A Criminal Magic (12 page)

Grace frowns as she studies her cards. “Hardly ever near enough to Gunn to mine into his thoughts,” she tells Ral, “and
when I am, he's hard to breach. But from what I can gather from his thug-puppy, Dawson, Gunn will end this soon. Dawson's been thinking constantly about this shining room, the Red Den. I see a wooden door sign, this two-story space with stages, a crowd where little glasses of shine are being passed around.” She looks up at us. “Dawson's got a bare-bones imagination, and the images are clear, almost pushy. I'd say any day we're looking at the finish line.”

Ral shows his hand. “If you're right, Gunn will need to force the issue,
force
seven of us to team up.” He shakes his head. “It can't come to that. I'm not going home to Marla and my boys empty-handed. I want to approach another team and make an alliance now.”

“With who?” Billy puts two queens down with a flourish, and I toss my pair of twos into the center. “Stock's trio of shine junkies and sibling-humpers? Or those quacks from the Carolinas? I don't think there's a lesser of two evils in this situation.”

Ral says, “You know there has to be.”

And Ral's right, of course. We need to choose. I size up our alternatives.

Stock, Tommy, and Rose sit against the back wall of the warehouse, puffing spirals of smoke to the ceiling, deep in the middle of their own hushed conversation, that dull, grayed-out, post-shine-trip haze about them. Rose quips something into Tommy's ear. Her brother laughs, low and sultry-like, which breaks me out into all sorts of uncomfortable. But on the other side of the warehouse, the Carolina Boys are playing with fire,
literally
—each of them passing a palm-sized ball of flames around their circle of four, until one of them decides to mix things up, burst the ball, and burn the hands of the passer, like a high-stakes, sadistic game of hot potato.

Ral's comment hangs there, unaddressed, and I realize
it's been silent for a while. I look back at my team. Ral, Billy, Grace—they're all looking at
me
. “What's your vote, Joan?” Ral whispers.

And something I haven't felt in a long time rises up inside me: a sense of doing well. Of mattering. Fact, it's such a warm and wonderful feeling that I force myself not to take the memories of Mama and that night down off their shelf, like I always do whenever I feel a shade of self-satisfaction.

“We go with Stock.”

“Stock,” Grace repeats slowly, looking at me curiously. “The Stock who's teased and taunted you from the moment you walked in the door. The guy who's been throwing insults our way every time we rub shoulders with him.”

“We don't have the luxury of holding grudges,” I say. “First, look at those Carolina Boys. They're
burning
themselves. That the sort of fellas you want to be teamed up with, heading into a gangster den to perform cutting-edge magic?”

“But—”

“Two, if we try for the Carolina Boys, we still have one extra man if Gunn insists on walking away with only seven to achieve the strongest troupe,” I interrupt her. “What happens once we're eight? Does Gunn pick the one who goes? Do we vote?” I look around at the trio encircling me. I don't want to leave their sides. “No, we stick together. Allying with Stock's trio lets us do that. It's the only option.”

Ral waits a beat, then says quietly, “I'm with Joan.”

Billy nods. “Stock's a long shot on accepting. But he's better than Gavin's crowd. As always, on the bull's-eye, Kendrick,” and I smile.

Grace shakes her head. “It can't be me or Joan who asks him.”

“I'll do it. I'll wait for the right time,” Ral whispers, as the rest of us settle into our cots around him.

“Right time better be soon,” Grace whispers back. “Telling
you, I sense Gunn's gonna bring this whole thing to an end any day.”

I don't want to fall asleep on that note, but nobody's arguing with Grace's forecast. So we give her the last word and surrender to the darkness.

*    *    *

We never make it to the morning. Sometime in the middle of the night, I hear a banging, a tear of a noise through the dark warehouse that shakes the walls. I jump up in my cot, look around, panicked, as a few of the other sorcerers sit up, jittery, anxious gray forms in the darkness.

There's a scratching sound, like the wood barrier on the other side of the warehouse entrance is being lifted, and then the door is thrust open with a
BOOM
. Footsteps shuffle toward us. I crawl forward to Grace's cot.

