Maise came by for her first appointment later that week. We went to the back room to discuss what she had in mind.

"My partner and I are involved in a kind of horror roleplay project," she explained. "It involves a lot of special effects, which I realise isn't the same as what you do, but I want to try moving it in a more magical direction. I've sawn her into pieces with a jigsaw on a number of occasions so now it's my turn to get sawn, I'll be the one in the box. Do you think you can help us?"

The horror theatre project she was talking about had to be the Mortal Masquerade. I wanted to learn more without mentioning it directly, so I asked if she had any pictures of what they'd done so far.

"Not that I can share, but do I have a video on my phone," she said. "This was a crazy thing we shot at home as part of a story we were running, but it's one of our sawings. A quartering, actually. I'll warn you, it's a bit graphic, and a little kinky."

The film turned out to be of Maise in a mask and long dress, next to a woman tied spreadeagled on a plastic covered bed, fully dressed in a t-shirt and trousers. Maise was saying something to the camera, but as the sound was turned down I couldn't hear what was being said. When she finished her speech she picked up a motorised jigsaw as the woman on the bed goaded her on. They used no frame for the sawing about to take place, but concealed the secret with a torrent of stage blood, which soaked the bed and both women in floods of crimson as the victim was sawn across the waist, reacting throughout. Maise then carefully pulled the saw back, making an effort to conceal the illusion secret in a logical manner. It was an over the top, gory display that wasn't yet at the level of a professional magic performance, but I recognised the signs of a magician's mind at work.

Maise then took the saw around the bed and placed it against the crotch of her bound partner, turning the blood torrent back on as she ran the saw vertically up her torso and over her face. She crawled up on the bed to do so, getting drenched in blood herself in the process. The sawing complete, she threw the jigsaw out of frame and made a final speech to the camera.

"That was pretty extreme," I said after the film was over. "Do you make a lot of films like that?"

"It's not really about making films," said Maise, "more immersive experiences. We only made that video to advance a storyline, it was deliberately over the top to get a reaction from the person we were addressing it to."

"There were some strong moments," I said. "I like that you went beyond the standard jigsaw routine and had the idea to do it in both directions. It was pretty bold of you to leave part of the gimmick out, but you did a good job of hiding the pipe and using the blood flow to conceal the illusion secret. I couldn't make out the story with the sound off, but it was clear you had one that you were telling in character. So that was your partner you were murdering?"

"Yes. Her name's Lexie, we've done a lot of stuff like this together, to each other. Now I want to let her saw me in half, but I want to see if we can do it more like a classic magic trick, bring something to it other than gore."

We had a stock sawing box in the workshop about the right size for Maise. She had no trouble at all mastering the standard instructions with the fake feet, but wanted to do more.

"Is there a way I can keep stretched out when she saws through me, then switch out the feet to separate the boxes?" she asked.

I couldn't help but laugh. Triana had told me to watch out for coincidences and signs from the universe, having someone come to me and independently come up with my signature sawing routine the exact same way I had definitely qualified. I took her through the various steps, which she took on board smoothly and creatively. Never mind the Mortal Masquerade tempting us away, I was wondering about stealing Maise away to our side, she was definitely thinking like a magician. After Maise thanked me and left, Ted told me he'd invited her to bring a party of friends to see our show when she was able. He didn't say which group of friends, but it was implied.

They came about a week later, booking a table as a party from Morior Studios, which we knew to be the location fronting the Mortal Masquerade. They were a cheery, friendly lot, nothing like the despondent, brainwashed souls Ted had imagined. In among their party I was pleasantly surprised to find an old friend, an actor-director from a horror theatre who used to hire me as an illusion consultant. He'd been at my funeral and even spoke with my parents, who he told me were genuinely proud of the man I became even though they struggled to let go of the girl they raised. There was a tear in my eye I learned that, after everything, they accepted me as best they could. It's all I ever wanted from them.

Lexie, the girl I'd seen sawn on the bed, turned out to be a butch tomboy with cropped blond hair and the air of a scrapper. When Ted tried to warn them about the trinities and voiced his concerns about the Mortal Masquerade, she very sweetly told him to do one. She told us that the Mortal Masquerade was her family, the only place she'd ever fitted in, and extended an invitation from the bosses there to go and see it first hand; they had a big outdoor event coming up and had already asked Lillian to come back to do a fire performance. It was put up or shut up at this point, so we decided to go.

What we found was even crazier than what Lillian had seen. In the woods they had constructed a jungle theme park filled with full size working models of man-eating plants, then held a wide game where they had to collect plastic eggs without getting devoured. There were costumed characters and little stories unfolding all over the place – Maise and Lexie spent the whole night in character as a pair of Victorian sisters, acting out a complex mystery plot with another couple playing their antagonists. We watched it all unfold on closed circuit monitors with the people who'd put it together, a male artist named Wilco and a t-girl called Chris, who it turned out had been the then-male technician Lillian met on her first visit.

Maise and Lexie's story ended with them vanishing into a pool of quicksand while their last surviving antagonist (the other having been eaten by a plant in a spectacularly staged moment of drama) was gobbled up by a giant salamander puppet worked by Chris and Wilco. After everything died down and the party ended, we all sat together by the moonlit lake with the trinity behind the Mortal Masquerade; the big boss Uncle Morbid, Scott the maintainer and, finally revealed, the deliverer, a surprisingly normal woman called Susan.

Uncle Morbid told us their whole story. He'd been a movie special effects expert working on 1960s horror movies before he died, then founded Morior Studios and the Mortal Masquerade through a by now familiar pattern of coincidences. When they started it had been about helping lost spirits come to terms with dying before Susan helped them on their way, but as the Masquerade became more theatrical and attracted more creative spirits, the emphasis shifted to playing dead in order to choose life, living off the intensity and excitement of simulated fatalities in intricate roleplays. Most of them now had no intention of ever actually passing on – gruesome as it appeared on first glance, this vision of Hell was some spirits' idea of Heaven.

Uncle Morbid convinced Ted and Lillian we had nothing to fear from them and said he wanted the Mortal Masquerade and the Wonder Emporium to coexist as allies. Our organisations were sides of the same coin – we offered fulfilment through magic and wonder, they through dark excitement, horror and elicit thrills.

Uncle Morbid noted something else about us too, something that I'd suspected for a while, that Triana had hinted at and that Ted had been running from for years.

On Monday, Lillian and I arrived at the Wonder Emporium to find Ted had closed for "stocktaking and staff training". He said it was about time we did.

We went through to the theatre, where Triana was waiting for us with her parents. She gave me a little wave as I entered.

"I believe you are already acquainted with Bob and Stephanie," Ted said to me drily. "I spoke with Susan after we met on Saturday night, it turns out we have a mutual friend. One who's been watching us for quite a while."

He nodded at Triana then back at me with the calm fury of someone who knew he'd been fairly fooled, hook, line and sinker.

"Well played," he said. "Well bloody played."