This summary section includes “The Highest High Walker of them All,” Chapter 24: “The Pocket-Box,” Chapter 25: “The Commedia Close,” Chapter 26: “The Canal of Mirrors,” and Chapter 27: “The Grandest Illusion.”

Gia arranges a meeting with Ella’s father since, as the Grand High Walker, he commands the Underworld. She offers him a large sum of money to raise her dead daughter’s spirit. Sebastien insists that Gia’s daughter must still be alive because she can’t be found in his domain, but Gia doesn’t believe him.

Back at the Arcanum, Ella’s still reeling from the accusations that the Headmarvellers leveled at her. She finds Jason and Brigit in the menagerie and tells them the whole story. Jason’s animal friends report that the police have been secretly searching rooms for a pocket-box. Brigit thinks they must be looking for hers. As she rummages through it, she realizes that it contains a skeleton key like the one she knitted in the picture of Masterji. The three friends make a more thorough search of her pocket-box and find a flyer from a circus and an even more disturbing image—a photograph of the Aces and Gia Trivelino: “Ella gulp[s], staring at the waving image of a young Indian man.