“I have prepared certain defenses, I shall have one of my men deliver them to you before the curtain goes up. Their use is self-explanatory. They are powerful magics, Seth, and once set in motion they can’t be recalled, remember that. Time will try and fix itself, I’m absolutely sure of that. The longer Glass Town is removed from our today, the harder entropy will work to ensure that time finds its way in through any cracks or weaknesses in the lenses to where it is hidden. The glass must be maintained at all times. Should one anchor fail the entire feat will come undone, and when it does, the years will catch up with you, Seth. You can’t escape them, we are all beholden to time, even if it only feels like you’ve lived for a few weeks or months. If the lenses fail, you will experience the toil of every single lost year. You will age years in moments. And, if enough time has passed, you will die.”
“Then they better not fail,” was all the gangster said to that.
“Is owning her really worth all that?”
“And more,” Lockwood assured him. “I love her, magician. One day you might be lucky enough to understand what that means. I’d move heaven and earth to have her. It is that simple. That absolute. I have made my peace with this, magician. I know what I am doing, what it means. But the simple truth is I cannot bear to be even a day out of her orbit. She is the earth to my moon.” For all the poetry, all Damiola could see was madness in Lockwood’s eyes. There was no love here. “She will be mine, with or without your help.”
“And your brother?”
“Fuck him.”
“I will do what I have to do,” Damiola said, and knew he would. He hated himself for it, but he was weak. The last and greatest trick of his career. It would have to last him a lifetime.
He never made it as far as the stage that night. The crowd formed a long line around the theater waiting for the doors to open, without realizing that Damiola was out there among them. He walked down the line, smiling to the few people who did a double take, almost recognizing him before he moved on to the next until he found Eleanor Raines deep in conversation with one of the women from that doomed film they were working on. No one seemed to understand that Ruben Glass was destitute, that the half-built Glass Town was the folly that ended him as a power player in the city, and that the movie he’d invested his fortune in—like the studio city he dreamed of—would never be finished. Hell, come sunrise, there would be no sign of him or his doomed empire anywhere in the city, including the streets it was built upon.
Eleanor recognized him.
Smiling, she introduced him to her companion, “Cadmus, this is Claire. She’s the star of our picture. Claire, this handsome devil is Cadmus Damiola, the star of the show we’re all queuing up here so diligently to watch.”
“Charmed,” the magician said, taking her outstretched hand and raising it to his lips.
“Likewise,” Claire Greet said, offering a slight curtsy. In most company, she would have been the most attractive woman present, but even her rare beauty paled beside Eleanor’s. “I trust you are going to put on quite the show for us, Mr. Damiola.”
He inclined his head slightly, a wry smile spreading across his lips. “I hope you will find it unforgettable,” he said. “If you would excuse me, dear lady, I need to talk to Eleanor.”
“Of course, of course. Don’t worry, I’ll keep our place in the line.” He ushered them away. Eleanor followed him to the street corner. He breathed deeply, knowing what was going to happen. It had all been carefully orchestrated like some grim dance.
He rested a hand on her shoulder.
She looked at him.
She knew something was wrong.
He didn’t waste his breath trying to reassure her.
“What is it? What’s wrong, Cadmus? What’s happening?”
“It’s your man,” he said, not saying which corner of the love triangle he meant. Considering his profession, he was a lousy liar. The trick was to keep things as close to the truth as he could. “He’s in trouble.”
She looked nervously toward her friend, who was completely oblivious to their conversation, tapping her toe to some barely audible tune being pumped through tiny speakers in the awning, then back to Damiola. She trusted him. If he said Isaiah was in trouble, then Isaiah was in trouble. So many things communicated wordlessly between them. They all came back to the only word she said aloud—the one word that by chance meant he wasn’t lying to her. “Seth…”
He nodded.
“He’s going to hurt him,” he said, delivering the line in such as way as she couldn’t possibly misinterpret the amount of pain involved.
“You can’t let him. Please, Cadmus, you have to do something.”
He nodded again, hating himself. “I’ll take you to him, then the pair of you, you’re going to have to run. Seth won’t stop until both of you are dead. You do know that, don’t you? He’s obsessed. There’s no happy ending here.”
“I know,” she said, sadly, like she’d always known, but had been blind to it for the longest time, attracted to the flame of fame he promised and knowing deep down she was going to get burned. “Where is he?”
“I’ll take you to him,” Damiola said. She didn’t know him as well as she thought she did. If she had, she’d have noticed the slight tick in his cheek that he got when he was lying.
“What about the show?”
“We’ll be back in time, don’t worry.” He looked up and down the street, seemingly checking for a taxicab. It had only been a few years since the city was awash with horse manure with over eight thousand hansom cabs working the streets, but they’d all but died out over the last couple of years. Now the fares went to Austin Low Loaders with eight thousand of those trawling the streets for passengers. There was a horse-drawn four-wheel growler outside Kelly’s across the way, and beside it a couple of Rational motor cabs waiting for fares from The Savoy. Damiola had no intention of flagging down either. He raised a hand, catching the eye of Seth’s man who was parked up two hundred yards down the street.
