by R. L. King
I moved on to Connor. The woman with him had unbuttoned his shirt completely and was now playing with the hair on his chest as his big hands gently caressed her rear end. For a guy who’d been freaked out about the stuff he’d smelled and heard outside that I hadn’t even noticed, he sure was relaxed now.
Maybe the danger had passed.
Maybe I was getting myself worked up over nothing.
Maybe whatever was outside the train was gone. If Connor didn’t seem worried, then why should I be?
If Connor didn’t seem worried…
Inside my head, a tumbler clicked into place.
I jerked up, nearly knocking the two women off my lap. I muttered an apology when they protested, but barely noticed I was doing it.
I looked at Al, Stan, and Blum. They still sat as they had before, their partners still in their laps, not paying a bit of attention to me. Stan was so relaxed he’d almost dropped his brandy glass on the floor.
Almost dropped his brandy glass…
Another tumbler dropped.
What was that old adage from Sherlock Holmes? Something about when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
The problem was, when you were dealing with mages, nothing was impossible.
But that was okay. As I’ve discovered time after time, nobody’s exempt from good old human error. It doesn’t matter how smart or powerful you are—it almost always gets you in the end. That was why even master criminals usually got caught, eventually.
I smiled.
11
Across the room, the bartender, who’d returned to his spot in front of the curtained door, tilted his head. Then he tapped his wrist again. He looked worried.
Gently, I sat up the rest of the way. “Sorry, ladies,” I told them. “Be back in a minute.” Still smiling my best shit-eating grin, I ambled over to the bartender.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked. “Remember, you still have to figure out how to get the door open.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean, you don’t think so?”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
He frowned, his brow furrowing, his whole body tight with tension. “I’m telling you—you don’t have much time. You’ve got to get in there and stop the train before it goes beyond the point of no return.”
“Why?”
He looked genuinely confused. “Why what?”
“Why do I have to stop it?”
He looked around as if expecting something to jump us. “Why? Do you want to stay here forever? Don’t you want to get home?”
I shrugged. The two ladies had almost succeeded in getting me out of my polo shirt before; I pulled it the rest of the way off and tossed it aside. “I dunno. It’s pretty sweet here. I could get to like this, I think.”
“Like it?”
“Hell, yeah.” I half-turned as if to move back to my chair, where the two smiling, naked women waited. “Come on, dude—what’s not to like? Good booze, good music, willing ladies…this place is a guy’s paradise.”
“Hey!” Connor protested from the other side of the room, pushing free of his own partner. “What about Amber?”
“What about Amber?” I mused, rubbing my chin. “I mean, she’s hot and all, but why settle for one lady when I can have all of these? You know what they say—variety is the spice of life.”
I settled back into the chair, holding out my hands toward the two women. They came readily into my arms, snuggling against me with little murmurs of pleasure. I looked around. “What about the rest of you? We can share, right? You ladies okay with that?”
Connor’s face was growing red. He leaped out of his chair as his startled partner scrambled away. “What the fuck, man?” he snapped. “That’s my sister you’re talking about!”
I looked at Al, Stan, and Blum. They’d all pulled up from what they were doing to look at me like I’d suddenly sprouted wings.
“Listen to the man,” the bartender said, pointing at Connor. “He sounds pissed. Hurry up and figure out how to get through that door. I’m telling you—you’ve barely got any time left!”
I looked at my watch, which hadn’t displayed the correct time since this whole thing started. “Oh, I’d say I’ve got at least…what, two hours?”
Their confusion was better than the best booze I’d ever had. I wondered how long I should prolong it. After all, they’d strung me along for at least an hour—by rights, I should give them the same treatment.
But right about now, I didn’t feel anything but pleased with myself. “Okay, guys,” I said, laughing. “It’s over. You can come out now. Who all’s here? V? I know you’re here somewhere—this has your fingerprints all over it. Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
For a moment, I thought they’d try to keep it going. The bartender’s face showed something halfway between confusion and consternation, and Al, Blum, and Stan exchanged questioning glances like they were trying to get their stories straight.
Then they all looked at me. Al chuckled.
The scene changed.
All around me, the elegant gentleman’s club transformed into the first car I’d remembered entering: the leather chairs changed to less fancy ones, the paneling faded away, and the plush carpet went back to its former, more utilitarian pattern.
The naked women, the purple guy, and the tentacle monster disappeared. So did Blum. Al, still smiling, remained, but his clothes had morphed from the smoking jacket into his more usual black T-shirt and jeans. Connor was still there too, wearing the same green plaid shirt but now it was buttoned and tucked in.
That left only two more people—or creatures—in the room: the red-haired bartender and the orange, six-legged monster who’d been serving the tentacle guy. As I watched, the bartender began to morph too. When he was finished, his clothes looked the same—but his face definitely didn’t.
I gaped. “Holy shit—you’re here?”
Ian’s grin was bigger than Al’s. “You didn’t think I’d miss a chance to mess with you, did you? This was much more fun than hanging out with a bunch of drunken straight guys.”
