Wild Nights (Jokers Wild)

by Katherine Garbera

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” Nicholas said. “Jade, this is Zelda Quincy.”

  Jade glanced over at her, taking in her dress and hair, and then turned her attention back to Nicholas. Zelda knew they’d been lovers, and it was obvious that Jade wasn’t done with Nicholas yet. But from what she’d heard, Jade had been the one to end things. Maybe she’d realized what she’d given up…but that was too bad for her, Zelda thought. She linked her arm through Nicholas’s and turned so that her breast brushed against him. He looked down at her with a hot, sexy smile.

  “I can’t imagine she’ll do anything that compares to the stunts in your upcoming show,” Zelda said.

  Before he could respond, another couple arrived behind them, and she turned to see that it was Leo and Keely. Both of them were dressed in their best and looked like…like something had finally happened between them. Leo completely ignored Jade. Zelda remembered that they knew each other, since Jade had been part of the act when Leo had first started mentoring Nicholas, but Leo put his back to her and made the four of them into their own private group.

  “You look gorgeous tonight, Keely. I love red on you,” Zelda said.

  “Thanks. You look fabulous, too,” Keely said.

  “What was that about?” Leo asked Nicholas.

  “Just Jade bragging about her stunt. There’s no way she can top what we have coming, and she must know it,” Nicholas said.

  “She wants you,” Zelda said.

  “That’s ridiculous. She left me.”

  “Then she regrets it. Because she was looking at you as if plotting a way to lead you down in her faux dungeon and have her way with you.”

  He smiled and dropped a kiss on her lips. “You’re the only woman I want. And I’ll follow you down anywhere.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jade’s big trick was exactly the same illusion that Nicholas and his team had been rehearsing for months. Zelda sat between Nicholas and Keely and heard them cursing. They were livid. And as the curtain fell and the audience stood up and roared their approval, she could only look over at Nicholas in sympathy.

  Jade took betrayal to a new level. Zelda was angry for him. There used to be a code among magicians. This type of theft wasn’t tolerated. Had that world changed so much since she’d left it?

  “I’m going to hurt someone,” Leo said. “Get me out of here before I completely lose my temper.”

  “I need to go backstage and talk to her crew. How did they think they’d get away with this?” Keely said.

  “I’m going to find out,” Nicholas said.

  Zelda could see that Leo was literally hanging on to his anger by a thread, so she stood up. “I’ll go outside with Leo. Meet us when you’re done.”

  Nicholas nodded at her, but his face was tight with rage. Maybe Leo wasn’t the only one who needed to calm down. Keely looked at her, and Zelda nodded.

  “I can take care of myself,” Leo said. “I’m going back to Jokers Wild and our rehearsal space. We need to figure out how to tweak our show.”

  “Surely not tonight,” Keely said.

  “Yes, tonight. I need to work or I’m going to lose it,” Leo said.

  “I’ll come with you, then,” Keely said. “Even I’m tempted to punch Jade in the nose.”

  “We aren’t punching anyone. Keely, tell Trixie what’s gone on here and have her start legal proceedings. She’ll know what to do,” Nicholas said before turning to Zelda. “I’ll be back in a minute. Wait for me in the lobby?”

  With the way he looked right now, she wasn’t sure it was safe to leave him alone, but she wasn’t really in any hurry to get between the two very competitive ex-lovers. “Okay.”

  The audience slowly emptied, and Nicholas made his way to the backstage area as the three of them watched. As soon as he was out of sight, Leo started cursing. “I told that boy she was bad news, but he wouldn’t listen. But damn, even I didn’t realize she’d stoop this low.”

  “I thought there was a code of conduct that prohibited magicians from stealing illusions,” Zelda said.

  “There is a code of conduct,” Leo said, turning toward her. “But that’s an old-fashioned way of putting it.”

  “It’s not that old-fashioned,” she said. Fifteen years ago, when she and her family had stopped doing magic, it had still been in use.

  “You look familiar to me,” Leo said suddenly, leaning closer to her. “I know it’s not Vegas, but I am sure I know you from somewhere.”

  An icy cold shiver went down her spine. She had spent so long hiding who she was from everyone because there were still those who wanted what the Waterstones had created. Those illusions had been unduplicatable. She and Zoe had changed their surnames and disappeared to keep the family’s illusions from ever being repeated.

  “You don’t know me,” she said. “We met when I came into the room with Nicholas six weeks ago. That’s it.”

  She turned and started walking down the aisle, feeling Leo’s eyes on her the entire way. She just kept on moving, not wanting to do anything to give herself away. She looked nothing like the skinny teen she’d been. And the heavy makeup that she and her sister had worn had made them look very different on stage then they did in person.

  Besides, she didn’t really care if Leo found out who she’d been, who her family was…but she wanted it to be after she told Nicholas. She didn’t want to add to the betrayal he felt after this night.

  Damn Jade. Zelda didn’t even know the woman, but she really hated her in that moment. She got how hard it must be for the other woman to move on, but she’d dumped Nicholas, and Jade was just going to learn that she couldn’t have him back. This kind of betrayal was a knife in the back to a magician. It made Zelda wonder again if Jade had been behind the theft of Nicholas’s chest. Doing his illusion was the same as that theft. It was personal.

