“No one’s eh-ever…called me a magician before,” she said, and it turned out more tears weren’t just possible, they were necessary.
She leaned over onto the table and buried her face in her arms.
No one moved for a while. Eventually the door opened. Still facedown, she heard a third person enter the room, followed by hushed voices—“Are you sure?” / “Yeah, it’s over. Let this poor woman go home.”
Then a voice close to her and more distinct: “Mrs. Fredericksson, you’re free to go. And please accept our sincere condolences on your loss.”
Claire straightened up from the table. Her sleeves were damp, sticky, wrinkled. Her face ached.
“Why?” she asked softly. “What’s happened? What’s going on?”
“Captain’s holding a press conference in an hour,” said Lieutenant Douglas. He held his hand out for her to grasp. “I’ll walk you out.”
Dazed, sleep-deprived, and battling a headache, Claire swayed on her feet as Douglas guided her down the hallway. They didn’t make it around the corner before a bloodcurdling scream erupted in Claire’s ear.
“You! You witch!”
Confused and discombobulated, Claire watched in slow motion as her husband’s mistress struggled against her captors, thrashing wildly toward Claire, reaching out with blood-red nails as through trying to slash the air between them and propel herself closer.
Douglas thrust Claire behind him and his younger partner covered her from the side until Becca was subdued.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” Becca cried out, slower, sounding sad instead of angry now. “You don’t even know who I am.”
Jessica
That evening, Jessica watched the press release live on the local news and read the report online six or seven times because she couldn’t quite believe her nightmare was over.
Having recognized a man from Cal’s footage, Jessica had picked up her cracked cell phone and frantically called Club Deception.
“Veronique speaking. Password, please.”
“Veronique, it’s Jessica Clarke, listen, I need—”
“Oh damn, Jessica. How are you holding up?”
“I need the name of a member, he’s a…” What had Claire called him? An amateur? A probationary something? “He’s not a full member, I think he still needs to pass the test, but he’s older, real skinny, and he, like, skulks around, does card tricks…”
“That describes a lot of—Oh wait, you said he’s not a member yet? There are only three provisional members right now.”
Jessica closed her eyes and bit her cheek. “Provisional, right. Who are they? Please, I need their names.”
“Normally I wouldn’t do this—but since it’s you, Cupcake Girl…let me see…Richard Moore, Toby Joyce, and Leon Krause. With a K.”
“Thanks, you’re a lifesaver.”
Fingers tripping over one another at her keyboard, Jessica opened three browser screens for three separate image searches and typed in the names.
“Leon,” she whispered.
It was the skinny, grudge-holding man she’d dubbed Ichabod.
In the unused footage from Cal’s show, Ichabod had sat next to Cal while Cal performed his Bottle Cap trick for seven or eight audience members. He’d held out a napkin and asked for Cal’s autograph, which explained how he’d perfectly forged it at the Marmont’s guest log. Although he wasn’t the one who’d helped with the trick, he managed to walk offscreen with the bottle—holding it at an odd angle with the signed napkin so as not to muddy Cal’s fingerprints.
She called it in to the station and prayed for the first time in years. Let it be enough. Please let it be enough.
* * *
In the news clip, Leon was seen from behind, wearing handcuffs and keeping his head down as he passed through a barricade of reporters and camera crews.
The anchor intoned: “His motive is currently unknown but police have in custody a second, unnamed suspect, whom they will also be questioning at length.”
Jessica puffed up with pride at the next voice-over: “A tip from original suspect Calum Clarke’s wife—we’re told they’re newlyweds—led to the warrant necessary to search Mr. Krause’s apartment, where police discovered the original clothing worn by the murder victim.”
Cut to a slick-looking reporter outside the police station, struggling to be heard above the din of competing TV news crews. “According to his website, Leon Krause was a talent manager whose lead client, Rebecca Winstrom, recently performed in murder victim Jonathan Fredericksson’s magic show as a woman who gets cut in half. Becca, as she’s known to family and friends, was apparently following in the family footsteps. As Channel Four has exclusively learned, Becca’s mother was also a magician’s assistant, way back in the summer of 2004, when Becca was nine.”
An old photo of Becca’s mother filled the TV screen, then shrank to half size to make room for Becca’s professional headshot. Seen side by side like that, they almost looked like twins. Jessica’s feeling of déjà vu at the Magician of the Year contest made sense now. She had seen both of them onstage doing a similar illusion, albeit many years apart—she’d seen the mother in Jonathan’s show in Chicago as a girl.
* * *
The first few days after Cal’s return, Jessica worried incessantly. Part of it was leftover anxiety from his time in lockup, and part of it was a delayed response to his actions on the night of the murder. He’d fallen off the wagon, hard, which was of course the only way to fall. To her relief, Cal started going to AA meetings every day—sometimes twice a day—which was something Jessica’s mother had never even attempted.
The night he came home, they kissed in a mutual tempest of emotion.
“You saved my life,” he murmured. “You beautiful, brilliant woman.”
He lifted her and she wrapped her legs around his waist so he could carry her to the bedroom. He set her down on the silk sheets and reached over her to open the bedside drawer.