“Grace,” I whisper. “Wake up, I don't know what's going on—”

The pair of footsteps halts at the edge of our sea of cots.

“It's time this experiment of mine ended. My patience is wearing thin. You can consider this your wake-up call.” It's Gunn's voice, though he appears as a fuzzy mirage, a floating illusion in the dark. “Everyone has five minutes. Gather your things and meet Dawson outside. You won't be coming back here.”

Gunn leaves, but Dawson stays hovering over us, watching as we all shake one another awake and start scrambling for our belongings. Panic has wound around the warehouse, tense whispers, mumbled prayers.

“Can you sense what's about to happen?” I ask Grace, as I shove my loose things into my satchel.

“No more than you,” she whispers.

We all grab our bags, and I reach for Grace's hand hastily. We stumble out of the door, regroup with Ral and Billy on the other side. The October night is frigid, shocking. Dawson's truck
headlights shine across the empty lot, slaying the pitch-black forest like a pair of swords.

“Throw your bags in my truck,” Dawson orders as the rest of the sorcerers spill outside. “You all know where the clearing is by now. Gunn's waiting for you there.”

We hurry through the woods, the eleven of us tripping over unseen roots, climbing over fallen branches.

“What do you think Gunn's going to do?” Ral asks us, as we cut swiftly through the trees. “Force some kind of face-off? A performance duel?”

“Whatever it is, we're going to win it, for us, and our families back home,” I tell him. I close my eyes, picture Ruby in our cabin's kitchen, sitting on the counter singing as I whip up morning eggs. I focus on her, let her be a beacon.
She will keep her home I will win I have to win—

We emerge from the forest to find Gunn waiting in the clearing. He holds a black lantern. Three identical lanterns have been placed on the ground, arranged ten feet away from one another in a long line, cutting the clearing in half. Their dim light bathes the clearing in a hazy, otherworldly glow, makes the space feel like something not of this time, or of this world. We cross over the line and join Gunn on the right side of the field.

“I've been studying each of you for weeks,” Gunn's voice breaks through the silence, “learning your strengths, your shine, your magic.” The eleven of us shiver in front of him, our team in the middle, Stock's trio on our left, the four Carolina Boys huddled tightly on our right side. “I told you at the beginning of this endeavor that I was looking for something groundbreaking—a troupe of sorcerers, seven men and women held together by magic, elevated and strengthened by magic. A group that is more than the sum of its members. But I'm tired of waiting for you to overcome your hesitations and insecurities for the sake of something greater. You've left me no choice but to force the
issue.” Gunn motions theatrically to the wide stretch of grass on the other side of the line of lanterns. “Billy, if you will, can you please create a door?”

I feel Billy flinch beside me. “What kind of door, Mr. Gunn?”

“Any door,” Gunn says curtly, “the only requirement being that you can walk through it . . . and that we can close it at the end.”

Billy faces the clearing space behind the lanterns, his brow stitched in confusion. But he closes his eyes, whispers his words of power, and in the middle of the field, right behind the center lantern, a thick, white wooden door materializes against the night sky. It stands there, no walls, no support. It looks eerie, like a passageway to a nightmare. Or a gateway to hell.

“Consider the space behind that door your canvas,” Gunn says as he paces in front of us. “I want the eleven of you to enter that door and use your magic to create something out of nothing in the clearing behind it. There are no rules I'm going to set for this final trial—the only limits are those you and your allies conjure, and the ones in turn that your adversaries create. I don't care what happens in that clearing, honestly, once you walk through that door. The only thing I care about is that only seven of you walk back out.” He stops walking. “You decide who that is, and what makes that happen.”

The clearing's so quiet you can hear crickets squeak like faraway rocking chairs. My mind is racing, trying to process what Gunn is actually demanding—
only seven walking out? What happens to the rest of us?
—but before I can think it through, Gunn says in his flat, even tone, “Begin.”

