As the cloaked and masked Phantom Mage, Max walked on air and juggled fireworks at the dark apex of the nightclub called Neon Nightmare.
As himself—the Mystifying Max, stage magician on hiatus—he’d crashed the hidden offices, spy galleries, and rooms beyond the noise and the neon of the club’s public spaces. Private rooms were strung along hidden tunnels through the pyramid-shaped building for the use of Neon Nightmare’s secret owners, a consortium of magicians.
Max as himself—bare-faced, clad in matte black civvies—was due to make another in-person appearance before the claque, the cabal, the clique of disgruntled old-school magicians called the Synth.
From the outside, Neon Nightmare was a dark mountain of architectural pyramid topped by the pyrotechnical display of a neon horse at the apex. Inside, it was designed like its ancient Egyptian role models. Once you were past the central open core where the bar and dance floor dominated, hidden paths led to unexpected chambers. If dead pharaohs didn’t await, career-dead magicians did, brooding over the wrongs of a world that now favored the naked revelation of magical illusions over the ancient tradition that cloaked stage magic in the mystic.
Max found his way to the center of the Synth’s secret world, an eternally stuffy Colonial club room, where the stout and storied sat and smoked and sipped and relived old triumphs.
He pushed the pressure point that turned black, unrelieved wall into a featureless door, then moved into a room that glowed the deep claret of a full wineglass. Crimson carpet, black leather, and ruby-stemmed glassware … it was like an Edward Gorey illustration, elegantly Edwardian and etched in black, white, and gray, except for the telling blood-red accents.
“Max! We were just talking about you.”
That would do for the opening salvo in a war of words. Having been “just talked about” made one the outsider in an instant. The inconstant lover. The philandering husband. The betrayer.
“Where have you been?” the dramatic-looking woman he had nicknamed Carmen demanded before he could answer.
“Certainly not onstage,” said the mentalist named Czarina Catharina. She wore the caftan and turban that hid an aging woman’s thinning hair and thickening waist. “No professional demands keeping you away. No excuses,” she added coyly.
He shrugged and slipped into an oxblood-red leather chair, happy to fold his telltale six-foot-four height into lounging level. “I have matters to attend to anyway,” he said.
“Matters?” Carmen’s question was sharp.
“Financial.”
“Ah.” The portly old gentleman by the bar cart who’d performed as Cosimo Sparks smiled tightly. “He now performs illusions with numbers, in private.”
“You must have made an obscene amount of money,” Carmen speculated, her husky voice softening with lust, whether for love or money it was hard to tell, but Max’s dough would be on the filthy lucre.
“Money isn’t everything. And the stock market.” Max sighed, spreading his fingers so eloquently that the assembled magicians stared at them as if seeing money melting away.
It had melted away too when he’d poured it into global counterterrorism actions after 9/11. Not into any specific government’s efforts, but into the same shadowy, idealistic nonpartisan group that he and his mentor Gandolph had supported for years.
“You know what we are,” Sparks said.
“I think I do. Does anyone ever fully know another?”
“Exactly. But we need to really know you.”
“Aren’t I enough of an open book for my fellow, and sister, magicians? You all know that I got caught in ‘a situation’ the night my performing contract closed at the Goliath. I was unfortunately seen too close to a couple of thugs attempting to rob the casino, who inexplicably shot each other. It was flee or face charges. And so my career came to a dramatic end.”
The bitter twist to his mouth on the last sentence was particularly effective, and truly felt. Honesty was always the best disguise among enemies.
“Your career was ruined,” Czarina agreed. “But new ones beckon.”
“Oh?”
“Join us.”
“I thought I had.”
Sparks answered for Czarina this time. “You’ve been tolerated, man, but remain unproven.”
“We require a trifling … initiation ritual,” the older woman put in.
“I found you in this rats’ maze, didn’t I?”
Sparks shook his head. Not enough. “We require more than fine discernment. We require risk.”
“You’re talking to me about risk?”
“Granted. But perhaps you’ve grown complacent behind your anonymity.”
“Perhaps. I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“We’re not. We’re betting on you living up to, and surpassing, our highest expectations. Once you complete your assignment.”
Max chuckled. It wasn’t a reassuring sound. “I haven’t had an ‘assignment’ since high school.”
“We are Ph.D. level,” Carmen noted languidly from her corner. Her working name was Serendipity and he supposed he’d better get used to it. She went by Serena among friends. “We require absolute loyalty, dazzling ability, and, oddly enough for magicians, transcendent honesty. To the Synth, anyway.”
“What do you want?”
“The Czar Alexander Scepter.” The slightly British accent of Cosimo Sparks slapped the words onto the table like a gauntlet.
Max snorted, delicately. “The centerpiece of the forthcoming White Russian exhibit at the New Millennium? You’re joking.”
“No,” Czarina said. “We want you to get it for us.”
“I’m not a thief.”
“But you could be, an exquisite one,” she coaxed him. “We don’t care about the value of the piece. We care about the value of the act of taking it. You can return it, if you like.”
“Or keep it.”
“Or sell it and share the wealth with us, which would be a nice gesture.”
Max fanned his fingers to produce a feathered bird of paradise, a faux one. No awkward droppings. “Magicians appreciate the nice gesture.” He presented the bird to the Czarina.
“Then you’ll do it?” she asked.
“I’ll do it if I study the situation and decide it’s doable.”
“We should warn you:’ Sparks said in his fuddy-duddy way. “None of us has come up with a foolproof method.”
“I’m your court of last resort?”
“You’re our pledge, Mr. Kinsella. If you can’t cut our initiation rite, you’ll have to take our hazing.”
The threat was unmistakable.
“I don’t take anything,” he warned back, “except what I want to. So I’ll leave now and examine the situation at the New Millennium that has stymied you all.” He stood to go.
“Just a minute.”
He paused, looking impatient. “Do you want this trinket, or not?”
“We want your undivided attention.”
“Have you seen the new act here at Neon Nightmare?” Serena, lying back on the room’s sole sofa in a gown out of a Sarah Bernhardt portrait, practically purred the question.
“Besides yours?” Max asked back, sardonically.
“Tut-tut.” Czarina intervened. “No need to get testy. You’re an untried factor. We must be sure you’re reliable.”
“So.” Sparks was looking excited and a bit nasty. “Have you seen the Phantom Mage perform here?”
“No, and with that impossibly hokey name, I don’t want to. I’ll be going.”
“I hope not.” Serena uncoiled herself to rise and take his arm, a seductive gesture that was also custodial. “Why in such a rush to leave us?” she purred. And her voice did indeed rumble deep in her … ah, chest.
“You want me to steal the most prized object in Las Vegas or not?”
“Stay just a while,” she coaxed. “You might find this new fellow interesting.”
“I find little that is common interesting. I must be off.”