Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“I had a ‘brain crash.’” Max shrugged. “Memory loss was a side effect of the two broken legs that came from hitting the Neon Nightmare wall on the swing of a frayed bungee cord.”

“Damn!” CC’s striking bare fist, large folded fingers with hair-dusted knuckles, made the items on his makeup table, which weren’t makeup, bounce. “Onstage assassination attempt. I figure I’m going to end that way. When you’ve made a career of unmasking other magicians’ hallmark illusions, someone is going to get mad enough and is expert enough to do you in, no matter the guards. Look how close you came today. If you’d wanted to knife me instead of talk to me—”

“You’d be fine,” Max said. “The cloak is fine-woven chain mail, and the equipment-loaded mask collar puts your neck off-limits. I would have had time to slip a stiletto down your gauntlet, though, and cut your wrist veins.”

“Damn again! We’ve never thought of that in our security meetings.”

“You’d probably recover and I’d be dead,” Max said in consolation.

“Maybe not.” CC sounded morose. “You survived that Neon Nightmare impact. Why are you my friend?”

“I need one. And I’m nobody’s hired gun.”

“I’ve always thought we had common ground, Kinsella, that you were in some way imprisoned by your career as much as I am. That you were as really and truly solo as I have to be, not able to trust anyone, or ever let down my guard.”

“True enough,” Max said.

“And yet I do with you.” CC braced his armored right forearm on the dressing table, holding up a bare fist as an invitation to arm-wrestle.

Max hesitated, then braced and flexed his own right arm. His legs were iffy. His arm and upper body strength were the foundation of his career. He’d win in two seconds. Instead of grasping CC’s fist for a contest, he gave it a bump, the current gesture of camaraderie.

The man’s laughter sounded faint compared to his supplemented onstage voice. Max guessed he’d never see CC’s face unless he was in a casket. And the Cloaked Conjuror would probably want even that closed.

“I never exposed your ‘walking on air’ illusion,” CC said thoughtfully. “Of course it wasn’t magic. It was timing and astounding physical discipline. Loved the doves, man. That was a message.”

Flashback.

Strobe lights raking an empty stage faster than the blink of an eye. The audience hushing when the first dove flew to its invisible black perch against the stage’s velvet-black backdrop. The next dove flickered onto a different level on the other side of the stage. Then the next landed elsewhere until all you could see were doves fluttering like snowflakes, dozens of them, archangels landing on a cloud, wings lifted, balancing. The audience was now mentally adding the words to the instrumental music playing softly behind the first dove and getting louder. Upbeat. It was the “Believe It or Not” Mike Post theme from The Greatest American Hero TV show about an ordinary Joe becoming a superhero.

Only … blink again and there was the magician, standing upright on nothing, Max standing taller than a straight pin, wearing traditional magician’s garb. Dark hair, dark formal garb with strobe flashes of white tie and flying black tails, holding a slim white-tipped black wand. Wearing a shiny black top hat.

CC chuckled. “You were something else. Hugh Jackman doing Tommy Tune doing Fred Astaire as even Fred Astaire had never imagined it. I could never do that Lightfoot Harry act.”

And no matter where onstage Max had appeared, it was among a flutter of those constantly landing white doves. The strobe lights caught him flashing from one impeccably posed position to another, dancing in the dark, never captured striving or moving, walking on air, always the iconic image of the Magician. The Mystifying Max.

Flashback again:

“That effect,” he heard himself saying authoritatively, “was the product of years, five bird handlers, a tech crew of seven and a wonderfully calming dove cote only three miles off-Strip, plus the inspection and fiat of animal welfare groups.”

Max could shut his eyes and hear the doves’ low warbling chorus. Lovely, gentle creatures. Reality pushed him out of the past when his recovering mind flashed a newspaper headline shot of DOVE HUNTING SEASON OPENS. Not on his turf.

So. Did the Synth have a Cloaked Conjuror–hunting season? They might well, Max believed. He’d found a possible target. Now he had to find the potential perpetrators and figure out what they planned and where and when.

“Speaking of ‘messages,’” Max said, “that’s why I’m here. You could be closer to ending the way that you fear. Someone cut the Phantom Mage’s cord at Neon Nightmare.”

“That’s why the act went dark a couple months ago!” CC couldn’t convey expressions, but Max could almost see a lightbulb winking on above his heavy-maned head. “And why you made the remark about your memory.”

“Right. I could have been killed, and I’m putting the why and who and how together. My mask certainly didn’t keep me safe. What about your mask, any known imitations out there?”

“I don’t just have one mask, I have three. One to wear, one in the shop, one at the cleaners. They’ve been marketed as Halloween masks, but I don’t really have the kiddie audience.”

“The full head?”

“No, just my adorable kisser.”

“I’m thinking of full head masks, with voice-altering capabilities. That Darth Vader vibe.”

CC leaned back, folding his arms over his impressive chest. Here, without his boot platforms and gauntlets, the character’s roots in the entertainment wrestling game were more evident. “Nothing commercial. Some of my fans buy pricey kids’ helmets like that, supposed to be Darth Vader or Septimus Prime from the Transformers franchise.”

“Those would be shiny plastic, mechanical-looking masks, not animalistic strips in flocked stretch velvet dotted with tiny Austrian crystals like yours.”

“No. The Vegas Strip glitz is subtle and costly. But my fans are cagy and devoted. Craft store adhesive felt and dollar-store glitter work wonders when my fans get a hold of them for a redo. But most of those costly toy helmets have voice mechanisms that are more an echo chamber effect than a real alteration. And you’d be surprised how many adults fit into them and get a kick out of playing a kick-ass character.”

Flashback.

Swooping down fifty feet to hover above an awestruck crowd, cape billowing, face masked, while even the air vibrates with the heavy bass beat rocking the triangular-shaped inner space of Neon Nightmare, and neon lights of the zodiac wash every person there with pulsing colors.

“You’re right. I enjoyed doing the Zorro bit at Neon Nightmare.” Max smiled as he recalled the kick. “But it made me an easy target, as you are every night.”

“I know it. And you just proved that again tonight. Is there a reason you’re trying to make me insecure?”

“I’m trying to make you safer.”

“Why?”

“I know what it’s like. I made myself a target of professional killers at seventeen.”

The Cloaked Conjuror whistled in surprise, a common reaction. The mask made the sound into an eerie high-pitched wheeze. “You were a pro at magic that early?”

“Magicians aren’t usually a target. No, it was because of my naïve ideals.”

“You at least had some. I always just wanted to be a magician, but I wasn’t very good at it.”

“So you became good at debunking it.” Max smiled. He wondered how often the Cloaked Conjuror saw that ordinary expression off a stage. Perhaps he had call girls in. “Proves the axiom. ‘Those who can do; those who can’t … criticize.”