A Criminal Magic

by Lee Kelly

  He stands there, dressed to kill even at this hour: crisp, narrow pinstripe pants, tight vest over a pressed shirt. He’s got one forearm raised and pressed against my door frame. “Can I come in?”

  The mixed-up emotions I always feel just on seeing him start battling inside me—what’s he want, what’s he see when he looks at me, am I performing well enough—and I have to shake my head to quiet the war. “’Course, sir.”

  I sit down right on top of my pillow as Gunn perches on the opposite end of the bed. The entire cot is between us, but it still feels too close. Gunn’s talked with me alone a few times before, since he cleared his whole old staff out and moved our sorcering troupe into the Red Den a few weeks back. Some nights he’s pulled me into his office off the main show space after our performance, to get my pulse on whether we’re taking enough risks. And he’s stopped by my room once or twice before, in that tight window between rehearsal and our actual show, to give me his last-minute embellishments on the finale—but he’s never crossed the threshold.

  Now, as he’s sitting on my bed, I wonder if he’s chatted alone like this with any other sorcerer, or if I’ve become some kind of face for the troupe. I’ve thought about asking Grace a couple of times, but I’m not sure what answer I’d prefer to hear.

  And I’m sure as hell not going to ask Gunn.

  “Wanted to let you know that your little parlor trick last night was a success with some of my colleagues,” Gunn says. “Underbosses Kerrigan and Sullivan were raving about it in the VIP lounge. Said it took the old rabbit-in-the-hat trick to a new level.”

  Heat starts rising to my cheeks at the unexpected compliment, and I think about the parlor trick he’s talking about, the way I turned the gangsters’ handkerchiefs into a pair of doves that soared up to the rafters last night. During every show, there’s an intermission between the individual performances we sorcerers put on for the first hour, and the immersive magic finale we perform together at the end—and for those twenty minutes or so, we’re supposed to work the floor, cozy up to a patron, and perform an off-the-cuff parlor trick to get the audience even more excited for our finale. The little intermission is billed as “improvised,” but our troupe learned pretty quick who we’re supposed to target with our extra attention: wealthy regulars. Rich shine addicts. And of course, the higher-up Shaw men, on the nights they come in to see what all the fuss over Gunn’s revamped club is about. “That’s nice to hear, sir,” I finally answer. “Glad your colleagues enjoyed it.”

  “It’s important, that they understand the true magic inside this place. And I knew they would. It’s all coming together.”

  Gunn stays silent for a while, until the silence between us is suffocating, until I almost scream, Why are you really here, what do you really want?

  “Your troupe continues to surpass my expectations,” he finally says. “An immersive show where people truly lose themselves in magic for a night. Sold-out performances for a hundred fifty people, six nights a week, at fifteen dollars a ticket. McEvoy laughed when I told him about my idea to transform the Den. He didn’t think I’d pull it off. No one thought I’d pull it off.” He looks at me suddenly, expectantly.

  I gulp. “Well, clearly they were wrong, sir.”

  Gunn gives me that smile of his, the cagey one that starts at his eyes and gently touches his lips, but never quite comes together. “But as impressive as the troupe is, Joan, as seamless as the seven of you work together—there’s no denying there’s a star.” Gunn studies me with those white-blue eyes, and his look, his words, they stun and silence. He’s clearly talking about me.

  “We’re not so different, you and me,” he adds slowly. “In fact, I think that’s why we work well together. I’ve watched you out at the warehouse clearing, and here, night after night. You push yourself, hard. You run until you win, or until you fall. You do what it takes. I respect that.”

  I don’t think I’ve breathed for the past minute. Somehow I manage, “Thank you, sir.”

  Gunn leans forward, rests his forearms on his thighs, talks to my bureau in the corner. “When I was a boy, Joan, I thought my life was going to turn out very differently. But then tragedy struck, and the keys to the kingdom that I thought were in my pocket, turns out they belonged to someone else.” He throws a glance at me. “I learned to be resourceful, patient, learned to work for what I wanted until it was mine. In fact, I’ve been planning this Red Den transformation for a very long time.”

