The Last Magician

by Lisa Maxwell

  The room felt strangely empty once Esta was gone, as though she’d taken something vital with her. He looked at his reflection again, the smudges under his eyes, the stain of red that left his lips looking bloodied.

  Who knew how far Evelyn would have taken things if Esta hadn’t interrupted? He owed her for that, even if she’d only done it because Dolph needed him. But he didn’t know how he’d ever pay her back with anything but betrayal.

  THE GLASS CASKET

  Harte was still avoiding her. He always came back to the apartment late, long after she was asleep, and he would be gone before she awoke every morning. After she’d given everything away in his dressing room, maybe that was safer. She’d been cornered, and she’d acted on instinct. Too bad her instincts tended to get her in trouble. Like what happened with Logan.

  But with every day that passed, the news clipping remained stubborn in its insistence that Dolph Saunders was going to die.

  Enough was enough. She had a job to do—she needed that book and she needed Ishtar’s Key. And Dolph was sure they couldn’t do anything without Harte, which meant she needed him, too. He couldn’t avoid her forever.

  After breakfast, she set off for the theater to confront him, but it wasn’t Harte she found when she arrived. The first person she ran into was the red-haired harpy.

  “You’re back,” Evelyn said, sounding like she meant, Go away.

  “Of course. I’ll be around quite a lot from now on,” Esta said in her falsely accented voice as she headed toward Harte’s dressing room.

  “He isn’t there,” the woman called, a mocking note in her voice. “He’s down below.”

  Straightening her spine, Esta gave Evelyn a cold smile before she turned and made her way through the maze of the backstage hallways and then down a staircase to a damp-smelling room beneath the theater. She thought she heard water and wondered if the theater wasn’t built over one of the hidden rivers in the city. Just ahead, there was a light, and as she moved toward it, she heard a familiar voice letting out a string of curses.

  “Harte?” she called, navigating through the cluttered storage area until she came to where he was working.

  The Magician had pulled a vanishing act, because the boy before her could have been any factory worker, any laborer in the city. He was dressed in worn brown pants held up only by a pair of suspenders. They sagged low on his narrow hips, and his shoulders and arms were bare beneath his sleeveless shirt, which was damp with sweat. He looked more unbuttoned and human than she’d ever seen him.

  Then he flipped the visor up on the welding mask and ruined the effect.

  “Get in,” he said, pointing to the table where the strange, coffinlike tank he’d been working on was sitting. His eyes were a little wild.

  She took a step back.

  “I mean it. Get in. I need to see if this will fit you.”

  “Why?” she asked suspiciously. “Looking for new and inventive ways to dispose of my body?”

  “The thought did cross my mind once or twice,” he said dryly.

  She bit back a laugh. “Nice of you to spring for a glass coffin. Wood is so 1899.”

  He glared at her, scratching his chin. “It’s not a coffin. It’s a—wait. Maybe you’re right.”

  “I usually am.”

  However hard his eyes were, Esta sensed that he was too excited to really be mad. “We could go with the defying-death angle. The Glass Casket has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

  Esta eyed him. “What do you mean, we?”

  “You and me. If I’m stuck with you, I’m going to make use of the situation.”

  “I thought you’d decided on avoiding me,” she said, crossing her arms.

  “Didn’t you say we had to get to work?” he said, frowning at her. “I’ve been getting things ready.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, not trusting the excitement in his expression. “Ready for what?”

  “We’re going to run the lost heir on Jack.”

  “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

  He frowned. “It’s a con game. If it works, Jack’s going to believe that we have something he’d do anything to get. You’re going to be the lost heir.”

  “What, exactly, am I the heir of ?” she asked, walking over to run the tips of her gloved fingers against the smooth glass.

  “You, sweetheart, just happen to be the long-lost illegitimate daughter of Baron Franz von Filosik, who was rumored to have found the secret to the transmutation of basic elements before his untimely death.”

  “Is that an actual person?”

  “Of course it is.” He paused. “Wasn’t that all part of Dolph’s plan? I figured that’s why you introduced yourself to Evelyn with that name.”

  She glanced up from the glass box, trying to hide her surprise. After all, she’d been improvising about who she was that day in the dressing room. She’d given her own name, not one Dolph had invented. Not that Harte needed to know that.

  “Of course it was the plan,” she said, trying to stay in control of the situation. “Who was he, this Baron von Filosik? What did he do?”

  “Dolph didn’t explain it?”

  “He just gave me the name,” she lied.

  Harte gave her a knowing look. “Yeah, that sounds exactly like something he’d do.”

  Esta relaxed a little with his acceptance of her story, but she couldn’t help but wonder if the Professor had known somehow that the name he’d picked after he found her in the park would come in handy one day.

  “Well?” she pressed. “If this con is going to work, I should know my own fictional father.”

  “You will, but for now all you need to know is that the transmutation of the elements is basically the Holy Grail for most alchemists. The good baron died in a fire some years back, along with all his secrets. Or so people thought.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “But now his secret daughter has returned to continue her father’s work. And she’s lonely and afraid and could use a protector.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “And that’s supposed to be me?” she asked, doubtful.

