Escape Magic (10 page)

With laughing encouragement from the
audience, he led her to a chair that looked like it might have come
from a schoolroom somewhere and instructed her to check it out for
any abnormalities. She did so, even lifting the chair and looking
underneath it. Then he told her to sit and she felt him move behind
her, tying the blindfold with practiced movements. Just as he
finished, he leaned down and said softly in her ear, “Do you trust
me?”

“Should I?” She folded her arms over her
chest and crossed her legs, trying to look like she didn’t have a
care in the world.

The laughter of the audience let her in on
the fact that this exchange had been with a live mic. He really was
full of tricks. She pictured him moving away from her, pretending
to be offended. When the laughter died down, he began talking about
studying the beliefs of Tibetan monks and practicing their
philosophies to broaden his mind. Her own mind wandered. She
couldn’t concentrate on his words, but she enjoyed the sound of his
voice. Then he stopped talking, and she felt a light breeze
soothing her hot cheeks. She thought of the look in his eyes before
he tied the blindfold on her, and the words he’d whispered in her
ear.

Do you trust me?

Hands touched her shoulders, tingling as if
sending a light jolt of electricity through her. She jumped and he
laughed. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.” He whipped the
blindfold from her face. “Are you all right?”

“Of course.” She blinked. “Is it over? What
did you do?”

“Actually, I didn’t do anything. You did.”
He put an arm around her shoulders and turned her to face a
monitor. She stared, unable to comprehend at first that the instant
replay of the chair hovering near the curtains at the top of the
stage was actually the one she’d just been sitting in, and that the
figure seated imperturbably in it was her. He moved behind her,
placing both hands on her shoulders as if to brace her, his words
oddly intimate even as they echoed across the huge room. “You
flew.”

“Oh my God.” She felt sick. She looked at
the ceiling, a good thirty feet above her head. She looked at the
little chair she’d been seated on. No safety buckles, no harnesses.
Her knees buckled and she might have fallen had he not caught
her.

She heard a gasp from the audience as he led
her off the stage and handed her over to a pretty girl with a
clipboard and headset. She heard him murmur instructions, but she
couldn’t focus. The girl nodded and half carried her backstage.
Andre returned to the stage, assuring the audience she was fine and
recovering from her shock. The ensuing applause seemed to indicate
that Stacey’s reaction to the trick had done nothing but affirm
their belief in him.

Stacey recovered herself as the girl in the
headphones tried to lead her down a hall. She shook off the girl’s
grasp. “Where are we going?”

“Mr. Hawke wants you to wait for him in his
dressing room.”

“Right. I’m not doing that.” She turned and
started back toward the stage. “In fact, I think I’m going to kill
Mr. Hawke now.”

“You can’t go back out there.” The girl
moved to block her path, unperturbed by Stacey’s death threat. “I’m
sorry, but you have to wait here.”

“You can’t do that.” Stacey glared. “I
bought a ticket.”

“And sat in the seat Mr. Hawke provided.”
The girl might be young, but she wasn’t stupid. “He always pulls a
volunteer from that seat, and it’s always with prior consent.”

“Well, there was no fucking ‘prior consent’
tonight, I promise.” Stacey glared. “He never told me I was going
to be flying through the air. Or in a trance. I could have been
killed.”

“He’d never let that happen.”

Stacey frowned, looking at the girl. She
obviously believed what she was saying. In fact, Stacey figured the
girl would sit on any chair Andre asked her to. And go into any
number of trances at whatever inopportune time Andre chose. She
shook her head. “Dear God, how does he do it?”

The girl sensed she was no longer going to
cause trouble and said, “Look, if you really feel well enough, you
can watch the rest of the show from backstage. I’ll show you. It’s
even better than your seat was.”

“Excellent.” She folded her arms. “Are you
sure he’d want you to do that? He did tell you I’m a journalist,
didn’t he?”

“He said you were a reporter. I don’t think
he’s particularly concerned.” The girl shrugged and held out her
hand. “I’m Mattie. He wants me to take care of you. Can I get you
something to drink?”

