“Mayor, where’s Sally?” Jack asked a few hours later.
The Mayor shivered a little. “She’s, um, er, well,”
“Mayor, where is she?”
“Well, I might know where she is, but I wouldn’t advise trying to talk to her right now.”
“And why not?”
“She…” the Mayor gesticulated frantically. “She was crazy, Jack! Lying there on the floor twitching and saying something about a Mastermind! Scared my socks off!”
“Mastermind?” Jack said.
“Yes, the Mastermind. Why? Have you heard of him?”
“Somewhat…”
“Who is he, Jack?!”
“I don’t really know,” Jack confessed. “Umm…Mayor, can you call a stop to today’s work?”
“They won’t be happy…”
“This is serious. I need to look into it further.”
The Mayor shrugged. Jack was going to take the heat for this, not him. “Well, if you say so…”
“Good! Thank you.”
On a hunch, Jack headed back to his room. Yes. There it was. That little scrap of paper.
‘So, she’s gone? Don’t worry. This time you’ll find…well, you may not meet me, but I think you will be most surprised at what you see.’
“I will, hmm?” Jack mused. “Well, we’ll just see about that.”
***
“Master.” Sally spoke, her voice echoing in the darkness. “I have come.”
She waited.
“Master. I have…”
Her voice was cut off, her body jerked forward, and she fell to the ground.
She was, in one sense of the word, dead.
She had been ever since the fire.
“The trap is set. The bait is waiting. We only wait now for our fox to come sniffing, and then...it will be complete.”