  “If you can pull it off ? Yes,” he told her. “As far as Jack Grew’s concerned, you’ve recently shown up in town in need of help from an old friend—that would be me. We just have to make him believe that it would be better if he were the one you relied on. After all, you’d be very grateful to such a person, wouldn’t you? You might even be willing to share your father’s secrets with that person.”

  “So we make Jack believe that I have my fake father’s secret files?”

  “And we make him think you’re vulnerable enough to give them up with the right encouragement. In this case, an introduction at Khafre Hall.”

  “You really think that will work?”

  “It’s what we have.”

  “Which is such a ringing endorsement.”

  “Look, Jack’s been interested in my act for months now, but he’s like the rest of them—he believes that his family’s money and status makes us fundamentally different. That’s what will catch him—he won’t be able to accept that you would choose me over him if you had the option.”

  “He’s going to rescue me from you,” she realized, appreciating the simplicity of trapping Jack with his own greed and narrow-mindedness.

  “That’s the basic idea. He’ll have to prove himself to you somehow, and that’s what will trap him.”

  “But what does this death trap have to do with me being the daughter of some dead baron?”

  “You have to earn your keep somehow,” he told her, the corner of his mouth kicking up wryly. “So you’re helping me with my demonstrations.”

  “I don’t know,” she hedged, eyeing the box. “That doesn’t really seem necessary.”

  “It’s all part of the con.” He ran a hand over the glass case. “That disappearing thing you did was a great effect. We’re going to build on it to hook Jack into believing that you have secrets that could help him with some experiments he�
�s been doing.”

  “What kind of experiments?”

  “No idea,” Harte admitted. “I haven’t been able to get him to tell me yet. Like I said, he still doesn’t completely trust me. He’s been using me for information, but he’s still keeping me at arm’s length.” He glanced back in the direction of the stairwell, as though checking to make sure no one else could hear. “So how did you do it?” he whispered. “The disappearing thing. I’m going to need to know what I’m working with.”

  “I’d be happy to.” She leaned in. “Right after you tell me what you’re really planning to do with the Book. Because I don’t believe for a second you really plan to hand it over to Dolph.”

  He pulled back, his eyes wary. “Or we can work around it.”

  She gave him a shrug. “If you insist.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, neither wanting to be the first to flinch. Neither wanting to be the one who gave up any ground. To Esta’s relief, his excitement to show her the glass casket won out.

  “Okay, then . . . Come take a look at what I’ve done here. I want you to see how it works.” He closed the hinged lid and then opened it, to show her how smoothly it moved. When he depressed a hidden lever at the end of the case, the glass lid slid silently free of the frame, like a car window rolling down. “I’ve been working on this for a while, but I finally figured it out.” Then he grinned.

  Esta’s stomach did an unexpected—and definitely unwanted—flip. When his mouth turned up like that, into a real smile instead of the one he pasted onto that smug face of his onstage, he looked almost boyish. Almost like someone she’d like to know . . . if she wasn’t who she was and he wasn’t who he was. If he hadn’t just all but admitted he was making his own plans.

  But they were who they were, and she couldn’t let herself forget that he was the one she was supposed to stop. If he betrayed the team, it would mean more than the loss of the Book. But now, it might also mean the death of Dolph Saunders. What would happen to his crew—to all the people who depended on him—if he were gone? What chance would any of them have against the viciousness of the city and the Order that controlled it without Dolph to lead them and to protect them?

  “You made this?” she asked, stepping around so that the glass box was between them.

  “Yeah. I’ve been working on the idea for a while. I was going to do it myself, but with your . . . whatever it is you do, I think it’ll be better.” He slid the glass back into place and closed the lid. “Most people do this effect behind a screen or with a box, where no one can see what the girl is doing. But with you, we can do something new.” He ran his hand over the glass coffin. “The girl—that’ll be you—will disappear right before the audience’s eyes. No mirrors or screens, no capes or hiding. Poof.  You’ll be gone.” He eyed her. “Assuming, of course, you can manage it.”

  “I can manage it,” she said, “but don’t you think it’s a little risky to have me disappear like that? It’ll raise suspicions about how I did it. Maybe about what I am.”

  “No, it won’t,” he said, his gray eyes dancing. “That’s the beautiful thing about it. No one will believe you actually disappeared, because no one will expect you to have real magic. They expect that everything I do onstage is a trick, an illusion. Half the audience will be telling the other half that they knew how it was done.”

  Even though she knew he was still up to something, this version of Harte Darrigan was disarming. His face was smudged and his hair was standing up in a riot of loose waves. His clothes were rumpled, and although he was attempting to play things cool, he was practically vibrating with anticipation. It was all a hundred times more compelling than anything she’d seen him do onstage. It seemed so authentic. This Harte Darrigan seemed so real.

  All part of his game, she reminded herself. For all she knew, it was just another con.

  “Are you going to get in, or what?”

  Esta hesitated. “You aren’t going to trap me in there?”

  “I’m not promising anything,” he joked, but when she gave him a doubtful look, he let out an impatient huff. “You saw how the mechanism works, didn’t you?” Then he held out his hand, a challenge in his eyes.

