A Criminal Magic

by Lee Kelly

  “Clever.” Ral nods. “All right, lead the way.”

  We climb out of the trap, the six of us trailing Rose, as she holds her charm out in front of her. The charmed box pulls us through Ral’s hallway, and back to the original hall. Rose walks down it slowly, and then stops walking, turns to her left to face the white wall.

  “Right here. I feel it,” she says, rubbing her hand over the plaster. “Reveal.” And then, like two white curtains are being pulled back, the wall’s plaster peels away to reveal Billy’s original door to the outside world.

  Rose lunges for it, pulls it open. Tommy and Stock follow her, and our foursome trails behind them. One by one, we stumble into the soft, moon-drenched grass of the real clearing. It feels like we’ve been transported to another time, another space. It feels like I might not be the same person I was walking in. Billy scrambles to shut the door behind us—

  “Erase the door, Billy!” Ral shouts.

  Billy waves his hand, and the door to our house of manipulations crumbles and swirls into dust. But it doesn’t erase the world of hell we’ve just created together, a giant structure with domes, enclosed hallways running around it, odd towers that shoot up three stories high over the clearing.

  “Now destroy it,” Gunn orders behind us.

  We all turn around to face him.

  “I need seven,” Gunn says evenly. “And only seven. I never leave loose ends.”

  We all look at one another, no one saying a word. Something jabs underneath my skin—something raw, sharp, a double-edged blade of fear and shame. Did I ever want Gavin and his allies gone? No. But is there a choice?

  Me or him, I hear from somewhere inside me, a mantra that somehow takes root and grows into a weed all on its own. Us or them. Don’t think, just do. Remember the endgame, why you’re here.

  Remember what you did to get here.

  And then it begins. I’m not sure who starts it, all I know for sure is that I have a hand in it too. The magic structure we’ve made, with all its domes and hallways, starts to extend like it’s being pulled taut in both directions. The entire manipulation becomes stretched out, and thinned, like it’s being pressed into one long, wide, flat piece of paper.

  “We need to fold it up,” Stock says hollowly.

  The manipulation begins to fold in on itself, the edges of the left side of the flattened manipulation folding over like the page of a book and meeting the right. And then again, and again, and again, until the entire manipulation has been folded up into a square the size of a window. The magic keeps collapsing, folding into itself, becoming smaller and smaller, a box, a breadbox, a block, until it pinches out into dust.

  And then there’s nothing on the other side of the lanterns but a flat scroll of grass.

  A strange cross between remorse, regret, and pride, beats inside me like a new heart. I look around. Grace, Billy, Ral. Stock. Tommy, Rose. Me.

  Seven sorcerers.

  Gunn walks toward us, slowly, carefully, like he’s approaching wild animals that have been released from their cages.

  “Congratulations to the future of American magic. This troupe has greatly, greatly exceeded my expectations.” He clasps each one of us in a firm handshake. The sign of a partnership. The sign of respect. “And I promise to God that I’m going to exceed all of yours.”

  PART TWO

  THE REHEARSAL

  EASY RUN

  ALEX

  It starts tomorrow. My real performance. The one that takes place on a stage beyond these prison walls, the one that all this time inside Lorton Reformatory has been preparing me for. It’s been a month since my cafeteria brawl, a stunt that earned me an extra week on my sentence. A solid month of listening to Howie and his Shaw brothers’ never-ending stories during mealtimes. Of afternoon cigarettes in the quad outside Lorton’s dormitories, just one more duck in a row of gray jumpsuits. Of nights spent scheming and self-aggrandizing with Howie, about how we’re going to set ourselves up on the outside, work our way up, and take over the world.

  A month of playing someone else, day in and night out.

  I suppose I should be exhausted. I suppose I should be asleep right now, getting as much rest as I can before I stand in front of my parole review board tomorrow and try to convince them that I’m fit to walk the streets.

