“But she was already dead?”

“We don’t know what to think. It’s unprecedented. And I’m sure this is only the start.”

I still don’t know what I can do. I shake my head. “This sounds like a forensic matter.”

“Can you pull a card from behind my ear or make all the aces come to the top of the deck of cards?”

It’s an odd question. “Yes. Of course.”

“If I sent that deck of cards to the forensic lab, what would they tell me?”

I understand what he’s saying. Maybe they’d find a few fingerprints and creases, but that’s not enough. The real answers are in the mind of the magician. In other hands, those cards are just thick pieces of paper.

He slides the magazine toward his end of the table and flips it open to a page with a yellow Post-it note. “You said in the interview that you like to be fooled by something firsthand, rather than have someone describe it to you?”

“Yes, that way you might think of possibilities nobody else thought about before.” Magic works by misleading expectations. You assume the hand is empty or the box doesn’t have a false bottom. Magicians can be just as easily fooled. We assume the awkward hand at the performer’s side is hiding something or the thick table has a trap door.

Ailes nods. “Well, let’s test your theory. I won’t spoil you with what we know. If you’re game?”

“Game for what?”

“I want to spring you from the paper jungle and let you work on this. I want to send you out into the field with the team. But I want your raw experience. I don’t need another FBI agent. I need a magician. The Warlock is trying to convince us that he’s the genuine article. He wants us to believe he’s created a miracle.”

I look down at the folder. I’ve never worked a homicide. “I’m not sure this is my area.”

“Maybe not. We just want your eyes and brains. Agents, we have plenty. Magicians, I have only one.”

He’s been working me all along. He knows I’ve been trying to put all of that behind me. The magic, the family drama, all of those other connections I’ve been trying to sever.

This would mean revisiting that. It means bringing a part of my past I want to forget about in front of my peers. They’ll know about the magazine and everything that goes with it. They’ll think they know me.

Pride wants me to refuse. The scared girl that had to learn how to shut down overbearing males wants me to tell him to drop dead.

But I didn’t become a cop because of ego. I did it for a lot of reasons. The most important one is that when I see something wrong, I need to do something to make it right, no matter the personal sacrifice. No matter the ridicule. No matter what the people who are supposed to love you say.