It took Lisa a few hours to hit the jackpot over at City Hall. She returned to the office beaming. Sam and Donnie had been cooling their heels. They spent the time reviewing the details of the case and the files that they had built up. They transferred notes from Sam's notebook into the growing binder of evidence and thoughts they had gathered. As they worked through the sheaves of paper and mounds of notes, Sam questioned her choices almost more than when she had been walking through wet shit in the sewers.

  Lisa burst in like a ray of sunshine.

  "Miss Fontaine, you are going to be pleased," she hummed.

  Turns out Sam's hunch was right. Harold Maris had, within the last year, purchased an apartment somewhat near to David Wilson's building in the same neighborhood. It was one of the nicest areas in the city, where the homeless addicts and soot from coal furnaces were less concentrated.

  Sam and Donnie bundled themselves once again against the cold and set off to interview their suspect. Donnie had made it clear that this was just a suspect. They had no solid proof that Maris was even involved, much less the culprit. Another strong possibility was broken magic. Changing space itself would be a monumental undertaking, something that no other diviner had ever accomplished.

  They followed their usual procedure when they arrived at the building and checked the perimeter, noting that there was, in this case, an alley and an access door. Sam took Donnie's lessons to heart, popped open the access door, and they made their way to the elevator.

  Harold Maris had purchased his apartment on the eighth floor. Lisa had gotten access to a blueprint of the building in addition to the address Maris purchased, so they knew the ninth floor was a penthouse. They had carefully examined the layout of Maris's apartment so they felt reasonably confident as to what they were going to be walking into.

  They reached the eighth floor and Harold Maris's front door.

  "Any advice, boss?" asked Sam.

  "No," answered Donnie. "This should be a simple interrogation. Most folk crumble or are bad liars the first time someone asks them a question they weren't expecting. Your training should be plenty."

  Sam turned and knocked on the door. They waited a moment. There was no response from inside. No sound of shuffling. No voices. Nothing to indicate that Maris was inside.

  "So, I know what I would do if you weren't around," said Sam after waiting another moment.

  "But Miss Fontaine," replied Donnie. "Breaking and entering would be illegal."

  This time Donnie pulled out his own lock picks and popped open the door.

  "Listen," he told Sam, "if he's inside and he's not guilty, we could be in for a world of shit. Are you ready for that?"

  "Come on, let's go," replied Sam. She never worried about consequences. Only results.

  They stepped inside. A small foyer, dark tile floor, dark maroon paint, gave the place an oppressive feeling. The colors were too dark in the small space. Beyond the foyer was a living room, well furnished, so Maris had either purchased a furnished apartment or was fond of interior decoration. They couldn't see beyond the living room but a hallway led further into the building. Sam and Donnie knew from the blueprints they'd reviewed prior to leaving that the hallway led to a kitchen, formal dining room, three more bedrooms, and one office. Maris was rich, as were most diviners. Sam ached with jealousy for a moment before remembering she had a mansion of her own that she didn't want to visit.

  Sam had been telling herself she didn't want to go to the place because she was busy with this case. Prior to that she was busy learning sorcery with Emil and prior to that she was busy with another case. She wondered if she would run out of excuses eventually and have to admit that she just didn't want to go there because she didn't want to deal with the responsibility of a ten-year-old girl and friendships she didn't want to maintain.

  Sam pulled her mind back to the case at hand, concentrated on the rooms they were meant to be searching through. Donnie had started working counterclockwise, examining the room beyond the foyer. Sam began working clockwise. Starting from the ceiling she noted: the decorations all seemed to be recently purchased. Evidently Maris had hired an interior decorator or was fond of decorating himself. Working down in the room, horizontal surfaces at waist height had no personal items, she noted. He hadn't been living there for long so this made sense. She started opening cabinet doors underneath the horizontal surfaces and they were all empty.

  They made their way room to room, using the same pattern, discovering the same basic facts: well-decorated but unlived in. The bedroom even contained few personal items, just some clothes and a book it appeared Maris had been reading.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  They reached what should have been, according to the blueprints, the end of the apartment. Sam and Donnie both noticed a door at the end of a hallway that should not have a door because it would lead to a brick exterior wall. They glanced at each other; Donnie nodded for Sam to open the door. Now they were wary. Sam cautiously turned the knob. The door opened to the same dark tile oppressive foyer that they had entered.

  According to identical instincts Sam and Donnie both turned their heads back and looked down the hallway towards the foyer they had come from. They could see it, or a corner of it, past the living room. It was normal, not a mirror, and they weren't looking at themselves coming out of an open doorway.

  "Looks like Maris had his little sorcery project succeed," mused Donnie.

  "Yeah, but where is he?" questioned Sam. "I ain't seen hide nor hair of nobody in this place. If it weren't for the clothes in the bedroom, I'd say it was abandoned."

