“I can’t sit here and do nothing.” Tempest paced the few feet of floor space in the tower above her bedroom.
“You’re doing a great job wearing out the floorboards. But you nearly stepped on Abra.”
She scowled at Sanjay. She’d never step on her beloved lop-eared bunny. He was safely munching hay on a bunny bed she’d made from a wicker basket.
It was two o’clock in the morning. This used to be her standard bedtime, when she’d leave the theater by around midnight and either have a late dinner or a long bath to wind down before bed. She missed the clawfoot tub from the house she’d lost in Las Vegas, and her luxurious mattress, but not much else from that bloated house she thought she was supposed to want. She was going to bed before midnight these days, to be up at dawn. Not that she could imagine going to sleep any time soon tonight.
“I shouldn’t have broken my social media moratorium,” Tempest said. “It’s not like there’s any useful information there. Just noise.” Social media was lighting up with wild theories about how Corbin could be in two places at once.
“I like the theory that he had a twin,” Sanjay said. “Totally unrealistic, since it’s way too big a secret to keep in this day and age, but it’s at least plausible.”
“Unlike the idea that he transformed into a raven like his character, which people are saying.”
“They don’t actually believe that. Those ones are jokes.” Sanjay tugged on his collar. “I think. The ones that make me nervous are the ones that say The Hindi Houdini summoned both him and evil spirits during the séance. I’m truly never doing a séance again. I don’t care what you have to do to stop me. Just do it.”
“Did you see there are also reputable news sources questioning whether he’s really dead?”
“Yeah, that it’s a publicity stunt in collaboration with you.”
Tempest froze. “With me?”
“You wanted more publicity for your upcoming farewell stage show that’s being filmed, and he wanted to drum up interest in his latest book that was probably going to be a flop. The sound bites say things like, Two has-beens who are trying to make a comeback, and Is this the latest stunt gone wrong from illusionist Tempest Raj?”
Tempest groaned. It was worse than she thought and reminded her yet again why she’d quit social media when she was embroiled in a scandal the previous summer. “They’re right that it has to be a trick. He wasn’t really a man who could transform himself into a raven.”
“Have you read The Raven?” Sanjay asked.
“When I was a teenager, why?”
“How close is his murder to what happened in that book?”
Tempest considered the question. “The plot is that a man whose wife was murdered during a theft slowly begins to question reality as he seeks out the truth about her death. It’s suspenseful because the reader wonders if he’s actually losing his mind.”
“What about the murder itself?”
“You’re not going to like this.”
“I already hate it.”
“A large black feather was found at the side of his wife’s dead body. The feather of a raven.”
Sanjay groaned. “Why didn’t you tell me this before the séance?”
“First, you didn’t even tell me you were using feathers. Second, we never thought there would be a murder.”
“Proceed.” Sanjay’s face was flushed and his voice was clipped.
“You could read all of this on a gazillion pages online.”
“I’d rather hear it from you.” He gave her a charming smile that made her want to both punch him and kiss him.
“The main character thinks of the killer as ‘the Raven’ since the feather is his only clue. As he follows one false lead to the next, and the people he interviews tell him strange things, he begins to wonder if he’s transforming into a raven himself. The astute reader is misdirected into thinking they’ve figured out the twist and that the man himself is his wife’s killer. But in a twist that makes the book supernatural suspense instead of horror, and that made the book a big hit, the killer turns out to be his sister. In her bloody confession, his sister says her brother’s wife didn’t want to join their raven clan, so she had to die. The ending is left open-ended as to whether he and his sister are truly supernatural entities who can transform themselves into ravens.”
“I hate stories without a real resolution.” Sanjay flipped a coin absentmindedly between his fingers.
“That’s why our stage shows, and those classic mysteries at the Locked Room Library where Ivy works, are better than Corbin Colt’s novels.” Tempest winced. “Is it awful of me to say that? It’s true, but it feels awful to say that now.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
“A couple of times when I was around twelve or thirteen. It was at Veggie Magic, when we were both there at the same time and Lavinia introduced us.”
