A Criminal Magic Read online

  I hesitate before pulling out the little silver flask of shine that I brought, the one I made this morning before I took the streetcar into work and sat behind a desk for ten hours. I was planning on giving it to Warren as a thank-you, pawn it off as a score from the Unit’s temporary evidence room, but now I’m not in the mood. Now I want Warren—with his big Sigma Phi dreams and his golf-trip-wielding father and his borrowed hair toss—to feel what it’s like to lose something.

  “It’s different for everyone.” I pull the flask out of my coat with the flourish of a true performance sorcerer. “You’ve got to try it for yourself.”

  Lana wraps her hands around mine, which are wrapped around the flask, and gasps. “Are you serious? I can have this?”

  “Of course, doll. But better drink it tonight. Shine’s magic only lasts a day—that flask will just be water again tomorrow.”

  She looks around, then takes it from me slowly, as Warren mutters, “Stealing government property now too?” But I ignore him, just relish this moment of having something to offer.

  “Drink it now,” I urge her, “so it’ll hit you right as you walk into the party.”

  She nods, like I really am some unquestionable expert, and then takes the flask to her lips and downs it in one gulp.

  “When will I feel it?” she whispers, giggles, as she passes the flask back to me.

  “Any minute.”

  We’re moving closer to the front, now maybe one or two groups away. A narrow white door to what looks to be a broom closet stands half-open about ten feet ahead, and a nice if nondescript-looking man sits on a stool next to the door. As we take another collective step forward, Lana gasps, stops.

  “Oh. My. God,” she whispers, arching her neck back. “Holy Mother. Holy effing Mother.”

  She closes her eyes, licks her lips, purses them. I haven’t hit the stuff myself in a long time, but I know the stages of a shine trip inside and out, from working with my father, and now the Unit—at least the stages of a trip before your body comes to need the stuff. First comes the euphoria, the flood of magic out of the bottle and into your blood. Then “the clarity,” where things take on a different sheen, like the world is coming together. Like there’s been a secret, evasive all your life, that’s now being whispered into your ear. Then, as our Unit guidebook clinically states, comes a “heightened sense of invincibility, increased sociability, and the ecstasy of the senses.” Which, in layman’s terms, basically means that the world becomes enchanted.

  “Good?” I ask.

  Lana laughs, seductive, guttural, looks me right in the eyes, her pupils two tiny specks. “Perfection.”

  “You ever think these kinds of tricks could land you right alongside your old man?” Warren digs, as Lana stumbles to my other side, so now I’m in between them.

  “Relax, Warren,” I mutter, as Lana wraps her arm around mine. I try to focus on her, but Warren won’t let it go.

  “I still remember what you told me, right after his indictment, how you never wanted to be like him. Ever.” Warren leans in. “Every time you ask me to take you out, I think about that, how ironic it is. ’Cause it’s like you’re trying to be him,” he adds. “It’s like you can’t help it.”

  Warren’s words hit me hot and quick, the shock of his jab quickly settling into angry shame. “I guess neither of us is man enough to change,” I cut next to him. “Jealousy still looks bad on you, Warren.”

  We reach the cleaning closet, come face-to-face with the man on the stool sporting a black jacket, black pants, and a bowler hat. He gives us a smile and folds his hand out like a welcome toward the door. “Your turn, folks. Step inside.”

  Lana, Warren, me—we all peer into the closet out of instinct. There are cleaning supplies stashed in the dusty corners, an old broom, buckets. No light.

  “But it’s not a closet.” Lana looks at me with those wide eyes. “It’s a test.”

  The doorman nods with an almost cringe-worthy, put-on flourish. “Very wise.” He smiles at me. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

  Lana takes me by the hand, and Warren and I follow her into the broom closet.

  The closet is a double-sided trick, it has to be: linking two objects together through time and space, so that guests walk into one door, only to instantly walk out of another located somewhere else. Sure enough, as we pass through the broom closet, we magically exit a different door that leads into a low-lit, windowless hallway faintly smelling of mildew. My guess is that we’ve been transported into the cellar of the house.

