Disappearing Nightly (22 page)

“Guys, guys…” I shook my head. “Did it never occur to anyone in the Collegium that maybe a vicious djinn’s idea of a really wicked curse involved a little more than just inflicting a lisp?”

“You mean…”

“I mean Hieronymus is evil,” I said. “Since before he was born! Vicious-djinn evil! Cursed-by-an-evil-power evil! Something-wicked-this-way-comes evil! You know—
Evil.
”

“Oh dear,” Max said. “She has a point.”

Since Lysander didn’t deny it, I assumed he agreed but would naturally rather die than admit it.

“And you folks,” I said in exasperation, “taught him the secrets of the cosmos. Nice going, guys.”

Lysander cleared his throat. “Whether or not he was born evil is a matter of conjecture, but that he was born with power is
not.
An individual with his inherent talent was going to learn the secrets of the cosmos whether he had teachers or not, Esther.”

“True, true,” said Max.

“The Collegium can neither grant power nor prevent the acquisition of skill. It can merely try to teach us to use power and skill wisely.”

“Didn’t work out so well with this lad, huh?” I said.

“Esther.” Delilah bit her lip as she gazed at her cell phone. “Duke and Dixie do use the same company. Tech support has checked their service and agrees something’s wrong. No response, just dead air. And no one knows why.”

“What about Barclay?” I asked.

“No record of him, he must use a different provider. But tech support says that’s even stranger. They’ve got no idea what could make three cell phones from two different providers simply…flatline like this.”

I looked at Lysander and Max. “Could Phil do it?”

“I would think so,” said Max. “Oh dear.”

“Why would he want us to be out of touch? Why is he so determined to prevent us from talking to them?” I asked frantically.

The bells chimed, heralding a new arrival. We all jumped out of our chairs and ran for the door.

Duke gave a little start of surprise at the way we rushed him. Then he smiled. “Howdy, folks. I—”

“Duke!” I flung my arms around him.

“Er, uh, glad to see you, too, Esther.”

“Are you all right?” I pulled away to examine him. “Is anything wrong?”

He frowned. “I’m just fine. How are
you?
”

“We were worried,” Max said.

“Aw, I’m sorry,” Duke said. “We tried to check in a while ago. Tried a few times, in fact. But, you know, it’s the darnedest thing—”

“All three of your cell phones have stopped working.”

He blinked. “Well, yeah. How’d you—Oh! You’ve been trying to reach us, of course.”

“Where are Barclay and Dixie?”

The urgency of my tone made him blink again. “At the Magic Cabaret, of course. I helped them set up, watched them do a couple of run-throughs of the whole act.”

“They’re okay?”

“Oh, a little nervous. Performance jitters, that’s all. You know how it is.” He rubbed his hands together. “Anyhow, it’s gonna be a great show! Come on, let’s go watch the kids’ professional debut!”

He seemed so normal and cheerful, I started to relax. I’d gotten worked up about bad cell-phone service. How ridiculous was
that?

I shook my head. “We really wanted to, but now I don’t think we can, Duke. We’ve got to—”

“Aw, come on,” he said. “Max promised—”

“I did?” Max said.

“—and, of course, we’ve got to celebrate! By the way, where is my Dolly?”

“Your what?” Goudini said.

“I know she’ll want to see little Dixie perform tonight,” Duke said. “And I sure do want to see
her.
”

A terrible feeling crawled over my skin. “Duke, why do you think…think…”

“Oh, the phones weren’t useless
all
day,” he said. “Right before we lost service, we got Max’s message.”

“What message?” Max blurted.

Duke looked puzzled now. “Well…your message about solving the case.”

“I didn’t leave you a message,” Max said in a hollow voice.

“But…” Duke looked from Max to me, then back to Max. “But Hieronymus phoned Dixie.”

“Oh my God,” I said.

Duke’s expression was clouded now. He knew something was wrong. “He said you’d solved the case and rescued the disappearees. He said you’d meet us at the Magic Cabaret, that we should wait for you there. We’d all celebrate. But it got close to showtime, with no sign of you. And we realized y’all probably didn’t know where the cabaret was and hadn’t been able to reach us by phone. So I thought I’d just come back here and get you, and…Max, did something go wrong? What’s happened?”

Max’s mouth worked, but he didn’
t know how to tell Duke we hadn’t gotten Dolly back and still had no idea where she was. Still didn’t even know if she was dead or alive.