She’d been at an age when she was starting to be interested in boys, and she remembered how handsome she thought Corbin Colt was with his jet-black hair, sharp jaw, and brooding expression. Not a squeaky-clean hero like the teen-idol musicians her friends had on their walls, but like the villain in a movie who had second thoughts and whose face betrayed his moral indecision.
Corbin Colt’s early supernatural thrillers had been huge, but by the time Tempest met him he wasn’t much of a literary celebrity. The Raven had made him not exactly a household name, but certainly known by the reading public for a time. If comparing him to Golden Age of detective fiction writers, he wasn’t as famous as Agatha Christie or as obscure as Christianna Brand, but was revered like Ellery Queen by fans of his genre.
“So you don’t know him well enough,” Sanjay said, “to shed any light on things from that direction.”
“I’m not trying to. I’m just concerned by all the misdirection from these impossibilities. Confusion that points to my grandfather.”
“You saw the crime-scene team arrive before we left to give our statements. I’m sure they’re doing their forensic thing.”
“Which is what I’m worried about. Only my grandfather had blood on him.”
“There’s bound to be physical evidence elsewhere, like where the body was hidden.”
“How?” Tempest asked. “How is there going to be any physical evidence when there’s no physical space where his body could have been before he dropped onto the table?”
“That’s what you were looking for above the séance table when Ash was examining him, wasn’t it?”
“You spotted that? Thurston and Kellar’s floating-lady illusion doesn’t fit. Help me think of other magicians who had an apparatus that could drop a body into our laps.”
The Golden Age of Magic brought illusions like levitations, disembodied spirits, and sawing women in half. Tricks for levitations would apply here. Some of those acts were simple and some complex, but all grand illusions needed equipment, and in most cases, a theater. Successful magic that astonishes takes far more effort than the observer thinks could possibly go into a trick, which is why it’s able to be baffling. A combination of psychology, showmanship, clever props, and practice. So much practice.
“If we do find a magic trick behind it,” said Sanjay, “doesn’t that point even more toward Ash?”
“Or one of us.”
“You’re really creeping me out, Tempest. You’re totally your character The Tempest right now, with destruction following in your wake.”
That had been her tagline that her mentor, Nicodemus, had come up with long ago. She’d thought it overly dramatic when they first brainstormed it. But the public loved it when she said the only words spoken during her stage show: I’m The Tempest. Destruction follows in my wake.
“I should turn my wrath toward that home-wrecker girlfriend of his. She has to be in on the trick with her livestream.”
“I don’t know.…” Sanjay scrolled through more news on his phone. “Her livestreams aren’t recorded, so it’s just eyewitness statements. We don’t really know anything yet.”
“Except for what we experienced ourselves in Lavinia’s Lair. We need to get back inside.”
“The crime scene will probably be locked up until I’m back.”
“Back? Oh, right.” Tempest felt her stomach drop. She didn’t think of herself as a needy person, but having Sanjay around was rather like being wrapped up in a sexy security blanket. She was more disappointed than she wanted to admit that he wouldn’t be at her side as she figured out how to help her grandfather. “You’ve got those shows. When do you need to—?”
“I should already be packing. My flight is before dawn.” Sanjay dropped his hat onto his head and moved toward the door. “I really should stop letting other people book my flights.”
After Sanjay departed at half past two in the morning, Tempest was left alone with her rabbit, the posters on the octagonal walls surrounding her, and her thoughts. She preferred the former two.
One of the eight walls was the doorway leading to the narrow secret staircase, another was a window, and the remaining six held framed magic posters. Her mom’s favorite magician, Harry Houdini; her own favorite, Adelaide Herrmann; her mentor, Nicodemus the Necromancer; a Hindi Houdini poster of Sanjay’s; one of her mom and aunt’s Selkie Sisters posters; and one from her own show, The Tempest and the Sea, with an illustrated version of herself showing her long black hair swirling in the water and turning into dark waves. Most of the posters contained magical elements to conjure a sense of mysterious delight, like whispering devils and swirling ghosts. All except for the Harry Houdini poster, with a straightforward message that said it all: the handcuff king could escape any confinement.
