In a bit of wrapup to last week's episode, a marriage and another divorce certificate is turned up for Gavin, indicating that he's also been married to Melissa Fanelle. He can't remember anything about her, though. Several weeks pass uneventfully after this revelation.
Late one night, Thielo hears Alexandra saying something in her sleep. After listening for a moment, it sounds Greek, and very similar to the invisibility incantation. He wakes her up and they worry about it a bit.
Meanwhile, Angelina is awakened by a pounding on her door. It turns out to be Tina. Esteban, she says between sobs, has vanished! He was talking loudly in his sleep, a language she didn't understand, and then when she went to see if he was all right he wasn't there. Angelina checks things out a little and finds Esteban's wallet, watch, and shoes, and decides that he doesn't seem to have slipped out. She tells Tina to call Gavin, and Gavin calls the Strausses and Orchis, and that team comes to Esteban and Tina's apartment to try to figure out what happened. The only thing they find out is that under the ruby glasses Orchid has a book under one arm, apparently having fallen onto the path of some archetype. Orchid and Alexandra together invoke Carcosa in the mirror and Alexandra sees an out-of-place brown-stone in that view.
They return to the Ranch and contact various people. During the night, Violet performs the tracking ritual and finds out that Esteban is in New York, even finding a particular address. SILVER heads to the Big Apple, catching some sleep on the plane.
In New York, they are met by Officer Bob and a woman from the NYPD, detective W. Anne Crushe. She tells them that Bob and TNI having helped her out some before she wants to return the favor... apparently the McCalister building has had a police investigation there recently. Abigail Carstairs vanished a couple of months ago and the police investigated but found nothing. She lets them into the building and tells them the little the police know about the whole thing.
Abby's apartment is creepy - it is completely without furniture, including the carpet, but not bare - the walls and ceiling are covered with a mass of papers and found objects. Thielo finds something that might be a yellow sign or maybe a doodle of a squid. Others find pages from a play which features the residents of the building. One page they find mentions the arrival of some inquisitors, which seems pretty odd.
Over the next few hours they check out the apartment, map the building, and interview the other residents under the pretense of investigating Abigail's disappearance. None of them know anything or have much besides speculations on what happened to her or even how she got all the furniture out of her apartment. Other calling around done by Darwin reveals that no one in the building has paid their bills in a few months and the building is about to be cut off from most services. Violet does the tracking ritual on Angelina's sketch of the building layout and can't find Esteban on it, though she reports that the planchette does react some to the drawings, as though he's there somewhere. Eventually they decide that things may change after the sun goes down.
And indeed they do. They go through the roof door after sundown to find a lushly appointed chamber (the "smoking room" mentioned in some pages of the play) done in an Edwardian sitting room style. They all freak out and possessed by the panic of crowds, run back downstairs.
There they get into a fight with the painter they had talked to earlier because he is taping Abby's apartment. He's much more combative at night and tells them Abby moved upstairs with the encyclopedia salesman. They give up fighting with him fairly quickly and return upstairs, where they start looking for the sixth floor, where Abby and the salesman are supposed to live.
In the night floors they find a number of strange things. One of them finally freaks out Gavin - when they find themselves suddenly on a stage with an audience of puppets - and he is unsettled for the rest of their time in the floors. Other highlights include an invitation to the ball at the palace delivered by a clockwork device, strange sounds and a few strange people, and so on. It's all very surreal. Doors sometimes change where they lead too, for instance.
Eventually they find some bedrooms, one of which has shackles on the bed. Thielo remembers that Esteban found a room like that in Ytl, and they examine the bed more closely with aura sight. It becomes apparent that Esteban is on the bed, but invisible. They get the shackles open and make there way back to the real world. Once there, they retreat from the building to let Esteban wake up from his stupor and to recover a bit.
Reporting in, Gavin tells the Inquisition to send bombs and fire and stuff, raving quite a lot before Alexandra takes over and gives a more lucid report. She does ask for Dr. Atsui to come out, however.
That night, Gavin has a dream in which he is looking into a pool at the center of a ring of thrones. Around him are clustered many people, but he doesn't see them. He's watching Sam German (from the trinity site meeting) go into the McCalister building and from there into the night floors. The people around him are dismayed at this occurrence. In the morning he tells the team that they have to rescue the presumed Comte from the night floors. He also has settled a bit in his mind, now that he knows about the great doll and puppet conspiracy.