Carrie Vaughn - Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand

The area was public, well traveled. Under the odor of carpet cleaner I smelled people, lingering perfume and aftershave, hundreds of warm bodies passing through these doors, and under it all lurked a musky feline scent. Feline, but different. Distinctive, including both fur and skin.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ben said. “This is making me nervous.”

We didn’t speak until we were back outside, on the sun-baked pavement and in the fuel-tainted air. I took a deep breath of it and smiled. After the close environment of the Hanging Gardens, even the crowded, traffic-filled Strip felt like wide-open territory. We walked back to the Olympus.

“I’m not sure I want to see their show,” Ben said, after taking a deep breath right along with me. “It would just be weird.”

“And nobody knows about it. They’ve kept it secret. Of course Dom knows—but wow. What a story.” But I wouldn’t be the one to break it unless Balthasar wanted me to. I had too much respect for the kind of effort it took to keep any lycanthropic identity hidden to blow it for someone else. Kind of like my identity was blown. But that was why I really wanted to talk to Balthasar, to find out how this had started, why they did this—and how.

My face pursed with concentration. “I wonder...”

“Hm?”

“Does the group of them work like a pack? If Balthasar’s also a lycanthrope”—and with that look in his eyes, even in the picture, I was betting he was—“is he the alpha? And if both those things are true, do you think the performers are there voluntarily? Or are they being coerced?”

“How? Like someone’s holding a gun to their heads or something?”

“We’ve seen what a dysfunctional pack of lycanthropes can do. If the alpha’s got them cowed, yeah, they might not want to do this. I just can’t imagine a lycanthrope shape-shifting and performing like that voluntarily.”

We walked another half block, dodging a crowd of what had to be a bachelor party. Young men, loud, cans of beer in hand. The group swarmed around one guy in the center; they might have been egging him on, or dragging him with them. He looked a little spaced out. Ben and I moved as far to the edge of the sidewalk as we could, and they surged past, like a pack on the prowl.

Ben said, “If all that’s true, what are you going to do about it? Mount a liberation?”

“That’s why I want to talk to Balthasar and get the whole story. Then—I don’t know.” But yeah, depending on how the interview went, I might just have to mount a liberation.

I took a cab to the Diablo for my meeting with Odysseus Grant. By myself this time. Ben wanted to spend some time playing poker this afternoon. “Practicing,” he said, for the tournament tomorrow. I’d promised I wouldn’t nag him about how he spent his free time while I was doing work for the show, so I didn’t nag him. But I did remind him about dinner with my parents this evening.

I’d been instructed to ask for Odysseus Grant at the box office at the Diablo theater. The clerk there directed me to theater door. “He’s onstage, practicing. Go right in.”

It was somehow less exciting sneaking around a theater when I’d been invited.

The empty theater seemed larger and lonelier than it had yesterday. All the lights were on and the curtains were open, making the stage seem like a gaping warehouse instead of the setting for a show. I could see the tape marking out spots on the floor, as well as the scrapes and scuffs that marred it. Catwalks and hanging stage lights were also visible. A few of the show’s larger props sat toward the back of the stage, looking lost under the bright lights. Less mysterious.

In the middle of the stage, next to a small folding table, stood Odysseus Grant. A few props sat on the table: a top hat, a glass of water, what looked like scarves, and a folded newspaper. Grant, wearing a button-up white shirt, open at the collar, sleeves rolled up, and dark trousers, was shuffling cards, rotating through a number of tricks so quickly his hands blurred. He pulled one out, showed it to the empty seats, shuffled, drew out the same card again. And again, and again. He shuffled a different way every time. At one point he winced, shook his head a fraction, and did the same trick again. And again. I hadn’t seen anything wrong with what he’d done.

I made my way to the stage stairs. “Mr. Grant? I’m Kitty Norville. Thanks for agreeing to talk with me.”

He gave the deck one last spin—almost literally, launching the cards into the air with one hand so that they fanned in the air and landed neatly in his other hand. An old, familiar trick, but I’d never seen it done in person. The cards whispered through the air.

“Yes. I know who you are.” He glanced at me sideways with icy blue eyes.

“The woman up front told me you were practicing. You do this every night, I’d have thought that would be enough practice.”

“No. You never stop practicing. You always have to find new tricks, stay at the top of your game. Otherwise you become obsolete.” He set the cards down, then twisted his hand to produce a coin. Then another, and another. “I’m afraid I only have a few moments. What would you like to talk about?”

“Rumor has it your magic is real.”

He kept going through tricks, plucking coins and scarves out of the air, shoving them all into the hat, pulling out a second glass of water.

“You don’t mince words, do you? Straight to the point.”

“That’s me,” I said.

“It’s a useful rumor. Especially recently. I suppose I have you to thank for that. People are willing to believe lots of things these days.”

“Is it? Real, I mean.”

He gave a smile that made his craggy face light up with mischief. “You’ve been watching me for five minutes now. What do you think?”

Hey, I was supposed to be the one asking questions. I moved on. “You might have heard I’m doing a televised version of my show tonight. Stage, audience, everything. I wondered if you’d like to come on, do a few tricks for the audience, talk about your act. It would be great publicity for you. I have a pretty big audience who would love to see what you can do.”

He was already shaking his head. “I don’t need publicity. This may come as a shock, but I don’t aspire to great fame and success. I have my little show, my little talents. It’s all I need.” He turned a formerly empty hand to show four silver dollars stuck between the fingers.

“Then maybe you’ll do it because I asked nicely? Please?” I could wear down almost everyone eventually.

“I’m willing to talk to you for a few minutes, not appear on your show. Those few minutes are almost up.”

Okay, fine. File this one under future projects.

I smiled, conceding the point. “Right. Your show’s pretty retro. The tux, the rabbit in the hat, the old-school tricks. Some of your equipment even looks antique.” I nodded to the box of disappearing, with its art-deco stylings.

“A lot of it is antique,” Grant said, still guarded. Mysterious—was it part of the act, or just him? “I inherited it from an old vaudeville magician. He lived in the neighborhood where I grew up in Rhode Island. He used to tell all sorts of stories to the kids. But I listened the best, so he taught his tricks to me. When he passed away, he was ancient, over a hundred, I think. I was eighteen, and he left me the keys to a storage unit. It held all his equipment and props, his books, notes, everything. I suppose I felt I’d been left his legacy, as well. If I was going to do tricks on the stage, I wanted to do it in a way he’d approve of.”

I wandered around, growing brave when he didn’t stop me. There was the box where he sawed his own leg off, then put it back on. The levitating chair—I looked for wires and didn’t see any.