A minute later he was bundling Eleanor in the back of the car and giving the driver the address of one of the anchors. It was a relatively short drive. He had no urge to make small talk. The driver, though, was happy to fill the silences with a stream of barely comprehensible cockney babble. The streets rolled by to his commentary. Damiola checked his pocket watch. Time was running out. If he didn’t time the incantation to perfection, there was no telling what would happen. The only thing he knew for sure was that Seth Lockwood wouldn’t accept failure. That was why he was doing it, he realized. It wasn’t about helping Seth spirit her away; it was about banishing Lockwood from the streets he terrorized.
When he thought of it that way his cowardice was almost noble.
They pulled up outside one of the many churches of London. This one was a little different as its gargoyles hid one of the magician’s lenses, serving as an anchor point for his great conjuration. “We’re here,” he said.
There were three men waiting on the church steps, their faces obscured by the shadows cast by the steeple. Ruben Glass stood beside Isaiah Lockwood.
Isaiah came running down the steps toward them. Seth shoved him in the back, sending him sprawling down the stairs. He was on his hands and knees, battered and bloody from a proper beating, as they clambered out of the car.
“What have they done to you?” Eleanor wailed, dropping to her knees beside the love of her life. She cradled him in her arms. She didn’t care about the puddles or what they would do to her dress.
Seth stayed up in the shadows.
Misdirection.
Showing the audience what they wanted to believe. The brothers were day and night to each other: one light, the other dark; one tall and thin; the other shorter, stockier. They should have been easy to tell apart, but she wasn’t looking at what was in front of her, she was looking at what Damiola wanted her to see. That was the foundation for a lot of illusions. A wig to change the hair color, stoop a little to make yourself appear smaller, d
ress in your brother’s clothes; the illusion will hold because it’s not being scrutinized.
Thinking it was Isaiah, she helped Seth stand, allowing him to lean on her.
Seth didn’t look up once. No eye contact. He lifted a dirty hand to his brow, and breathing hard, said, “It is time, Cadmus.” Their voices were different, of course, and Seth made no effort to mask it. Eleanor wasn’t listening for the subtle differences. She thought she was saving Isaiah and nothing was going to change that until the denouement, and by that time the trick would have been played, the outcome assured. She would only see what the magician wanted her to see until it was too late to change anything.
He breathed deeply, calming himself. He was committed to this course of action. He had been ever since he’d taken the gangster’s coin. You get involved with a man like Seth Lockwood, he’s not content until he owns you body and soul. And he’s always looking for ways to make it so.
Damiola began to intone the first few words of the invocation, feeling the faint tingle beginning in his fingertips spread quickly down the length of his arms, trammeling the bones of his rib cage to collide in a spark that ignited inside his heart, giving birth to the first true magic London had seen in generations.
The words when they came were laced with the raw elemental energy of that spark.
He raised a hand as though in farewell.
A ghostly blue glaze engulfed it.
Inside the glaze the light crackled and sparked with life as he drew on the alignment of the elements around him, the unique power of the place, and in turn its place within time, to fuel what would be his last illusion.
It still wasn’t too late to back out, to turn around and walk away.
As though sensing his moment of hesitation, Seth rasped two words: “Do it.”
Damiola reached up, whispering the final syllables of damnation.
The light sparked from his fingertips, hitting the lens in the center of the anchor and refracting to follow the precise lines he’d calculated that would take the light from lens to lens around the thirteen anchors completing the circuit of Glass Town.
It was a heart-stopping few seconds while they waited to see if his calculations were right, and then the sizzling line of blue-white light came racing from the lens of the last anchor streaking through the air to rejoin the first, completing the ring of blue fifteen feet above their heads.
The air stank of magic.
He couldn’t remember what it had been like before when he couldn’t smell the impossible. When you knew what you were looking for it was unmistakable. It was all around him, in the fresh-cut grass, in the cinnamon from the bakery on the corner, in the thick choking smog of the city and every other incredibly vivid aroma. It was the essence of magic that amplified the natural odors to the point that they were so much more powerful than any other smell in the vicinity. It wasn’t some fragrance of its own. Standing there in the middle of the dirty East End street it was the reek of garbage, of rotten cabbage and urine, so much stronger now than they had been when they’d emerged from the car. There were other fragrances that refused to be overpowered by the garbage, most notably the turgid smell of the river and its murky water.
Seth grabbed Eleanor’s hand and pulled her back behind the line of magic.
She fought him instinctively, recoiling from his touch.
She knew in that moment that he wasn’t Isaiah, but it was too late for her.
The air between them rippled like a summer haze.
Seth turned her toward him, the wig on his head lopsided and almost comically covering half of his cruel face.
Eleanor pushed back against him, her hands on his chest. Seth reached up, gripping her by the wrists as she struggled against him. There was no mistaking who it was, or how she’d been tricked, and in that moment she seemed to move to hit him, the motion becoming a blur. Her face turned away from Seth to look hopelessly at the magician. The betrayal in her eyes burrowed into him.
Damiola watched as the magic trapped them.
There was nothing he could do now.
No place or time for regret.
He had damned her.
