by R. L. King
“And how are we to do that?” Stone asked. “Even if we all abandon our senses of taste and switch to badly-fitting Hawaiian shirts and oversized tote bags, I think the three of us are still fairly distinctive looking. Especially when we’re all together.”
“Then we’ll have to remedy that,” Harrison said. With a stage magician’s grace he fanned out three silver dollars and spread them on the desk.
Jason looked perplexed. “Silver dollars? What’s that gonna—”
But Stone leaned forward, his expression sharp with professional curiosity. “Are these what I think they are?”
Harrison nodded, and Stone reached out to pick one up. He turned it over in his hands, examining it from all angles.
“What is it?” Verity asked.
“If my guess is correct,” Stone said, “these are enchanted to be magical illusion generators.” He looked at Harrison in question.
“Yes. They’re fully configurable: I will attune them to you, Dr. Stone, after which you’ll be able to alter the illusions generated by all three of them at will.”
“You mean these things can make us look different?” Jason asked, reaching out to pick one up. “And they can really fool people?”
“They’re quite effective,” Harrison said. “I have used similar items on many occasions. They even have a technological component, which means they’ll deceive cameras and recording devices. Although,” he added, “they’re not nearly as effective in that regard, so I’d advise you not to spend a great deal of time inside casinos other than this one unless absolutely necessary. And you should particularly avoid any gambling, since the pits are some of the most heavily monitored areas of any casino.”
“How do they work?” Verity asked.
Harrison motioned for Stone and Jason to hand back the ones they’d picked up. When they did, he took all three of them, held them out, and fixed his intense gray gaze on Stone for a few seconds. Then he offered them all to him. “Can you feel them now?”
Stone nodded. He took one, concentrated on it for a moment, and suddenly instead of his tall, pale, and dark-haired figure in a fine suit sitting in his chair, it was now occupied by a short, shaven-headed African-American teenager wearing a 49ers jersey, baseball cap, and jeans.
Jason and Verity stared at him. “That—” Verity began.
“That’s—fucking amazing,” Jason finished, concentrating hard to try to pierce the illusion and obviously failing. “And we can look like anything we want to?” he asked.
Harrison inclined his head. “Anything humanoid. Again, though, I caution you: the illusion works best when it doesn’t cause cognitive dissonance in the observer. It’s best to keep to the same general height and weight range as the original, and the same gender. The illusion won’t do anything to disguise your voices. And obviously if you don’t want to be noticed, your goal is to make yourselves unobtrusive.”
“What will a camera see?” Stone asked. He hadn’t dropped the illusion, and it was odd to hear his British accent coming from the youth’s mouth.
In answer, Harrison directed their attention behind them. All three turned to see a large section of the wall light up into a bank of small monitor screens. Though there was no sign of a camera in the office, the monitors each displayed their images. As they watched, the display changed so that all of the monitors together showed a single large image: Jason, Verity, and the teenager. But although Stone’s illusion held, all three of them could see it flickering around the edges. When they concentrated hard on it, every few seconds it shifted briefly back to Stone before returning to the teenager.
They also noticed that Harrison had not included himself in the camera’s image, but nobody mentioned this fact.
“So...let me get this straight,” Jason said. “As long as we keep these coins on us, Al can change the way we look, and nobody will be able to see through it?”
“Another mage might,” Harrison said. “But unless you encounter any Evil mages who are specifically looking for deception, you should be safe.”
“Excellent,” Stone said. “Thank you, Mr. Harrison. These will be a tremendous help.” He shimmered and returned to his normal appearance, pocketing the three coins. “Now I suppose I’ll have to dust off my American accent.”
Harrison rose. “I’ll make some discreet inquiries regarding possible locations for the portal, but as I said before, I cannot become personally involved without increasing the level of danger for everyone associated with this.”
The others stood as well. “I just hope it isn’t somewhere inside one of those other casinos,” Jason said. “These places seem to be like fortresses—getting in won’t be easy if it is.”