  A double-sided trick, a link, isn’t particularly difficult—like all magic manipulations of reality, it just takes the right words of power, the right objects, and of course, the magic touch—but it’s definitely a crowd-pleaser. And it’s real sorcery, not one a puffer could try to fake in a pathetic attempt to flaunt himself as magic. So my guess is that Warren’s buddy Sam has shelled out quite a lot of cash for this little party to go down. Sorcerers aren’t the typical frat-house fare—you hear whispers of performances in higher-echelon circles, you find them in the city’s shining rooms owned by the mob. And even though magic itself doesn’t wow me, the keys to it—money, influence, power—that’s a bag of tricks I still can’t accept that I’ve lost.

  “Don’t leave me,” Lana says dreamily. She works her hand up to my bicep as we walk down the hall. “You’re an angel, you know that? You’ve brought me something amazing. You’ve brought me light.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” Warren mutters behind me.

  I ignore him, just wrap my hand around Lana’s, and together we follow the hallway until it dumps us into the main space of the cellar, a wide, low-ceilinged, windowless den that looks like it spans the entire length and width of the house. The ceiling is peppered with small, blinking lights, and the floor is shiny as a still mirror, reflecting back the lights on its glossy black surface, which creates the effect that we’re walking over a field of stars. There are a few trees lining the perimeter of the crowded room, oaks with arms that stretch and bend like they’re being animated by a magic wind, with leaves that rustle and sway, all tucked away in the basement of Sigma Phi.

  All of this will be gone tomorrow. All pure magic is real, a true manipulation of reality, but it’s fleeting. From sorcerer’s shine to magic replicas, force fields, and every type of trick, all of a sorcerer’s magic is condemned to fade away after a day. Most people think that makes sorcery even more mesmerizing: getting a glimpse of a world that’s better than our own, but one that only lasts for a moment. But magic’s taken too much from me to see it as anything but a swindle.

  “I feel like we’re flying.” Lana takes my face gently and presses hers into it, her cherry lips on mine, before she pulls away. “More magic,” she says. “Take me.”

  I scan the room. The crowd is divided into clusters, anywhere from ten to about thirty college kids arranged in a semicircle around each of the three hired sorcerers on the floor. Each holds their audience’s attention with a small, space-friendly trick, performing it parlor-style for their enraptured crowd on repeat.

  My eyes rest on the nearest sorcerer, a few feet away. He takes his time fanning playing cards into a rainbow above his head, and then folds them back into a perfect deck that lands softly on his outstretched hand.

  “Come on”—I pull Lana toward him—“you’ll love this.”

  She practically coos as we watch the trick once, twice, three times. I bet the show must seem even more wowing when she’s on shine. She sneaks me another kiss as we stumble over to another performer, one who holds a small sphere of fire in his palm, waving it back and forth and jovially threatening to hand it over to a particularly shell-shocked dame on the sidelines. Lana whispers, “That light is so hot, so blinding, Alex.”

  As she leans into me, I can’t help but agree; it’s bright in here,
warm and familiar. If I just focus on this girl, the way she’s looking at me, on the jazz music blaring and the faint scent of privilege that perfumes the cellar, I can forget. I can lose myself in the now.

  “I want to get so lost,” Lana whispers into my ear, then pulls away from me suggestively. I want to get lost too. “Come find me.”

  “Wait, Lana,” I laugh. But as I move to chase after her, Warren steps in my way.

  “You can stop, all right?” he says flatly, yelling into my ear over the jazz. “Uncle. You want to feel like a big man? I say uncle.”

  I shake my head. “What are you taking about?”

  “God, you’re really going to make me spell it out?” He looks around uncomfortably, blushes. “I have my eye on Lana, all right, Alex?”

  An electric feeling, shiny and heady, lights me up from the inside. “That’s funny, ’cause it seems like she’s got her eye on me.”

  “Yeah, as a joke, as a trip, same as the shine,” Warren snaps. “She’s the daughter of a freaking senator. Don’t kid yourself.”

