"Edghill,.Rosemary.-.SS.Collection.-.Murder.By.Magic.v1.0.txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Edghill Rosemary)

"He died."
Silence always made him uncomfortable. He supposed firing her in the middle of that medical melodrama could have made it hard on ... someone. He didn't like to hear about people dying. He never knew what to say, so he said nothing.
She seemed to expect no less from him. "So, did you like the show?" she asked.
"What's not to like?" Everything. "Glad you made such a great . . . comeback. You look terrific." Spoken softly, like an invitation.
"Thanks. It's good to see you again, too." She seemed pleased that he was here.
Oddly, that cheered him. He hadn't realized he'd needed cheer until now. "Really?"
"Well, you are the maestro. I'm flattered that you bothered to see my show."
"It's that Mirror Image trick that's the draw."
"Illusion," she corrected as swiftly as he had corrected the reporter.
She leaned an elbow on the dressing table, then her chin on her fist. Her image reflected to infinity behind her, thanks to the room's traditional parallel aisle of dressing table mirrors. It was all done with mirrors, and he was never done with mirrors, for he saw himself, small and wee, in a tiny corner of the reflected room behind her. His trademark mane of hair, now a dramatic white, was mostly extensions now. He was the sum of all the parts of his former illusions.
His heart fluttered. This moment was important. He knew it. For her, for him. He couldn't tell for which one it was more vital, just as one couldn't tell the twins from the Mirror Image illusion apart, even when they merged at the end.
"It's twins, isn't it?" He spoke without wanting to, hungry urgent, worried.
"No, not twins."
"Not twins?"
She smiled gently, as at a slow-witted child. "This is something totally new, my illusion."
"Nothing's new in magic. Nothing! It's the same dodge and burn the photographers use to enhance photographs, only it's performed on the audience's eyes instead of a negative."
"Dodge and burn," she repeated. "I like the way you put that."
"Listen. I'm curious as hell, and I admit you've got me wondering. I really want to know how you do that."
She was silent. Signature illusions were a magician's bread and butter, big-time.
"A million bucks," he said, unable to stop himself. "I'll give you a million dollars if you show me the secret of that trick."
His words had surprised her as much as they had him.
"A million dollars." She savored them like bittersweet chocolate. "A million dollars would have saved Cody's life."
"Cody?"
"My son."
"Oh. Sure. Sorry. Sorry about that. So the disease, whatever, was terminal."
"Then it was. Not now."
He didn't know what to say, so he left his offer hanging there.
Apparently, she saw it still twisting in the wind. "You have to promise not to tell anybody."
"Sure. I mean, no. Not ever."
"And you can't use it yourself without paying me a ... royalty."
"I wouldn't want to use it. I mean, I'm not a copier. Haven't ever been. I just want to know." He realized this new, unexpected need was the deepest he'd felt in some time. "I don't understand it. It's not magic like I know it. I need toЧ"
"I understand need," she said, cutting him off as if uninterested in the sudden flood of genuine feeling that engulfed him. "I'll show you how the trick works."
"A million dollars," he repeated, awash in a foreign wave of gratitude.
He really had to know, more than anything in his life. What life? It was all magic show. She'd probably give the million to some foundation for the disease that had killed her son. So he'd have helped her, after all. Life was strange, but magic was even stranger.
It would be quite an event. She would only reveal her illusion by using him in it. He was to be the stooge hauled from the front rows of the audience. His hotel and her hotel had agreed to copromote the onetime union of two major Strip magicians as if they were world-class boxers having a ballyhooed rematch.
Maybe they were.
She also stipulated that he wear his stage costume: glittering black sequined vest and satin cummerbund, the vaguely frock-coat-style jacket with the capelet in the back. Even his corset. He had felt like blushing when she mentioned it. How did she know?
It was obvious, though, that she had to know the stooge's apparel before the illusion began. He knew he had no twin, but maybe she could make one. No one came to take an impression of his face beforehand, but makeup people could do incredible masks even from photos these days. More and more it was special effects instead of old-fashioned magic, like everywhere else in the entertainment industry.
He was even announced on the program, a parchment flyer tucked into the glossy photo-book about Majika and her show that cost the marks nine bucks a throw: "Special Guest Appearance by Merlin the Magnificent by arrangement with the Goliath Hotel and Casino."
He sat down front, cricking his neck to look up at the stage he was used to looking down on people from. He felt like a kid dragged to a cultural outing, the local symphony maybe. There was a lot of show to sit through, and for a pro, it was all routine stuff, although the audience around him gasped and applauded.
He patted his palms together; no stinging claps from him. The racket, music to his ears when he was onstage, only hurt them now, especially the enthusiastically shrill whistles. His act never got whistles, but that was because it offered an old-fashioned dignity. He shrank a little in the disconcertingly mobile seat. Old-fashioned dignity did not sound like where it was at these days. He wouldn't outright copy Majikas mirror illusion, but borrow the best of it. And being part of it, going through it, was the easiest way to master another magicians illusion. You saw how it was done in an instant. Amazing that none of her audience stooges had been tempted to give away the trick, since it was the talk of Vegas and exposing it would cause a media frenzy. He was surprised that the Cloaked Conjuror at the New Millennium, who specialized in laying bare the mechanisms behind the magic, hadn't touched Majikas Mirror Image illusion.
When the mirrored cabinet was finally whisked onstage by the black-spandexed minions, Marlon stared hard at the space above the wheels. No mirror halfway back to reflect the front wheels as the back and disguise an escape or entrance through the stage floor. In fact, Ma-jika writhed underneath the cabinet like a sex kittenЧor Eartha Kitt in heatЧjust to show the space was open and empty.
But not to worry. He'd soon know the way his "twin" would enter the box, although how she got that "two melt into one before your eyes" effect would be interesting to know. Probably mirrors again. So embarrassingly often, it was mirrors.
When she singled him out in the audience, he stood, nervous as a schoolboy at his first magic show. He was used to being in control, the king of the board, not a pawn.
As he headed for the six stairs to the stage, he heard an audience member hissing, "Look at that kooky old guy, that big white hair! Televangelist showman. Las Vegas!"
He held his cherished snowy pompadour high. It gave him an ecclesiastical air, he thought. He liked to consider himself as the high priest of magic in a town riddled with cheesy acolytes.
Chardonnay went through the usual chitchat with him: name, where he was from, what his hobbies were. The audience quickly caught on that he was more than the nightly guinea pig, that he was a noted magician himself, and laughed at his coyly truthful answers.
"Are you ready to face my mirror of truth and consequences?" she asked at last.
He glanced over his sober, caped, black shoulder at the gaudy thing. "Of course. I am even more ready to meet myself coming from it than going into it."
That earned a few titters from the audience, and then the gilt-frame door was swinging toward him like a horizontal guillotine aiming at his sutured neck. He ducked when he stepped up to enter the dark space behind the silvered door, thinking the opening might be too small for his height.