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. The whole time, my helpful subconscious had been trying to tell me he’d seemed familiar, especially the sensuous, easy way he moved in both male and female form, but I’d been too busy dealing with Cirque du Surreal to pay attention.
I pulled a deep breath and pointed first at the six-legged orange creature and then at Stan. “So…given that everybody else in the “Let’s Fuck with Jason’s Head” Magic Club has shown up, that just leaves you two. Which one is you, V?”
The orange creature laughed and began to ooze. A moment later Verity stood in front of me. “Good job, big brother!” she said. “How’d you figure it out? I was sure we had you!”
“I was too,” Al said. “Do tell, Mr. Holmes—what gave it away?”
I know it was a cliché, but I felt like the cat that had just swallowed a whole six-pack of canaries. I’m sure I must have looked like the smuggest sonofabitch who’d ever smugged, but I didn’t do a damn thing to change it. They deserved everything they got.
“Before I tell you, I think you owe me an explanation. Why the crazy shit? And how did you do it? I figured it was illusions, right?”
“Oh, definitely,” Al said.
“I figured it might be from the beginning—but the thing throwing me was that I didn’t think even you had the kind of power to pull this off, Al.”
“On my own? Not a chance. Too many variables to keep track of. That’s why I had to recruit these miscreants to help. We’ve been planning this for weeks—essentially ever since you asked me to be your best man and made that amusing remark.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What amusing remark?”
“You made me promise not to ship you off to another dimension. And I did promise. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t make you think I’d done it.”
/> Verity laughed. “You shouldn’t challenge him like that, Jason. You know it just makes him worse.”
I looked around. “So—where’s everybody else? You didn’t tell them all what was going on, did you?”
“Of course not,” Al said. “They’re in the other two cars, drinking and carousing and watching pornographic movies. We told them we had a little private thing we wanted to do with you for an hour or so.”
“Wait. So you mean we’ve never left this car?”
“Nope.” Verity was looking even more smug than I felt. “You can do some amazing things with illusions, if you coordinate them well enough. Doc taught me and Ian a lot of new stuff we didn’t know before.”
“Uh…yeah. That’s only a little bit terrifying.”
“So come on,” Ian said. “Tell us how you figured it out. I’m dying to know. I didn’t think we screwed up at all.”
I began pacing the car, looking at each of them in turn. I felt like one of those old-time detectives revealing which of the suspects had committed the murder in the drafty old house on the moors.
I stopped in front of Stan and pointed at him. “So…the one part of this I haven’t figured out yet is who you are.”
“What do you mean? I’m Stan. I’m just here watching the fun.”
I shook my head emphatically. “No, you’re not.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because Stan is left-handed.”
They all looked at me in confusion.
“Stan is left-handed,” I repeated. “And when you were sitting in that chair, you were holding your brandy glass with your right hand.”
“Come on,” Verity protested. “That’s not exactly definitive proof. Lots of people hold things in their off hands.”
Ian snickered. “Maybe his other hand was busy.”
“You’re right,” I conceded. “That’s not definitive proof. It was just another piece of the puzzle. But I’m still sure you’re not really Stan. So who are you?”
“Stan” held my gaze for a moment longer, and then broke into a grin of his own. “Jig’s up, mate,” he said in a deep Cockney accent. He shimmered and turned into Eddie Monkton, Al’s old friend from England.
“Of course! I should have known you wouldn’t miss this. Is Ward here too? Is he cosplaying a chair or something?”
“He couldn’t make it,” Al says. “He sends his regrets, but he wants to hear all about it next time we’re at the Dragon.”
“Anyway,” Verity put in. “You said that wasn’t what gave it away. What was?”
“Two things: first, the fact that only Al, Stan, and Blum were here.”
“Why is that important?” Ian asked.
“Because they’re the only ones you guys know. If you’re gonna do a convincing illusion of somebody that’ll fool one of their closest friends, you have to know them at least a little. If you tried pretending to be Dave or Ty or any of the rest of the guys, I’d have figured it out in a second.”
Al looked approving. “Well done, Jason. I can see why you’re so good at your job.”
“But that’s still not all, is it?” Verity asked. “Even that isn’t enough to really give it away.”
“No, you’re right.” I walked up and down the row again, and this time stopped in front of Connor. “The biggest clue was you.”
“Me?” He looked indignant. “Hey, I didn’t screw anything up. I did just what they told me.”
“Exactly. And that’s why I got suspicious. I bought the part about the sleeping potion not working with your bear metabolism—that made sense. And I bought all that stuff about smelling or hearing things I couldn’t, because you’ve got the super-senses.”
“Okay, so—”
“So,” I continued triumphantly, patting him on the shoulder, “the whole thing fell apart when I realized one thing: that I only had your word for everything you said. I had no way to prove it. So I started thinking about the whole thing in a different way, and it all made a lot more sense when I reframed the problem. Put in somebody who’s in on the joke, to feed me false clues and ramp up the tension just enough so I always felt like I was working against the clock. I gotta say, it was really a fantastic little show. You almost got me. What would have happened if I’d made it to the engineer? Would I have found Bob driving the train or something?”