A good strong Scotch.
She shook her
head. “No. I mean, just water.”

Mattie turned and issued an order to a
stagehand, who hurried to follow instructions. Stacey wondered who
exactly the girl was. She certainly seemed to have more authority
than the stagehand/groupie Stacey had first assumed her to be.
Within a few moments, Mattie had installed her in a chair in the
wings of the stage, a bottle of artesian water in her hand. From
her new seat, Stacey had a very good view of Andre as he performed
a couple of amazing card tricks, plucked a rose out of a woman’s
hair, and turned a paper airplane into a white dove. If he was
misdirecting the audience, he must surely be a master because even
from her angle, she couldn’t catch the trick.

Would they let me move, though?
She
glanced at Mattie talking to a stagehand. She saw Bobby, the kid
from earlier, watching from the other side of the stage. What if
she got up and started over there? Just as she considered this,
Mattie placed a hand on her shoulder. “I have to ask you to keep
your seat for the next few minutes. He’s ready for his finale and
if you move you could endanger someone.”

Stacey relaxed in her seat, wondering what
exactly was wrong with her, anyway. She was a tough kid from a
rough upbringing. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t let anyone boss her
around, and if she got thrown out while in the quest for a story,
she wouldn’t care.

But I’m not here to find out how he does it.
I’m here to find out what was done to him. That’s my story, and if
I get thrown out now, it’ll ruin everything.

She was prevaricating, and she knew it. She
didn’t
want
to know how the magic was done. If she did,
she’d never be able to believe, never be able to experience that
sense of wonder that, to be honest, Andre had first woken in her.
She smiled a little, remembering that show. It had been a rare
treat for her and Bella back during her senior year in college.
She’d won the tickets on a radio show and gone, never expecting the
show to work its way past her cynical exterior and touch something
else, some carefully guarded desire to believe. She shook off the
memory. She couldn’t afford to believe in magic when she’d been
given so many reasons not to during her life.

The finale was a spectacular illusion in
which Andre performed an escape worthy of Houdini himself while
hanging upside down over a tank of water while a flame slowly
burned through the rope. A curtain was drawn around Andre, and a
circle of witnesses surrounded the area. Stacey watched the rope
jerk with his movements, so completely caught up in the moment that
when the rope gave way and she heard a splash, she half-started out
of her chair. She heard a chuckle and glanced to her side as he
walked out of the backstage area, completely dry, and grinned at
her. “You worried?”

“Of course not.” She pretended not to be
startled by his appearance. She’d been watching the entire time. He
had definitely begun the illusion suspended from the rope. The
audience members he’d pulled onstage still stood in a circle with
their hands joined. The logistics of the trick boggled her mind.
Holy cow.
She shrugged. “I knew there was a trick.”

“You have serious trust issues.” With these
parting words, he loped onstage, startling one female volunteer
with a kiss on the cheek and taking his well-deserved bow.

He finished his bow, then shook hands with
each volunteer as they were escorted off the stage. He paused to
speak quietly with both Bobby and Mattie before returning to her
side. “You still mad?”

“Mad?” She snorted. “Why would I be mad? Oh,
you mean the little putting me in a trance and sending me floating
in the rafters thing? Ha!” She glared at him. “You keep pulling
shit like that and you’ll have lawsuits on your hands, buddy.”

“Umm.” He compressed his lips, then held his
hand out to her. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“A walk?” She blinked. “You’re kidding,
right?”

“Not at all. I always go for walks after a
show. Come, we won’t go far.”

She checked his forward momentum with an
angry sneer. “I really don’t have any desire to go anywhere with
you. Have you forgotten you nearly killed me?
Without
my
consent?”

He looked amused. “Are you mad because I
forgot to ask your consent to kill you? Would you have given
it?”

“Ha. Ha.” She put all her contempt into the
two syllables. “That’s not what I meant. Do you do that all the
time?”

