My body relaxes, but my mind goes into overdrive. This only means that we have that much less time to save the girl who vanished. She has no idea what happened or what’s coming.

39

EVERYONE IS WAITING for an explanation. I think about the right way to describe what happened. I have to explain this clearly, but I also need them to remember the moment they were fooled. The trouble with telling someone how a trick is done is that after they hear the simple solution they decide the secret really isn’t that big of a deal and assume they were on the verge of figuring it out anyway. Most of the time that’s not the case.

I also need to present it so that they won’t just dismiss what I did as nothing like what the Warlock did once they see the differences. That’s the difficulty with trying to debunk psychics and people who claim they have magical powers. People who secretly want to believe will dismiss any deviations as proof that the psychic is real because you didn’t replicate what they did exactly the same way. I had two minutes to plan my little illusion. The Warlock had years.

To walk them through my thought process, I start with a story. I need them to get my point. “When Harry Houdini died, he left behind the plans for what may have been one of his greatest illusions if he performed it, the Flight of Venus. He wanted an illusion that didn’t use cabinets, trapdoors, or anything else that people were using back then. The curtain would rise, revealing two men holding a large plate of glass, like a table. Houdini would help an assistant up onto the glass, have her lie down and then throw a cloth over them that hung a few inches below the edge of the glass. He’d then whip it away and she would be gone. It would have been done in full light. Even with people all around the illusion. It probably would have been his most deceptive effect ever.”

The lobby is filled with people waiting for me to reveal the mystery. I still feel guilty explaining how these methods work. Like I’m a little girl telling my family secrets in school to impress the children I want to make friends with. Revealing the Secret Library.

“The method was simple. My grandfather thinks Houdini got the idea from the old Chess Master illusion. Um, never mind.” I catch myself getting too particular. “The point is, the girl never really disappears. The audience just doesn’t recognize her. One of the men holding the glass sheet is a hollow dummy. When the cloth is covering the assistant and the men, she climbs inside the robes of the dummy. She then walks off the stage holding one end of the glass. In plain sight.” I point to the monitors. “We shouldn’t be looking for the blond girl, or holographic projectors, for that matter. We need to look for a girl, or maybe a guy, leaving the Empire State Building whom we never saw go up it. It could be a wig, glasses, lots of different things. Simple changes can change our perceptions.” As I say this, I think of Damian and his gift for disguise. It unnerves me to think that this is the kind of illusion he could create. Was I right to dismiss him out of hand?