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.

He’d seen the show in the local listings in the back of The Other, the weekly alternative magazine that had proven much more interesting than the Times. Roman Emperor. The name was either cheeky or awesome, depending on how you looked at it, and Dick was sold.

Now, seated before the man and his assistant, Dick couldn’t wrap his mind around what he was seeing. Of course every magician has secrets, but this maniac Emperor was good.

“Oh God,” Theresa whispered, leaning into Dick. “What are they doing now?”

Dick had to admit, the trick looked dangerous. Emperor stood on one side of the stage. His master of ceremonies, a blonde whom Dick couldn’t get a handle on (Is she pretty? Is she sick? Is she perfect?) stood across the shaky stage, an ax raised high in her hands.

“I will stop this tool with my mind,” the blonde said. And everybody knew what that meant. She was going to throw it at Emperor and…stop it with her mind.

Dick looked for the strings.