I speak calmly. “Maybe I should come back later.” I step away from the table.

“Please have a seat, Blackwood. Jensen is just a bit rattled because he doesn’t like not knowing,” replies Chisholm diplomatically.

I sit back down on the other side of the table, across from them. Chisholm asks me to elaborate.

I can only lay out my inner monologue. “I guess my point is that all I have is a theory. I don’t presume to know how he did it. I just have Occam’s razor. That tells me he didn’t pull the thing through time and space and drop it on our doorstep. He’s covered his tracks enough with the pilot to confuse things. A DNA test won’t help because we have no tissue from the original pilot. Even next of kin might be doubtful if there’s no match. Failure to show a match between the body in the plane and a family member only means they didn’t share any genes. Somebody could have been fooling around and nobody knew.” I point to a group of forensic techs. “According to them, we can’t even use dental records because looking at tooth fillings would help, but his are all gone and the teeth have been washed with an abrasive that would take away any tool marks inside cavities. No matter how much we insist the Warlock tampered with the body, we can’t prove he wasn’t born in the 1920s. That’s what people will remember. Either way, the real trick here is the sense of wonder. The plane. It’s an artifact out of time. Where did it come from?”

“How did he do that?” asks Jensen.

I can tell he’s not expecting much of an answer but I surprise him. “I have an idea. You’re not going to like it.” It makes the most sense out of everything.

I’d been thinking about it before they called me over to the table. “It’s the real thing,” I explain.

“What?” Jensen almost spits out his coffee.

There’s a trace of a smile on Chisholm’s face. I think he can read me more than I care to be read. I ignore him and turn to Jensen. “If I wanted to really impress you, there are two advantages that I can use to make that happen. The first is planning. When a magician steps onstage, he has years of practice going into the things you’re only going to have a few seconds to ponder. The Warlock has been planning these stunts for a very long time. So much so, like a good magician, he’s tried to think of every contingency. That’s why the Chloe’s double caught on fire when we wanted a closer look. That’s why our fake pilot is setting off Geiger counters.”

Jensen shakes his head. “How do you arrange for the appearance of an airplane that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle over fifty years ago?”

“You don’t. It’s the second thing you hope to have happen as a magician. Opportunity. I think he tipped his hand more than he wanted to with this plane stunt. But it was too good of a chance to pass up. If you know it’s a trick, but the plane is real, then answer is obvious.”