A Touch of Magic

by Isabelle Adler

  But now that Cary knew more about the intricacies of magic practice, it was strange he hadn’t inquired more about it. Ty was expecting him to at least suspect and be curious about his own magical potential, but apparently Cary chose instead to wallow in whatever self-inflicted misery that was troubling him.

  There were a lot of other things Ty wanted to ask Cary—personal things. Every reluctant tidbit of information from him only served to fuel Ty’s curiosity further. It was quite an unnatural fascination, really. There was absolutely no reason to be interested in anything other than the extent of Cary’s pickpocketing skills, which were the only thing pertinent to their temporary alliance, and which Ty had yet to test. There was too much at stake to blindly take the guy’s word for it. Ty had to make sure Cary was good enough before he let him anywhere near Giordano.

  Ty chewed on his unlit cigarette thoughtfully. The wind was way too cold to lower the roof, and he didn’t like smoking in a closed car.

  “There’s a truck stop coming,” Cary said suddenly, snapping Ty out of his reflective mood. “We might as well grab something to eat.”

  “Sure.”

  Ty followed the sign and pulled into the parking lot by the side of the road. A small rundown diner called Molly’s Place was huddled against the side of a one-pump gas station. Two semitrailer trucks, a California Highway Patrol car, and a number of pickups occupied the rest of the lot, making Ty’s shiny silver Chevy look wildly foreign in comparison.

  As it was the lunch hour, the diner was pretty full. They sat down in the only empty booth next to the window and took turns in the men’s room before placing their orders with a harried middle-aged waitress.

  “So why did you decide to become an illusionist?” Ty asked while they were waiting for their cheeseburgers to arrive. He wasn’t looking forward to working alongside someone who was going to sulk the entire time. And, frankly, Cary’s smile was much more attractive than his frown.

  “I thought you’d done your research on me,” Cary said, picking up a napkin and starting to fold it.

  “Just the bare facts. There’s still a lot I don’t know, and I’m not actually psychic.”

  Cary sighed, pushed the napkin aside, and leaned back in his seat.

  “I didn’t want that at all when I was younger. My granddad’s parents were carnie performers, and he was an illusion artist, so stage magic was kind of a family tradition. When I was a kid, I was…so angry all the time. With my dad for leaving. My mom for getting drunk and killing herself and leaving me with her father. My granddad for having no clue what he was doing raising a teenager. I wanted nothing to do with any of them, and I did some bad, stupid stuff to get as far away from them as I could. But when I was in prison… You know how they say prison changes people, and it sounds so damn corny and condescending? Well, it’s true. At least it was for me. I had plenty of time to figure things out. And then my granddad died, and I didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye. I was a shitty grandson, always had been, and he didn’t deserve that. So I guess…I just wanted for my grandfather to be proud of me for once. Even if he’s not around to see it.”

  The raw longing in his voice took Ty by surprise.

  “Hey,” he said. Cary’s hand rested on the table next to the napkin dispenser, and Ty covered it with his own. There was only one thing he could say that would be both encouraging and true. “You’re gonna be just as good as he was.”

  Cary looked at him, and the corners of his mouth tugged in a reluctant smile. As they looked at each other, the moment seemed to stretch, the clunking of the cutlery and the din of conversation fading. Cary’s long lashes dipped, and he opened his mouth as if to say something.

  “Damn faggots,” someone growled loudly next to them.

  Ty looked up, annoyed at himself for paying closer attention to the warmth of Cary’s skin than to what was going on around them. It was a little slip, but he couldn’t afford any more of those, not after allowing himself to be jumped in a parking lot like a schoolboy being mugged for lunch money.

  His gaze met with that of an angry-looking bearded guy in faded jeans and a Red Bull baseball cap. A trucker, by the uneven tan on his face. Ty noted that despite the cool weather, there was a sheen of perspiration on the guy’s forehead, and his pupils were slightly dilated.

  “You got a problem there, buddy?” Ty asked, leaning back on the vinyl booth bench and taking his hand off Cary’s as unhurriedly as he could. Cary glanced uneasily between him and the angry trucker but said nothing.