  He fishes in his pocket for cigarettes, lights two, and hands one to me. He waves his match until the small flame surrenders to milky smoke.

  “I saw where you come from. I can put two and two together,” he says slowly. “Clearly, your life didn’t turn out the way you thought it would either. You want to do right by your family, I understand that, just like I want to do right by mine.”

  Gunn’s never mentioned his family, or his past, or really anything about himself, ever. It feels like we’ve crossed into strange, unsettling territory. You don’t get personal, or even comfortable, with Gunn—but that provides its own sort of comfort. “Your troupe, these performances, the power of seven—this is your shot, Joan, to transform yourself into something truly extraordinary. Just like it’s mine.” He stares at me, as smoke curls in between us. “And I know it, I feel it. There’s more we need to do—in fact, I don’t even think we’ve scratched the surface of the magic under this roof.”

  I’m not sure where this conversation’s headed, but I know it’s somewhere I don’t want to go. I know Gunn well enough by now to understand that he’s somehow asking for more from me. But I spend nearly every waking hour at the Den already, still have this unshakable habit of practicing on my own after the show and once the stagehands sweep the place clean, if I don’t think I nailed my piece of that night’s finale. I’d never deny that Gunn kept his promise, he pays us well—sixty dollars per week, with a five-dollar bonus if we pack the house for that week’s run, which we’ve managed every week since we opened—I’m sending home twice as much money as Mama and Jed ever managed to pull in during the best of times. But I earn it, every cent. Long days, wild nights, nonstop magic. There’s nothing I’ve got left to give.

  “This arrived by post this morning,” Gunn interrupts my thoughts, and pulls a ratty envelope from his pocket. He hands it to me, and then I forget everything else and hungrily reach for it with trembling fingers. I know the doily ridge of the stationery, the faded taupe color, the dash of a red seal pressed into the back. But still, I gasp out loud when I flip it over. My cousin Ben’s crappy penmanship is scrawled across the front:

  Joan Kendrick c/o Mr. Harrison Gunn

  The Red Den . . .

  It’s been so long since I talked to Ben that my eyes start watering, blurring the ink.

  “I took the liberty of wiring an extra week of salary directly to Drummond Savings and Loan, about a week after you arrived here at the Den. From what I gathered from you and your cousin back in September, time was of the essence in settling your uncle’s debts.” As I sit there dumbfounded, Gunn tears open the envelope for me, pulls out the folded note inside. “I suppose Ben got the news.”

  I finally recover. “Thank you, Mr. Gunn. That was far too kind of you, saved us weeks of delay. I won’t expect my pay next week—”

  But Gunn waves my response away with his hand. “Considering how you go above and beyond, let’s think of it as a special bonus.”

  Special bonus. But I don’t want to parse that out, not yet. I just want to fall headfirst into Ben’s letter:

  Joan,

  Stopped into Drummond S&L today. They got the money, which damn well saved us. Said it came by wire from Harrison Gunn—sounds like you pulled it off up in the big city. I got Mr. Gunn’s address and had to write.

  Ruby says hi and that she loves you. She says she promised you she was going to beat the sickness inside her, and sure enough she’s been on he
r feet more each day. Hell, this morning she was helping me in the kitchen, giving me orders like she owned the place. She looks healthier, Joan—weighs heavier.

  We’re both beyond proud of you. Thank you.

  Love always, Ben

  The relief and joy welling up inside me is so intense that for a minute, I actually think I might burst.

  “This bonus doesn’t have to be a one-time thing.” Gunn uses a voice I barely recognize—smooth and slippery, like silk, or a snake. “I could keep wiring payments, take care of the back dues. Help pay down the rest of the mortgage. You could start using your salary for yourself, or save it to buy your family a new place. A palace.”