“Actually, that was a first.” He tilted an
eyebrow. “But then, you have a reputation for doing your research,
so you’d know that, wouldn’t you?” He started down the hall, still
talking so she had no choice but to follow him if she wanted to
hear what he was saying, which, in spite of her fury, she did. “I’d
planned to use the trick for the first time tonight, but I didn’t
actually plan to open with it. You were a little easier to put into
a trance than I’d anticipated.” His voice indicated this wasn’t a
compliment, and another source of heat began to burn in her, this
time from humiliation. Was that what he wanted?

But he was still talking. “I needed to get
you under control, and that seemed like a good way. I figured you’d
have a strong reaction to it, although I have to admit, I didn’t
anticipate fainting. Fear of heights?”

She gritted her teeth. “You didn’t have to
do any such thing. I was on my way to my spot in the back row when
that kid waylaid me and put me in the front row seat you selected.
And besides, I’m not here to discover your secrets. I’m not that
kind of reporter.”

His lips curled. “Oh, I have a pretty good
idea what kind of reporter you are, Ms. Matthewson. You’re here to
question me about Tony. You want
that
story. The one where I
bemoan the fact that my brother and closest friend betrayed
me.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “Are you
saying your brother betrayed you?”

He broke off. Had she rattled him? But then
he shook his head, speaking in a regretful tone. “And if it weren’t
for the fact that this is so far beneath you, you’d’ve been out on
your pretty little ass right after the show.”

“Beneath me?” She blinked. It almost sounded
like a compliment. At least it was far enough from his former line
of humiliating repartee to both intrigue her and throw her off.

“Beneath you.” He whirled, taking both her
hands in an abrupt motion. They were on the casino floor, standing
close to the windows. People at the nearby craps tables shot them
curious glances. Had she followed him this far, blind to her
surroundings? “I did some research. Not much, but enough to know
who you are and what your capabilities are. You write crap, Ms.
Matthewson.”

She winced. “Call me Stacey, and who the
hell are you to make that judgment?”

“Doesn’t matter what I call you, you still
write crap. And as your next intended victim, I think I’m pretty
well qualified to make any judgments I want. You prey on people’s
worst moments, immortalize the shadows and sell it to the highest
bidder.” He paused, his lips compressing as if he didn’t want to
say anymore, but then he added, albeit reluctantly. “And yet…you
write well.”

“I write well?” She shook her head, aware he
was still holding her hands. The warmth of his grasp combined with
an unexpected gratitude for the compliment, and she felt a little
too warm and also as if he were playing with her emotions so
skillfully she was almost enjoying it. “Are you saying I write good
shit?”

“Not really.” He dropped her hands and
gestured around them. “Life is chance, Stacey. Have you never
noticed that? I wonder what chance has brought you into my path.
Was it Lady Luck?” As he spoke, a woman at a slot machine near them
gave a cry of delight as bells and whistles began to sound. Andre
grinned. “We better move on. Management tends to blame me when
things like that happen.” He grasped her forearm and started toward
the exit.

“Wait!” She pulled back, trying to check
their forward progress. “Where are we going?”

“To talk.”

“Where?” She shook her head. She felt
exhausted from the yo-yoing of her emotions. “I don’t…”

“There’s a coffee shop in the shopping
center across the street. It’ll be quieter than here.” He cocked an
eyebrow at her again. “Of course, we could go to my suite, but then
natural assumptions would be made…”

She blushed, wondering if he meant natural
assumptions by him or someone else. Mattie or Bobby, maybe? “Oh.
Okay.”

He bought two coffees and brought them back
to the table where she’d dropped. She looked drained, exhausted
from traveling, probably, but he had a guilty feeling he was partly
responsible. He quashed the guilt. He didn’t want to feel concerned
about her. She’d threatened his family, after all. But he couldn’t
help it. There was more to this woman than her beautiful, tough
exterior showed. He’d seen it in the articles Mattie brought him
before the show. Especially in the later ones, he’d sensed sympathy
for the subjects. She could definitely prove useful to him.

Tossing a few cream and sweetener packets on
the table, he said, “I didn’t know how you took it.”

As he’d suspected, she disregarded both,
taking a cautious sip of the steaming liquid. “Can you explain to
me why exactly we’re here?”