One evening in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Finn the Fantastic’s tour route crossed paths with the blossoming controversial Emperor and he decided to take in the show. Finn, an amiable and shameless self-promoter, sat at the bar with his collar unbuttoned and a rum and Coke in both hands. His blond hair was as perfect as if he were on his way to shoot a publicity photo, which, of course, already hung on the wall of the Stardust Matinee.

He watched Emperor closely.

Finn, a student like Roman, detected not one reference in Emperor’s act. As if Roman had done the impossible: invent a wholly new show.

The performance ended with Roman tied up in a chair. The audience held their breath as the ropes started to move and untie themselves. Finn knew Roman was using invisible thread, but he couldn’t spot the angles, the places that thread should be connected to. The rope moved snakelike, as though living, and Finn downed a drink, marveling at the fact that, if you knew your magic, even the best illusions looked artificial.

Not this one.

At the conclusion of the trick, Roman tossed the ropes to the foot of the stage and he and Maggie made a somewhat understated exit to the sound of rapt applause.

Finn eyed the rope. He couldn’t resist.

Walking casually to the stage, as though studying the curtains for a show of his own, Finn quickly inspected the rope. No thread. No anything. Finn knew what to look for and there was none of it there to find. All the circuit talk of dirty magic echoed in his ears. When he looked up to the curtain he saw the eyes of Maggie watching him from a pale, placid face.

Finn dropped the rope. He smiled at her but she did not smile back, and he couldn’t help but feel like the rope was left there on purpose. That he had somehow ended up an animal in a trap that night.

He left his second unfinished drink on the foot of the stage and departed.

A week later, Finn ran into Don Deanie in Texas. Finn, political as he was professional, wasn’t one to gossip or smear but after getting very drunk, he told his old colleague what’d happened in Oklahoma and how he felt about it.

Deanie was upset.

Emperor, he said, was going to ruin them. In an effort to circumvent this, he arranged the show at the Kerry Theatre, under false pretenses of uniting the circuit as one. He would lure the quiet Emperor by billing it as a sort of magicians’ conference. Any man desperate enough to shake hands with the Devil wasn’t going to miss an opportunity like this. There was too much potential notoriety to be had. And besides, Emperor was clearly enjoying the power he was accumulating over his peers.

Deanie believed they’d all get to see Emperor up close and then could ask him, in person and together, where he had learned how to bend metal. Make things explode. Stop axes from striking his skull.