"I'm fine." William said almost irritably, and with renewed energy began trying to free himself. "What's happening? What have they said to you?"

"I have only a few moments with you," I whispered. "They're giving me a second chance to join them, and I demanded to see you, to see that you were alive, before giving them an answer. Is the cuff key with Reverend Perkins, on his key ring?" I asked Simon quickly.

"Yes, he locked the cuffs when they brought us in here."

I cursed under my breath. Sweat dripped down my face and I was close to a panic.

"Do you have anything I can try to pick the lock with?"

"A pocketknife. We've been unable to reach it, but it is in my pocket," William said.

In a second, I retrieved the knife and began working at the lock. I tried to keep my back to the door. For all I knew, Reverend Perkins was watching us through the keyhole.

"My aunt. Is Christina safe?" William whispered.

"Yes, for now. Max promised to leave her alone. But ... "

"What is it?"

"Perdita, William. She was dead when I arrived at the house."

"d.a.m.n! " William hissed as his face contorted in pain. "Get these cuffs off! "

"Keep your voice down and let Abbie work," Simon said quietly.

I was having no luck getting the lock open.

William was incensed now, swore profusely, and began jerking his hands against the cuffs in an effort to free himself.

"Hold still-I can't do this at all if you don't hold still." I whipped my head around to glance at the door. Reverend Perkins could come in again at any minute, and time was running out.

"This has to end now," William continued. "Abbie, they killed your mother."

"William," Simon hissed.

I froze. A cold chill swept through me, and I stopped picking the lock. The pocketknife still in my hand, I stood, facing William.

"What did you say?"

"William," Simon said angrily, "this hardly does any good ... "

"She deserves to know." William met my eyes. "There was more in my father's notes than I told you, but I thought it might be too much for you, too overwhelming. Dr. Bartlett fell in love with your mother from the first moment he saw her, that day at the operating theatre. He convinced the others that they needed a woman in the group. Caroline was educated and beautiful; she would be an a.s.set to them as an immortal, as the psychic, the artist of the group. They gave her the offer. When she refused, they only allowed her to live because she was pregnant, the hope being that she might have a daughter with her same gift. Gabriel sent her away with Jacque to protect her. Max probably killed Sharp and let Caroline live only long enough to raise and educate you, the thinking being that you would be most like her if she raised you herself. He was probably the one who killed her, too, once you became a woman. It wasn't dysentery. He undoubtedly poisoned her."

Her visions. I remembered how they had increased in the weeks before her death. My mother had known the Conclave was coming for her during my entire childhood-and then, in those weeks before she died, she had seen them.

And Dr. Bartlett had been in love with her. This explained the lingering looks, why he called me "Abbie" while the others called me "Miss Sharp." Why he had sent Max to seek me out, specifically, to see if I also was psychic. It also might explain why they were so willing to give me a second chance.

I was Dr. Bartlett's second chance after he did away with Mother.

"Abbie," Simon said gently. "It's the truth. I'm sorry."

Oddly, I didn't cry. I only felt fury. A consuming fury.

"Abbie, are you all right?" William asked.

William and Simon could not help me now, not as long as they were locked up like this. And I had no immediate way of freeing them.

"I'll be back," I said, turning from them.

"Abbie? Where are you going?" William demanded.

I didn't answer him as I clutched the pocketknife tighter, concealing it in the folds of my skirts.

"Abbie, don't be stupid. You need us."

"Don't do this alone," Simon added.

"Abbie! Abbie ! Get back here." Now William was desperate.

Ignoring them, I joined Reverend Perkins in the hall.

"I hope you're satisfied now, Miss Sharp," he said as he locked and bolted the door again.

I followed him, formulating a plan as we ascended the stairs. My best chance to eliminate the Conclave would be to kill the members one at a time, and I had to keep them separate. They could overwhelm me if all together.

Reverend Perkins would be the first to go.

I removed the knife from my skirt folds and felt my palms sweat. It would do no good if the others heard him cry out. Severing his windpipe would ensure his silence.

I steadied myself.

One. Two ...

Catapulting my whole body against him, I knocked him to the floor and collapsed on top of him. Then immediately, before I could think too much about what I was doing, I plunged the knife into his throat, feeling it cut muscle and then bone. I turned away, hearing only a gurgle. Then nothing.