  And despite the blood sport we’re playing, the hard daggers we’ve been slinging at each other, I’m still surprised silent by his cut. My eyes pinch without my permission, and I have to look at the floor.

  “Jesus, what are we doing, Alex?” Warren says. “Look, I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “You’re right, I’m not.” Warren runs his fingers through his hair, gives me that infuriating, borrowed hair toss again. “I’m tired of this. It’s awful what your father did, it really is, all right? And I felt bad for you. Sometimes I still do. But you’re becoming poison,” he says. “Happy? There’s the truth.” And then he turns to walk away.

  The anger starts to boil, overflow inside. I need to direct it, somewhere, anywhere else, besides letting it burn me inside out. So before Warren gets away from me, before I think better of it, I take a step forward and give him a sharp shove to the back.

  He stumbles forward, and a couple of chaps and dames on the edge of the nearby performance circle stop talking and stare. Warren whips around. “Are you serious?” He takes a few running steps toward me and pushes back. “Leave. Just go home, Alex.”

  But I shove him again, sending him off balance.

  “Keep your dirty hands off me,” he seethes, as he barrels back into me. I grab his neck into a headlock and send us both scrambling to the floor.

  “Fight!” I hear from somewhere above us.

  I grab Warren by the collar, give him a hard slap to the jaw, not enough to hurt, just enough to shock him. “You’re a pathetic fighter,” I say, as I grip him tighter.

  “And you’re just pathetic,” he spits. He thrashes his hand, nails bared toward me, and manages to cut my lip. As he tries to roll over, I send my shoulder into his stomach before two pairs of hands rip us apart. It’s only when I’m pulled to my feet that I realize the music has been cut, the sorcerers have stopped their tricks, and Warren and I are now the main performance.

  “What the hell, Warren?” this Napoleon of a frat boy says, barreling in between us.

  Warren freezes. “Sam, I—”

  “Who is this guy?” Sam interrupts, nodding toward me.

  “An old friend.”

  “Doesn’t look like a friend to me.” Sam studies me with wide eyes. “You even go here, chump?”

  “No, I’m a trainee,” I say slowly, “with the Prohibition Unit.”

  Sam pops a sharp, cutting laugh over the crowd’s silence. “So you’re fighting with a pig, Warren, at a criminal magic party?”

  “I’m not a pig,” I interject.

  “Shut up,” Warren and this Sam chap say in unison.

  Sam turns his wrath back to Warren, stares him down. “It was stupid, bringing him here. And we take smart fellas at Sigma Phi—”

  “No, no, he’s cool,” Warren interrupts with a stammer. “I mean, he’s a total prick, but he won’t rat on us—he can’t, he’s as crooked as his old man—”

  At the mention of my father, my fist takes on a mind of its own, flies out from my side before I can stop it, sucker punches Warren right in the jaw.

  Warren stops, sucks in his breath, in shock or pain I’m not sure. He looks at me silently, as he holds his face.

  “Get these losers out of here,” Sam barks at the two varsity-letter types that pulled us apart earlier. Each of them grabs one of my arms, as another frat boy comes to the rescue and restrains Warren.

  Sam glares at Warren. “Don’t come back here.”

  The frat boys take us up the back stairs, into a dark kitchen, through the side door and the force field, and into the alley behind 35th Street. And then they leave Warren and me with each other.

  “I can’t believe it.” Warren gives a weird, almost girlish laugh as he rubs his jaw. “You just managed to ruin everything.”

  The high from Lana and the adrenaline from the fight are both waning, and a dull, familiar self-loathing starts taking over. “It’s all right,” I say softly. “Sam must have paid an arm and a leg for those sorcerers. My bet is he was already shined. He won’t remember tomorrow. You’ll get in.”

  Warren just stares at me like I’m insane. “Don’t ever talk to me again, you understand?”

  He turns on his heel, starts fumbling with his pack of cigarettes as he walks into the alley.

