A single high-pitched note cut into her ears. Sloan froze. She knew jack dick about music or instruments, did not even osmose any secondhand knowledge from all her time spent with Clair. But she knew one instrument for sure, could pick it out from a single note, and it caused a reflexive wave of dread to billow in the pit of her gut.

The violin.

A sleek gash burst across Sloan's chest. It rent her coat and the skin and flesh beneath and cut straight to the bone. Sloan staggered back, almost to the edge of the fallen roof, only to understand that there was no fallen roof. There was no collapsed wall. Her back hit the perfectly upright wall, right beside the window that had shattered. Around her Clair's room rebuilt itself, the bed, the desk, the closet, the uniforms, the computer, everything mussed but stable.

An illusion. It had been an illusion. And Sloan had not even considered—

A second slicing note of the violin silenced her thoughts as a red streak spread diagonally from shoulder to hip. Sloan bounced against the wall. As the illusion broke and the room returned to its original dimensions, even Clair returned, standing in the center with the violin under her chin and the bow spread across the strings.

A third cut. A fourth. Sloan bent forward to defend the Soul Gem on her stomach. Slices spread across her back, her skull. She was whisked back and forth as the strikes came from all sides and angles, an endless onslaught of pain brought upon by each coarse note on the violin. The instrument Clair had mastered the most, her favorite instrument, the one in which she placed her faith. Everything else—trickery, stage machinery. The violin did the real work. She only played it when she knew she could kill.

(Chapter 26)