  But I’m not tired. In fact, I feel almost electric. Because despite the sheer terror that pumps through my veins, walking through these halls, showering next to thieves and vagrants, eating lunch with guys who would terrify my mother if I ever brought them around—for the first time in a long time, I feel like I have a purpose. I’m working for the Feds, and not just as some bought man, some interchangeable suit who lets himself be greased by a dollar. I’m undercover, important. Hell, essential, to bringing down the Shaws—and I think I’m actually pretty good at the job.

  So maybe I’m not damaged goods. Maybe there’s more to the story for me.

  “Alex,” Howie whispers from the top cot. “You up?”

  It’s too dark to see what time it reads on our nightstand clock—all the hall lights have been turned off, the prison now a field of sleep and shadows—but I can tell it’s late. I’ve been running everything over and through for what feels like hours: what I know about Howie’s cousin, Shaw underboss Win Matthews, when I’m next going to see Agent Frain, how I’m going to break the news to my mother that I’m not coming home. So I’m surprised to hear that Howie’s still up too.

  “Yeah, what’s up, man?” I answer softly.

  “Nothing, I—” He stops. “Just had a bad dream.”

  “About what?”

  He sighs, rolls over with a huff. “My mom,” he concedes. “She was walking away. I was calling for her, but she didn’t turn around.”

  I don’t know how to answer. From what I’ve gathered these past few weeks, Howie’s sorcering mom left him when he was little, took off with some wandering hobo sorcerer after Howie’s dad died, and never looked back. It’s why Howie started pickpocketing with his cousin Win on the streets, and how eventually, they found their way in with the Shaws.

  “Christ, I could really use a smoke,” Howie says, as he turns over once more.

  “Your pack’s finished?”

  “Yeah.”

  I dig out my cigarettes and matches from underneath my mattress. I pull out a cig, light the thing, and then release it like a dove from my hands, let the burning stick float in the air, up up up to Howie’s bunk, where I imagine it floating over to him like a cloud.

  Howie laughs above me and grabs the cigarette, breaking my spell.

  “I freaking love how you do that.” I hear a sharp inhale, see a creeping puff of smoke waft away from his cot and settle over our small cell like fog. “Better,” he says. “But if you weren’t such a roughneck, Danfrey, I’d swear you were missing your calling as a performer.”

  “I think I’d rather be on the street than in some circus show.”

  “Eh, I don’t blame you,” Howie says. “Though I’ve heard one of the Shaws’ shining rooms has become a far bigger deal since the last time I went in there.” He laughs. “That it ain’t so much a circus anymore as some all-night wild trip to the moon.”

  My ears perk up a bit. “What do you mean?”

  “Guys are saying that Harrison Gunn—he’s McEvoy’s underboss who runs a shining joint called the Red Den, down on M Street—finally got McEvoy’s blessing to clean house. That he canned all the sorcerers they used to have pulling card tricks while patrons waited for their shine, brought in all new talent.” Howie sends another cloud of smoke floating over the edge of his cot. “Win always says Boss McEvoy calls the Den a failing money pit, but apparently Gunn’s managed to transform the place. Now it’s some big immersive show: a spellbound performance hall that changes as you walk through it, a team of sorcerers brewing shine live, a huge audience group trip at the e
nd. Gunn’s even calling the Den a ‘magic haven’ now. Freaking wild.”

  My heart starts beating a little faster with all I don’t know, with all I want, need, to find out about Howie’s underworld. “You spend a lot of time in shining rooms?”

  “Whenever I can, when I’m not on the road with Win,” he says. Then he drops his voice to a hum. “Speaking of, Sanders came by when you were out at the brick-making unit. I’m up for release. Going in front of the review board on Thursday. I’ll be right on your heels.”

  A mix of dread, fear, excitement churns around inside. “That’s great, man.”

  “Great for both of us. I plan on getting back in the smuggling game right away,” he says. “You need to meet Win. He’ll break you in, set us up, get me working again.”

  All I need is the where and the when. “I’d owe you big-time, Howie.”

