I abruptly snapped out of the nightmare like a bullet out of a barrel, with smoke and crackle. The world around me was still floating and the walls of the mansion swaying as if they'd lost their bance for company. My head was dry, my mouth was humming, my lungs were refusing to cooperate, my body felt like it had been put through a meat grinder. A couple hundred times. But Zakhar and Danil in my hands were soothingly heavy.

  Woodsworth!

  The butler, slouching, sat with his arms around his head. His face, usually impeccably composed, now looked parched. His eyes were clouded and his lips trembled. Words tumbled out of him, but fell back in like stones into a dry well.

  “Dissociation," I breathed out, rubbing my temples.

  A rough exit. No preparation, no anchors, bursting through someone else's mental boundaries. Really a dumb brute. It was like trying to pull a cord from a thousand-volt outlet by yanking an appliance.

  “Hey, Woodsworth," my voice sounded more gruff, and I squatted down in front of the butler. “You in here?”

  No. Deafening silence. Only heavy breathing.

  “Great," I grumbled. “So you're not going to show me the new room.”

  “What... What did you do to him?!”

  The maid. She ran over to Woodsworth, knelt beside him, and gently touched his shoulder. I took a few shaky steps back, letting the girl pass.

  “Mr. Woodsworth? Can you hear me? It's okay. It's all right.”

  She lied quietly, soothingly, her fingers gripping his wrist as if holding cracked porcein.

  “He should come to his boring self in a couple hours," I muttered, still tormenting my temples. “I hope so.”

  “Hope?!” her voice trailed off. “What have you done to him! He's barely breathing!”

  “I didn't do it on purpose.”

  “You didn't?!” her eyes fshed. “You came in here, you, uh... got into his head, and now you're just saying ‘not on purpose’?!”

  She turned back to the butler, her fingers running over his wrist, checking his pulse.

  “He needs to lie down. He shouldn't be sitting like that. Help me.”

  I sighed, but obeyed. Together, we carefully lifted Woodsworth up and id him on his bed. His breathing was even, but his face remained in another world. A monstrous world of his own. The maid ran her hand over his forehead, brushing a stray strand of hair from his damp skin.

  “I'll stay with him," her voice became quieter, but there was still a hint of reproach in it.

  “I need to see the dead man's son.”

  Her lips pressed into a thin line. She looked at Woodsworth again, and then she stood up.

  “I'll take you. “

  I thought loyalty was supposed to look different. I had just knocked a man out of his mind, and what does a maid do? Taking me to a young man, the son of the master of the house. A man into whose mind I must plunge, exposing the same risk. All these people bow their heads politely to noblemen, serve tea with polished grace, and stand in line when required. But servants don't serve the people, they serve the house. And the house always outlives its masters.

  “Have you heard about the new room?”

  “No. The house is old. When it had new rooms, I wasn't born yet.”

  We walked down the corridor, and with every step I grew colder. Not from the temperature. I'm not a boy anymore, I'm only old enough for a few more entrances.

  “Excuse me, sir, but Mr. Henry... He's a little strange,” suddenly said the maid, remembering that she was supposed to call others “sirs” and be polite.

  “What do you mean?”

  She looked away, while her fingers fiddling with the edge of her apron. An involuntary, nervous gesture. She seemed to regret saying it.

  “He... loves animals, sir.”

  “Is that a crime?”

  She looked at me again.

  “You tell me, detective.”

  When we entered Henry's room, I froze. I expected a mess. I expected the smell of teenage ziness, books, paper, maybe leftover food tossed in a corner somewhere. But the pce smelled different. Old wood, charcoal. But I had an anarchic street youth, what did I understand about noble young men?

  There were a lot of paintings. They hung on the walls in massive, overly ornate frames, stood on the floor leaning against each other, canvases piled in the corner. I stepped closer and the maid came out.

  The drawings were charcoal. Dark, bold lines, rough strokes. The artist's movements were sharp, nervous, as if he were pressing the charcoal into the canvas until it crumbled in his fingers, creating dirty, ugly images. Darkness mixed with dirty red and white paint. A bck fox with crazy white eyes rolling out, a chain of hands, something that should have been a dog, a red man with his arms unnaturally twisted, either through ineptitude or too good a knowledge of what twisted joints look like. I had seen simir images, though not in reality.

  Henry sat in the corner of the room, in his chair. Dark eyes, frozen and cold, stared somewhere into space. What did they see? He didn't say a word when we walked in.

  I took a step forward, freezing so as not to disturb his equilibrium.

  “Mr. Henry," I said, finally breaking the silence. “Did you paint these pictures yourself?

  Please, not you.

  He did not answer at once, but tilted his head slightly. His eyes remained fixed on the wall. On it hung another picture - something strange, inexpressible, but it still leaves a musty feeling in the soul. He spoke softly:

  “Yes, I am an artist.”

  Psychopathy!

  There was neither sadness nor joy in his voice. It was as if the words just slipped out of his mouth like everything else in his life - without much meaning. “Everyone has their own ways of dealing with grief,” I tried to convince myself.

  “Got it,” I nodded, trying to keep myself from drifting off into these strange pictures, but my gaze was still pulling me towards them. “I'm a psi-detective and I have to get inside your mind to find your father's killer. But there are some dangers in our case, Mr. Henry. When I enter someone's mind, it's not always safe,” I paused, deliberately slowing my speech, but something in his gaze made me add: “Sometimes a mind breaks. The owner's mind or mine.”

  Something lit up in his eyes. Not that it was fear. No. It was something else. It was curiosity.

  “What would happen if... destroyed?” his voice was almost a whisper, but with such genuine interest that I felt the warmth in the room die.

  “If the mind shatters, you yourself will remain in that shattering," I said, pausing involuntarily, gazing into his eyes. “You will cease to be you. Everything will disappear, but you'll stay in this pce. It's like a trap, Henry. You could be part of it forever.”

  His eyes fshed. He was almost out of breath, but there was so much greed in his gaze that it seemed as if his soul was drawing out the light, as if he was ready to dissolve into this bck, dark world I was talking about.

  “Let's give it a try,” his answer was almost quiet, but it was like a lightning strike on an empty day.

  Fear ran a wet finger along my spine. I gnced at him, then at the paintings. Not a watcher. A destroyer.

  “Good.”

  Sat down on his bed.

  Crossed my arms with my revolvers across my chest.

  “What interesting guns. Have you ever killed with them?” Henry became exactly what he should be - alive. His eyes burned with anticipation.

  Closed my eyes.

  And stepped inside.