But it was hard to believe he couldn’t just reach and pull her out of that place. Just for a second he even contemplated it, leaving Seth trapped alone on the other side, but before he could move they changed, becoming ghosts as they slipped out of time.
He hadn’t noticed Ruben Glass come down the church steps to stand beside him. “That deserves a stiff drink, my man. By God does it. I can’t believe that I get to wake up in a London without that bastard Lockwood tomorrow. You don’t know what a great thing you’ve done, magician. What a great, great thing. You’ve saved us all.”
Damiola shook his head, not so much in answer, as in denial. They were gone. “Not her. I didn’t save her.”
“Collateral damage,” the businessman shrugged as if to say such is life. “The way I see it, it’s better some woman I don’t know gets hurt than me. And the way things were going, Seth had gone off the deep end. If you’d failed, we’d both be dead by dawn. Losing some real estate is a small price to pay. Lockwood’s gone. We’re free of his vicelike grip. That makes today a good day no matter who had to be hurt to make it happen.”
“You’re all heart,” Damiola said.
“Better than that, I’m a free man, magician. Smell that? That fresh air? That’s hard-earned, my friend. Every breath is a treasure. He’s gone. Think about it for a moment. He’s gone. I can’t believe it. He’s fucking well gone. Look around you; this is what London looks like without that bastard. And it’s beautiful. Now try and tell me that’s not cause for celebration?”
All Damiola could say in answer to him was, “What have we done?”
“Won,” Glass said.
He wasn’t so sure.
38
CLEAN SLATE
Seth closed the door behind him.
Rosie Raines led the way through to the sitting room, offering him a choice of tea or something stronger and a seat. Seth was all smiles as he took the cup from her. The room was nothing special. There were the obligatory family portraits on the mantelpiece. It was interesting to see his brother’s face diluted across a few generations before it settled unerringly back in the same set of features with Josh.
“I’m sorry to turn up on your doorstep unannounced, especially at this ungodly hour, but I was hoping to catch Josh before he headed out to work.”
“He’s not been home all night,” Rosie said. “I never know whether he’s coming or going these days. Not that it makes much difference to him. He lost his job at the magazine when he did his disappearing act after the funeral.”
“Some people find it difficult,” Seth said, pretending empathy. “It really is a lovely house you’ve got here,” Seth said, lying through his teeth. It was anything but lovely by any of the yardsticks he would have used for his own taste. It reeked of the old man who had lived out the last two dozen or so years of his life cooped up in it. There was little of the woman’s personality on display. Indeed, since Boone’s passing it had become something of a shrine to him.
“There’s a lot of living been done here, that’s for sure,” she said, “but I don’t think I’d call it lovely. Boone was never one for creature comforts, and even after he took us in, well, this was always his house.”
“And now it’s yours,” Seth said.
“But I wish it wasn’t,” Rosie admitted with a resigned shrug. “I could quite happily have waited another twenty years to inherit a few bricks given the alternative.”
“I’m sure. It must be a hard time for you. Like losing your husband all over again,” Seth said, watching her reaction.
She looked down at her plain slippers, then up, offering a wan smile. “Thank you for coming to the funeral. It meant a lot.”
“It was nothing, honestly. These family feuds can be a bit silly if you ask me. Best to keep the past where it belongs rather than keep stirring it up.”
She smiled at that, and raised the bone china cup to her lips to take a sip of the steaming drink.
“I appreciated it, and what you said. You and Josh, you’re family, you’re the future. I won’t be here forever. I worry about what will happen to him. He’s a bit…” She seemed to struggle to find the right word, only to settle on, “lost.”
“The sickness of us millennials, I’m afraid,” Seth said. “I can’t help but think it was easier before, now everything is at your fingertips and you’re carrying around the collective knowledge of the world in your pocket. Meet a nice girl, the first thing she does is check out your digital footprint, where’s the romance in that? It was so much easier when it was just that old, old story of boy meets girl.”
“Quite,” Rosie said. “And to be honest, sometimes I think he’ll never meet anyone. He doesn’t even seem all that interested most of the time. I wouldn’t mind if he brought a nice young man home, either, if that’s what he wanted. That’s all a mother wants, you know, for her kids to find someone nice to settle down with and be happy. That’s not so much to ask, is it?”
“Very enlightened of you, Rosie. I can’t imagine old Gideon reacting the same way if I brought a charming young man home,” Seth laughed at the thought of it. The woman was annoying him in a perfectly useless suburban housewife kind of way. Her entire world revolved around these four walls, the extent of her horizons the end of the cul-de-sac they lived on, or stretching it, the short line of shops around the corner. “It’s what makes the world go around, Rosie. You don’t mind if I call you Rosie, do you?”
“No, that’s fine; we’re family after all,” she simpered. It made his skin crawl.
“Rosie,” he smiled his most ingratiating smile, like a salesman offering the world. He shook his head. “It’s so hard to grasp, after all this time, growing up alone, thinking there was just me, looking at the way my grandfather ruled this place with a rod of fear, me hidden away from the world,” he enjoyed that line, that was clever, that was almost telling the truth, “you start to think that’s all there is to life, that this small circle of people around you is everything.”
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