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Sanjay strode into Gray House with a broad smile on his face.

“For you, m’lady.” Sanjay’s smile fell away. “Hey, where’s Kira?”

“Kira?” Tempest grabbed the flowers and flung them to the floor. A mangled rose petal landed on her red sneaker. “You and Lucas staged this macabre joke for Kira ?”

Sanjay sputtered, “I know I’m late, but the florist Lucas wanted me to go to was already closed. I didn’t have my cell phone to call and let him know. Where is everyone? I didn’t take that long, did I?”

Ivy reached Tempest’s side and stomped on the flowers in solidarity.

“Hey.” He frowned at the crushed petals. “Those were expensive.”

“Forget about the flowers.” Tempest glared at him.

“Yeah,” said Cameron. “How could you and Lucas play such a cruel joke on us?”

Sanjay blinked at them. “Swapping places? A surprising twist, yes, but I wouldn’t characterize it as a joke . It was a pretty good quick-swap routine, if I do say so myself. Where’s Lucas?” He looked around the living room and peeked into the kitchen and dining room.

“How the hell did you get out of the house?” Tempest asked. “And don’t act like you don’t know where Lucas is.”

“If he’s still alive at all,” Cameron said.

Sanjay chuckled, then broke off as he saw that Cameron wasn’t joking. “What? Really? There was an accident after I left? I’m so sorry. Is he in the hospital? Did the others go with him? That’s why you were all so mad at me! You could have filled me in.”

“The bullet hole was part of the joke?” Cameron asked.

“ Bullet hole? ” Sanjay stared at them. “Someone shot him?”

“You’re the magician,” Ivy said. “How did you miraculously vanish both yourself and Lucas? Or is he actually dead? Was it a bullet-catch trick gone wrong? I’m sure the police will understand if it was an accident—”

“What the hell is happening?” Sanjay tugged on the rim of his bowler hat. “It’s like I’ve stepped into an alternate dimension.”

“You’d better start at the beginning,” said Tempest.

“Me?” He gulped.

“ You ,” Tempest and Ivy said at the same time. Cameron nodded but looked incapable of speech. It was far more likely he was about to punch Sanjay. Which would have been very bad both for his ego and his upcoming performances.

“How am I supposed to know where Lucas disappeared to? All I did was walk out the back door during the darkness when Lucas and I switched places.”

They stared at Sanjay in silence for five seconds.

Tempest groaned. “The actors were all making noise in the dark, and with us in the living room, it wasn’t yet impossible for you to leave through the back door. All you had to do was walk out in the dark. It was only after Lucas was lying on the floor a few seconds later that we saw what was happening and then ran to the kitchen so nobody could have left that way.”

“You were running after me?” Sanjay asked.

“We were getting our phones to call the police,” Tempest said. “Since we found Lucas dead.”

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” Sanjay wailed.

“You two had a plan?” Cameron asked.

“Of course. Why else would I switch places with him and show up with roses?”

“Get back to your explanation,” said Tempest. “ Now. ”

Sanjay picked up the open wine bottle.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Ivy.

“That bad?”

Tempest took the bottle. “I don’t really believe it was poisoned by a ghost, but probably best not to take any chances.”

Sanjay’s eyes widened for half a second, but he quickly recovered and strode to the central point of the room: the fireplace. Always the performer. “I was doing a favor for Lucas,” he said, “to woo Kira.”

“To woo her?” Tempest repeated.

“That’s the expression he used,” said Sanjay. “But you get the picture. He really likes Kira.”

“Really?” Ivy asked.

“He called her singing ‘heavenly,’” Sanjay said, “which I know is a bit cliché, but it conveyed a heartfelt thought. Anyway, he didn’t know how to go from friends to more, so he thought of this grand gesture. We swapped places when the lights went out, and I left through the back door to get roses. Like I already said, the nearby florist Lucas suggested was closed, and I couldn’t call since I didn’t have a phone, because of your murder mystery party’s stupid rule. Rather than show up empty-handed, I went in search of another florist. Which is harder than you’d think without a phone.”

“Hang on,” said Tempest. “You glossed over the most important part.”

“What’s that?” Sanjay blinked at her.

“How and when did this even begin? Something else is going on, so we have to figure out when it started.”

“Right. Makes sense. It was today, around lunchtime, that Lucas got in touch to ask for my help tonight. As a favor.”

“I didn’t know you two knew each other,” Cameron said.

“They didn’t,” Ivy cut in. “Lucas asked me for Sanjay’s number. I didn’t think anything of it. We all know one another, and they’re both performers.”

“Which is why he got in touch,” said Sanjay.

“You don’t normally help out random people you have a tangential connection to,” Tempest said. “And you definitely don’t do it on a small stage.”

Sanjay’s cheeks darkened. “I’m a romantic, Tempest. I couldn’t resist helping. The two of us have similar hair and builds, so he thought we could pass as each other in the dark. He called it a quick change , but really, it’s a swap or more technically a transposition—”

“Sanjay,” Tempest interrupted.

“Right. Point is, he wanted my help performing an impressive magic trick.”

“ Why? ” asked Cameron. “Why did you want to mess up the play?”

Sanjay narrowed his eyes. “Magic elevates all forms of art. But never mind. Like I said, he wanted to impress Kira. He has a ma jor crush on her.” Sanjay pointed to the crushed roses Tempest had discarded. “That’s how he convinced me to do it. For love. It’s hard to move from platonic friends to a romantic relationship, so he needed to try something different.”

He stole a quick glance at Tempest and reddened. “He thought it would be fun to surprise Kira and show her he could do magic in addition to acting, and then he’d pick up the rest of his role as the detective in the play. It wasn’t going to mess up the practice show, since he was supposed to resume his role right away. Then I’d show up a few minutes later with roses from the shop down the street. Only it didn’t go as planned.”

“What did you do to him?” Cameron asked.

“Nothing! The swap went as planned. He was hiding in the trunk we’re using as a coffee table. It’s one of mine, so it has plenty of air holes and there’s no danger of suffocation. So when the lights went out, I let him out… but then everything went off the rails because I didn’t have my phone. I told you taking people’s phones was a bad idea.”

Cameron glared at him.

“I went down the street to Veggie Magic,” Sanjay continued. “Lavinia let me use her phone, so I found a flower shop that was open, got flowers—it was a good thing I had a credit card in my wallet, since I didn’t have my phone to pay—and arrived back later than I’d hoped. The back door had locked behind me, so I knocked on the front door… And you all know the rest of what happened.”

“You have to know more than that,” Cameron insisted. “You vanished and then he did.”

“While you were all in the kitchen?”

“When we came back into the living room a few minutes later,” said Tempest, “he was gone.”

“Before you ask,” said Ivy, “we were all in sight of one another the whole time.”

“And the house is locked up,” added Cameron, “including the windows being locked from the inside.”

“So Lucas is playing a joke,” said Sanjay, “and he roped me into it?”

“That’s what the police said,” Ivy said.

“There you go. Did you search—”

“We searched,” said Cameron.

“Maybe he’s good at hiding.” Sanjay eyed his magic trunk.

Tempest followed his gaze. “We already checked in there.”

“In the second false bottom?” Sanjay asked.

“There’s a second one?” Even Tempest didn’t know about that one.

She didn’t know if she was hoping to see Lucas inside the trunk or whether she was dreading it. She held her breath and opened the lid of the trunk.