She had guessed correctly about Malingo.

He was indeed rocking from the rafters, his tears running down his brow and soaking the carpet beneath him.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Candy mouthed.

He shook his head, his expression one of bottomless despair.

Candy picked up the rum decanter and returned to the front room. As she arrived at the door, the telephone rang. Wolfswinkel picked up the receiver, thrusting the empty glass at Candy to have it refilled.

He had put down his staff, she saw. It lay across the arms of his chair.

What if she threw the decanter at Wolfswinkel, and while he was busy trying to catch it, picked up his staff and made a break for the front door? No; that was no good. Even if she made it out there—and who knew what traps Wolfswinkel had laid around the house to prevent escapees?—she’d be leaving Malingo behind.

She couldn’t do that. Though they had had no more than two minutes’ worth of conversation, she felt responsible for him. They had to get out together.

She poured the wizard some more rum. Wolfswinkel wasn’t even noticing what she was doing. Whatever he was being told on the telephone had him absurdly excited.

“He wants to talk to me?” he said. “Really?”

He downed the glass of rum and thrust it toward Candy to be refilled. She obliged happily. She knew from experience what alcohol did to sharp minds. It dulled them, stupefied them. A drunk magician, she reasoned, was a sluggish magician, which was exactly what she wanted right now.

Wolfswinkel emptied the third glass of rum with the same speed as he had the first two. And demanded a fourth. Before he could get it to his lips, however, his whole demeanor changed, and a look of strange reverence came over his face.

“My Lord Midnight,” he said. “This is indeed an honor, sir.”

Lord Midnight? Candy thought. He’s speaking to Christopher Carrion, the Dark Prince himself. And what was the subject under discussion? Apparently she was.

“Yes, my lord, she’s here,” Wolfswinkel said. “She’s here right beside me.” There was a pause. “Well, if I may be so bold, sir, she doesn’t seem to me in any way an extraordinary creature. She’s… just a girl, you know. Like most girls: something and nothing.” There was another pause while Wolfswinkel listened. “Oh, yes sir, I spoke to Otto Houlihan. He’s on his way to collect the Key.” Another pause. “And the girl, too? Oh yes, of course. She’s yours.”

He drank the rum and again thrust the glass out to have it refilled. But the decanter was empty. Irritated, Wolfswinkel gestured that Candy should go find some more. She got the impression—judging by the slight trembling in his hands, and the twitches under his eye and at his mouth—that though he was honored to be speaking with the Lord of Midnight, he was also intimidated to his cowardly core.

Candy went next door in search of the liquor. She didn’t have to look far. There was a bottle in the dresser. As she wrestled to unscrew it, her eyes went up to the portraits again.

“Who are these people?” she murmured to Malingo.

It took the beaten geshrat a moment to come out of the trance of unhappiness he was in. But when he did, he whispered:

“They were all friends of his. Members of the Noncian Magic Circle. But then he swore allegiance to King Rot—”

“Who?”

“Carrion.”

“Oh. King Rot. I get it. What did he do, once he’d sworn allegiance?”

“He murdered them.”

“What? He murdered his own friends?”

“Rum!” Wolfswinkel roared.

“Why?”

“RUM!”

Wolfswinkel was at the door now, with his empty glass. His face was flushed red with liquor and excitement, like a shiny tomato balanced on top of an overripe banana.

“That,” he said, with an expansive gesture, “was Lord Midnight himself. My liberation, you see, is imminent. All thanks to you.” He smiled lopsidedly at Candy, displaying his ill-kept teeth. “It was quite a moment, missy, when you came knocking at my door. You changed my life. Fancy that, huh? Who’d have thought a little ferret’s dung-hole like you would be the cause of Uncle Kaspar’s Liberation?”

He walked over and pinched Candy’s cheek, as if she were a little child and he the indulgent relative.

“Give me another glass of rum, girl,” he said. “Keep me happy till Otto arrives, and maybe I won’t beat you black and blue.”

Candy took the top off the bottle and poured another brimming glassful. As Wolfswinkel put the glass to his lips, Candy took her life in her hands and deliberately let the bottle slip from between her fingers. It smashed on the floor between them, releasing a pungent stench of rum.

“You idiotic—”

Candy didn’t give Wolfswinkel time to finish his next insult. Instead, she pressed her hands against his chest and pushed. The rum had made Wolfswinkel unsteady on his feet. He staggered to regain his balance, and while he did so she slipped through the door into the next room.

There, still lying across the armchair where he’d left it, was his staff.

Without giving herself time to question or doubt the wisdom of what she was about to do, Candy picked it up.

The thing vibrated in her grip, as though it resented being handled by a stranger. But she refused to let the staff intimidate her. She held onto it and waited for the inevitable reappearance of its owner.

Somehow, he knew what she’d done, because he yelled: “Put that down!” even before he appeared at the door.

The staff’s vibrations became still more violent at the sound of its master’s voice. But Candy refused to release it.

Wolfswinkel was at the door now, pointing at her.

“I said put that down,” Wolfswinkel said, his voice slurred with alcohol. “Put it down, or I’ll—”

“Or what?” Candy said, wielding the stick like a baseball bat. “What will you do? Huh? You can’t kill me because then you won’t have anything to hand over to your lord and master.”

Wolfswinkel wiped away the sweat that had popped up all over his forehead and was threatening to run into his eyes.

“Malingo!” he yelled. “Get in here! RIGHT NOW!”

Malingo dutifully crawled in, upside down, around the top of the door.

“Seize that wretch!” Wolfswinkel demanded. “And give me my staff!”

Malingo hesitated, his despairing eyes on Candy. I said—

“I heard what you said,” Malingo replied.

Wolfswinkel took a moment to consider what his slave had just said, or rather the tone of it. There was something new in Malingo’s voice. Something Wolfswinkel didn’t like at all. It called for a new order of threat.

“Do as I say, geshrat. Or so help me I’ll break every bone in your body.”

“With what?” Candy reminded him. “I’ve got your little magic stick.”

“But you don’t know how to use it, missy,” Wolfswinkel replied, and before Candy could evade him he caught hold of the end of the staff.

Even drunk on rum, he had a supernatural power in his grip. He twisted the stick to the left, then to the right, then to the left again, attempting to wrest it from Candy’s grip. But the more violently he twisted, the harder she held on.

“If you don’t let go—” he hollered at her, his unpretty face made uglier still by his rage.

“Hot air. That’s all you are,” Candy said. “Hot air in a banana-skin suit.”

Wolfswinkel’s lip curled with fury, and he hauled his staff toward him. There was a short scuffle, and in the heat of the moment they both lost their grip on the staff.

It fell to the floor between them and rolled off across the boards.

Both Candy and Wolfswinkel made a lunge to reclaim it, but before either could reach it Malingo dropped from the ceiling and neatly snatched it up.

A smug smile appeared on Kaspar Wolfswinkel’s face.