“Which is?”

I remember Damian’s comment about this being an old family trick. I’d ignored it at the time. Now it makes sense. “My grandfather used to perform an illusion called the Transmitted Woman. He’d call a woman from the audience and have her step into a cabinet that looked like a big metal machine. He’d twist some dials and sparks would shoot out the top. He’d open the door and she would be gone. There’d be an explosion and she would reappear, sitting in the audience.”

“Twins?”

“Not for that illusion. But everyone assumed that. Even though the girl was really from the audience, not a plant. He told people to come back each night and see the effect performed again with a different girl. And he would deliver. Reporters would chase the girl down and follow her around to prove she was a plant that worked for us. But they couldn’t. She wasn’t in on the secret.”

“All right. How?”

I feel funny telling him. This trick has been a family secret for a long time. A few people in the magic community know how it was performed, but it’s never been published anywhere. It’s part of our own Secret Library. “All right. Magic oath time?”

“Sure,” Ailes replies seriously.

“Back then, things were different. My grandfather could travel with a much larger cast than my father or I could. He had thirty chorus girls in the show. Women had less variety in makeup, hairstyles, and clothes. Lots of them wore hats. When people came into the theater, my grandfather would watch from the wings and pick a woman who looked like one of his chorus girls. With thirty girls backstage, we were bound to find at least one woman in the audience who could pass at a distance. If we didn’t have an outfit that matched, our seamstress could make up something close enough. He’d call the woman onstage and an assistant would lead her up the side steps. That’s when we’d switch her for our chorus girl. While the audience is distracted by the machine sparking and making a noise, the usher would bring the woman back to her seat in the dark. The chorus girl would go through a trapdoor and vanish. An instant later the spotlight would reveal the woman from the audience back in her seat. The audience was never the wiser. They didn’t realize the switch happened before the woman even got onstage. She was led back in the darkness with no idea what happened on stage. Afterward, the people around her would teller her she walked into the cabinet and vanished. She’d insist she came right back to her seat. Grandfather would suggest that she’d have no memory of what happened to her, making both accounts fit. It’s not a practical trick to try today, of course.”

“But what does that have to do with the Warlock if the DNA matches?”

“Twins.”

“Twins? You just said no twins,” Ailes seems almost agitated.