On Saturday morning, before everything went wrong, the grand gong of the doorbell groaned differently. It was a bloated sob that ricocheted off the walls of Troy’s home until it petered into a distant scream before vanishing altogether. Troy would later think of that twisted sound as an omen—a sign that whoever stood uninvited at the threshold of his family’s normal, happy life should not be acknowledged, even if it meant never opening their front door again.
Darius, Troy’s big brother, answered anyway.
Their parents wouldn’t be back for a whole week—the longest they’d ever left the boys alone—because their anniversary cruise was hitting four different Caribbean islands. Mom had said she was going to buy a dress at each stop. Dad had said he was bringing back as much rum as he could. They’d both said the boys better answer their phones whenever they called to check in.
“Don’t make us regret this,” Dad had told them while they loaded luggage in the Range Rover.
This was low stakes for Darius, who was off to Georgetown University in August, but Troy had three long years left under their parents’ roof. Any missteps would mean doom for Troy and Troy alone. This weighed on him, just not so much that he expected trouble at eight in the morning.
The odd moment of queasiness Troy felt at the sound of the doorbell passed quickly, and his curiosity about the early-morning visitor was the excuse he needed for a break from practicing the Ambitious Card. It was a trick where you placed a specific card—the ten of diamonds, for example—into the middle of the deck, then had someone pull that very card off the top. The idea being the card was so ambitious, it moved up in the world!
It was one of those “simple” tricks that was supposed to be “easy.” But Troy kept spilling cards across his comforter. He abandoned the deck of splayed cards then and barely reached the banister overlooking the foyer when his brother called.
“Troy,” Darius shouted. “Mr. Meridian!”
Shit. Jack Meridian was their next-door neighbor who’d taught Troy the card trick. Mom called him “an eccentric” and Dad said that was her way of saying “weirdo” nicely. Mr. Meridian loved it, though. His response: “Is there such a thing as a stage magician who isn’t?”
As good-natured as Mr. Meridian was, his popping up felt like he’d stopped by to give Troy a grade—hopefully not on his Ambitious Card trick.
“Coming!” Troy yelled back.
He darted down the stairs, stumbling on the last two steps.
Darius snagged his elbow before he fell. “Slow down, man. Don’t need you breaking your neck on my watch.”
Darius looked and sounded like Dad. Everyone thought so. They were the same kind of tall—not quite six feet, but close enough to claim it—and the same kind of handsome. Darius was more muscular because he wrestled, and Dad liked to ride his Peloton, so if you saw just them, you’d assume they were a fitness family. If you then saw Troy, those assumptions would fly into the ether like his mishandled cards.
Five foot seven in boots, a little less wide than he was tall, Troy was the fun house mirror version of the other men in his family. His home was a loving place, though. Mom and Dad never shamed him about his body by suggesting he eat differently or less. Even Darius’s clumsy gym invites felt more like bonding attempts than veiled judgment, though Troy had only ever joined him once. All that grunting, clanking metal plates, and musk wasn’t his vibe. Troy felt comfortable in his own skin at home. Elsewhere … was another story.
Family couldn’t protect you from the outside. Not always.
Maybe that’s why Troy had taken such a liking to the man in their foyer. Jack Meridian was retired from his days of performing magic and illusions (“There is a difference, Troy!”) in Vegas. Having purchased the home next door five years ago, and to this day, graciously sharing the basics of his craft with a kid he clearly took pity on, Jack had earned a great deal of admiration from Troy. Shorter than Troy and rail thin, Jack still seemed like a giant in all the ways Troy wanted to be.
For all the love and kindness Troy’s family showed him, they never hid their confusion over Troy’s affection for the old … eccentric.
Jack tugged his cherry-red sunglasses away from bloodshot eyes. He looked paler than usual, and that was saying something since he’d never been the kind of white guy who hit the beach, a tanning salon, or even stood outside for long periods of time. His sequined tiger-patterned jacket twinkled with a thousand bursts of reflected summer sunlight. It was a garment only Mr. Meridian could pull off. Though Troy couldn’t help but wonder how he might look in something like it, under stage lights.
“Mr. Meridian,” Troy said, getting out of his own thoughts. “What’re you doing up so early?”
“Sorry to disturb. I was hoping to catch your parents, but I’d forgotten they were away. I need … a favor.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Jack shook his head. “Let me ask first. Never give away too much up front. Remember.”
It was one of his many Philosophies for Show Biz and Life Biz (the working title of his in-progress memoir).
Troy said, “Okay. What is it?”
“I’m expecting a package soon, but I need to run downtown to Gossamer’s.”
“The magic shop?” Troy had only recently learned such a store existed and was still awaiting a promised trip.
“Yes. The package is quite valuable, and as such, I don’t want it left alone on my porch, so I was wondering if you’d be willing to accept the delivery just until I return? You can say no. I won’t be mad.”
“Is it big or something?”
Jack mimed the approximate size and shape of a toaster.
Troy shrugged. “Okay, I’ll hold on to it for you.”
Jack chewed his bottom lip and glanced over his shoulder. “Just until this afternoon. This evening at the latest.”
Then Jack did something so eccentric, even for him, that Troy felt the first tickle of crawling skin. The old magician hugged Troy with the heft of someone going off to war.