Duke said, “Esther?”

“I’m sorry, Duke. Hieronymus was lying. We still haven’t found Dolly. And he’s the one who made her disappear.”

Duke’s expression changed into something awful. “But he…he told Dixie that Max said it was perfectly safe to go ahead and do the vanishing illusion now.”

“What?”

“They spent two hours rehearsing it!” Duke’s voice was flooded with panic. “They’re gonna perform the disappearing act at the Magic Cabaret!”

“T
he Magic Cabaret!” I shouted into my cell phone, trying to be heard above the engine of Barclay’s van. “No, I’m asking if you have the address? Or the phone number?”

“Goddamn it! I thought for sure it was just off Broadway!” Duke said, anger and fear making his driving reckless and his language rough.

“I
know
you’re not Directory Service,” I said to the sarcastic cop on the phone. “Isn’t Lopez back
yet?
”

“Where are we?” Max asked from the back seat, his voice laced with terror as the van sped through an intersection.

“Somewhere in Morningside Heights.”

“Where’s
that?
” Lysander, the out-of-towner, said from his seat directly behind me.

“Above the Upper West Side, below Ha
rlem.” Into my phone, I snapped, “Well,
this
is important, too, goddamn it! Call Lopez! Tell him there’s going to be another disappearance if we can’t stop it! At the Magic Cabaret, somewhere around Columbia University! What? Yeah,
I
need a more specific location than that, too, Officer!”

“This doesn’t look familiar!” Duke shouted. “I don’t think I’m going the right way!”

“All right,” Lysander said, “let’s stay calm.”

“Calm?” Duke shouted.

Lysander asked, “What do you remember seeing in the vicinity of the cabaret? Maybe that will help us find it.”

Duke had left the Magic Cabaret in a calm, cheerful frame of mind, eager to see Dolly. He only realized now, as we tried to find the place in conditions of considerable stress, that he had not pinpointed its location as clearly as he might have before leaving it earlier.

“I don’t remember!” Duke shouted. “All these doggone streets look the same in this gol-durned city!”

“Philip Hohenheim, whose real name we believe is Hieronymus Blankenberg, is about to make a girl disappear at the Magic Cabaret!” I shouted into my phone. “He’s a bad man! He’s got to be stopped!”

“Oh my God!” Duke cried. “My little Dixie!”

“Tell Lopez!” I said. “It’s urgent!”

“What do you think the police are going to do?” Lysander said contemptuously.

“What?” I said.

Max, covered in a fine sheen of sweat as he gripped the sides of his seat and kept his eyes closed, said, “I’m afraid Lysander is right, Esther. No police officer can stop Hieronymus now. This is
our
duty. Please, hang up the phone. We shouldn’t endanger mundanes.”

“We
are
endangering mundanes,” Lysander pointed out.

“These mundanes have chosen a sacred duty,” Max replied. “Detective Lopez has only chosen police work.”

“No, no!” I said into the phone. “
Don’t
put me on…” I sighed and hung up. “He put me on hold.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Max said.

He was right, I realized with a sinking feeling of acceptance. Lopez didn’t believe in translocation or mystical conduitism. And even if he arrested Hieronymus, how could the cops hold an adept capable of transmuting through solid walls?

Worried by Max’s ghastly appearance, I asked, “Are you all right?”

“I am mentally reciting incantations for our safety and survival.”

“Hieronymus is that powerful?” I asked.

“I was referring to Duke’s driving.”

My phone rang. I answered it.

“Honey, this is Delilah. We’ve got confirmation. Phil was Joe Herlihy’s coach, too.”

“Good work!”

We had split up back at the bookshop. Goudini and Delilah had gone to see Joe while Max, Lysander, Duke and I were heading straight for the cabaret—if we could find it. “We’ve got confirmation, too. Phil coached Cowboy Duke. About six weeks ago. Duke didn’t really think about it again after that.”

“Joe, either,” Delilah said.

“I’ll
kill
the son of a bitch!” Duke said.

“We’ve got Joe in custody and are en route for the cabaret now,” said Delilah.

“Well done!” I said. Max’s plan was to get everyone who’d served as a conduit to gather in one place in the hope that he could figure out how to use their energy to reverse the effects of Hieronymus’s translocations.

“Where
is
the cabaret?” Delilah asked.

“We’re working on that right now,” I said.

