Professor Norax's Wonder Emporium and Theatre was a small magic shop with an attached cabaret venue situated in one of the hidden backstreets in our city. It was run by Ted Braxton, the business associate Maise had purchased the sawing illusion from (along with some coaching on the finer points), who then invited us to bring a group to one of his magical cabaret evenings.

By now our work on the Hungry Garden and wider Jungle was pretty much complete and we were looking forward to opening up at the next Masquerade, which would include the egg hunt event. This happened to coincide with our ongoing roleplay as Larkin and Adelia, so it was decided that it would be the stage for the third, possibly climactic, showdown with Elbert Makabra and Amethyst Annie, with plenty of interesting ways for any of the characters to meet their end. In the meantime, everyone agreed that a group trip to Prof. Norax's establishment for a meal and evening's entertainment would be a good way to unwind and celebrate after all the hard work that had gone into getting the Jungle ready.

Uncle Morbid was happy for us to book the tables as a group from Morior Studios and even offered to charge the meal to the company account as a treat for us all. He himself would not be attending, however.

"I know of Mr. Braxton's work and would very much like to meet him," he said. "We have in the past welcomed a member of his company as a visiting performer at the Masquerade. But for reasons I won't go into, it would not be appropriate for me to accompany you on this occasion, I think he will want to talk to you before he does me. If the opportunity arises, you may extend an invitation for he and his company to be our guests at the Masquerade. I have already asked about booking one of their performers this weekend, but am yet to hear back.

"Please represent us proudly. As you will have gathered, Mr. Braxton and his company are aware of what we do and I believe there is mutual respect between us, but there is also a level of distrust and misunderstanding that I would very much like to clear up. If you can pave the way to us doing this I would be very much obliged."

Our group consisted of everyone who had worked on the Hungry Garden with the exception of Scott. We also invited Debs and Rafe, who we couldn't leave out of an outing like this, it was right up their alley.

Maise and I arrived first to find a group of tables set aside for us on the right side of the room, just in front of the stage, which was on a low platform surrounded by lights. Ted Braxton came out to welcome us personally.

"Hello Maise, and you must be the Amazing Lexie I've heard so much about, welcome! Thank-you for bringing a party down, we're very glad to have you here. Tell me, will your boss be joining us?"

"Not tonight," I told him. "He said he wants to meet you but thought you would want to just speak to us first. Something about a misunderstanding."

Ted thought about this.

"That's actually quite perspicacious of him," he said. "I'll explain later, but for now get some drinks and enjoy the show. How did you get on with the sawing illusion?"

"It was incredible," I replied. "Maise led me through the whole thing from inside the box."

"She has a magician's mind, that one," said Ted. "I wouldn't have sold the kit to her otherwise. Great to finally meet you, Lexie, we'll talk again after the show."

Our group started arriving in dribs and drabs. Chris and Wilco were first, looking very different in evening dress. Wilco wore a suit with his dreaded hair tied neatly back, while Chris wore a black cocktail dress with jewellery, makeup and a long dark chocolate red wig. Maise hugged Chris as she saw her.

"Chris, you look stunning!" she said. "How does it feel to be out as a lady?"

"It feels good," she said. "But different, knowing that it's me and not an avatar."

We were soon joined by Debs and Rafe, who of course had dressed for the occasion, Craig, Rebecca, Hannah and Jess. Jess was accompanied by a tall smiley man I didn't recognise but who seemed vaguely familiar. She introduced him as her boyfriend Ben, who looked at me as if waiting for me to realise who he was. Finally he gave me a hint.

"Nice meet you again, Lexie," he said. "I nearly chopped your head off last week."

Of course! He looked very different in normal clothes without a mask, but he'd been the executioner that I'd offered my neck to as Larkin. Now I thought of it, we'd met him and Jess in Limbo back before we started out as Larkin and Adelia, with everything that had happened I'd forgotten all about it. I apologised for not remembering, as I mentioned it takes me time to get to know new people.