I stood up, quaking all over as I forced myself to look at him, to make certain that the blow had been a fatal one. His enormous hands reached toward his bleeding throat. He could not make a sound. Reverend Perkins had hated me more than the others, and I watched his angry stare until he gasped his last breath.

The door to the conference room slammed open and urgent voices sounded from far down the corridor. The others had heard Perkins fall.

I bolted into the gallery, slamming and locking the door behind me. The moment I shut it, I heard them outside. They had found John Perkins's body and immediately began trying to break through the gallery door.

Feeling a bit like a trapped rat, I panicked when I realized that I had dropped the knife in the hallway. I frantically scanned the cases of weapons-the spears, the guns, the knives. I considered the guns, but I could not be certain whether they would work or not, whether they were loaded or not. A second later, I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and, covering my fist, punched through one of the cases and took the bowie knife.

Excellent for skinning and tearing organs.

As I held it, I estimated the force of my momentum; I considered the curved blade, the heavy handle. If I could send it spinning, I might be able to make a kill.

The door frame cracked a bit as the men outside pushed against it. They would be through at any moment. There were no windows in the gallery; I backed up against another door at the far side of the room.

Then the gallery door burst open and I faced them across the room, the knife poised in front of me.

"You killed my mother." My voice quivered and did not sound like my own. I shook with rage.

"She had a choice, Abbie. A fair one."

"Did she?" I spat. "What, join your group or die? The same choice you're offering me? What kind of choice is that?"

"It was an offer," Marcus Brown said, taking a step forward. "Off the table, now that you've killed John."

"Stay where you are!" I warned him, before turning my attention back to Dr. Bartlett.

He laid one hand on Marcus Brown's shoulder. "In a minute, Marcus. Your mother," he continued, turning to me. "With her gifts, once she took the elixir, might have been anything."

"What? As your immortal love puppet?"

A chilling coldness overcame his expression. I suspected that my statement affected him more deeply than John Perkins's death had. His response came out severe and cold, as if he were issuing my own execution order. "No one can live, knowing the secret. It is part of the rules-four centuries worth of rules."

My mother might have been just another casualty to them, but to me she meant something. They had not seen her suffer and die. They had not loved her as I had. They had robbed me.

Robbed me of too much.

Dr. Brown pushed past Dr. Bartlett. "Miss Sharp, this has gone too far. Stop this foolishness. Drop the knife and surrender to us." He spoke kindly, politely, even as he was crossing the room to kill me.

The great politician. The murderous politician.

The politeness infuriated me, and I decided that their gentlemen's rules were at an end.

"Your Conclave can go to f.u.c.king h.e.l.l!"

I slung the knife forward. It stuck hard in Marcus Brown's heart.

Without wasting another second, I plunged through the door behind me, locking it. I found myself in yet another gallery lined with cases, a door slightly ajar at the far end.

I needed another weapon.

Trying to ignore the shouts, and then the great thuds against the door, I ran toward the cases.

In these cases there were no weapons, only rows and rows of shrunken heads: the skin was dark, leathery, obviously stretched and then boiled. The eyes had all been sewn shut. The hair on the heads was all different colors-blond, black. I swayed as I saw a streak of auburn locks. In my horror, I tried to tell myself that Robert Buck had collected these heads from gravesites around the globe. But I knew of his anthropological curiosities, of the people that the Conclave had killed over the years. I swallowed as I contemplated how far Robert Buck's experiments might have gone over the centuries.

There was nothing in this room to help me, so I ran toward the other door. Along the way, I threw myself against the cases, crashing them to the floor in the hopes that the mess would stall the Conclave.

Running into the next room, a laboratory, I slammed and locked the door behind me. There were no more escape routes. I would have to face them in here.

I began flinging open cabinets, looking for a new weapon. Test tubes and fluids crashed around me. In the darkness, I slammed into the dissecting table and my hip throbbed in pain.

I heard their voices and the sound of crunching gla.s.s. Robert Buck and Julian Bartlett were in the gallery.

My odds would be better if I could create some sort of diversion. A large vat of formaldehyde caught my eye.