  A palace dances, slow and sultry, across my mind, but I ignore it, ’cause I’m no fool. Nothing comes without strings from Gunn. “Sir, I’m not sure what else you’re asking of me, what I’d do to deserve more. . . . I’m giving everything I’ve got to the troupe, to the show, you said so yourself—”

  “Thing is Joan, there’s something I remember.” He pauses, stubs the remainder of his cigarette onto my bedpost and tucks the stub in his pocket. “It’s something I haven’t quite been able to shake about you since we met. It’s been keeping me up at night if I’m honest, thinking, running things over and through.” He glances at me, but now, all the softness in his eyes is gone. “That night I came down to Parsonage. You brought me a bottle of shine that looked like it went to hell and back.”

  My heart skips a beat. Mama’s spell, the blood-magic. “Well, sir, I—”

  “It was dark. But still, I noticed small traces of blood caked around the top, detected an unusual, almost rusty smell to the shine. It was old, Joan, timeworn, even though you insisted different,” he says. “I know my magic. Don’t tell me again that was a shine you brewed that morning.”

  In one swift motion Gunn moves closer, so that I can’t look anywhere else but at him. “I know you’re keeping things from me. I don’t know what, I just know you are. I’ll say it again: you and I have the chance to make both of our lives what they were meant to be.” He shakes his head fiercely, slowly. “But not if you hold back from me.”

  My heart’s clambered its way up to my throat by now. Can I lie, dodge, say no? “What—what exactly do you want, Mr. Gunn?”

  “Everything,” he says bluntly. “I want to know everything you can do.”

  Everything. I gulp, try to swallow my fear, my panic. But some of my secrets aren’t mine to share.

  Mama’s blood-spells have been with the women on her side of the family for generations. Her severing spells, the tracking spells, the caging spells: her magic was, is, a personal magic, family blood in the truest sense. And I’ve committed myself to using sorcery in order to right the past—if I’m honest, some nights I’ve even felt this distinct surge of rightness, like performing magic is something I was born to do—but giving Mama’s secrets away feels wholly different. Feels like delving into the oldest, truest parts of me and selling them wholesale to Gunn. Besides, what’s Gunn want with blood-magic?

  I look at the letter that’s starting to crinkle around its edges from my death grip. If this is about Ruby and Ben, and only them, should it matter? Should I keep giving everything I can in exchange for making things better for them, for making things right? Besides, now that Gunn’s circling in, how long can I stall? What happens if you say no to a man like Gunn?

  “Joan.” Gunn shifts on my bed, bringing me back to the here and now. “I’m not in the habit of asking twice.” He stares at me with those cold, hard, almost taunting eyes. “In fact, I’m not in the habit of asking at all.”

  My heart hammers against my chest. And even though I swore I wouldn’t let these memories haunt me, I can’t help but think back to the warehouse clearing: to those two sorcerers Gunn turned on each other, to all the casualties during his little “experiment,” to the way he forced us to “finish” the Carolina Boys during our final test. This man is dangerous. This man knows where my family lives. Gunn does not stop till he gets what he wants.

  Mama might even understand. Hell, Mama might do the same thing, if Ben’s and Ruby’s futures were on the line.

  “If you’re promising to take care of our cabin back home, Mr. Gunn,” I say softly, hesitantly, “there are some things that I can show you, things—things I’ve never shown anyone.”

  His eyes grow brighter, hungrier. “But you’re going to show me.”

  And for just a second, it feels like the bottom of the world has dropped out, and I’m sitting on a bed with the devil himself. I can’t say yes, or bring myself to speak what feels like a strange form of betrayal, despite how many ways I try to reason it away.

  So I nod. Once.

  “In my office, after rehearsal.” Gunn extends his fingers onto the bed but doesn’t touch mine. “Just you and me.”

  And then he walks to the door and closes it behind him.

  As soon as Gunn’s gone, I try to banish him from my mind, think only about Ben’s letter, let the world begin with Ben’s scrawl of my name and end with his signature. But what I just promised, what I’m going to share with Gunn—it teases, itches, claws at me inside. There wasn’t a choice, comes from somewhere deep within. You’re in this world to fight for Ruby and Ben with everything you’ve got. Just keep going. Like Gunn said, run until you win, or until you fall.

