Jack

Seattle, WA—Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition

Monday, September 6, 1909

I STOOD OUTSIDE the Alaska Building, preparing myself to go in. All day, Laszlo and Wil had been zipping around the exposition, causing excitement wherever they appeared, but the time had finally come for them to begin.

More people than I had expected had gathered in and around the Alaska Building as the sun began its slow descent in the west. They milled about, excited and impatient, completely unaware of what was going to happen. They believed they were going to watch a magic trick. They didn’t know that the life of someone I cared for deeply hung in the balance. If I made a single mistake, I might never see Wilhelm again.

I climbed the steps and went inside.

I wound my way through the crowd, my hands dipping into pockets as I passed. I circled the iron cage, eyeing the lock on the door. Sadly, picking that lock wasn’t part of the plan, though I wished I’d been able to find a way to take a crack at it.

Four exposition guards stood around the room, each vigilantly keeping their eye on the gold, which sat inside an alarmed glass case, which was protected by an iron cage, which sat under a temple held aloft by Doric columns that looked like they’d been brought over from Greece. The bodies that made up the crowd were pressed so close together that the air was getting thick and hard to breathe.

Even knowing how Laszlo intended to steal the gold, I couldn’t help but admire the audacity of his plan. I’d been thinking of how I would’ve stolen the gold, and I certainly wouldn’t have done it with an audience watching. The easiest way would’ve been to do it at night. After the exposition closed, the display case with the gold lowered through the floor to a vault beneath the building. The guards watching the vault were probably the weakest link of the whole operation. Usually, the simplest plan is the best. That’s why most robberies are just a couple of bullies with guns.

The only rule to stealing something is to not get caught, but Laszlo was practically announcing what he was going to do and then daring someone to catch him. If he’d been smart, he could have used Wil to walk away with that gold, and no one would have suspected it was him. But Laszlo’s need for adulation and acclaim had driven him to this, and I was going to use his very need against him to rescue Wil.

“There he is!” someone exclaimed from the other side of the room. The crowd moved like an ocean wave in the direction of the sound.

“No, he’s over here!”

The crowd moved again, jostling me about.

“Laszlo’s here!”

Now he was just showing off. If I hadn’t known how Laszlo was appearing and disappearing throughout the room, I might have been impressed. But since I did, I was just irritated that he was exploiting Wilhelm’s ability. Laszlo was an imposter, riding the coattails of someone more talented. Today, that would end.

Finally, in a puff of blue smoke, Laszlo revealed himself between the columns of the temple that stood over the cage containing the building’s most precious treasures. He wore an impeccably fitted white-tie formal suit with a tailcoat and top hat, looking like he was on his way to dinner with President Taft and not like he was about to steal the gold bars behind him.

“Welcome, guests,” he said. “Welcome to a special performance that I trust will prove once and for all who the premiere illusionist of the grand Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition is!”

The spectators applauded and cheered. The heat from so many bodies pressed together was already doing my head in. I scanned the room, looking for—

There he was! Wilhelm stood in the shadows, his hair slicked back, dressed in a blue plaid suit that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else but which Wil wore perfectly.

Standing in that crowded room, unable to go to him, almost broke me. I was a hair’s width from abandoning the plan and running to him.

When Evangeline had told us we were traveling to America, I had never expected my life would change so drastically. Despite the pain I’d endured and the bruises I’d been given, I wouldn’t have done anything differently. If I hadn’t gotten caught picking pockets the first day, I never would’ve met Ruth. Seeing how hard Ruth worked, and everything she was willing to sacrifice for the future she wanted, had given me the strength to fight for the future I wanted. Without Lucia, I never would’ve found the path leading away from Evangeline, and I might have stayed with her forever—a good life, for sure, but not the one I was meant for.

But, most of all, if we had never come to Seattle, I wouldn’t have met Wilhelm. He wasn’t my whole future, but I hoped he would want to be part of it as much as I wanted to be part of his.

“Now,” Laszlo said, his voice carrying through the building, “who would like to see some magic?”