  Frowning, Esta took his hand and allowed him to help her step up onto the table and into the glass box. It was a tight fit with the bulk of her skirts.

  “Good,” he said, looking her over. “Now lie down, would you? I need to make sure it’s not too long or too short.”

  She barely had enough room for her hands to be at her sides.

  “There’s a small lever by your right toe. It’ll take some practice to find—”

  She hit the lever, and he had to jump to catch the glass top from sliding too quickly. “You were saying?”

  He scowled at her. “And now we close it.”

  “But—”

  Before she could protest, he was already pulling the top down and locking it with a bronze padlock. Fog from her breath started to build on the glass, inches from her nose. Suddenly, the air felt too warm, too close.

  “There aren’t any air holes,” he shouted, his voice muffled by the glass. “You’ll have to work fast.”

  No air holes? She was going to kill him.

  Her foot fumbled for the latch but missed the first time.

  If he doesn’t finish me off first, that is.

  “We’ll have a cue or something,” he was shouting, motioning to the lever near her foot. “Some sort of hand motion or signal to . . .”

  She pulled time around her, slowed the seconds, and depressed the latch. The glass released, and she slid it away from her face, taking a moment to breathe in the cool, musty air of the basement and allowing the prickle of panic to recede from her skin before she climbed out. Composing herself, she wiped her sweaty palms on her skirts and then slid the glass back into place before examining Harte. Nearly frozen midword, his eyes gleamed.

  He loves this.

  Whatever else he pretended, whatever he’d done or was going to do, she could see that he wasn’t pretending his excitement for this new trick—effect. Whatever. The point was that he loved it as much as she loved the rush from lifting a fat wallet or hearing the tumblers of a lock click into place.

  She felt that strange lurch in her stomach, one that she didn’t like at all, so she released time and watched Harte sputter midsentence.

  “. . . let you know—oh.” His face split into a surprised smile. His stormy eyes lit, unguarded and unaware that he was showing her something new about himself.  “Yes! That’s it exactly.” Then he seemed to realize he’d revealed too much. “You’ll have to wait for my cue, of course,” he said, back to his usual arrogance. “You don’t want to come out too soon and ruin everything. We’ll have to—”

  “You locked me in an airtight box,” she said flatly, interrupting him.

  His brow furrowed. “That’s kind of the point. If there’s no sense of danger, the audience won’t care.”

  “You. Locked. Me. In. An. Airtight. Box,” she said again, enunciating each word through her clenched teeth.

  “Maybe we should add something more,” he said, not paying any attention to her outrage.

  “You could have warned me before you locked me in.  You should have warned me.”

  He ran a hand through his already mussed hair. “You got out,” he said, looking at her as though he didn’t understand her point.

  “You could have killed me!”

  “I didn’t—” he started to say, but when she stepped toward him, he put his hands up defensively. “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry. I should have warned you.”

  “Dolph isn’t going like it if I end up dead.”

  “You’re probably right about that, too.” He ducked his head and unlatched the bronze padlock. “But other than the almost dying, what do you think?”

  She shrugged, reluctant to give him any credit at all. “It’ll be okay.”

  “Okay?” He laughed. “No. This will be like nothing anyone has
ever seen. If this doesn’t convince Jack that you have something he wants, nothing will.  This has to work.”

  “It will,” she said, looking over the glass coffin again. “We’ll make it work. Together.”

  “We just might,” he said, his expression changing. “Here’s to bringing down the Order.” He held out his hand, his eyes serious. Esta considered all the reasons she shouldn’t let him touch her, but in the end she placed her gloved hand in his. He squeezed gently, but the warmth she felt thrum through her had nothing to do with the peculiar energy left behind by magic.

  The atmosphere between them grew thick, charged. She pulled her hand away.

  “Esta . . . ,” he started, but hesitated as though he didn’t quite know what he wanted to say.

  Before he could figure it out, a voice called from close by. “Harte?” Evelyn said, stepping into the light thrown by his work lamp.

  The moment broken, he took a step back from Esta, looking suddenly embarrassed. Or guilty. “Yeah?” He wiped the hand that had just shaken hers on his pants.

  “Shorty wanted me to let you know you’re on in twenty.”

  “He sent you down here?” he asked, a frown tugging at his mouth.

  Evelyn put her hands on her hips. “Is that a problem?”

  “No. Sorry. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “I’ll see you upstairs,” she said sweetly, before giving Esta a pointed glance and then slinking back from wherever she’d come.

  Esta watched her go, wondering how long Evelyn had been standing in the shadows. And how much she’d heard. But if Harte was concerned, he didn’t show it.

  “Look, I’ve got to get ready for the show, but stick around, would you?”

  She glanced up at him, surprised. He’d never invited her to stay and watch his show, or to wait for him after.

  “So we can practice again,” he finished, tugging at one of his suspenders. “I’m thinking once we work on the timing, I can get ahold of Jack. It shouldn’t take us that long to get it right.”

  “Oh, right,” she said, feeling suddenly stupid. Of course. “Dolph would want us to get this going. We’ve taken long enough.”