“There was a church!” Duke cried. “I remember now. A church! About two blocks away!”

Lysander said, “This city is full of churches.”

“It was
big.
With towers. And there was scaffolding.”

“St. John the Divine!” I said. “It’s on Amsterdam, not Broadway!”

“Oh, thank the Lord! Which way is Amsterdam?”

“Turn here!” I said.

Lysander shouted, “Wait! No! That’s a one-way street!”

Max started chanting loudly. The van round
ed a corner and sped recklessly down a side street, going the wrong way.

I told Delilah, “We’re getting closer! I’ll have an address for you any minute. Just keep driving north for now. Toward Morningside Heights.”

I heard her give those instructions to their cab driver. Then she said to me, speaking so softly that I had trouble hearing her, “Joe is a little anxious, Esther, I’m not sure how useful he’ll be.”

“How’d you get him away from his wife?”

“I told Matilda we were on our way to recover Golly Gee, and if she didn’t interfere,
Sorcerer!
could reopen by mid-week.”

“So you’re not just a pretty face,” I said.

“
All
of my parts are pretty,” she replied.

We turned onto Amsterdam while Max’s chanting grew louder.

“Yes!” Duke cried. “This looks familiar! Yes! We came past here!”

“How far past here?”

“Why isn’t this cabaret in the phone book?” Lysander wondered irritably.

“That street! This one right here!” Duke said.

Leaning over my shoulder, Lysander said, “But that’s another one-way—
Agh!
”

“We’re nearly there!” I shouted into the phone.

“I’ll call the Pony Expressive’s main line and have the girls meet us at the Magic Cabaret!” Delilah shouted back. “They’ll want to help!”

“This is it! This is the building!” Duke cried, pulling to a stop. He jumped out of the van and ran up the stairs of an ordinary-looking, brick apartment building. “It’s on the second floor!”

I gave Delilah the address and told her we were on our way upstairs. I hung up the phone and said to the sorcerers, “Come on!”

“Are we sure we want to get out of the car in this neighborhood?” Lysander asked.

I hopped out of the van while Duke pounded on the front door of the building and pressed every doorbell on the console. I opened the back door of the van and grabbed Max’s arm. “Can you stand up?”

“Thank God we’ve stopped! Thank God we’ve stopped!” He briefly collapsed when I hauled him out of the van, then staggered toward the curb.

“Lysander, come on!”

As he descended, he asked, “Should we really leave the car unattended and sitting in the middle of the street?”

“Come on!” Duke shouted as the door to the building opened. “Hurry!”

We raced up the steps and into the building. It had probably been a nice place decades ago, but it was faded and worn now, with drab walls, eerily dim lighting and grime rubbed deep into the floor tiles.

“What kind of a cabaret is
this?
” Lysander demanded.

I saved my breath to follow Duke, who was
charging up the steep stairs to the second floor. When we reached the landing, I saw that this floor had been remodeled at some point in its past. Instead of a hallway with apartments, we were confronted by a wall with one wide, curtain-covered entrance. Just to the side of the entrance was a little desk. A girl of about twenty, dressed in Goth style, sat at the desk. She smiled at us.

“Hi, Cowboy Duke! I saved you two tables at the front, just like you asked.”

“No wonder we couldn’t find a listing for this place,” Lysander said fastidiously, sounding breathless as he reached the top of the stairs only moments behind me.

The girl beamed at us. “Are these your friends, Duke? That’ll be ten dollars each—Hey! Wait! You can’t go in without paying!”

I followed Duke as he plowed past the curtain covering the door, shouting, “Dixie! Barclay!
Stop!
”

We entered a small cabaret. Music was playing too loudly from strategically placed speakers for anyone but a few nearby patrons to hear Duke’s shouts. The tables and chairs were an eclectic and shabby collection, as if someone had raided various church basements and suburban garages for the club’s furnishings. The dreary surroundings were decorated—to use the word generously—with some stereotypical magic props. Instead of a bar, a folding table was set up in the corner; the beverages were presumably in the coolers I saw under the table. The
audience was less than two dozen people; they were drinking out of disposable plastic cups.

This was Barclay’s big break? I stopped feeling depressed about
my
career.

“No!” Duke cried.

Barclay was spinning a big, square, mirrored contraption around and around onstage while the music played. As Duke ran toward him, shouting in panic, Barclay suddenly gasped and staggered backward. There was an awful expression on his face.