  It wasn’t just business or even magician one-upmanship. This had been deliberate, and Zelda wanted to hurt Jade for doing it. She got as far as the lobby and then stood off to the side, ignoring the audience members who were raving about Jade’s show.

  Instead, she pulled up the internet on her phone and started searching, looking to find out as much as she could about the other woman. It turned out that after she left Nicholas, Jade had had one big show that received lackluster ratings, and then her career had kind of stalled. She’d been working the county fair circuit and doing street magic for the last few years.

  Until she’d gotten this gig at the Golden Palms. How had she done that? It wasn’t like she was a headliner, unless…the management at the Golden Palms knew she had a big illusion. Had she been planning this the entire time? Experience had taught her that there was a zeitgeist when it came to developing tricks. She’d seen it happen when her family had still been in the thick of it. Everyone was fed by new advancements in props, and they’d push the envelope of old tricks even further. But to do the exact same illusion? Not likely.

  “Let’s go.”

  Nicholas’s face was the tightest and angriest she’d ever seen it as he cupped his hand under her elbow and led her out of the hotel. The paparazzi and photographers were still there, and a few of them called out to ask for his reaction.

  He turned to face them. “I’ve seen better.”

  Then he continued walking away, and she knew that he was going to need something more than the act they’d spent months rehearsing to save his show. She realized then that she could give him a trick that no one else had been able to duplicate since her family had stopped doing it. It was complicated, but it would perfectly suit Nicholas once he tweaked it. It just had to be performed by one illusionist instead of secret twins, as she and her sister had been.

  But if she gave it to him, she knew he’d consider it another betrayal. And in her attempt to save his show, she might just lose him for good.

  …

  Nicholas wa
sn’t in the mood to be polite. He thought he probably should tell Zelda to go home, but she didn’t seem inclined to leave, and he was glad to have her by his side as he entered his rehearsal space at the Jokers Wild Hotel and Casino. The team was there already, including Trixie, who was at her desk in the corner, giving someone an earful on the phone.

  Leo was working chains and moving around in those quick angry motions that reminded Nicholas that his friend had been a boxer in his youth. Keely’s fingers were moving over her keyboard in that rapid-fire way that usually meant she was onto something.

  “Jade’s standing by her statement that her team developed the trick. We are going to have to go through all of our records to prove we came up with it first, which is going to take more than two f-ing days. So, we need a new trick or we’ll have to delay the opening. And I’m not sure that Dare or Casey are going to be okay with us pushing it back. Dare’s not ready to go with his daredevil show, and we need Phantasm to launch in order to keep up with our quarterly projections,” Nicholas said. “Not that that’s important to anyone in the room. I’m just talking out loud. Does anyone have anything?”

  “Yes. Jade is a c—”

  “Leo. Don’t say that,” Keely reprimanded him. “She is, but that is really a harsh word, and I don’t like it.”

  “Sorry, babe,” Leo said. “I’m just super pissed, and I don’t know what to do next. You’re right. We don’t have time to come up with another stunt that will leave audiences in awe. She stole our ace in the hole.”

  “No one in the industry will trust her again. Everyone who we invited to the preview knows that is your illusion. Her showrunner was invited,” Trixie said.

  “She explained it by saying she was surprised we were onto something similar,” Nicholas said, grinding his teeth.

  Onto something similar, his ass. She’d done it to screw him over because, as she’d said so succinctly tonight, he’d taken the tricks to his show when they’d split. She figured that was the reason she’d failed. Nicholas had developed every illusion with Leo, using a very old framework for a show that had been done in the early twentieth century. Why Jade thought she had any claim to their work was beyond him. But now they had to deal with that.

  “What do we have that we can embellish? Something that audiences haven’t seen in a while,” Nicholas asked.

  “Not much. I was thinking we could do more with the levitating trick or levitate the audience. That always gets some oohs and aahs, but it’s not a showstopper. We need you to do something that leaves the audience breathless.”

  Zelda walked around the room, looking at the props and the ropes and wires. Some of them weren’t visible from the audience’s perspective, but back here, everything was visible.

  “Hey, so remember how I was working on mimicking the tank in the lobby? What if we do a water-escape trick on steroids using that?” Keely asked.

  “I like that thought, but people have seen water-escape tricks. We’d have to do something really high-risk.”

  “Like the Waterstone family did. Remember, one of the daughters was injured… I think she was paralyzed from the waist down after she got trapped under the water,” Leo said. “That trick has never been successfully performed since then. I think we should—”

  “No. You shouldn’t,” Zelda said.

  “I think Leo has a better idea of what will work,” Nicholas said, turning toward her and noticing that she was holding the escape ropes like a professional. He’d never shown her how to loop them, not like he had with the straitjacket.

  “I don’t think he does. Nicholas, can I speak to you alone for a minute?” she asked. “I have something to tell you, and I don’t want to do it in front of everyone here.”

  “Whatever you say can be said in front of them,” Nicholas said, his mind going almost numb as he tried not to make the obvious connection. Leo had said she looked familiar, she was holding an escape rope like she knew how to use it, and she’d gone white as a sheet when Leo had mentioned the Waterstone family.

