Then she turned and walked out of the hangar, back out under the crazed Goblin sky. The party was still going; Barbara would even say it was growing. And as she reentered the throng, she recalled the sound of her husband whimpering, the snotty sobs she’d heard as the hangar door closed behind her. She heard his cries in the music played by the band, in the laughter and shouts of the guests.

She even heard it in the falling rain, each drop a reflection of the sound Neal was making as he knelt among his trophies, crying rain among his game.

Presto

1

Dick Mable sat in the eighth row of a small crowded theater and might not have known his wife sat next to him if she weren’t gripping his arm in terror. It was dark in there (cave black, he’d called it, finding the description to be clever) and, except for what was happening on the makeshift stage, you couldn’t see a thing. Dick couldn’t get over it. The show.

This guy Emperor was honestly unreal.

What he and his wife and about fifty others had witnessed so far was easily the best magic show they’d ever seen and well worth the eight-dollar tickets. It was crazy. Truly. Crazy. It was nothing like watching TV and nothing like those out-of-control Las Vegas shows where the men in glittering capes rode polar bears. This show was gritty. Almost to where Dick could feel the gravel beneath his dress shoes. The magician, Roman Emperor, was right there, fifteen feet in front of him at the most, using foldout tables as a stage and doing tricks Dick wouldn’t have been able to figure out if you gave him a pencil, a pad, and a month. The Stake, the black-box theater on Main, was the kind of intimate place where, when a play came through, you could see the anxiety on an actor’s face. The place was small. Tight. There was simply nowhere to hide the tricks! Mirrors and trapdoors, strings and pulleys…Dick couldn’t spot any of it. And he’d certainly been trying.

“I’m scared,” Theresa had whispered a few minutes ago, and Dick didn’t blame her.

With TV, you always carried the indomitable suspicion that the reality of the illusion was somehow edited out. And the big Vegas shows may as well have been TV, you were so far from the stage anyway. But Dick Mable was forty-four years old. He’d seen a lot of shows. His nephew was in a loud grunge band and his niece sang opera in Kansas. He’d seen big productions and small, great shows and ones that weren’t so much.

But this one? Christ, Dick could smell the show. And the smell was part grease, part sweat, and the unmistakable odor of honesty.

And yet…it was a magic show. Built on dishonesty.

“I can’t look,” Theresa said.

I can’t stop, Dick thought.