  “Yeah, I got a problem.” The trucker raised his voice, looming over their table like the embodiment of bigoted judgment. Several other customers looked up to see what the fuss was about, including the two state cops occupying the far corner booth. “I got a problem with you degenerates coming here and groping each other in public!”

  Punching him seemed like a bad idea, given the police presence. Ty wasn’t sure which side the cops would take, and seeing as they had yet to intervene in the impromptu farce, he couldn’t rely on their understanding. Still, as much as he wanted to avoid drawing even more attention, there was only so much he was willing to let slide.

  Ty started to rise from his seat, casually flipping the side of his leather jacket so that the holster he was wearing underneath was visible to the man in front of him, but it was then that the waitress, guided by some sort of clairvoyant intuition, moved in to diffuse the escalating tension.

  “Now, Bill,” she said, touching his arm. “Don’t you go making a big stink. Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll bring you the usual. Extra cheese.”

  Bill threw her hand off roughly, glaring at Ty. He was a burly man, but Ty was taller by half a head and noticeably fitter. He didn’t look like someone who’d be easily intimidated by a display of macho behavior. That seemed to give Bill pause as he sized Ty up, and the waitress swooped in again to calm things down.

  “You two gentlemen enjoy your lunch,” she offered with a tight smile at Cary. She took Bill by the arm again, and this time, he let her lead him toward the counter, where she poured him a cup of coffee, while chattering about the weather to no one in particular. Bill threw one last hateful look at Ty, who bared his teeth in response and sat down.

  With the potential confrontation neutralized, the spectators, including the cops, got back to their food and conversations.

  “Fucking asshole,” Cary muttered.

  “Screw him,” Ty said, sitting back down. “Let’s just eat and get the hell out of here.”

  They turned their attention back to the food, which was actually not half bad, but the companionable mood they’d shared earlier was ruined. They ate in silence and drank their refills of black coffee (which, unlike the cheeseburgers, was terrible).

  “I’ll hit the men’s again before we go,” Cary said. As he walked past the counter, which was nearly fully occupied, he bumped into Bill the trucker’s chair. It was nothing more than a casual brush, and Cary apologized right away, but Bill muttered something unflattering about “those pansies” loudly enough to be heard by everyone at the counter.

  Ty took out his wallet and threw a few bills on the table as he waited for Cary to come back from the bathroom. It was a larger tip than he’d originally intended to leave, but he had a feeling the poor waitress was going to need all the perks she could get today.

  A few minutes later, Cary slid into the booth with a smug smile on his face.

  “Nicely done,” Ty observed.

  “Yeah, I thought so,” Cary said, pulling out a worn brown leather wallet with a chain attached to it. “William Hogen.” He read the name off a faded Arizona ID.

  Ty took the ID card, flipped it in his fingers, and then glanced at its owner, who was now arguing loudly with the guy sitting next to him about the new Interstate 11, completely oblivious of having been pickpocketed.

  It was a small thing to go on, and could be nothing more than dumb luck. But Ty had had a hunch about Cary, and it was satisfying to see his instincts, at lea
st, were still sharp. He couldn’t deny he’d been apprehensive about taking on a complete stranger on such a delicate job, with so many unknowns thrown in the mix. But Cary hadn’t lied about being a good thief. Perhaps the struggling magician really did have the skills to pull off the heist they were planning.

  “You know what?” Ty said with a slow-spreading grin. “Let’s see if we can’t get Mr. Hogen here into some trouble.”

  THE SEMITRAILER WITH the Arizona plates was parked square in the middle of the lot, half-hidden from view from the diner by the other semi and the pickups. Ty and Cary circled to the driver’s side, making sure no one was watching them. Ty took out a small set of lockpicks from his jacket pocket and got to work on the door while Cary kept a casual lookout. Once again, Ty was impressed with the way Cary fell naturally into his beat, picking up on his intent without asking and not batting an eye at Ty breaking into the vehicle. While that might have indicated deeply ingrained criminal inclinations, Ty was more concerned that so far they seemed to make a good team.