She didn’t have to look to know what was inside.
Her pulse quickened deliciously but she pushed him away. “My turn,” she said.
“Oh?”
She took the rope from him. “Wrists above your head.”
He looked surprised, but game. “Okay.”
The rope was soft but thick. She was afraid of hurting him, so he walked her through the knot-tying process. When she was finished, Cal remained fully clothed in his dress shirt and slacks, his wrists tied to the bedposts above his head, with his legs spread open across the mattress, ankles secured at either end.
She hovered over him, and he strained upward so that he could brush his lips against hers. But at the last second, she moved away, and he let out a noise of frustration. The ropes held tight, preventing him from pursuing.
“This, right here, how you can’t touch me, is how I felt around you for a long time,” she said quietly. “Like you were just out of reach, like I was only getting some of you instead of everything. I had to learn about you from other people. I wanted to be close to you so badly, but you wouldn’t let me.”
To further make her point, she sat down in a chair across the room.
He looked straight at her, eyes full of guilt. “I didn’t mean for you to feel that way.”
“I know you didn’t. That’s why I’m telling you. That’s why I want it to stop.”
“Can you come back, please? Just be close to me.”
She hesitated and he gave her a sad smile.
“I won’t distract you,” he promised. “I can’t touch you at all, remember? You’re in complete control.”
She strode back to the bed and turned off the bedside lamp so they were shielded, at least, by darkness. The conversation wasn’t going to be easy, but it was necessary. She laid her head on his chest and he sighed with contentment.
“Why did you marry me so fast?” she asked.
“You first.”
“Because you were my dream guy. And I knew if I didn’t lock you down, it woul
d never come around for me again. Plus, have you seen you? And that accent—come on. You’ve got to know how sexy it is.”
“Oh, this? I keep it around strictly for seduction purposes. ‘Howdy, Pard-ner,’” he drawled. “That’s my real voice. I’m a red-blooded American.”
“Shut up, we’re not all from Texas.”
“It’d be fun if you were, though. All that big hair.”
“I’m trying to be serious.”
“Okay. Here’s the truth. The day I met you, I couldn’t take my eyes off you, because even though you got the biggest tips, you didn’t keep them. You organized a pool.”
She shrugged off his awe. “We all work harder when everyone’s paid equally.”
“If I and everyone I know had gotten the biggest tips, we’d have kept them for ourselves,” he remarked. “You took the blame for a broken glass so the new hire wouldn’t get sacked. You were the reason people loved coming back to the bar; you chatted and laughed with every customer, made them feel welcome. You were everything I wish my friends and I were like. Everything I hoped for in another person. And I knew if I left town and went on with my tour as though I hadn’t met you, if I left without at least trying to be with you, I’d regret it forever.”
She wrapped her arms around him and rested her face on his chest, feeling bashful. “Okay.”
“I like myself, now. With you. I didn’t before.”
“I like you, too.”
“Mmm, I had noticed that.” He nuzzled the back of her neck and gave her a tender kiss, all of it misdirection for the sneak-attack tickle against her ribs.
Her eyes widened. “You jerk.”
“What? Oh. Right.”
“Your hands have been free this whole time?”
“Well, yes, what kind of magician would I be if I couldn’t get out of a simple sailor knot? What kind of sailor, for that matter?”
“But the whole point was that you couldn’t touch me,” she cried.
“And I couldn’t. Because you didn’t want me to.”
“But you could’ve stopped me at any time. You could’ve grabbed me and held me down.”
“I would never grab you and hold you down. I love you.”
She licked her lips, tasting the slight saltiness of her tears. His gaze was steady and she held it for a charged beat. “What if I want you to hold me down?”
“Then all you have to do is ask.”
“Cal,” she said, twining her fingers roughly through his thick, dark hair, “hold me down.”
He gripped her wrists in his strong hands and flipped her over so she was flat on her stomach, facedown, divesting her of her clothes at the same time. She wiggled her butt at him and he pounced, gripping her hips firmly so he could slide home.
She gasped and he kissed her neck at the spot where it met her shoulder, right where she most loved it, and whispered in her ear.
“The French call orgasms le petit mort,” he murmured. “It means ‘little death.’”
“I’m dying,” she wailed, a minute later, breathing frantic lungfuls of air, “I’m dying…”
“You’re living,” he corrected forcefully, slamming so hard that her body slid forward and her face dangled over the foot of the bed. Still he didn’t stop.
* * *
Two weeks after his release, Jessica threw a dinner party. She’d been eager to introduce Cal to Landon, and to spend more time with Kaimi, whom she’d come to consider one of her closest friends. She invited Claire and Felix over as well, though Claire had been noncommittal about their presence. Jessica didn’t even know if they were still seeing each other.
Landon was the first to arrive. “Heyyyy, sis,” he said. “I love saying that.”
“Me too,” she squealed. “Cal, look who’s here.”
Cal and Landon shook hands. “Thanks for coming tonight, it means a lot to us.” Cal clapped him on the back for good measure.
“Hey,” Jessica added, “when I talk about you, can I call you my—”
“Nope,” Landon interrupted.
“My brother from—”
“Nope.”
