“You struck out, huh?”
Tempest slammed the car door and sunk down in the seat, disconcerted by Fleur’s parting words. “Follow that car.”
Gideon laughed.
Tempest raised an eyebrow.
He stopped laughing. “You’re serious?”
“We might as well try.”
They lost Fleur less than five minutes later, as soon as she got on the freeway at a spot that split in two directions. Fleur crossed two lanes quickly to take the highway they weren’t expecting and Gideon wisely chose not to cause a traffic accident. Tailing someone in a distinctive baby-blue 1960s Renault shipped over from France wasn’t the best way to be inconspicuous.
Once they gave up, Gideon drove them to Hidden Creek’s town center, which consisted of a small main road that retained a historical Main Street feeling. It was packed with small shops and cafés, like Lavinia’s Veggie Magic, with a tree-filled hillside behind one side and a more modern plaza on the other. The more modern plaza included a multilevel parking garage and a midsize supermarket where Tempest thought she’d be able to get the items on the list for her grandfather. Twice a week, the plaza also held a farmer’s market. This afternoon, they found a corner of the outdoor parking area filled with food-truck pop-ups.
Hidden Creek couldn’t quite decide if it was a small town or a metropolis. Though near bigger cities, it hadn’t been able to grow as much because of the constraints of the steep hillside and the underground creek that prevented buildings from being packed into every spot. The parking garage was relatively new and was a nice way to encourage people from nearby towns to visit both the cute main street and the amenities in the bigger plaza, but the town quickly abandoned charging for parking after experiencing the unintended consequence of people coming to town but circling nearby residential streets in search of free parking.
“Tacos?” Gideon asked as he maneuvered into a parking spot. “Rewind. I’m sure you can’t think about eating at a time like—”
“No. It’s a good idea. I’m starving.” She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she saw the food trucks. She hadn’t eaten all day. “If my grandfather has taught me nothing else, it’s that it’s important to take time to eat.” She could have added with people we care about if she’d finished her grandfather’s thought out loud, but she didn’t want to weird things up between her and Gideon.
They split up as they each picked a different truck to order from. Tempest felt her tension ease slightly as she stepped into the line behind four others.
Tempest loved pop-ups. Not only food trucks, but temporary shops and experiences of all kinds that popped up in unused storefronts or outdoor spaces. She knew it was partly that she was a product of her generation, but she also loved them because so many of them strove to create the same effect as magic: presenting a surprise to the participant that brought them a sense of wonder. They were fleeting. Special. And they could be absolutely wondrous if you did them right.
She was thinking of implementing that pop-up theme to the farewell stage show she was planning. Since it was a one-off performance, she wanted it to feel special on multiple levels. She hadn’t yet told her manager, Winston Kapoor, the full extent of what she was planning. Winnie would never approve.
Tempest had struggled for months to come up with a story that made a worthy follow-up to her first big headlining show, The Tempest and the Sea. Story came first. Always. Magic wasn’t really about tricks. Not if you wanted an illusion to be memorable. It’s easy to fool people. It’s hard to make them gasp with wonder and get so swept up in a story they feel like a kid again.
After her name had been cleared of the charge of orchestrating a dangerous stunt that went horribly wrong and endangered lives, Tempest agreed to perform one final live televised show. That way she could go out with a bang, both bringing closure to her fans and setting herself up with a nice payment to get her started on building her own house in Hidden Creek, and to help her dad’s business get back on its feet.
The problem? Her show didn’t yet have an ending to its story.
Her farewell performance had to be a personal show. She’d followed in the footsteps of her mom and aunt, who’d been famed illusionists when they performed as the Selkie Sisters in Edinburgh thirty years ago—before they both died by magic. Emma and Elspeth Raj, with their otherworldly presence, spinning stories of their supposed origins as the daughters of a mythical selkie from Scottish lore and an Indian sailor, caught between the words of land and sea. Their grand illusions drew upon classic magic and used simple-yet-captivating devices like a magic lantern that cast mysterious shadows and wires hidden by mirrors and careful lighting.
After Aunt Elspeth and her mom were gone, Tempest created her own version of their story of the sea. A way for her to bring them both back to her, and give both herself and her audience a satisfying happy ending that didn’t exist in real life.
For her farewell show, she knew she’d begin with their story. But this time, the ending would be far different. This time, the ending would be—
“Miss?” the man at the window asked, startling her from her thoughts. “What would you like to order?”