Emma Raj had always said that Tempest was like Harry Houdini, because like Houdini, Tempest was a key that could open any lock. Opening locks applied literally in Houdini’s case, as he was the handcuff king who could break out of any locked room or shackles, but Emma Raj also liked to think of it as also applying to Houdini’s underdog origins. Hungarian immigrant Erik Weisz had worked hard for years before gaining any recognition, and changed his name to honor the father of modern stage magic, Jean-Eugéne Robert-Houdin. Emma Raj’s tall, brazen, ethnically ambiguous daughter hadn’t always fit in, but Emma made sure Tempest knew she could make her way any place in the world where she wished to be.
Tempest sometimes thought she was born a century too late for the style of magical entertainment she loved. But that, of course, was wishful thinking. A woman of color, who was also taller than many men, had to maneuver enough hurdles as a magician in the twenty-first century. The challenges of a hundred years ago would have been far greater.
Tempest had her own unique challenges, like everyone did. Her family had never wanted her to be a performer because of the Raj family curse. The eldest child dies by magic. Tempest had found out part of the truth, enough to know there was no supernatural curse. But she still didn’t know the truth of her aunt’s supposed stage accident or what had become of her mom.
It was five years ago that her mom was presumed to have died by suicide in the bay. That was when Tempest dropped out of college. She wasn’t able to find out what had happened to her mom—none of them were—so she poured her grief into writing a stage show that told the story of her mom and aunt—both incredible women who’d died far too soon.
Years before Tempest was born, Emma and her sister Elspeth’s Selkie Sisters act had enchanted audiences in Edinburgh, Scotland, before a rift sent Emma to California, where she met Tempest’s dad. Elspeth stayed in Edinburgh and became a solo performer, performing magic at a theater in Old Town, Edinburgh. Ten years ago, a tragic stage accident had claimed her life.
Was it an accident—or was it the Raj family curse?
It turned out it was murder.
Tempest now knew that five years ago, Emma Raj was about to reveal who had killed her sister Elspeth. Before she could do so, she vanished on the stage of the Whispering Creek Theater, in front of a crowd of people.
Emma’s plan had been to reveal the killer in her show. Was it because the police wouldn’t believe her? Tempest didn’t know the answer to that question. What she did know was that Emma didn’t want Tempest to pursue the matter. She’d feared for her daughter’s life. Because of the family curse: The eldest child dies by magic.
Was it really a curse, or a risky illusion and some bad luck, followed by an opportunistic killer? Magical stunts in nineteenth-century India could be dangerous. After two of Grandpa Ash’s relatives died, both the eldest in their families, the legend began to grow. When Ash’s own older brother died while performing a dangerous stunt, teenage Ash left the family’s already-crumbling magic dynasty for Scotland, where he was accepted to medical school.
Like with her own family tragedy, Corbin Colt’s murder was both mysterious and curious. How and why? Just like they were with her own mom’s and aunt’s unsolved murders, the two questions were linked.
Emma and Elspeth Raj’s deaths were cold cases, so as much as it pained Tempest to admit it, they had to wait. It was the murder her grandfather was implicated in that needed her full attention. She’d already lost too many people she loved. She wasn’t going to lose him, too.
Tempest squeezed her eyes shut as she thought back to Corbin Colt’s dead body materializing out of thin air on that table, with a fake knife sticking out of his chest and raven feathers scattered around him, when he’d been seen alive minutes before more than fifty miles away. Even though she knew the feathers were from Sanjay and everything else had to be a trick, her rational mind faltered.
She wished Sanjay could have stayed, but she knew he had to get ready for his flight that was departing in a few hours. She’d already made plans to see Ivy in the morning, but the new day couldn’t come quickly enough.
Four impossibilities. How was the impossible trick accomplished?