  Howie must be stubbing his cigarette butt on the wall, because little flakes of ash start drifting down to my cot like a cinder waterfall. “You’d do the same for me, brother. Friday at five, at the Red Den, all right? M and Sixteenth Streets. Make sure to mention Win’s name or you’ll never get inside.”

  Friday, five p.m., the Red Den. It begins. “Thanks, How. Looking forward to getting started.”

  But Howie doesn’t give his usual boastful cackle, or jump into his laundry list of the ways we’re going to take over the Shaws. Instead there’s a long silence between us. A silence that begs to be broken. So I venture, “You feel ready to be out there?”

  “’Course,” Howie answers. But he’s quiet again for a while. “But I mean, it just feels safer in here sometimes. I know that sounds crazy, but . . .” He pauses. “In here, we’re big deals. Out there . . . it’s going to be different.”

  Howie would never talk to me like this in the morning. But at night, in your cell, when it’s just you and your bunk mate, you’re allowed to say things you’d never admit to in the daylight. I’ve done it with him, too—told him things about my father. Things I only see now with hindsight, little ways he conned me, when I thought he only needed one big score of magic cures to settle his debts with D Street. Not a year of breaking the law.

  “I hear you, How. I feel the same way.”

  “But we’ll get each other’s backs out there,” he says.

  “You and me against the world.” My answer, unrehearsed, natural, surprises me on its way out. I used to say the same thing to my buddy Warren. I’m even more shocked that I mean it. “Get some sleep, Howie, okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” His bed creaks as he rolls over and flicks his cigarette stub in the vague direction of our toilet. “You too, Danfrey.”

  * * *

  I’m in front of my parole board the next morning by nine a.m., and I hit the streets of the outside world before lunchtime. It’s been less than two months, but it seems like forever since I’ve seen the outside of Lorton Reformatory, and the world beyond its walls feels much different than the one I left. The keys that Agent Frain must have left me through inventory thankfully have a small tag with the address of my new home: 1206 P Street. Right on the border of the old Hell’s Bottom district.

  1206 P Street is a sagging row home, one lonely window on one floor overlooking a narrow plank porch with more scars and holes than Frankenstein. And the inside is worse than the outside. My suitcase that I packed the night I met Frain has been placed in the corner of a sad-looking kitchenette: a slice of a room consisting of a few cupboards, an icebox, a cheap laundry stove, and a table. A single bed stands opposite the kitchen. One room. From the Danfreys’ mansion on Massachusetts Avenue to one room on the edge of the slums.

  Speaking of the Danfreys’ fall from grace, I work up the nerve and call my mother on a nearby pay phone that afternoon. I give her the story that Agent Frain and I agreed to—that time in jail allowed me to really think. That I need some time away from home, to sort myself out, to figure out who I am and what I really want. Mother barely speaks, just gives me confused, punctured gasps that I know means she’s crying, and it’s the first time I feel shame’s sharp, familiar stab since I was booked down at Lorton. It’s also the first time I’ve ever been tempted to blow my cover. When we hang up, I miss her so bad it hurts.

  Remember, you’re doing this for her, in one sense, I tell myself on the walk back home. To clear our name. To get revenge.

  * * *

  My walk to meet Howie at the Red Den on Friday is a blur of crippling nerves and adrenaline, and I find myself standing at the corner of M and 16th Streets before I realize I’ve arrived. The lot is a squat, two-story redbrick building with one large storefront window, and a wooden side door with a gold lettered sign, THE RED DEN. The faint whisper of jazz seeps out of the establishment’s walls, like a promise of a good night to come. I collect myself and open the door.

  Inside is small, quaint, not at all what I was imagining from Howie’s description. There’s a narrow mahogany bar with a few stools dotted around it, and stocked liquor shelves towering above. Behind the bar stands one lone bartender, young and polished-looking in his coat-tailed jacket and pressed white shirt. The whole scene, the image of legality: just another run-of-the-mill drinking establishment. A premature panic starts ticking inside me, faint but steady, like a watch. “I’m sorry. . . .” I look around. “I’m here to meet a man named Win Matthews and his cousin, Howie.”

