Two on a Guillotine

The spitting image of her mother at that age, early twenty-something Cassie Duquesne never really knew her parents, Duke and Melinda Duquesne, having been sent to live with her aged maternal aunt in Wisconsin after Melinda abandoned the family when Cassie was an infant, Melinda's whereabouts since unknown. Twenty years ago, Duke and Melinda were at the top of the profession as a magician - The Great Duquesne - and his on-stage assistant respectively, they specializing in illusions of the macabre and gore. Cassie reenters the realm of her father's life when she returns to Los Angeles to attend his funeral, which is as theatrical as his life in that he vowed in his life to emerge from the dead. Beyond this issue, Cassie learns that she is the sole beneficiary of her father's $300,000 estate, with which those arguably closest to him, Buzz Sheridan and Dolly Bast, his longtime manager and housekeeper respectively, are outwardly all right in Duke's want to bring Cassie back, she who they state he loved from afar despite Cassie's belief that he never loved her in not seeking her out in life. There is one caveat to Cassie getting that inheritance: she must live for seven consecutive nights - midnight to dawn - in her father's isolated mansion. Getting over her initial antagonism toward him, Cassie is able to navigate through most of the unexpected occurrences in the mansion with the help of a man she meets, Val Henderson, they determining those occurrences all part of the illusions of the Great Duquesne's professional life. Cassie is however unaware that Val is really a reporter out to get a story. As more and more terrifying and inexplicable occurrences happen at the house, the questions become if someone is trying to frighten Cassie into losing the inheritance, and/or if the Great Dusquesne really has risen from the dead. The answers may partially be found in the locked room in the house which Cassie cannot get into as the Great Dusquesne had the only key which was buried with him.—Huggo