  He muttered an unlocking spell as he worked, mostly out of habit. It couldn’t undo a lock or a latch all on its own, certainly not when performed by Ty, but it helped ease things along—especially when more complicated mechanisms than picking a car were involved.

  The lock clicked open, and Ty climbed into the driver’s seat, keeping low. The interior looked and smelled pretty much like he’d imagined. There were empty Styrofoam cups and fast-food wrappers strewn all over the floor and the passenger seat, and a rabbit’s foot charm was dangling from the rearview mirror. Ty could have told the owner that these kinds of things usually held no charms whatsoever, but that would be a waste of breath. People liked to cling to silly superstitions, since it gave them a semblance of control over events that were entirely out of their realm of understanding.

  He rummaged through the glove compartment, but came up with only small change and used tissue paper. If Bill Hogen had anything interesting stashed in his truck (and Ty had a hunch he had), it wasn’t in there.

  “Hold on,” he told Cary, who was still leaning against the side of the truck, his sharp dark eyes scanning the parking lot. “I’m gonna take a closer look.”

  The back of the roomy driver cabin smelled even worse. Ty threw the blankets off the sleeping pallet that was tucked there. Two empty beer bottles rolled around on the floor.

  He finally found what he was looking for in a flat tin box tucked away behind a stack of tattered Playboy magazines. Ty unzipped the small plastic bag, tasted the white powder on the tip of his finger, and then spit it out.

  “Our friend has expensive tastes,” he told Cary as he climbed out of the truck and closed the door softly behind him. “Wouldn’t figure one could afford a whole ounce of cocaine on that salary.”

  Ty checked the door was locked, and they walked away briskly.

  “What did you do with it?” Cary asked in a low voice once they were safely out of the line of sight from the diner.

  “Absolutely nothing,” Ty said. He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, lit one with a flick of his finger, and leaned on the hood of his Chevy, intent on the front of the diner. “And now I’m gonna watch. This should be good.”

  Cary looked dubious. He eyed the exit to the highway with longing, as if itching to get away from what was about to become a rather unpleasant scene. Ty couldn’t blame him for having healthy instincts, but his work was rarely amusing, and he didn’t want to miss out on the satisfaction of witnessing the jerk being brought down a couple of notches.

  Ty took a drag on the cigarette and waited. It took about ten more minutes (by the end of which, Cary was fidgeting restlessly by his side) before a commotion in the diner caught their attention. They couldn’t see inside from this vantage point, but in another minute their pal Bill burst through the door, accompanied by one of the state policemen. Unsurprisingly, he was pissed off and rather vocal about it.

  “The fuck is wrong with this country?” he huffed while the officer followed him silently. “It’s just a fucking wallet. I musta left it in the truck. What’s the big deal? I ain’t gonna split over a few bucks, for fuck’s sake. They know me here, don’t they?”

  They approached the truck, and Bill unlocked the door.

  “It must be here somewhere—” he began, and stopped short, looking at something on the driver’s seat.

  “What’s that?” the policeman asked, pointing to the cocaine-filled plastic bag Ty had placed there.

  “That ain’t mine,” the trucker said quickly.

  “Sir, I must ask you to step away and place your hands on the side of the vehicle,” the cop said in a whole different tone and then reached for his radio.

  “Jack, request assistance here,” he said, presumably talking to his partner who’d remained inside.

  “That ain’t mine!” Bill repeated. “I’m telling you, somebody stole my wallet and planted that thing in here!”

  “This wallet?” the officer asked, picking up the leather wallet Ty had wiped clean and left lying on the floor next to the brakes. “Sir, hands on the vehicle.”

  “Okay, that’s enough fun for today,” Ty said. He got in the car and waited for Cary to slide into the passenger seat before taking the exit back to the highway. Bill’s shouts of outrage dwindled into the distance as they sped away.

  “I kinda feel sorry for the bastard,” Cary said, checking the side mirror.

  “Nah,” said Ty. “He got what he deserved.”