“I don’t think it is,” Stone said. “Remember who set it up in the first place—I doubt they’d have had access the hidden areas of any casinos, especially pre-Evil.”
“Good point,” Jason said.
Upstairs once more, they were met by the smiling Nakamura. “Called ahead, did he?” Stone asked.
Nakamura chuckled. “Don’t worry, I won’t be following you. You have only to call if you need anything. But he did ask me to give you these.” He handed Stone an envelope bearing the Obsidian’s logo.
Stone raised an eyebrow. “What—?”
“Complimentary tickets to one of our headliners’ shows tonight,” he said. “He’s a young man named Shane Tarkasian, a real rising star in Vegas, and he puts on quite an impressive magic show. Mr. Harrison thought you might enjoy it, and perhaps use it to test out your—new wardrobes.”
“Magic show?” Stone asked with a sly sidelong glance.
Nakamura’s smile widened. “There are many different kinds of magic, Dr. Stone.”
The show started at nine o’clock. Stone, Jason, and Verity had spent the time before that testing out the coins—Jason and Verity had entirely too much fun calling out new ideas to Stone and then checking themselves out in the mirror. The mage rolled his eyes at them. “You two are like a couple of children in a toy store. It’s a good thing magic doesn’t wear out.”
In the end, they decided to take on the roles of three college students in town for a vacation. Verity chose the identity of a slender, plain Asian girl with glasses who looked like she spent more time reading books than partying. Jason decided on a muscular Hispanic athlete with a buzz haircut and an oversized baseball jersey, and Stone assumed the appearance of a pale, skinny garage-band rocker in jeans and a Rush T-shirt. They looked at each other and grinned. “I have no idea why these three would be friends,” Jason said, working on changing his voice to make it sound deeper than his real one. “Or for that matter, how they could afford to go to this show we’re going to.”
“Don’t overthink it, Jason,” Verity said, grinning.
“Name’s not Jason. It’s Tommy. Tommy Duran.”
“Nice to meet you, Tommy. I’m—er—let’s see…Alice Lee.”
They both looked expectantly at Stone, who sighed. “I didn’t know I was signing up for a bloody method acting class.”
Jason looked him up and down with a critical eye. “Lemme see. In that getup, you look just like a...Larry Bozeman.”
Stone raised an eyebrow, which didn’t look nearly as impressive on his new face. Then he shrugged. “Why do I get the feeling that you knew a Larry Bozeman in primary school or something? But it’s as good a name as any, I suppose. Larry it is.”
“And stop talking like you’re about to order tea and crumpets. American, Al—I mean Larry. Speak American. Get used to it so you don’t slip.”
“Fine, fine,” he said in his California accent.
Jason grinned at him. “You know, if it wasn’t for the Evil and everything, I’d be having a lot of fun with this.”
“That would make one of us,” Stone said.
The maître d’ at the Obsidian’s posh, high-tech main showroom didn’t look twice at the three of them as they arrived and presented their tickets. He handed them off to another tuxedo-clad employee, and soon they
were seated at a primo table with an excellent close-up view of the entire stage.
“I feel a little guilty,” Jason said after a waiter had taken their dinner and drink orders.
“Why?” Verity asked. “This is great.”
He shrugged. “I feel like we ought to be out looking for the portal, not taking in the shows.”
“We are supposed to be tourists,” Stone said, still in his American accent. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt to be seen doing tourist things. And besides, even though I’m not completely sure yet that I trust Mr. Harrison’s motives, I don’t see the point in possibly offending him by turning down his invitation.”
By the time the lights went down a little after nine, the entire showroom had filled up—a sold-out show. A driving rock beat swelled up as the main curtain rose, revealing a stage that was something out of a nightmare. The scene was decorated with a sort of horrific H. R. Giger-meets-Alice-Cooper motif, with torture racks, elaborate caskets, complicated flashing electronic apparatus—including what looked to be a functioning theremin—and draping black and red curtains.
“I think I’m gonna like this,” Verity said under her breath.