  * * *

  By the time Gunn leaves, it’s time for practice, so I tuck Ben’s letter into my bureau drawer. The Shaws take care of the troupe’s room and board in addition to our weekly pay: our entire troupe resides on the second floor of the Red Den, so there’s never a good reason to be late for a rehearsal or show. I walk past Grace’s room, Ral and Billy’s across the hall, Stock’s, and Tommy and Rose’s beyond that, to the back stairs and down three flights to the cellar. I follow the cavernous, lantern-lit hall past Gunn’s office and into the center show space of the Den, a two-story performance area floored with cement and walled in cinder blocks, which spans our entire corner lot.

  Each day we begin practice with our solo and duo tricks—the ones we open our show with at eight p.m.—the five- or ten-minute performances that we’ll run on repeat until about nine. These “warm-up” tricks are performed on the small circular stages in the front of the show space, Gunn’s thought being that the audience can come in, get a drink at the bar and ease into the show, mosey around our stages and take in the tricks of their choosing. So during morning practice, we’ll try new flourishes on these tricks, or sometimes we’ll perform them for the rest of the troupe for a gut check or critique.

  We wrap up around lunch, after which Gunn comes in to give us his latest idea on the “immersive magic finale” for that night. Sometimes the finale is an entirely new idea Gunn thought up, other times it’s a fresh take or twist on a theme we’ve used before. We’ll brainstorm how to execute the finale, practice, then run it as a dress rehearsal for Gunn, and around five or six p.m. we break for about an hour before getting ready for the actual show. Every day except Sunday we spend like this, sorcering from pretty much morning until midnight, all for a hundred fifty patrons willing to pay top dollar. Besides, Gunn says the long day serves another purpose: strengthening the bonds of our magic until they’re made of steel. Sure, it makes for exhausting days. But it’s good work—work I can lose myself in. Work we’re all proud of.

  “Nice of you to show, Kendrick,” Billy calls across the show space. He stands in the center of his and Ral’s stage, the one in the front right corner of the space. I hustle over to join the rest of my troupe. Billy’s got a pile of about ten cards floating six inches over his outstretched palm. Ral’s beside him, in the midst of stacking a square of face cards up like a thin wall above his head.

  I reach the benches that encircle their stage and slide in beside Grace to sit. “Sorry—lost track of time.”

  Grace snaps her pack of cigarettes against her leg and offers me one. Sh
e drops her voice. “You really didn’t miss anything.”

  I give a little smile as Ral adds, “We wanted everyone’s take on our royal palace of cards trick.” He points up to his wall of face cards. “Billy thinks it’s getting stale.”

  “It was stale three days ago,” Billy mutters. “Now it’s moldy.”

  I peer across the circle to the far bench, where Stock, Tommy, and Rose sit in a row. “What do you all think?”

  “Building a house of cards based on the type of card?” Stock answers with a shrug. “It’s tedious, boring. If I was a patron, I’d pass.”

  “Sort of like being awake and counting sheep,” Rose adds, and Tommy laughs.

  “You know the deal,” Ral says evenly. “Constructive criticism only, please.”

  “Constructive criticism,” Stock repeats. He leans onto Tommy’s shoulder. “Okay, I’d rather watch paint dry than watch you two fuckups sort cards above your heads. Constructive enough?”

  Billy mumbles an obscenity and takes a step forward, but Ral holds him back, keeping him inside the perimeter of their stage.

  It’s like this, some mornings. We’re one troupe, a ring of seven sorcerers working together, bettering one another, but the scars from stitching our factions together—Stock, Tommy, and Rose, with Ral, Billy, Grace, and me—they’ve never faded completely. Most times we manage to pretend they’ve healed. We ignore them. But some days one of us—almost always Stock—starts picking at the edges, whether ’cause he’s in the throes of a shine withdrawal or ’cause he’s just generally more of a prick that day than the last.

  “You’ve got people around your stage every night, you two,” I tell Ral and Billy, trying to make my voice sound warm and encouraging. “You’re just tired of your own trick—hell, I’m tired of mine. I’m starting to see feathers in my dreams.”