  "Let's keep treating this like any other investigation. We'll proceed in pattern and examine this second apartment just like we did the first."

  Donnie's eyes narrowed on entering the second apartment space that shouldn't be there. Sam guessed he hadn't dealt with the supernatural as much as he had the mundane. As a city soldier he would have seen day-to-day crime, the sort of thing that didn't even involve a demon. She envied his career for that. She would have paid good money to not have to deal with demons ever again.

  This apartment was a lot like the first one. The layout was identical. The rooms had identical decorations. Even the personal items, what few there were in the bedroom, were laid in the same places and the clothing and bedding had the same wrinkles. It was like an identical copy of the first apartment and it occupied space that should have been thin air outside the building eight floors up.

  The only difference was there was another door at the end of the hallway. It should not have been there even in the first apartment. In addition to that door a third lay at the end of the kitchen, where an exterior window should have been.

  "Should we split up?" wondered Sam.

  "Hell no. I'm not walking around this place alone. Who knows what kind of spooky shit we're going to find."

  "All right then," nodded Sam, indicating the door in front of her. "Which door should we open first, this one or the new kitchen one?"

  They chose the kitchen door. They approached it as cautiously as they did the first extra door they discovered. They opened it slowly. Beyond the kitchen through the door they saw another dark tiled maroon-painted foyer that led, they could see, to another copy of the apartment. They closed the door, made their way back to the hallway, opened that door to discover the same foyer and now a fourth copy of the apartment.

  They entered the hallway door and examined that new apartment. Again, two extra doors led to further apartments. Returning back to the kitchen door, that apartment had two more doors. They decided to regroup in the first extra apartment living room. Sam flopped herself onto the couch and ran a hand through her greasy hair. She resolved to remember to bathe herself in between cases, but knew she would probably forget.

  "So," began Donnie. "If each apartment has two more doors beyond the first and it just keeps going, that means we now have at least sixteen, wait, no. Eight full apartments to go through. But we don't know when the chain is gonna end."

  "Yeah, if I knew math I think there's a word for that but I don't so there ain't," grumbled Sam.

  "Exponential. It's exponential," explained Donnie.

  "Thanks, professor. It's a pain in the ass is what it is."

  "It is but you got your notebook, right? Let's do it like this. We're going to make a map. We know the basic layout of each apartment. We can use a simple rectangle to indicate each one. Apartment 1 leads to Apartment 2. Apartment 2 leads to Apartments 3 and 4. Apartments 3 and 4 lead to 5, 6, 7, and 8 that we've observed so far.

  "From there we'll document which direction leads to further apartments if there are any and we'll see if we can find Maris somewhere in this mess."

  "You think good, Donnie. I like it."

  They got started making their map. When they reached their seventeenth apartment, they heard a sound coming from the bedroom door. Unlike the other bedroom doors, it had a lock attached to a latch that had been screwed into the door, keeping it from opening out.

  The sound was a human voice, muffled as if their mouth were shut.

  "Hold on," Donnie hesitated. "Let's pick the lock. I'll get it open."

  "Don't bother, I got it," grumbled Sam.

  The screws ripped out of the door and the door frame shredded under the force of Sam's kick. Donnie's eyebrows crawled up his skull at the display. Sam was growing impatient and had come to trust Donnie enough to show off some of her strength. He could have quit when he found out how weird the case was and he could have walked off around the tenth or eleventh apartment they discovered.

  Inside, a balding man with skin that hadn't seen much sunlight and wispy hair, middle-aged, was tied to the bed. His mouth was gagged. His glasses weren't sat right on his face, like he'd been struggling, knocked them off, and since his hands were tied to the bedposts couldn't right them again.

  "That's Hoffman," exclaimed Sam. Emil had given her a description of the man.

  Donnie walked quickly across the room and ungagged the man.

  "Oh my God, oh my God, thank God! You gotta get me out of here. He's fucking crazy!" babbled Hoffman, his eyes wide.

  "Okay," soothed Donnie. "We're gonna get you out of here, don't worry. First I need you to tell me what you think is going on here. We are private investigators. We've been hired to find you, Mr. Hoffman, and Mr. Wilson."

  Sam noted the careful wording. Donnie had a natural mistrust of anyone involved with the case. He was skeptical of even an apparent victim's first-hand account. Sam resolved to ramp up her own natural skepticism.

  Sam and Donnie both untied the man at the wrists and he sat up as soon as he could. He righted his glasses and said, "Oh God, Dave. He killed Dave!"

  "Who did?" asked Sam. "Was it Harold Maris?"

  "Yeah he's fucking crazy. He kidnapped us both, tied us up. He fucked up the contract. He's fucking trapped here so he kidnapped us.

  "He tried to get out but Bathym won't let him out."