  He knew she’d had no reason to tell him who she was in the beginning, but when he’d shown her the Waterstone straitjacket, shown her the illusion her father, he figured, had been famous for, she should have mentioned her connection then.

  “It will be better if I tell you while we are alone,” she said.

  “Better? Will it change what you are going to say?” he asked.

  “No,” she said quietly. “It won’t.”

  “Then just say it now,” he said. “Leo has seen me act like an ass over a woman before, so he won’t be surprised. And Keely and Trixie already know my track record with the opposite sex. What’s one more betrayal from a woman I thought I loved tonight?”

  He knew he was being an asshole and that his words were hurting her. He saw the sheen of tears in her eyes and wanted to take his angry accusations back, but he couldn’t. She had to be connected to a big magic family, likely the Waterstones. She had to have a past that was tied to magic, didn’t she? And she’d led him to believe otherwise. The biggest betrayals in his life had always come from people he loved. His grandparents of course. He’d thought he’d loved Jade though he’d never told her. And now Zelda.

  “That’s not fair. I haven’t betrayed you,” Zelda said. “We hooked up, remember? It was casual for so long that after a while, it just became harder to talk about the fact that I’m…”

  “Part of the Waterstone family. You are, aren’t you?” he asked at last.

  “Yes. I’m one of the twins known as Suria. Zoe’s the one who was hurt. And it wasn’t that she was trapped in the water; it was that I was the one who got caught and couldn’t get into the space at the bottom of the tank. The boom came down as she tried to save me,” Zelda said. “But I’m not telling you now because I want to drive you away. I’m telling you because my family’s tragedy could be your showstopper. You could take what you have here and modify the trick. It could save your show.”

  …

  Zelda stood there shaking as the memory of that day played in her mind. Part of what made the trick so fantastic for the audience was also what had made the ending so horrific for her and Zoe. They had both wanted to take turns playing the different roles—the one who started the trick and the one who ended it. But their father had insisted that Zelda be the one to end it. She hated being in the box under the stage for the extended amount of time it took to perform the trick, and she’d been sulky about it, showing up late to the rehearsals because of the boy she’d been crushing on. But Zoe had reassured her they’d get it right at showtime, when the tank was full of water and had switched places with her..

  “I knew you looked familiar,” Leo said. “I was at that show. I don’t know if you recall, but I came backstage to help get you both out.”

  “I don’t,” Zelda admitted. “I can’t remember anything about the show. I sometimes have nightmares where I still feel like I’m trapped underwater. I got caught because the escape hatch hinge was caught on Zoe’s costume.”

  Nicholas didn’t say anything, just looked at her woodenly. She had known it wasn’t going to be easy to tell him, but she’d never imagined a scenario like this, on a night when he’d had one blow too many.

  She understood that for Nicholas, love and lies were twisted together, and she’d wanted to prove to him that they weren’t. But her timing was off. Again. This time, she’d hurt another person she loved. This was exactly why she’d tried to keep her distance.

  “Give us the room,” Nicholas said. His voice was like a whip, and no one said a word as they left the room quickly.

  Once it was just the two of them, the silence was almost unbearable, and the rope she had been playing with felt too heavy. She looked down and saw that she’d been looping and unlooping it in a nervous movement. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much of her past she’d suppressed. She sometimes toyed with easy little tricks fo
r Stetson, but this was big magic, the kind that she’d been afraid of for a long time.

  And once again, it was breaking her heart. She could have kept quiet, let Nicholas’s show be delayed or not the event it needed to be. But instead, she’d told him the one thing that would drive him from her. She knew that. But she loved him, and he needed her.

  She finally understood what real love was. And it was more painful than she’d dreamed. But she wanted him to be successful. She wanted his show to succeed, because, in the long run, that was what he believed in. Hadn’t he said that to her so many times? That everything was an illusion? Maybe not in those exact words, but that was his truth. And she could give him a trick that would leave everyone in the audience talking about it long after they left.

  “Why didn’t you say something about this sooner?” he asked.

  “We. Hooked. Up.”

  “That’s an excuse. You knew I was a magician. When we were drinking shots—”

  “We both had questions we didn’t answer,” she said. “It’s easy to keep the important things hidden when you are just having sex with someone. It’s when it became something more that I started to realize how not knowing would hurt you.”

  “Then why didn’t you just tell me?” he asked after a few moments of silence. The pain in his voice almost undid the last threads she was using to keep herself together.

  “It’s my greatest shame, Nicholas. It’s not that I was hiding who I was from you. I was hiding how selfish and greedy I had been. That girl—” She broke off. “I’ve moved on from that life. I really don’t think about it much, except when I can’t sleep.”

  When he didn’t respond, she looked over at him. One hand was holding the gold coin charm his grandfather had given him, and her heart broke right then and there. She was trying to help him, and the showman in him would take her offer. She knew that. But her lover wouldn’t ever be able to forgive this. Despite his rock-hard body, cocky grin, and massive sex appeal, Nicholas had never been sure of his attractiveness.