“Bob?” Al raised an eyebrow.
“The tentacle dude in the porno. Nice touch, by the way—whose idea was that?”
“Mine,” Verity said proudly. “The freaky stuff was mostly all me. Doc did the big infrastructure stuff, Ian did the hands-on parts, and Eddie helped out wherever he was needed.”
“Sort of a utility player,” Eddie said.
“If you’d actually done what you were supposed to do and made it to the engine,” Al said, “you’d have discovered yourself in the bar car, with all your friends cheering your return. It’s a shame you missed it.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I feel a lot better that I figured it out. Those puzzles were pretty cool, I have to admit. Though I almost didn’t trust the drinks until I saw the color of our shirts matched them.”
Al chuckled. “That was a happy accident, actually. They were supposed to be keyed to your auras.”
“How the hell was I supposed to know Connor’s aura is green? You never told me that.”
“Didn’t I? Hmm.” He didn’t seem bothered. “Anyway—well done, Jason. We tried to play a trick on you, and you turned the tables on us. We deserved that, I think.”
“You really had me going when you wanted to stay and said that stuff about Amber,” Connor grumbled. “I was this close to rearranging your outlook.”
I grinned. “You should have seen your face, dude. You looked like a bearded brick.”
“Well,” Al said. “We should probably go back and join the others. They’ll be waiting for you.”
“What am I gonna tell them if they ask where I’ve been? I can’t exactly say ‘my best man and the rest of my crazy magic buddies sent me through the world’s most surreal magic escape room,’ can I?”
“Just tell them we got you good and drunk,” Verity said, laughing. “Trust me—they’re so sloshed back there by now that they’ll believe anything.”
Ian clapped me on the back. “Let’s go.”
“Yeah, just give me a minute.” I flashed a quick glance at Al, inviting him to stay behind.
The others drifted off toward the rear car, leaving the two of us alone.
“Hey,” I said, “you’re not upset that I figured out your puzzle, are you?”
“Upset?” He looked genuinely confused. “Why would I be upset? You did a brilliant job in there.”
“Yeah, but I know you were all hoping I’d play through.”
He shrugged. “It would have been amusing to see you pop through and discover all your friends waiting, but—well, to be honest, in retrospect I’m more pleased that it worked out as it did.” He took my arm and began steering me toward the door.
“Why’s that?”
For a moment, he didn’t answer; he seemed to be considering his words with care. “Because,” he said finally, “the world’s a dangerous place, it’s getting more so, and whether you like it or not, you’re as deep into it as the rest of us are, despite your lack of magic. Knowing you’re this good at thinking on your feet—and especially at not believing everything your senses tell you—makes me feel a lot better about the future.”
He exchanged the pensive look for a sly grin. “Now come on—let’s get on with the more conventional—but no less entertaining—portion of your party. I’m hoping to get you good and drunk so we can get some good photos and videos to play at your wedding reception.”
“Yeah. I’m sure you are.” I walked along with him toward the door. “Al?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks. For everything. I’ll admit I wanted to punch you out when I first realized you were behind this, but…yeah. Thanks.”
“My pleasure, J
ason. And it truly was.”
12
I’d describe the rest of the weekend, but to be honest I don’t remember much of it. By the time we made it to Tahoe (on a normal train, with no more freaky detours) later that night, my friends had me so drunk I could barely walk straight. I think there was some really good food, a few strippers, and a hell of a lot of booze.
Oh, and Jonah and Micah actually showed up—they were waiting for us when we got to the hotel in Tahoe. Damn, but those guys can hold their liquor. That’s probably why I got as drunk as I did—trying to keep up with them, I mean.
Bad idea.
I called Amber on Sunday morning, a few hours before we were scheduled to head back (this time on a plane).
“So,” she said. “How was your weekend of debauchery? Did Alastair behave himself and make sure you didn’t do anything you’d regret later? Or anything he’d regret later?” Her tone was playful. I pictured her lounging back on her bed—she’d never been a morning person—and imagined what she might be—or not be—wearing.
“You know,” I mused, “I am not even sure how to answer that.”
She must have picked up something in my tone, because she chuckled. “That sounds like a story you need to tell me.”
“Oh, I will. When I get home. It needs the…personal touch. How was your party?”
“Oh, the usual—a bunch of male strippers, a lot of drinking, and some good solid female bonding. I’m glad Verity could make it. I got some good blackmail photos of her dancing with one of the male strippers on top of a table.”
“Excellent.” Verity had left as soon as we got to Tahoe, assuring me that she had no intention of crashing my “testosterone fest” even though she’d probably have enjoyed the strippers as much as we guys did. “Hey, I’ll be back soon, and I can’t wait to see you.”