The Vanishing Hour
At the fog-locked Aurelian Theatre, illusionist Cassiel Duvane nightly performs the Vanishing Cabinet trick that made her mother famous before her mother stepped inside it ten years ago and never stepped back out. Now the volunteers who vanish always return smiling, cold to the touch, and subtly wrong — and Cass has one more show to learn what's really trading places with the living backstage before the whole town takes its final bow.
Main characters
Cassiel Duvane
POVFiercely controlled showwoman hiding raw grief, obsessively perfectionist about her craft, secretly desperate enough to bargain with things she doesn't understand
Thaddeus Voss
Gruffly protective mentor carrying decades of guilt, pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness, quietly terrified of what he helped build
Pim
Eerily polite and soft-spoken, speaks only in riddles and half-truths, unsettlingly patient in a way that suggests centuries, not years