“Good boy,” he said to Malingo. “You are a very, very good boy. I will think of some way to reward you for this.” He wiped his sweaty brow with the arm of his yellow jacket. Then he put out his fat hand. “Now give it back to Uncle Kaspar,” he said.

The beaten Malingo looked at his master like a creature mesmerized by a poisonous snake. But he didn’t move to return the staff.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Wolfswinkel demanded. “GIVE ME MY STAFF. I’m going to beat this wretched girl till she’s yelping. Won’t that be fun?”

There was a long, long moment in which nothing happened. Then, slowly—very, very slowly—Malingo shook his head.

“Candy…” he said quietly, not for a moment taking his eyes off the man who had once been his master. “You’d better go. Quickly, before Houlihan gets here.”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

At this, Malingo shot her a glance, filled with a mixture of fear and exhilaration.

“Oh, how sweet this is,” Wolfswinkel remarkedl “how touching.” Then, putting on a smile, he beckoned to Malingo. “‘Come on now, boy. Joke’s over. You’ve had your moment. Let’s stop all this playacting. You know you don’t have the guts to leave me.”

His tone was all milk and honey, and it was frighteningly credible.

“You belong to me, Malingo,” he went on. “Remember? I bought you in an honest transaction. I have the papers. You can’t walk away. I mean, goodness gracious, where would the world be if every slave just upped and walked away when they got the inclination?”

The smile went from his face. Wolfswinkel had exhausted his supply of sweetness.

“Now,” he said, “for the last time: give me back my staff and I promise you, I promise you, I will not hurt you.”

Malingo didn’t move. He didn’t even blink.

“Oh now, wait a moment,” Wolfswinkel went on. “I know what you’re thinking. You can smell freedom, can’t you? And it’s rather tempting. But think, geshrat. You don’t know how to live out there in the world.”

“Take no notice of him,” Candy said.

“You’ve got a slave’s soul, geshrat. And you’ll never change that.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of out there,” Candy said. Then revising her opinion in the interest of honesty, she said: “Well, nothing worse than this. Than him. And I’ll be with you—”

“Oh no, you won’t,” Wolfswinkel said, snatching hold of Candy’s wrist.

His grip was like fire. She cried out in pain and struggled so hard to be free of him that his hats, all carefully perched upon one another, slid sideways from his sweat-slickened head.

A look of panic crossed his face, and he let go of Candy so as to catch the falling hats and push them back into place. She stepped out of his range, her hand numb with pain. As she rubbed it back to life, the paintings of the five murdered magicians came into her mind’s eye. And with them, a simple thought:

His hats. Part of his power is in those idiotic hats.

She had only a moment to register this notion. Then Wolfswinkel was closing on Malingo, his hands reaching out to reclaim his staff.

“Give it to me,” he said to Malingo. “Come on. You know it’s mine.”

There were flecks of yellow-white spittle on his lips. He looked as though he was about ready to explode with fury.

Malingo raised the staff.

“Good boy,” Wolfswinkel said, a slight smile returning to his sweaty face.

Malingo looked his master straight in the eyes. Then he lifted his leg, and taking the staff in a two-handed grip, he brought it down across his knee.

Wolfswinkel let out a howl as the staff broke in half. Splinters flew in all directions, and the crack of the breaking staff echoed off the walls.

Malingo lifted the pieces of the staff and showed them to Wolfswinkel.

“You’ll never beat me with this again,” he said.

Then he threw the two halves down on the floor, on the very spot where he’d been bruised and humiliated just a few minutes before.

Wolfswinkel looked down at them, his body shaking.

“Well, now…” he muttered. “Aren’t you a brave little rebel?”

Now it was he who lifted his hands, locking his fingers together above his head.

Then, muttering something that was incomprehensible to Candy’s ears, but still sounded profoundly threatening, he unknotted his hands and began to slowly, slowly ease them apart. There was a form made of seething darkness between his palms, which grew as he parted his hands. It resembled a fat, five-foot-long maggot armed with tentacles, each one of which ended in a cruel red hook. It had two heads, one at either end of its body, their faces resembling Kaspar. Their teeth were as sharp as a shark’s teeth.

“Lovely,” Wolfswinkel said, looking up at this foul thing that he’d conjured. “You like my little eeriac?”

Then, without waiting for a reply, he dropped his hands in front of him and released the creature.

The eeriac, though solid, seemed to be able to defy gravity, for it instantly rose high above the heads of those in the room, twisting and turning like a rope that had an ambition to knot itself.

It made an inverted curve of its body and turned both its grotesque faces down to look at its creator.

Wolfswinkel nodded to the thing. “Are you ready?” he said. It opened its mouths and let out a hiss from the depths of its throats. “Good,” said Wolfswinkel. He pointed at Malingo and uttered these words:

“Kill my slave.”

The eeriac didn’t hesitate. It threw itself down from the heights of the room and flew toward Malingo.

Luckily, Malingo was quick. He was used to climbing over the rooms. He knew every rock and cranny. Before the eeriac could reach him, up he went, like a spider on the wall. The creature pursued him, the hooks on its numberless tentacles striking sparks off one another, bright enough to flood the room with a rancid light.

Wolfswinkel was pleased with the spectacle he’d created. He applauded like an egotistical child as the chase set the chandelier swinging. A dry rain of dust and dead moths came down off the crystals as they twinkled and shook.

“Get out!” Malingo yelled down to Candy. “Go!”

The moment that he took to beg her to leave was his undoing. The creature closed the distance between them in a heartbeat and clamped both sets of jaws upon him.

Candy couldn’t bear to look. She averted her eyes, her gaze going instead to Wolfswinkel. He was totally engrossed by the spectacle overhead. Surely she could creep up on him and not be noticed.

Did she dare? Yes, of course she dared. Anything to save Malingo from Wolfswinkel’s monster.

She glanced up once to see how Malingo was faring. Not well was the answer. The eeriac was wrapped around Malingo, its hooks seeking to catch his skin. But he wasn’t quite as vulnerable as a human being. Though doubtless his skin was tender from the beating he’d endured, the hooks did not wound him.

Even so, he was in dire jeopardy: not from the hooks but from the eeriac’s teeth. He did his best to hold the beast’s two mouths away from his face with his hands, and for a while he succeeded. But the eeriac was strong. It was only a matter of time before the monster’s needle teeth pierced him.

Candy waited no longer. As Wolfswinkel continued to applaud the horrible spectacle, Candy moved behind him. Then she pitched herself at his back.

Wolfswinkel turned at the last moment and raised his hand to strike her, but he was too late. She threw herself at him, and with a backward sweep of her hand, she knocked all of his hats off his head.

Wolfswinkel unleashed a howl of fury and went down on his knees in a desperate attempt to pick up the fallen hats. Candy did her best to prevent him from doing so by kicking them out of his hands.

From overhead there came a din like the sound of an enormous firecracker exploding.