Levitating Las Vegas(20)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“Jasmine, minor security crisis, gotta go, okay? See you Monday.” Kaylee pocketed her phone and walked straight toward Shane.

His blue eyes lit up, which broke her heart every time. Shane, in costume for his dad’s Frank Sinatra band, was hard to take seriously at first glance. But his black tux fit him really well. His quick, dry wit and the knowing look in his eyes told her if any guy without power could empathize with what she’d been through, it would be him. That’s what made him so tempting, and that’s what made him trouble. She couldn’t afford to get tangled in a relationship right now, maybe not ever—for her sake, and for his.

As she came within range, he made one more comment to Marilyn Monroe. Then he turned back to Kaylee, beamed at her, and took one step toward her.

She threw as hard as she could at him, Asking Kaylee out is not a good idea, and watched him step back to the wall again. Exquisite prickles rushed across her skin. She’d changed Shane’s mind so many times in the year they’d both worked at the casino that she’d almost begun to look forward to the encounter. If she wasn’t careful, she’d associate the sight of him with the pleasure of her power, like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

Still power-walking across the crazy pattern in the carpet, she stole a glance back at him. He’d folded one arm across his tux and propped the other fist against his chin, hiding his mouth. But he leaned forward just enough that he could see her beyond Marilyn Monroe. He followed Kaylee with his eyes.

This time the prickles Kaylee felt didn’t come from her power at all.

Only four more nights, Holly assured herself. Tonight, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. She and her parents took Monday night off. Tuesday her dad would perform his impossible feat of physical stamina. And then he would tell her his secrets, surely. She had to get through only four more nights as a brainless sex object onstage in a spangled bikini.

Her mom took care of the complicated parts of the magic trick, like yanking the red velvet curtain closed behind herself and balling her body into the tiny compartment underneath the rolling box to make it look as if she’d disappeared. Holly’s dad did all the acting. He adopted a pained expression as if he were focusing on the box through the wisps of dry-ice smoke and willing Holly’s mom to disappear. Holly’s job was to stand smiling at the packed auditorium and make presentation motions with her fingers gracefully extended and her careful manicure on display. No concentration required.

Until a light flashed in her eyes. Cameras weren’t allowed in the auditorium because the flash was blinding from the dark audience. She stood paralyzed, staring at bright spots marching across her field of view. She knew better than to take a step across the slick wooden stage in her high-heeled sandals until her vision cleared.

The prerecorded music over the speakers swelled to a dramatic climax, signaling that her dad had jerked open the curtain on the box to reveal—gasp—an empty space where her mom had been! This trick actually did cause Holly some anxiety. Her mom was getting older, and though she still rocked the stage in her own spangled bikini and high heels, her back had begun to bother her when she curled up in the bottom of the box, in a space so impossibly small that the audience believed she was gone. Flexible by comparison, Holly was the logical one to put herself through the most physically difficult part of the act.

Yet no one ever mentioned this possibility. Holly suspected her parents didn’t quite trust her. She was a beloved dog, generally sweet-natured, that had once bitten its master. If they put Holly in the box, one missed cue would ruin the trick, exposing her dad for the fraud he and all magicians really were. Everyone knew magicians were frauds, of course, but no one wanted to see it.

In fact, Holly currently was missing a cue, and she hadn’t even suffered a mental breakdown this time. She tried to blink the flashing spots away, unable to move on the stage. If she explained to her mom in the dressing room later that she’d been blinded and feared for her safety on high heels, her mom would one-up her with a story of a too-discerning crowd or a broken prop she’d faked her way through at some point in her many years as a Vegas magician’s assistant. Holly stayed where she was and made presentation hands in the general direction of the velvet box she assumed to be empty.

Holly waited a few seconds until her dad swept across the stage, cape billowing behind him. She couldn’t see the cape. She’d simply memorized the routine after endless rehearsals and performances. But now her vision had recovered to the point that she could step carefully to the box and twirl it on its casters, showing the crowd that indeed, her mom was gone in the front, her mom was gone in the back. The fact that her mom had stuffed herself underneath seemed so obvious to Holly. She could only assume that either the crowd honestly wanted to be fooled, or they were unable to complain about her dad’s hokey tricks because Holly didn’t pass around suggestion cards.

She’d just completed her second rotation with the box when the same flash blinded her, from the same place in the audience. Now she was supposed to take several steps away from the box so the spectators didn’t suspect her of engineering the trick through some mechanism on the box itself. Yet with one hand she clung to the side of the box and what was left of her sense of balance. With the other hand, she made the presentation gesture.

Her dad brushed past her, elbowing her to wake her up. Obediently Holly took a few shaky steps away from the box. Luckily, for the next minute, no tasks needed her concentration. She simply stood by and grinned blindly at the audience while her dad lit the box on fire. She painted it anew every afternoon with nitrocellulose, which produced an impressive flame, convincing the crowd that her mom couldn’t possibly survive unscathed if she were somehow hidden inside—her dad’s banal twist on an old standby in every magician’s arsenal.

Blinking through the spots before her eyes, Holly took the opportunity to scan the crowd for the source of the flash that had blinded her twice. She might not have as many years of experience in this business as her mom, but she had almost eight, and she knew the flash of a camera when she saw one. This had been no camera flash. The source was bigger. Wearing her pasted-on grin, she panned slowly across the seats, letting her eyes linger on the spot where she thought the flash had originated, even as her head moved away.

There it was again. She closed her eyes to avoid being blinded a third time, then opened one eye tentatively. Now the flash was dull enough that she could study it. It moved, almost as if it was meant to draw her attention. She panned her head in the other direction but kept her eyes on that mesmerizing light. The small rectangle moved up, down, then blinked brighter and dimmer. Someone was deliberately moving a mirror to reflect the spotlights into her eyes.