I then remembered the aftermath to the axe and block scene, when the executioner had gone on to bloodily decapitate another woman who mounted the scaffold as we were leaving. It had been in low light and the doomed woman had been well disguised with long hair, but as I looked at Ben and Jess together the penny dropped.

"Jess," I asked, "did you lose your head at the last masquerade?"

Jess smiled.

"It was a wig and a model head form, but yes, that was me," she confirmed. "Uncle Morbid helped us put the effect together, did it look good?"

"It looked very realistic, I wasn't expecting that at all," I told her. "Nice dress, too."

Jess smiled.

"That's my Lady Jane Grey dress," she explained. "I made it ages ago based on the one she wore for her execution, it was great to finally be beheaded wearing it."

"So is recreating historical executions your thing?" asked Maise.

"Not just executions, but famous historical and literary deaths," replied Jess. "Hannah does it too – she was Ophelia in the stream last year, and Ben's been joining in with us lately. He's a big teddy bear so I really had to talk him into being my executioner, but I love how he took to the role."

We ordered food and waited for the show to start. A well dressed man in his late twenties came and performed some close up magic for us, introducing himself as Darryl DeVante. He performed fluid card and coin tricks with a friendly conversational style that put us all at ease, picking up on little details about each of us and working them into his presentation. He finished his set just as the food arrived, thanked us for watching and headed off for another table. Then around about nine, the lights dipped and the stage lit up for the main cabaret. Ted mounted the platform, introduced himself as Professor Norax and thanked us all for coming. Then he was joined onstage by someone I recognised.

His assistant, who he introduced as the Lovely Lillian, was the burlesque dancer I'd seen perform on my first night at the Mortal Masquerade. On that occasion she'd performed a risqué dance on and around a guillotine, climaxing with her doing an upside down splits beneath the falling blade. I knew she wasn't one of our regulars so it was interesting to see her again in another context. This time she was fully dressed in a sparkly skirt and top, handing the props to Professor Norax as he performed a set of productions, colour changes and vanishes ending with a quick change illusion swapping Lillian's outfit for a long red evening dress. This was followed by a mind reading routine by Darryl DeVante, before Lillian returned in a circus bodysuit to perform balances and contortions around a series of props. Her performance was skilful, captivating and bizarre, I wonder what she must have thought of our macabre party when she came to visit.

The show ended with a levitation illusion, as Professor Norax wrapped Lillian, who was now dressed as an Asian princess, in a silk cloth to rise into the air and suddenly vanish. He then flourished the empty cloth, dropping it to reveal Lillian and Darryl so all three could take their bows together.

The stage was then cleared into a dancefloor and a DJ began to play classic pop. Craig and Rebecca were the first to get up and dance, followed by the other members of our party, leaving Maise and I alone at the table looking after Chris's handbag. Ted, Lillian and Darryl came out to sit and chat with us.

"I loved the show," said Maise. "Thank you so much for having us here."

"It's good to see you two as well," said Lillian with a smile. "The last time I saw you you were both run through with spikes."

"We know what you do at the Mortal Masquerade," said Ted. "I admit it's not my cup of tea – I'm old school theatre magic, while you're more like the Grand Guignol. But if the two of you ever want to try out your sawing illusion in front of a proper audience we'll have a slot waiting for you on our stage."

"Thanks, we appreciate that," I said. "But I have to ask, what's this misunderstanding that keeps getting mentioned?"

Ted sighed.

"First of all, you know where we all are, don't you?"

"You mean we're dead?"

"Yes, that. OK, that means we can talk openly."

He began to tell us his story.

We already knew that no-one aged in this plane of reality, instead remaining at the age at which they died. But it turned out that Ted Braxton had been here longer than anyone we'd met so far, having died way back in the early 1930s.