“Come on. ‘My brother from another mother’?”
“No,” Landon said sternly. Then he grinned. “Okay, fine.”
She clapped her hands and did a little dance.
Let the party begin.
Felix
The night of Jessica’s party, Felix pulled up to Claire’s house on Edgecliffe, his future still hanging in the balance.
In deference to her tragedy, the board members of Club Deception had put off voting on Jonathan’s accusation that Felix had stolen his act, with Claire facilitating the theft. But now they’d set a meeting for Tuesday. His entire future was at stake, and he had no idea what Claire thought about it. They didn’t talk much anymore, didn’t go out.
When they first met, he’d wanted to fuck the sadness out of her. But now that they were actually fucking, she seemed sadder than ever.
A few days ago she’d insisted they do it at his house in Glendale, surrounded by junk food and dirty dishes and laundry. She wanted to rub her own nose in the mess she’d made. They’d been having sex when Jonathan was killed, so her punishment to herself was to keep having sex with him. That’s how it felt, anyway.
Cut her some slack. Her husband was murdered, her daughter’s pissed at her, she might not have a place to live soon…Of course she’s sad.
Standing on her empty porch now, he remembered their first conversation. How she’d leaned against the doorway, cool as hell, drinking wine and pointing out his mistakes. Within an hour of talking to her and seeing what a genius she was at magic, he’d become infatuated.
Today she looked run-down and threadbare in a loose, knitted shift dress, wet, tangled hair pulled into a ponytail, eyeliner thick and wobbly. She was no longer precise.
He knew the rift with her daughter was flaying her alive. Eden blamed Claire for Jonathan’s death. She had it in her head that Claire had kicked him out, and that if he’d been happily living at home rather than banished to a hotel he’d still be alive. She’d hightailed it back to Rice University and wouldn’t be returning until her dad’s memorial next month, where she planned to perform the ceremonial breaking of Jonathan’s magic wand, because “Claire couldn’t very well do it in good conscience, could she?” (Eden’s words.)
So when she invited him to dinner at the Clarkes’ it was a pleasant surprise. Even though she asked him to bring her a joint for the drive. Claire smoked two-thirds of it on the way over.
“This is a lot stronger than I remember it being fifteen years ago,” she said. “Wooooo.”
“Maybe you should take it easy,” he replied.
She coughed and motioned for him to turn left, and to park in the underground lot, so they pulled up behind Cal’s BMW in the tandem spot. When Felix pointed out that she’d hogged all the weed, she inverted the joint so the lit end sat inside her mouth. He rolled up the car windows and she shotgunned the rest of the smoke toward his mouth. After that they were still early for the party, so they did it in the front seat. She straddled him in the driver’s seat and it happened so fast—jeans unzipped, dress hiked, angle adjusted, bounce-bounce-bounce—his head spun and “God!” He slumped against her. “Why are you even doing this?”
She flexed and rotated her neck. “I need to eat, and I assume you need to eat…”
“Not the dinner party. This.”
“Because…” She extracted herself from his lap and sat on her side again and wiped herself clean with a Carl’s Jr. napkin, which seemed the most wrong of the things they’d just done. “I feel something with you and I want to keep feeling it,” she said at last.
A seed of hope grew and flourished in his chest. “What’s that?”
“As though I might actually be here. And that someday, I may even want to be.”
It was a start at least, and she kissed him and brought his hand to the right spot to finish her off, and then they got out of the car, looking sl
oppy and half stoned, which was what they both were.
“Do my eyes look red?” she wondered.
“Yeah, sort of.”
“Oh well, they’ll just think I’ve been crying.”
He was a little taken aback. “Haven’t you been?”
She shrugged and that probably upset him the most. He had never known Claire to be anything less than certain about, well, everything.
* * *
While the other guests mingled, Felix took his time looking at the magic posters on the wall and admiring the view from the windows. He’d love to live in a place like this, right on Sunset Boulevard. It all depended on the damn board review.
Across the room, Calum wrapped an arm around Claire and she sagged against him, letting him comfort her. They melded together, a merging of dark and light.
Felix pushed down a spark of jealousy. He’d been inside her not ten minutes ago, but you’d never know it by looking at her. She remained unknowable, fathomless as the ocean. It seemed fitting that he still couldn’t say if her eyes were blue or green. Either way they signified a storm coming.
Jessica wore some kind of cute tweed dress that swished when she walked toward Claire.
“I never really told you how sorry I was,” she offered. “How sorry I am. I only met him the one time…”
“How lucky for you, then.”
Cal looked enchanted by every word his wife uttered. They seemed so happy and so in love that Felix felt weird watching them kiss, so he looked away. Claire didn’t suffer from the same problem; she watched them like a hawk.
Once everyone sat down and began eating, Kaimi’s phone buzzed repeatedly.
“Sorry, everyone, it’s this guy Nigel from Magic Crossroads. He wants the Erdnase papers, but he’s trying to screw me on the price.”
“What’s Magic Crossroads?” Jessica asked.
“The Blighty version of Club Deception,” Cal explained. “They think we’re a bunch of wankers, and we think the same of them.”
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