She’d been so caught up in the memories she hadn’t realized she’d moved to the front of the line. She shook herself and ordered fluffy bao buns stuffed high with grilled chanterelle mushrooms in barbecue sauce. The food truck was called “Toadstool and Steam” and featured a steampunk-style illustration of a giant mushroom with a toad wearing a monocle and eating a bao bun.
Okay, so maybe it was sometimes the name and logo of a truck that were the most unique things about it. But the food was still damn good.
She made a note on her phone to look up where she could find the latest venture of her chef friend Juan, who’d taken over the Tandoori Palace restaurant when its previous owner retired and renamed it Odisha to Oaxaca, with a cool logo designed by his girlfriend. He’d reimagined it as a fusion restaurant with Indian dishes he’d perfected as head chef at the Tandoori Palace, mixed with his grandmother’s Mexican influence. It was going so well that she’d heard he’d opened a couple of pop-up food trucks, but she didn’t know when and where she could find them.
The winter air was crisp, so she and Gideon took his crispy tacos and her stuffed bao buns back to the car. There they’d also have more privacy than the crowded bar-height communal table a dozen others were gathered around.
“I love that food culture here is finally catching up to France and the Philippines,” Gideon said after savoring a bite of his taco.
Tempest raised an eyebrow. “I know you get so caught up in your stone-carving you forget to sleep, but have you been living under one of those rocks? California has always had amazing tacos.”
“But so many more people actually appreciate it now.”
She couldn’t answer, since she was fully appreciating her own meal and didn’t want to rush to swallow the soft and savory bite.
Gideon finished his first taco and set the remaining one on the dashboard. He looked out the window for a few moments before turning to Tempest. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there that night.”
“You’re not the gruesome type.”
He shook his head. “But I’m the observant type. I wish I could have been there, since I might have seen something that would help exonerate Ash.”
She smiled. “It wouldn’t have mattered. Your superpower of being the observant one because you don’t have a phone to scroll on was irrelevant that night. Sanjay took everyone’s cell phones before the séance. None of us were obsessively scrolling on our screens. We were all paying attention. But that didn’t matter. It was completely dark.”
“Wait. Then how did you see him with the knife in his chest and know to turn on the lights?”
Tempest froze. “The light.… It flickered on for a few seconds.”
“Weren’t you all seated around the table holding each other’s hands?”
He was right. How had the lights flickered on? She closed her eyes and thought back on what she’d seen. She knew her memories would be muddled and unreliable at this point because of the trauma, but was there anything clear still there?
Her eyes popped open. “The light didn’t come from overhead. It was the fake fire.”
“The projection of the cozy fireplace?”
“It was menacing the way it silently cast light and shadows. Like when you held a flashlight beneath your chin to tell a ghost story.”
“Tempest. That projection is activated by a remote control. If you’re sure nobody let go of anyone’s hand…”
Tempest slipped her foot out of her sneaker without using her hands and wriggled her toes at him. It was difficult in the small space of his European car, but she’d done far more dramatic contortions in much tighter spots.
“You’re saying someone used their feet?” Gideon attempted to look skeptical, but he wasn’t very good at it. He had too generous a personality for skepticism.
“They could have. It’s easy.”
“Maybe for magicians like you or your grandfath—” He broke off when he realized what he was saying.
He wasn’t wrong. That remote wasn’t simply a button you could smash on and off with the ball of your foot. Someone clever had activated the soft, flickering light at that moment. Someone who’d just killed Corbin and now wanted everyone to see that they were seated at the table holding hands. The more Tempest pieced together, the more it looked like everything had been staged in such a precise manner for a reason.
“What about Sanjay?” Gideon added hastily. “How well do you really know—”
“It wasn’t Sanjay.”
“But you know it wasn’t you or your grandfather. Someone put a lot of work into setting up a murder that looks a lot like a trick. It was Sanjay’s séance.”
“It wasn’t him. Truly. But thank you. You’ve helped me clarify my thoughts. This wasn’t just a murder. Someone was trying to cast suspicion in a particular direction.” Tempest balled up the empty wrapper of her bao bun in the palm of her left hand and squeezed.
“I know you’re frustrated—”
“You’re not as observant as you think you are if that’s what you think is happening.” She blew on her hand, then uncurled her fingers one by one, revealing an empty hand.
“Someone wanted Corbin Colt’s murder to look like the work of a magician,” Gideon whispered.
“A magician who’s also a doctor and would surely examine the body. Someone is trying to frame my grandfather.”