He'd been a professional magician since his teens, learning his craft in the mid-1900s. He arrived at the stage name T B Norax as an anagram of his real surname, which apparently was a done thing at the time, toured English variety theatres and authored a few books and pamphlets as Professor Thomas Bradley Norax, including some exposes of fake mystics of the day. His career came to an abrupt end with an onstage accident involving a trick which had claimed other victims besides him.

"The fucking bullet catch," he said. "It did for Chung Ling Soo and it did for me. I was careful, really careful. I don't know how much safety you lot have to worry about being already dead and all, but when we were doing anything dangerous it had to be watertight. I was a magician, the whole point was that I wasn't actually doing what I said I was doing. That gun should not have killed me."

"So what happened?" asked Maise.

"Well, someone did me in, didn't they?" he replied. "Honestly, fair play to them, it was dog eat dog in our business back then and I'd certainly made enough enemies with the fortune teller booklets. If I didn't see them coming, they had a perfect opportunity to shoot me dead and make it look like an accident. I got over it years ago, there's no use crying over spilled milk and it's not like I can do anything about it. I'm not the bloody Ghost Detective. Actually, I was more concerned with why I was still able to think about it at all.

"Here's something else you should know about me: I'm a lifelong atheist. Being a professional magician turns you into a cynical git anyway – what was it Houdini said, 'my professional life has been a process of constant disillusionment' – but I was brought up to believe in rational science from a young age. I did not expect to wake up post mortem in whatever place this is."

"You remembered right away, then?" I asked.

"Funnily enough I did. I've had a few people tell me it takes a while to get total recall around here, but when I died I pretty much knew it immediately. Maybe I saw it coming, but too late to do anything about it. Maybe it was force of habit making me see things as they are. I was more surprised than anything.

"So, here's me, a lifelong atheist, finding myself in the afterlife. My first thought was that this was the last dying embers of my consciousness and I'd be fading off to nothing any minute, but then the longer that didn't happen I had to accept that, no, this does appear to be some kind of spirit plane. I knew it wasn't the world I'd left – it looked like it, but all the people were different, so there was no chance of me tracking down my killers even if I'd wanted to. Apart from that, there were shops, offices, factories, theatres, people doing jobs, all the same things I was used to. I tried doing some simple jobs while I got my bearings, and that's where I started noticing the Trinities.

"The Trinities?" asked Maise. "As in, three?"

"Yes, three. Trinity, triad, call it what you like. The bloody magic number. Anyway, I passed through a load of these places over the years – I was never what you'd call a normal career type of person – but wherever I went, I'd notice three distinct figures amongst the management. The first I called the Big Boss – he'd be the chairman, the owner, the person sorting everything out. And he'd always have a right hand man that would do all the dirty work, a Maintainer that would make things happen.

And then there was the third one. They'd be like the foreman, the day to day boss that would keep an eye on everyone, until one day folk'd go off with them and never be seen again."

He'd just described our three Custodians to a tee. Uncle Morbid, the Big Boss. Scott, the Maintainer. And Susan had already confirmed to me what she was.

No wonder Ted was spooked.

"Now, I'm not an idiot. Most religions have some kind of trinity in their mythology, so if there really are gods, fairies, djinn or whatever they're probably going to come in threes. I noticed that people were passing on from here and that the trinities were the ones prepping them and sending them on their way, but I didn't want them getting their hands on me. As I see it, at this point, there are three ways this can go. One: all that religious stuff is true after all and I'm waiting to get sent off to heaven or hell. I know which one I'd be getting in that case and fuck that, but I'm still not convinced anyway. I didn't believe in God before and I don't now.

"Option two: the plane after this is the oblivion I was expecting, it just turns out we get a little extra time first to work things out. Which leads me to option three.

"Since I'm here whether I like it or not, I might as well stick around and see what happens. Once I realised what the trinities were doing I pretty much made it my mission to stay out of their mitts for as long as possible. I wasn't expecting an afterlife, but now I've got one, ta very much, if anyone wants me to give it up they can prize it from my cold dead hands. I'm not a vampire or anything so it's not like I'm not hurting anyone.

