As he nears nineteen, the man in the grey suit abruptly moves his student to a modest London flat overlooking the British Museum. The relocation ends the boy’s formal lessons without explaining when his promised “challenge” will begin, leaving him to study alone among wardrobes of anonymous black suits and shelves of densely inked notebooks built around recurring tree diagrams and runic glyphs.

Now free to come and go, Marco spends his nights walking London, observing crowds while practicing illusions in mirrors with no one to judge their effect. When he returns one day to the old town house, he finds it boarded up and abandoned; on the walk back, he realizes he has lost a notebook and panics as he retraces his steps in the rain.

Under a café awning, Marco spots a young woman reading his missing journal. She introduces herself as Isobel Martin (a name that sounds false) and apologizes for paging through it after trying to return it. Marco gives his own name as Marco Alisdair, then chooses to extend the encounter by inviting Isobel for wine at a small candlelit café he likes.

Over wine and food, their cautious conversation turns when Isobel admits she recognized charms and symbols in Marco’s notebook and owns a tarot deck, including the Wheel of Fortune. Marco examines her cards and learns she acquired the old deck in Paris, where an antique dealer wanted them gone as “devil cards.” Intrigued by Isobel’s openness, Marco offers to show her what his work truly is, and she agrees.

Outside in the rain, Marco positions Isobel against a stone wall and asks whether she trusts him; when she says yes, he covers her eyes, whispers unfamiliar words, and the sound and feel of the street vanish. When Marco lifts his hand, Isobel finds herself in bright winter sunlight in a snow-dusted forest, with bare black trees and crisp air—an impossible, vivid transformation that convinces her he is a magician. Overwhelmed and delighted, Isobel laughs, and Marco kisses her; to London passersby, they appear to be only two young lovers kissing in the rain.