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Then, with obvious reluctance, Dalejem gestured in affirmative.

“Yes.” He touched Nick’s face, gripping his black hair, right before he looked directly at Black. “If he’s got an organic binary electronic all over this house, then anyone who tries to get through will definitely die. Nick’s damned lucky it threw him back. Either we figure out how to shut it off, or we’re stuck doing this thing for your vampire pal.”

“MY pal?” Black growled.

Dalejem blew past this like Black hadn’t spoken.

“It’s probably the same thing that’s keeping us from using our seer’s sight,” Jem added, giving me a grim look. “We should play the vampire’s game. I think we might have to. At any rate, it’s likely to be faster than anything else we try… and we have to assume someone’s watching us in here. For all we know he’d just gas us if we got close to finding a way out.”

There was another silence.

I could feel everyone agreeing with Jem.

Hell, I agreed with him. I didn’t want to, but I did.

“We need to get more creative with this,” Black said, frustrated.

For the first time, he sounded almost like himself. He sounded almost normal.

Still brusque, but like he was thinking strategically.

“We need to try more things. We need to look at absolutelyeverything,”he added. “It’s not’s enough to walk around here, trying to set off these virtual scenes or whatever. Brick won’t make it that easy. He’d have to much fun messing with us. My guess is, it’s not all going to look the same. Which means anything that calls your attention needs to be examined. Anything that looks out of place, or like it might have some significance… a book, a painting, a piece of furniture, something in one of the fireplaces, in the fridge, anything…”

Nick pointed at him, nodding emphatically.

“Yes,” he said. “He’s right. That’s how Brick is. Exactly like that.”

Nick’s voice came out lower and harder too.

It sounded almost like Black’s.

I recognized it from Nick, too. It was his cop voice.

Black met his gaze, and I saw a shared understanding there.

Black glanced at me next.

“Doc, you know Brick. Try to think about this the way Brick would. In the meantime, all of us should stick together from now on. More heads are better. Knowing Brick, there’s likely a reason he picked this exact group. There are probably things some of us would catch that others of us wouldn’t… like Dex picking up on the inconsistencies with the victim in the library. And doc picking up on that statue being some version of the god Anubis…”

“Brick has an Anubis cane,” Nick blurted. “He has those damned jackal heads all over his place in Paris. That symbol means something to him.”

Black nodded, again pointing directly at Nick.

“Like that,” Black said.

Black glanced at me, then back at Nick, then at Dex.

“We should try anything we can think of,” he repeated. “Look for clues in everything. Brick would have filled every room in this house with his game. Including the bathrooms. So we go through room by room. We do the whole damned house this time. Every floor, every crawlspace. Every closet and kitchen drawer and pantry we can access. And we do it together.”

All of us exchanged looks.

I could feel all of us relaxing.

We finally had a plan.

We were going to do this.

We were totally going to do the shit out of this.