“Help yourself.” She took out a bottle and tossed it to me. It was an old ritual, one we fell back into easily.
I opened the door to the rest of the building. The back area held a decent-sized space filled with props, illusions, some tools, and, tucked away in a far corner, a stage for rehearsals. It was crowded but not packed. The walls were covered with show posters, autographed pictures, and pin-ups. It made the place look smaller than it really was. I turned on the stage lights rather than the work floods. No need to really light the place.
Raven walked around as if reacquainting herself with an old friend. “It’s been awhile.”
She looked good, slipping in and out of shadows amongst the illusions. It had indeed been awhile. Too long. She walked up to the “Artist’s Dream” and stopped. I sipped my beer and watched her. It was a simple illusion, a way to produce an assistant. On the front panel was a picture of the girl. It was briefly covered and then, just like that, the girl was standing there and only a silhouette remained on the panel. Very Galatea... or My Fair Lady. Either way, the artist was bringing to life the girl of his dreams. I smiled as she pulled down the front panel. It was still set with her photograph. I hadn’t done the trick since she left. I think that pleased her.
Raven and I had stopped working together, professionally, about a year and a half earlier. The jobs dried up for the big shows in town and I really didn’t want to work the ships. They weren’t my kind of crowds. They were looking for safe and I equated that with boring. At least doing what I was doing, hustling tourists to give them the “street magic experience,” gave me the opportunity to keep my close-up chops. Doing nothing but boxes on a cruise was death to me. Besides, the ships didn’t really approve of you laying a week’s salary on red. So I didn’t go and Raven quit being my assistant. We stopped seeing each other personally not long after. Seems I wasn’t fulfilling potential, was only hurting myself, and she was tired of supporting me and my bad habits.
That’s the thing about habits, though, everyone has them. And I was Raven’s. Just because we’d stopped dating didn’t mean she wasn’t available for a quick fuck whenever I was in the mood. We had something together neither of us had alone, and for her it was a driving force.
“Do you have an idea?” she asked without looking at me. She had made her way to the stage. It was the first time I’d seen her completely lit in months. She still took my breath away. Did I have an idea? There was a mattress propped against the wall behind the stage. It wasn’t clean but it was more comfortable than the floor.
“I might.”
Maybe she could hear my thoughts in my voice. Maybe she knew me as well as I thought I knew her. Maybe it was all part of the game we were both playing, but she turned and stared across the room at me. She smiled. A sad smile. “I like fresh sheets these days, remember? It’s not like it was.”
We’d been on that mattress more times than I could count. It was what we did during rehearsals, after shows, before breakfast. But she was right. It wasn’t like it was. She was in trouble and I was here to help. She wanted me to be her white knight, but I was rusty. I drained my beer. The right lubrication can ease any passage.
“Did you give back the diamonds?”
She looked at me like I was a black man at a Klan meeting.
Of course. Charon pegged her for the body, not the brains. I wanted to laugh. The layman realizes how little the illusionist actually does, though. The magician dances out his choreography while the assistant does all the work, squeezing and running and hiding while the props move around them. One false move and it’s the girl in the box who’s getting impaled while the magician wields the blade. “Charon didn’t know you took them.” It was the only explanation. “And he didn’t know anything else was gone.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a handmade velvet bag. I’d seen it before. She got it when she bought a necklace from a beach vendor in Santa Monica. She used it to keep her valuables.
“And now he knows either me or Paul has ’em and I’m sending you away?”
“You can have half.”
“I’m covered, thanks. I got what I was after.”
She turned toward the back door. “This was a mistake.”
I could have let her go. I could have let her walk out the door and face whatever was beyond it. That would have been the smart thing to do. “Wait.” I was never that smart.
She turned back, grateful. I didn’t move. She crossed the floor and into my arms, hugging me hard. I didn’t want to but I hugged back. It was a reflex. “Oh, Remy,” she whispered in my ear. “Thank you. I was so scared...” The words trailed off as I turned my head. Her fears melted into passion. Just another emotional outlet.
I lifted her up, her lips still locked with mine, and set her on the “Impaled” table. The floor would have been more comfortable. The bottom half of “Impaled” was the receptacle. Perched above it, Murphy-bed style, was a rack of sharp metal spikes. Real ones. It was part of the gag. The magician would prove the spikes were real while the assistant was being chained to the table. A light would be positioned behind her and a thin curtain in front, so the audience could see her struggling. There was a time limit, artificially imposed, something to add more drama to the situation. When the clock ran out, the spikes would fall, and if the girl was still there, well...
At just the right time, though, the light went out, the spikes fell, and the girl reappeared someplace else, safe and sound. It was foolproof. There was a safety catch so the spikes couldn’t fall if the girl was still chained up, and she had a foot switch to release the spikes when she was in position. It looked dangerous and evil. It was the kind of illusion I could never perform on a cruise.
It was a new prop in the warehouse and I’d never before used it for this purpose. It supported our combined weight nicely, creaking and groaning along as if it were an active participant in our lovemaking.
Afterwards, we lay there in each other’s arms, slowly becoming aware of the cold metal table beneath us. She laughed as I shivered.
“Can you really get me out of here?”
I held her face in my hands and looked directly into her eyes. “I’m gonna get us a blanket first.”
She laughed again when I rolled off the table. I bumped my hip as I got to my feet. I looked over at her. She was beautiful. For just this moment, it was like it was. I went into the front office to grab a blanket. Raven had rolled over, away from me, when I returned. She was still naked.
I stopped and looked at her, wishing she didn’t have to go away. But I knew there was no other choice. If she was still here it was dangerous for everyone involved.
As I approached the illusion I hit the foot release.
I made myself watch as the spikes came down.
She turned her head at the sound, but there was no chance to get out of the way. She didn’t even have time to scream. With an illusion, there’s no point in a slow death. Of the forty spikes, no more than six or seven hit her, but it was enough to do the job. The rest slid into their proper channels with a sickening metal-on-metal grate. The blood channels, built into the table for show, worked just like they were supposed to, draining the red flow away from her body and collecting it in a basin at the foot of the table.
I threw the blanket I was still holding over the whole mess. I got dressed before I retrieved the diamonds from her pants pocket. I had plans for the little beauties.
The blood was overflowing, dripping on the floor. The basin was never really meant to hold anything. I grabbed a rag to sop it up.
The back door opened. Pierre Charon stepped in, cell phone in his hand. “She called me.”