As I heaved it toward the door, I spilled half of the vat's contents. The formaldehyde spread across the floor quickly. I dumped the remainder of the contents along the edge of the floor and across the surface of every countertop, taking care to keep the solutions off my skirts.

Just as I grabbed the nearest Bunsen burner, Robert Buck and Julian Bartlett broke through the door. Buck slipped immediately, falling, just as Bartlett braced himself on the slick floor. His eyes met mine as I lit the burner and tossed it onto the ground near me. I then leaped into the dry, middle part of the laboratory. Flames shot across the floor and up the countertops. The laboratory would be engulfed in flames within minutes, and then the house.

Julian Bartlett shouted something to Robert Buck and started to fight the fire. Buck, standing again, grabbed me hard as I ran past. I kicked him sharply in the ribs but could not disengage myself. I fought hard against him and we fell together, tumbling out into the gallery.

Shards of gla.s.s crunched under my back and cut into my arms as we rolled across the floor. I tried to ignore the shrunken heads that kept b.u.mping against my body, focusing instead on keeping Buck from pinning me. He slammed my head hard against the side of one of the felled cases. Then once he was on top of me, he put his hands around my throat, choking me. Flickers of light began to appear in my peripheral vision. I was losing consciousness.

I dealt a mighty kick upwards into his sternum, and heard a crack. That was enough. He released his grip and I slid out from under him, dizzy but standing.

Heaving and choking, I stumbled out of the room as smoke began pouring out from the laboratory, engulfing the galleries. I hoped that Dr. Bartlett had been overcome by the flames and smoke. That would leave me just Robert Buck to kill until I could find Max.

Buck stood up and I ran from him into the first gallery, ducking, trying to keep my head away from the smoke.

Pulling the bowie knife from Brown's body as I ran out of the gallery, I almost tripped over Perkins's body at the top of the stairs. The handcuff keys. Keeping an eye out for what was behind me, I struggled to get the keys unhinged from his belt. My hands trembled and I felt myself crying as I fought to free them. Buck would be upon me anytime.

"Abbie Shaaaarp!" I heard him roar from the gallery, just as I freed the keys and ran down the staircase.

There was no time to free William and Simon-there were at least thirty keys on the ring and I had no idea which, if any, would work on the handcuffs. I certainly didn't want to lead Robert Buck to them, so I ran in the other direction, into the drawing room.

Large sheets covered all the furniture. All the fish aquariums were now gone except for the jellyfish globe aquarium, which rested upon a large cart with wheels. The top had been removed.

Venomous. Can kill someone within minutes.

I still had the knife, but an easier means of killing Buck occurred to me.

Pushing all of my weight against it, I rolled the giant globe aquarium on its wheels toward the side of the entrance to the drawing room. Then, standing on a chair, I steadied my breathing and waited. I heard the stairs creaking. He was coming.

I held my breath as I placed my back against the aquarium. Timing would be everything. Then, if this didn't work, I still had the bowie knife.

I focused on the silence, listening for Robert Buck's breathing as he approached the room.

The second he entered, I threw my back against the aquarium. With a great crash, it toppled over, emptying its contents onto him. I would have fallen along with it, but I grabbed a nearby window curtain, catching myself just in time.

I leaped off the chair and stood nearby, watching, the knife ready in case this didn't work. Robert Buck was screaming and thrashing on the floor, his spectacles falling off. Jellyfish clung to his body. His neck began swelling immediately, turning red and then purple as he suffocated.

Smoke poured down the stairs. He was dead. Julian Bartlett, if alive, would have come down the stairs by now. I started to maneuver past Buck's body, careful of the jellyfish, to get to William and Simon.

Then I heard the crashing footsteps upstairs and a voice calling for Robert Buck.

Julian Bartlett was still alive.

I also heard roaring flames as he ran down the stairs. The fire had spread. Then a bullet hit the wall behind me. Bartlett had seen me, and he had a gun.

Sprinting back into the drawing room, then through the French doors into the hothouse, I found myself enshrouded in early morning darkness. The fountain was empty and the place absolutely silent. There were no shrieking monkeys, no flying birds.

I ran fast past the fountain into the forest, knowing that I had to take cover before he caught up with me.

I was not a moment too soon. The hothouse doors slammed open just as I reached the trees.