"Eventually I set up my little magic shop on the back street. It turned out I'd somehow saved enough money and the unit came up, so now I had a base where I could be my own boss away from the trinities. I missed performing so I ended up buying the unit next door to turn into the cabaret theatre we're in now.

"Lillian came into the shop one day, and never left. She'd worked in circus and burlesque before she got roped into some other stuff we won't talk about. Come to think of it, you got done in as well, didn't you, Lillian?"

Lillian scowled and nodded. I vaguely wondered what had happened to her.

"Point is, she knew what it was like to be manipulated, exploited and gotten rid of, had noticed the trinities just like I had and also said fuck that. So she came to work with me in the shop, was my assistant in the theatre and went out to do some freelance performing as and when. Darryl joined us fairly recently. As you've seen he's a bit of a close up marvel and has a real knack for making things work.

Anyway, your lot ended up booking Lillian to go and do her guillotine burlesque routine and she came back telling me about this weird ball where everyone was getting killed and taken off to the back, it was nothing like the way I'd seen the trinities operate before. Then when she told me it was all illusions, it was even weirder. I was intrigued, but I wasn't about to wander in and get caught up by whatever trinity is running the place. That bloke who runs it there, Uncle Morbid I think you call him – he's got Big Boss written all over him. And Lillian reckoned she'd met his maintainer."

Lilian pointed over at Chris, who was boogying away with Wilco on the dance floor..

"It was the bear that he was working with," she said. "Right?"

"Who, Chris?"

I noticed Darryl give her an angry nudge.

"Sorry, the bear she was working with. But she wasn't a girl back then."

"I think you mean Scott, our technician," I said. "And so you know, he and Chris were never like that."

"Sorry, no offence meant. But yes, him. What about your cleaner? Who's Death for you guys?"

I held in a laugh as I thought of Susan.

"Don't ask," I said. "I think we might have broken her."

Ted looked at us surprised.
"Well, you be careful," he said. "Trinities are there to mess with your head and get you ready to pass on, it's what they do. I've never known them to set up the bloody Grand Guignol, though."

"There's a reason we wanted to meet you," said Lillian. "They've asked me back to do a fire performance this Saturday. Apparently there's a big outdoor thing you're all doing?"

"That's right," I said. "We've been setting it up for ages, it's going to be amazing."

I suddenly had a thought.

"You're not planning to do anything stupid, are you? This is our family you're talking about."

"Don't be daft, of course not," said Ted. "Who do you think I am, Abraham Van Helsing? I'm not trying to destroy the trinities, I couldn't if I wanted to. But I don't want to be playing into their hands either. We've got our own family right here."

"Listen," I said, "All I know is that Morior Studios and the Mortal Masquerade is the only place I've ever fitted in. I have my soulmate Maise, good friends, a job that I love and Uncle Morbid told us straight up that we're here for as long as we want to be. Bollocks to passing on, this is our idea of heaven right here. For your information we do have a Death and I've seen her do her thing, but she also pulled the lever to bury us in cement and as you can see we haven't gone anywhere."

Darryl looked us up and down.

"You were buried in cement?" he said.

"More than once," said Maise. "It's the sort of thing we get up to. It's not even the weirdest."

"Uncle Morbid asked me to invite you over to see what we do," I continued. "I understand why you're suspicious, and you've been here a lot longer than I have. But I'm pretty sure he's not trying to pack you off to oblivion. Maybe we all have more in common than you think."

A thought struck me as I said that. I looked across the table at Ted, the boss, and his two companions, all running their own little piece of heaven together. They even had employees operating the bar and kitchen. We hadn't been introduced to them.

"Out of interest, have you noticed how many of you there are?" I asked.

"Smartarse," said Lillian with a chuckle.