  The bartender looks me up and down shamelessly. “Your name?”

  “Alex Danfrey.”

  The bartender waits a full minute before answering, while I stand here like a chump with my hands in my pockets. “Howie Matthews is already waiting for you downstairs, sir.”

  “Downstairs—”

  “Go ahead.” The bartender gestures behind me, to a small corridor on the left side of the joint’s single table. “Walk straight through that wall.”

  I slowly walk to the end of the hallway, to the sheet of eggshell plaster that poses as a wall. I take another step closer and carefully reach to touch the plaster—

  But my fingers pass right through it.

  As I step through the wall, I’m hit with that feeling you get when you’re passing through a force field—that magnetic pull at your insides, like a strong internal storm—

  And then I’m standing at the top of a staircase. I take the stairs two stories down until I arrive at a set of double doors, give a thrust with my shoulder to push them both open, and walk into a performance space the size of two banquet halls.

  The space is two stories high, with a cement floor, gray cinder-block walls, and two hallway exits, one on each side. Nearest to my entrance are several small performance stages, each encircled by a cluster of benches. Beyond that, there’s a seating area of lounge chairs and tables, and beyond that, a long, elevated stage.

  I scout around the wide space, looking for Howie, for anyone really. But it’s empty. Then I spot a lone shot glass resting on an end table in the seating area. It faintly glimmers red, evidence of sorcerer’s shine long gone.

  I pick up the glass, as a young woman dressed in all black approaches me from one of the corridors off the performance space.

  “Can I help you?” she says, pausing at the mouth of the hall a few feet away.

  I take her in: raven hair, long locks not sacrificed to that blunt-bobbed style all the dames are wearing. Rail-thin frame, almond-shaped eyes that stay locked on the empty glass of shine in my hand. She’s got a decent-sized basket resting on her hip.

  “I’m looking for a friend, Howie Matthews. I was told he was here.” I hold the glass up as evidence. “I’m thinking this is his?”

  “You’re thinking right.” She gives me a smirk. “He’s in the john, giving a shine-induced sermon to the wall on the meaning of life. You can hear him from the hallway if you’re after free advice.”

  “Christ.” I turn Howie’s empty shot glass around in my hand. Having Howie high as a kit
e the night I meet his cousin was not the plan. Having him shot to another planet does nothing to help work Win Matthews over for me. “You know about how long ago he took this, by chance?”

  She shrugs. “Maybe twenty minutes.” Then she studies me the way I was studying her. “You need a shot of shine yourself, sir? We try to keep a few extra ounces of the stuff around for the Shaws and their guests, from the previous night’s performance. And sorcerer’s shine only lasts a day—”

  “No thanks, I’m set.” Remembering my manners, I put the glass back on the table and rush toward her. “Sorry, let me help you with that—”

  “It’s okay, it’s my job.” She shakes me off, a note of pride in her voice. “Besides, it’s light as a feather.” She tips the basket toward me as evidence. Inside are hundreds of white feathers. “Literally.”

  I smile. I guess she’s some sort of stagehand. “So you work here?”

  “Nah, I just like to wander off the street sometimes. Smuggle out random props.”

  I laugh. Quick, as well as cute. And more than cute, I realize, as I study her again. Pretty damn breathtaking. I find myself flustered for a minute, all my old come-ons stalling out. It’s been a while. “And how’s that working out for you?” I try to recover. “Tricking sorcerers?”

  “It’s working out just fine.”

  “Maybe they’re just tricking you into thinking that.”

  As she laughs, I glance back to the door, wonder when Win’s going to arrive. I need to get Howie, run him under cold water, slap him sober. “What’s your name?”

  There’s a rumble of noise from the back of the performance space. Two middle-aged chaps roll a cart loaded with glass bottles to the base of the stage, which spans the entire back wall. They clamber up the stairs to the stage and call down, “Hey, Joan, Grace is looking for you. Something about the right dress?”