And then it's like a gauntlet's been thrown down, a race to get to the door, to stake an advantage in an unknown trial, me just as hopped up with adrenaline and fear as the rest of them. Stock and Tommy barrel ahead of us, with Rose trailing behind. They reach the door first. Stock grabs the handle and pulls it
open. His trio bursts through the entrance and closes the door with a snap behind them.

“Let's go!” Ral grabs my forearm with one hand and Grace's with his other. He starts to pull us forward, in an effort to get a jump on Gavin's crowd. Billy falls in beside us, but the Carolina Boys are right on our heels.

“Better move fast, little girls,” their leader Gavin taunts, panting as he runs behind us. “We're coming for you.”

“I don't understand. What are the rules?” Grace sputters as we stop in front of the door and Ral twists its handle open. He ushers her and me inside.

“You heard Gunn, there aren't any,” Ral quips.

“Then how the hell does he determine the winners?” Billy asks.

“He doesn't. The winners are the seven who survive whatever happens in here and manage to walk back out,” Ral says. “No matter what, we stick together, all right?”

I take another step forward as Ral slams Billy's conjured door behind us—

But the clearing is gone
. The grass, the night sky hanging over it like a swollen lid, the shadowy trees of the forest sketched like a charcoal border around it, all gone. Instead the four of us stand at the beginning of a long hallway—white walls, white ceiling, white floor—that extends in front of us like a scroll, stretching on and on for as far as I can see.

“What the hell?” Billy whispers.

“It must be Tommy and Rose's visual manipulation, a hallway to shield them and Stock as they move farther into the clearing,” Grace says.

Ral nods. “Come on, let's move. Gavin's boys were right behind us.”

“Don't think they're behind us anymore.” Billy points back the way we came. “The door's gone.”

I turn around instinctively, and my heart starts to quicken. Sure enough, the door we entered through a moment before has disappeared, and the whitewashed hallway extends for what looks to be forever in the other direction too.

“Holy hell,” Grace whispers beside me.

“Gavin's team must have pierced through this manipulation already.” I approach the right wall, study the mottled white plaster that looks and feels just like the wall of my cabin bedroom back home. “I bet Gavin will try to ally with Stock's trio, just like we were planning to. It's an even seven, easier. And once they shake hands, they'll start circling in on us and trap us in here to finish us off.” I will my heart to stay inside my chest. “We need to find Stock's team before Gavin gets to them.”

Billy says, “And how the hell do you expect us to do that, Kendrick?”

I take a deep breath. “One step at a time.” I put my hands on the plaster wall, whisper the words of power, “
Out becomes in
.” A dark perimeter of a door begins to carve itself into the wall, four long slashes that merge to form a rectangle. I hover my hand over the newly conjured door's left side, and the white plaster balloons until it gives birth to a silver knob.

Grace sidesteps me and grasps the doorknob.

“Decide where we're going first,” Ral orders.

“Conjure atrium.”
And then Grace turns the doorknob and steps through my magic-made door.

I follow right on her heels, Ral on mine, Billy behind him, as we step through my door into a huge, circular, nearly three-story-high atrium. A glass ceiling above us shows the faraway stars. The rounded walls are decorated in thickly striped white-and-pink wallpaper. Burning candelabras are mounted around the atrium's perimeter. A red marble floor runs under us like a foaming sea of blood. Ral looks at Grace curiously.

Grace shrugs. “Old habits die hard. Can't help but care about details.”

“You spellbind this door?” Billy calls ahead to me, pausing before closing it.

“Yeah, with a double-sided trick, in case we need it as an exit. I can link it to another door.”

“Nice.” Billy shuts it with a click.

We move across Grace's atrium, our shoes squeaking on the newly conjured marble. Ral takes a few more steps ahead, pauses when we're in the center of the magic-made space. He looks up to the sky. From here, in the belly of an unfolding magic manipulation, the stars look far, far away.

“This place is too visible,” Ral whispers. “Either team can surround us.”

“I thought we wanted to draw them out,” I say, “force them to deal with us. If we keep running, making new rooms, new hallways, we could bury ourselves in here.”

“Hush,” Grace says, “stop talking for a sec.”