“No!” Barclay cried.

“No!” Duke shouted.

“Oh,
no,
” I said.

Lysander grunted and staggered sideways, bumping into me, affected by his proximity to such a powerful dimensional disturbance. I heard a terrible
crash! smash! clatter!
and some screaming right behind me. I whirled around. Even more affected than Lysander, it seemed, Max had crashed into one of the cabaret tables. Now he, the table, the candle, the drinks, two other people and their chairs lay in a messy, painful-looking heap on the floor.

I knelt down. “Max. Max!” He was unconscious.

“My God, she’s
gone!
” Barclay screamed. “Dixie! Dixie! No,
no!
”

I looked at the stage and saw Barclay opening the vanishing box in search of the girl from Texas. Duke was helping, screaming Dixie’s name, too.

“Max,” Lysander said. “Rouse yourself, man!”

I left Lysander splashing a soda on Max’s face and ran to the stage (such as it was). Duke was trying to crawl into the vanishing box.

“What are you
doing?
” Barclay cried.

“Send me after her!” Duke shouted. “Send me after Dixie! I’m gonna go get her!”

But he was a tall, broad, big-boned man who couldn’t squeeze into a prop designed to be a snug fit for an average-sized woman. With the box all spread open from Barclay’s search for Dixie, I could see how it worked—very similar to the crystal cage in which I’d rehearsed as Golly Gee’s understudy. Duke couldn’t fit into it; but I could.

I helped a frantic Barclay drag Duke away from the mirrored box. Then I returned to it and climbed inside.

“Esther? Stop!”

“Send me after her!”

“No!
No!
” Barclay said. “I won’t!
Anything
could happen—”

I grabbed his collar. “I’m going to go get her! I’m going to go get them
all.
You do not for a
moment
suppose I’m afraid of that rat-faced pipsqueak Hieronymus, do you?”

“What?”

“If he’s what’s waiting at the other end of this journey, I’m going to wring his scrawny neck until his tongue turns blue and his eyes pop out of his head!” I shouted into Barclay’s face. “Now
send me to him
so I can put a stop to his fun and games!”

“But—”

“Duke,” I said, “help Barclay!”

“But—”

“Do it
now!
” I closed the door of the box.

I was immediately enveloped in pitch black. The suffocating closeness of the vanishing box pressed in on me from all sides. This thing was no more comfortable than the crystal cage.
God,
I hated magic acts.

I prayed this would work, prayed the conduit was still engaged. I was trying to follow Dixie’s mystical route only moments behind her. Surely such powerful sorcery didn’t turn on and off as quickly as a water tap? Surely I could catch the wave and go wherever it had taken that innocent girl? I doubted Barclay’s concentration was in top form just now, but his energy level had probably never been higher. And the sympathetic magic of the disappearing act had probably never been as powerful as it was at this very moment. No magician involved in these bizarre events had ever believed in hi
s ability to make someone disappear the way Barclay believed right now, with all his heart, in his ability to make
me
disappear.

I felt the box spinning, being moved around in a circle, the ritual Barclay performed as part of the act. He was trying, bless him. He was sick with terror—and probably with guilt—but he was trying to do as I’d asked.

“Come on, come on,” I whispered. “Come and ge
t me, Phil. Pick on someone who knows your tricks, for a change. Come—
Argh!
”

The floor of the prop box disappeared. So did gravity. I plunged down
and
up at the exact same moment—or so it seemed. Sucked in both directions, yet in neither direction. I gasped so hard I choked on my own breath, whirling in a powerful blackness that smothered me as I moved at a speed so fast, I felt like my skin and my stomach were being left several thousand miles behind me. Caught upside down in a backward momentum of blood-draining force, I was too terrified and disoriented to react, let alone think.

When it stopped, I did the one thing in the world I most wanted to do: I screamed.

Since I was out of breath and also trying not to choke on my own bile, it wasn’t as loud or as long a scream as I’d intended. I was drawing breath for another effort when I realized people were talking excitedly all around me.

I was lying down, stretched out on my back, on something hard and bumpy, cool and rather slimy. It seemed to be whirling…until I realized that was just my head, still trying to recover from whatever had happened to me.

I heard a strange, low rumble. Was that the subway? Then more talking. Then a snarl. No…not the subway. More words. But I was thinking about that rumbling. It sounded almost like…