The driving rock shifted into something darker, more gothic. The rear curtains parted, and an impressive, multicolored pyrotechnic display fired at the back of the stage, so intense that its heat reached Stone, Jason, and Verity at their table. From the middle of this conflagration a figure appeared, seemingly from thin air, and raised its hands triumphantly to the audience.
The crowd exploded into applause, and Jason, Verity, and Stone joined in with enthusiasm.
“Thank you!” Shane Tarkasian strode to the front of the stage, his arms still spread wide, a big grin on his face. “Thank you all. But you haven’t seen anything yet!” He was a tall young man with dark hair, his costume all leather and straps and tattoos. His heavily made-up face was pale, with big dark circles around his eyes. Incongruously with his macabre appearance, his voice was pleasant and full of enthusiasm, like he was having the time of his life up there. “Before we continue,” he was saying, “Let me introduce you to my lovely assistant, Tasha. Believe me, I can’t get anything done without her, and she never lets me forget it!”
The crowd laughed. From the back of the theater, a red-clad figure came hurtling down to the stage on an unseen zipline. She landed lightly next to him and flashed an electric grin even bigger than Tarkasian’s. The “lovely assistant” was indeed lovely: tall and tan, with long, California-blonde hair and a slinky red dress that clung to her curves like a second skin. A few hoots and wolf whistles rang out from the audience, including one from Jason. Tasha shook her finger at them, but her eyes twinkled.
“Okay, then!” Tarkasian called. “Are you all ready to see something amazing?”
The crowd roared.
What followed was nearly two hours of the most incredible magic show that Jason and Verity had ever seen. Even Stone couldn’t help but look impressed. Tarkasian was a born showman, engaging and shocking the audience with unexpected twists, death-defying illusions, and impressively showy set-pieces, almost all of which involved some sort of potential catastrophic injury to him. He was run through by swords, shot with arrows, locked in an iron maiden and hung, shackled and straitjacketed, suspended high above the house in a clear tank full of water. He even at one point appeared to recover from being decapitated by a spinning blade that sliced down with unexpected speed from high up in the rigging. Throughout the act, his assistant Tasha played cheerleader in addition to helping to set up the illusions: she teased the audience when they winced, egged them on to louder and louder applause, and flirted with some of male audience members between illusions.
At one point after Tarkasian had popped out of a box that had a few seconds earlier been burned to a crisp, Jason leaned over to Stone. “He’s damn good,” he whispered. “Kinda makes me wonder if he isn’t a little more than he seems.”
Stone shrugged. “He might be. I’ve been watching for it, but he’s good enough that if he is the real thing, he’s being very subtle about it. He hasn’t done any illusions yet that wouldn’t be possible with stage magic, but—”
“Seems like that might happen a lot,” Verity said. “You’d think it would be a good way to make a living if you were a mage—pretending to be a fake magician.”
“It’s certainly happened,” Stone acknowledged. He shook his head, focusing on Tarkasian. “I won’t say that he isn’t—just that I can’t tell for sure unless he were to do some actual magic. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that he’s one of those ‘minor talents’ Harrison was mentioning before. Not that I plan to ask him, of course.”
When the show finished to deafening applause following a finale involving an elaborate gallows, a chainsaw, and three other assistants dressed as zombies, Stone, Jason, and Verity got up to leave, still applauding enthusiastically along with the rest of the crowd. They had barely stood when the maître d’ came over. He looked them up and down as if surprised, but his tone remained polite and professional. “I’ve been asked to invite you backstage to meet Mr. Tarkasian, if you’d be interested.”
Verity grinned. “Yeah!” Then, obviously remembering she was supposed to be a nerdy college student, she added, “We’d like that a lot.”
Once again he handed them off to a different employee, who led them out of the theater through a side door, up some back stairs, and into the busy rabbit-warren of the backstage area. Techs and assistants scurried around everywhere, cleaning up the area and resetting everything to prepare it for tomorrow’s shows. Several times Stone, Jason, and Verity had to duck to the sides of the narrow hallways so they could move past.