  He couldn’t help but glance at Cary as he said it. Unlike that bigoted jackass, Cary deserved so much more than he was going to get. If everything went according to plan, Ty was going to swindle him out of the little he had going for him. Somehow, being fed crumbs of information about the workings of magic Cary had no previous notion about in exchange for the only means Cary had to explore said magic didn’t seem like a fair bargain.

  “What about you?” Cary asked.

  The question was so spot-on in echoing his thoughts that it gave Ty an unpleasant jolt.

  “Sorry?”

  “What made you go into this business of being a magic thief?”

  “Magic thief,” Ty huffed in amusement and relief. He briefly contemplated dismissing the question, but Cary had been open and honest with him earlier, about his family, so Ty felt he had to return the favor—to a certain extent. Besides, he’d already mentioned some of it to Cary.

  “I learned the craft from my mentor,” he said slowly, trying to gauge how much he should be divulging. “He was truly what you would call a magic thief. He was also a sorcerer and a scholar. He gave me shelter, education, taught me his trade. He was the only one who cared about me, the only family I ever had. I don’t even remember what it was like before I met him. Maybe my birth parents or foster family had thrown me out. Maybe they’d been abusive, and I ran away from them. Either way, nobody ever came looking.”

  Ty realized that perhaps he was talking Leland up a bit too much, all things considered. Maybe it was some deeply ingrained loyalty that was refusing to let go, even after all these years.

  Cary looked at him, his dark doe eyes intent and brimming with something Ty had a hard time identifying. Sadness? Concern? Empathy? It wasn’t an emotion he was used to seeing, whatever it was.

  “Do you still work with him?” Cary asked after a pause that seemed a little too long.

  “We’ve had a falling out,” Ty said, turning his attention back on the road. “I haven’t seen him in years.”

  Perhaps his answer was a cop-out, but being thrown out by a man he’d looked up to, whom he’d thought of almost as a father, for no clear reason that he could see, had hurt him more deeply than he cared to admit even to himself. He wasn’t ready to discuss it with Cary—to let him see just how damaged he was under the tough exterior. No matter how much he wanted to.

  The road stretched on before them, the cracked asphalt peppered with dust and empty promises.

  Chapter Nine

  “WELCOME T
O VEGAS,” Ty said.

  Cary sat up in the passenger seat, blinking sleepily. The Strip greeted him with a seemingly endless procession of winking lights that drove back the night with artificial brightness. Somehow, he’d managed never to have been to Vegas, and now he watched the neon-lit thoroughfare roll past with a sort of fascinated detachment. After the long, lonely stretches of road across Nevada, the sight was like a mirage, a perfectly crafted illusion.

  They drove past a huge sign displaying scenes from Criss Angel’s magic show at the Luxor. Even in the ad, it looked over the top, but Cary couldn’t help but be jealous. How awesome would it be to perform in front of thousands of spectators, at one of the most famous venues in the world? And to think he could have had a chance to do that if he hadn’t lost his damn magic pendant. With just a few years of hard work, he could have attracted enough interest to gain wider exposure.

  Did the power of the amulet extend to TV audiences? Perhaps Giordano was counting on it to make potential voters enamored with him enough to overlook his shady business and criminal past. He could easily become a governor, a senator—hell, maybe even the next president. Using the amulet on stage might have been cheating, but at least it wasn’t harming anyone. The country’s political future wasn’t hanging in the balance, only Cary’s career as a magician—which was of little consequence in the grand scheme of things.

  He had to get it back.

  “Jesus,” was all he said when they finally entered the lobby of the Venetian Hotel after availing themselves of the valet parking.

  Ty, who was making for the registration desk, followed his gaze and looked upward at the beautiful frescoed ceiling.

  “Want to take a selfie for your Facebook page?” he asked.

  “Shut up,” Cary told him, but couldn’t stop staring at the painting and the golden spherical statue underneath. One of the mermaids (or whoever the women were supposed to be) that adorned it gazed serenely back at him as he approached to take a closer look. Her face reminded him of the Sphinx painted on his granddad’s old magic cabinet, the one he’d used to hide in as a child during his mom’s alcohol-induced bad moods.