristocratic, the women decked out in pearls and embroidered lace, smoking cigarettes through long ebony holders, while the men looked sophisticated in their tuxedos, tapping canes of polished rosewood against polished shoes as they sipped absinthe from narrow glasses. Within minutes, the catacomb filled to capacity. Touched by no human hand, an iron gate clanked shut across the entrance, unnoticed by the illustrious guests packed in at their tables, who were chatting loudly and laughing the hearty laughter of the privileged until-

Ffftsssst!

The room fell dark, the torches miraculously snuffed out as one. A woman screamed. A ripple of titillated laughter passed among the tables. A violin began to play a melody at once languid and stern, the work of no known composer. With the sudden crack of breaking wood-

Voila! A single cone of light illuminated Sacrenoir standing center stage before his pile of bones. In the light’s dusky reaches, black-gloved Marcel could be seen playing his violin.

“Hurrah!” the audience cried. “Sacrenoir, magician extraordinaire!”

They rose to their feet, whistling and applauding and calling out in approval. Sacrenoir put a finger to his lips-Ssshh!-and waited until they had resumed their seats, quiet with expectation.

“It is said that when a person dies,” he began in a voice that seemed to address not those before him, but a numberless multitude as yet unseen, “whichever of his animal appetites are left unsated at the time of his death do not die but live on in the ether, in the very air we breathe, waiting to take up residence in another. I say, let the dead have their appetites back!”

“Give the dead their appetites!” the audience shouted.

Sacrenoir closed his eyes and his lips moved in an incantation impossible to hear over the strains of

Marcel’s violin. The bones piled behind him began to shift and creak. “Oooooh!” someone moaned, in imitation of a ghost, and everyone laughed.

Neither Sacrenoir nor Marcel seemed aware of the audience, the one mesmerized by his own incantation while Marcel’s melody rose to a crescendo, his bow streaking faster and faster on the strings of his violin. The bones skittered and scraped across the stage, arranging themselves into complete skeletons and, as

if sprung from their very marrow, rotted burial clothes formed, hanging loose from hips and shoulders. The audience sat rapt and horrified.

The resurrected dead turned empty eye sockets on the crowd, fleshless jaws moving up and down in a grotesque imitation of speech. But the sounds coming from those empty throats and tongueless mouths, and which passed through clicking teeth, were no imitations.

“Hungry,” the skeletons chanted, stepping off the stage and moving among the tables. “Hungry, hungry, hungry.”

One gentleman who’d been gulping absinthe with abandon mumbled that magic was only harmless illusion. He got to his feet and began to dance with the nearest skeleton, reached out to twirl his skeleton-partner and-

“Gaaaaaahghg!”

The skeleton’s jaws clamped down hard on his hand. With a relentless turn of the skull, it tore off three of the man’s fingers and swallowed them and they clattered through its rib cage and fell to the floor. Shouts erupted. In an instant, tables were being overturned, glasses broken, drinks flung into the air, torches knocked from the walls, setting fire to the puddles of spilled alcohol. The iron gate remained locked, the audience trapped. Again and again, the skeletons lurched at them with hungry jaws. Yet the dead were unable to fill their bellies. Every swallow of living flesh passed down through their empty rib cages and splatted on the floor.

“Hungry,” they chanted. “Hungry, hungry.”

Sacrenoir gazed upon the carnage with pride. Marcel continued to play his violin, though his melody was now drowned out by screams and moans. Redd and The Cat remained with Vollrath in their alcove, its curtain pushed completely open so that they could get a better view of things. The last guest collapsed to the floor. Marcel set down his violin and for a time there was only the sound of the skeletons chomping desperately on the wealth of fresh kill, then-

“Bravo,” Redd called out, bored, with a single clap of her hands.

Alerted to her presence, the skeletons turned, started jigging toward her, the snap and clack of their jaws answered by the eagerly chomping roses of her dress. “Hungry, hun-”

The Cat sprung from his seat. With a single swing of his arm, he shattered four skeletons into so many pieces that all of Sacrenoir’s powers could not have put them together again.

“Don’t waste your strength,” Redd yawned.

The Cat stepped aside and watched as, motioning with a finger from where she sat, his mistress sent one skeleton careening into another. She again gestured with her finger and two skeletons slammed together and fractured to crumbs. But Redd was not known for her patience, so she sucked air deep into her lungs, imagined the heat of jabberwocky breath as her own and exhaled, her breath hot enough to

disintegrate every bone of every skeleton to dust. And even before she pressed forefinger against thumb to douse the numerous fires burning around the catacomb, Sacrenoir was bowing before her.

“Forgive my former rudeness, Your Imperial Viciousness. I didn’t realize the extent of your powers, to which mine compare as a candle flame to the great fire of London. If you’ll accept of it from such an undeserving wretch as here kneels before you, I offer you my eternal allegiance.”