Finally, they reached a series of dressing room doors. The employee led them to one with a star on it, but no name. He knocked and waited for someone to answer, then bowed and headed back off into the crowd.
The dressing room was large, strewn with various pieces of wardrobe, and alive with activity. Assistants hung up bits of leather, arranged various small props on one table and set out dishes of chips, vegetables, and dip on another.
Across from these was yet another long table with a lighted mirror and a swivel chair. Shane Tarkasian sat in the chair as a makeup tech wiped off his pale facepaint. He still wore his leather pants but had stripped down to a tank top, which afforded a clear view of the colorful tattoos on both of his arms. The employee who’d led Jason, Verity, and Stone backstage moved over to him and the two had a quick whispered conversation. Then Tarkasian turned to the three of them and grinned. “Welcome,” he said. “Hope you enjoyed the show!”
“It was awesome, man,” Jason said in his ‘Tommy Duran’ persona, grinning back.
“Wicked,” Stone agreed. Verity nodded.
“How’d you do that thing with the chainsaws?” Jason asked. “That was insane. I thought those zombies were gonna cut you in half! It was like you were doing real magic up there!”
Tarkasian chuckled. “Magician’s code. Can’t give away my secrets, can I?”
“Of course not,” another voice said. It was “lovely assistant” Tasha, but she also looked different now. She still had the million-watt smile and twinkling eyes, but her long blonde tresses were now shorter and soft brown, and her slinky red dress had been exchanged for a blue sweater and jeans.
Verity glanced at the blonde wig on a foam head off to the side, and Tasha chuckled. “Yeah, Shane’s tricks aren’t the only fake thing around here,” she said with a shrug. “I’m not even really Tasha. I’m Tammy. But Shane thought ‘Tammy’ wasn’t the right kind of name for a magician’s assistant.”
“Not unless she’s the assistant head cheerleader,” Tarkasian said, favoring her with a fond look. Obviously this was an old joke between them. “Maybe when people get tired of the spooky thing, I’ll change the act. Just for you. You can be the hot bubbly cheerleader and I’ll be the captain of the football team, and we’ll do wacky hijinks together.”
She c
onsidered, then shook her head. “Won’t play in Vegas,” she said. “Certainly not here. And I like the paycheck too much to complain.”
Stone, Jason, and Verity stood back and watched their interplay. “You guys been at the Obsidian long?” Jason asked.
“About a year,” Tarkasian said.
“Seems like—” Stone started, then remembered he was supposed to be Larry. “— a sweet gig,” he finished.
“Totally,” Tarkasian agreed. “One of the Obsidian’s scouts discovered us doing dinner shows in L.A., and arranged for us to audition. I guess they liked what they saw, so they offered us an opener spot. People dug us, and we started bringing in the crowds, so we got bumped up to headliners four months ago. Two shows a night, plus a matinee on Saturdays.”
“We’re on T-shirts,” Tasha/Tammy said. “Seriously. You can buy ’em in the gift shop.”
The makeup artist finished cleaning Tarkasian’s face and he leaned back, swigging from a bottle of water and obviously tired. “Hey, it was great to meet you guys. I’m glad you liked the show! Can I get you some autographed pics or something before you go?”
They took the hint. “We’d like that,” Verity said in her nerdy persona. “Thanks for letting us come back here and meet you.”
“Our pleasure,” he said, smiling. Tasha/Tammy pushed a stack of photos and a Sharpie into his hand, and he signed three of them and handed them over. “Take care, you guys. And come back to see us next time you’re in Vegas, okay?”
“So,” Jason said as they sat in the back of a small bar after the show, “after watching his whole act, do you think he’s a real mage?”
“No real way to tell,” Stone said. “I’d guess not, though. Skilled, without a doubt. But I think he’s just a damned good stage magician with a solid act and a good assistant.” He sighed. “But whether he is or he isn’t, this isn’t getting us any closer to finding that portal. I’m all for playing tourist, but frankly I’d rather wait and do it after we take care of business.”