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Back Reunion Save as PDF
Chapters (62)
  1. Cover
  2. Full Page Image
  3. Introduction
  4. Advance Praise for Reunion
  5. Dedication
  6. Map
  7. Quote
  8. Prologue
  9. All About Eric Weiss
  10. The Young Magician
  11. From the Wikipedia entry for Middleton:
  12. Where They Used to Live
  13. All About Carrie Keene
  14. The Girl Detective
  15. All About Alana Bright
  16. The Warrior Princess
  17. All About Daniel Sharp IV
  18. The Boy Genius
  19. I’ve Done My Part
  20. The Only Warrior Left
  21. The World Beneath the World
  22. Even Less Fun Now
  23. The Flawless Performance of Innumerable Lines of Code
  24. Like Time-Lapse Photography
  25. You Don’t Have to Go Home but You Can’t Stay Here
  26. This is Where She Gets It
  27. I Never Believed in Prophecies
  28. Normal People Stumble Along
  29. INTERLUDE: The Case of the Candy Cult
  30. That’s How Her Story Ought to Go
  31. Normal Is Whatever You Grow Up With
  32. Even Good Kids Have Their Limits
  33. INTERLUDE: The Menace of the Middleton Monster
  34. Alanis Morissette Irony or the Other Kind
  35. What You Want Is Not the Most Important Thing
  36. INTERLUDE: Trapped in the Goblin’s Lair
  37. The Slowest Person in the Room
  38. INTERLUDE: The Final Secret of Dr. Sax
  39. All Part of King Jeremy’s Land
  40. INTERLUDE: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
  41. You Breathed It In, All the Time
  42. INTERLUDE: What Happened
  43. Danny Sharp Doesn’t Believe in Ghosts
  44. Ice and Bottles of Zima
  45. You Were Right All Along
  46. A Lot of Sacrificing to Do Tonight
  47. You Walked Right into It
  48. How Magic Works
  49. Was This Your Master Plan
  50. This Time, I Swear, We Can Do It Right
  51. You’d Think He Would Know Better
  52. Fresh Blood on Its Hands
  53. Any One of a Thousand Different Men
  54. The End of the World over There
  55. These Are Not Ideal Conditions
  56. Lightning and Thunder, Demons and Angels
  57. Into the Jaws of the Dragon
  58. Unafraid at Sunset
  59. Epilogue
  60. Acknowledgments
  61. About the Author
  62. Other Works by Christopher Farnsworth

3. What does your father do?

He’s a lawyer.

4. What does your mother do?

She is a housewife runs a charity, paints, and learns yoga and Japanese.

5. Who is your hero?

Leonardo from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tony Hawk

6. What do you want to do when you grow up?

I want to test video games for Nintendo.

1

The Young Magician

Eric Weiss realizes he is drowning. Actually drowning, not fake-drowning for the tourists from Boise and Beijing and Dusseldorf and Lexington. The quick-release bar on the water tank is stuck, so he can’t get out.

And all he can think is: God, he hates the matinees.

First of all, people bring their kids. As if he’s a clown giving away free balloons. Magic is not for kids, Eric thinks. He knows that better than anyone. The sign out front says, very clearly, Magic For Adults. Which means that there are showgirls. And what they show are their tits. Magic — stage magic, anyway — depends on distraction. That’s their job. They remove more and more of their glittery outfits as the show goes on.

As usual, they were down to their G-strings by the time Eric was wrapped in a straitjacket, chained up, then attached to a winch and dangled over the reinforced dunk tank.

Just like always, he’d given his lecture to the audience, hanging upside down over the tank. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to remember. This is real,” Eric told them. “If I am not out of these chains in three minutes, I will drown. So please, keep your eyes on the timer. Maybe dial 9 and then 1 on your cell phones. My life literally depends on it.”

That kept everyone’s eyes on the big clock on the wall instead of on him. Misdirection again.

Then, splash, he was in the water, and one of the girls drew the curtains around the tank.

Before tonight, Eric had this routine down so he could get out in two minutes. This is how it usually works: he pops his shoulder out of its socket and shucks off the straitjacket. (This is why he takes a Vicodin every night before bed and why he can’t shoot a basketball anymore, but hey, nobody said show biz was easy.) Then he takes the key to the padlocks out of his hidden pocket, and presses the button on the trick manacles on his feet.

This all went fine. He can hold his breath underwater for at least four minutes. He’s been doing this twice a day, five times a week, for four years now. And he’s done similar acts all over Vegas for almost fifteen.