  “Come on, Warren, that was as much your fault as it was mine.”

  He doesn’t answer, and my heart starts pounding.

  “Warren.”

  Nothing but smoke funneling over his head as he turns onto O Street. “WARREN!”

  Christ, he’s really serious.

  “Warren, come on!”

  And then the pounding gives way to a strange, searing ache in my chest. It vaguely feels like a part of me’s melting.

  I stand there for a long while, alone. I smoke one cigarette, then another, study the force field of the house in front of me, the dark exterior, the magic blanket of quiet draped over the raging Sigma Phi house within. I picture all those pretty dames and lucky chaps. Dolls with nothing to worry about but the shade of their lipstick. Boys with fathers who can buy them into fraternities. Boys like Warren.

  Once upon a time, boys like me.

  I take a long drag, focusing on that force field. And then I turn inward, wait for that huge, all-encompassing feeling of power to start coursing through my veins, fuel me with lightning. And when I feel ready, full, I flick my cigarette stub toward the force field and exhale with a whisper: “Poof.”

  The facade in front of the Sigma Phi house shatters, crumbles into dust in a flash of a moment, spirals away like it’s being carried by a magic wind, and now I’m staring at the real house. Light shines from every window. The quiet back alley of Georgetown is shocked awake with the wailing jazz that thunders from within Sigma Phi. No longer cloaked in magic, it’s bright as a beacon, a siren. The house practically thumps against the crisp September night.

  I watch neighbors’ lights go on around me, witness a woman in her nightgown thrust open her door to assess the commotion from across the street. Dogs bark and more lights blink on as I walk away, smiling, down the alley toward O Street.

  And for just a second, the world feels a little fairer. Despite the fat lip that Warren just gave me, I even manage a whistle around the corner.

  THE ROAD TO POSSIBILITY

  JOAN

  Gunn and I haven’t said a word since we left Parsonage. His sleek black car keeps popping as we cut through thick woods, and every jump and stall of its engine rattles me like gunfire. I’m riding with a man I presume to be a gangster, to a foreign city to prove that I’m one of the strongest sorcerers he’s ever seen, and I’ve got about two spells and one trick total to my name. I need to prove that I can brew sorcerer’s shine along with the best of them, and I’ve brewed shine exactly once. On
the night of my mother’s death, no less. And by accident, since all I was really trying to do was banish my magic touch and bury it three feet underground. And there is no room for error; there is no option to fail. Ben and Ruby are counting on me.

  It nearly killed me saying good-bye to Ruby back at the cabin. Telling her that Ben was going to watch over her, that I didn’t know where I was going, and that I wasn’t sure when I was coming back. Ruffling her wispy hair and leaning in close so I could take her smell with me, reminding her that she needed to believe she was strong enough to fight her “sickness” and get well. I picture her smell now, try and conjure it, wrap it around myself like a blanket. This is my charge, to make things right, I remind myself. I wouldn’t need to do this if I hadn’t gone and blown everything apart.

  Around the signs for Richmond, Gunn breaks our silent standoff. “You learned your magic from Jed, I take it?” he says quietly.

  I think about the best way to answer this and finally go with, “My mama showed me.” But Mama wanted no parts of me mixed up in magic. When I confided that I’d gotten the magic touch, told her I’d woken up one morning with a near-electric feeling pulsing through my veins, she reluctantly taught me a couple spells, only ones she felt necessary to survive in the world we were living in. Dark, powerful blood-spells she inherited from her family, ones that involve a sacrifice in the casting. Severing spells, like the ones she’d have to perform in secret on desperate farmers who came stumbling to our door late at night, where she’d sever a gangrenous toe off a foot to save the rest of the leg. Tracking spells, like the ones she’d cast on Ruby, where Ruby would ingest Mama’s blood so Mama could keep tabs on everywhere she went. And her caging spell, where you lock away a symbol of an evil and smear your blood over the lock in sacrifice, and ask the magic to imprison the evil forever—the same spell I somehow managed to use to banish my magic on the night that Mama died.