Why war? Troy thought, recalling the lessons on analogies from language arts class. But then Jack pulled away, taking that strange thought with him.
Jack said, “Thank you, Troy. You really are a fine young man.”
Low heat warmed the boy’s cheeks. “I been working on the Ambitious Card.”
Jack grinned. “How’s it going?”
Troy thought about saving face but felt a strong urge to be honest in the moment. Like he’d regret Jack leaving with a lie between them. “I’m having trouble with the card passes. My fingers feel clumsy.”
“Mine did too when I learned all my tricks. Every spectacular magician I know can tell you stories of the many decks they sent flying in the early days. You’re in good company. Keep at it!”
Mr. Meridian backed toward the door and snapped his fingers. A blue-purple flame leaped into the air and vanished.
“Whoa!” Troy beamed.
“Always exit like a showman, Troy.”
Then he left.
Troy closed the door and made a note to ask about that snap-flame trick. The doorbell rang again. Mr. Meridian must’ve forgotten something. But when Troy tugged the door open, no one was there. A plain cardboard box rested on the welcome mat, though.
Troy stepped out, looking for the delivery driver.
He saw no one. Just the box.
With Jack Meridian’s name and address scrawled in bold marker. No shipping label with the barcode thingy. No return address.
Troy picked up the package, gave it a shake—a slight rattle. He brought it inside his home, as promised.
Where it was safe.
Darius’s friends arrived in the late afternoon. Some of his old wrestling teammates and a few upperclassmen girls Troy recognized from the school hallway, followed by a DoorDash delivery of Chinese food and pizza. The group was loud, and one of those wrestlers should’ve showered before arriving, but no one seemed to mind. Much.
Troy scavenged the deep dish and moo shu pork leftovers, then entered the family room as a Nerf football spiraled end to end and a wrestler-turned–wide receiver made a flying leap to catch it. The big boy came down hard on the wraparound couch with the ball in hand, the frame making a distressing KA-RACK!
“D,” Troy said, “a word.”
Troy led his brother to the kitchen for a summit. “Darius, if Mom and Dad found out we had people over—”
Darius held up a halting hand. “I’mma stop you right there. One, nobody leaves their kid at home and believes people aren’t coming over. Facts. Two, it’s not ‘we’ it’s ‘me.’ Something goes wrong, I’ll eat it. Three, where are your friends, Troy? You should be inviting people over, too. Not dragging me in here to review the rule book.”
“I—I mean…”
There was a thunderous BA-BOOM! that could only mean property or bodily damage followed by a wailing “the fuck, bro?”
The brothers ran into the family room. Darius’s wide receiver friend sprawled on his back, prodding his busted lip.
Darius said, “What happened?”
“Tripped over that.” The boy pointed at the box resting in the middle of the floor.
Mr. Meridian’s package.
Troy snatched it up, furiously scanning the room. “Not cool, guys. Who moved this?”
Low grumbles all around. No one copped to it.
Troy had one job. Look after this box! And these dicks—who weren’t even supposed to be here—were about to mess that up for him. If the contents were damaged, Mr. Meridian wouldn’t trust Troy with anything again.
“It’s not yours!” Troy yelled. “You shouldn’t have touched it!”
Darius, not unsympathetic, placed a hand on Troy’s shoulder. “Chill. I’ll handle it.” Then, to the room, he said, “For real though, I told y’all about touching my people’s shit!”
A girl fiddling with the remote said, “Well, can you come touch this remote and get your TV to YouTube? I’m trying to watch the new Marvel trailer, but I can’t get it off the news.”
Darius sighed heavily. Maybe regretting his host-with-the-most role this evening. He took the remote and attempted to fulfill the request. The TV remained on the local breaking news.
“Maybe it’s the batteries,” Darius mumbled.
No one paid attention to the report. Except for Troy. Because he recognized the storefront bathed in strobing red and blue emergency lights. Gurneys rolled black body bags to waiting transports.
Troy snatched the remote and turned the volume all the way up. The batteries seemed fine.
The reporter was in the middle of an explanation: “… don’t have confirmed details, but the situation here at the Hidden Hares strip mall is intense. There are a lot of police. Initially, there were reports of an active shooter, though those accounts seem false. There are, apparently, fatalities. Our source says, and I quote, ‘It’s worse than guns in there.’”
Darius pried the remote from Troy’s hand, unconcerned with the tragedy described on-screen. Troy wanted to rage, but he knew he’d done it plenty of times, too. Some war in another country. Some horrible highway accident three states away. Terrible stories that had Mom and Dad shaking their heads and proclaiming how horrible the world had gotten. Catastrophe mattered most when it was yours.
And this mattered to Troy. Because Hidden Hares strip mall was where Gossamer’s Magic Shop was. It was where Mr. Meridian hadn’t returned from to claim his package.
Darius had asked where Troy’s friends were, and Troy feared this news report was answering the question in the worst possible way.
And what of that package?
I’ll take better care of it, that’s what! Troy thought. Because Mr. Meridian’s okay, and I’ll be handing him a pristine box to show him how trustworthy I am so he’ll teach me bigger and better magic.
“Fuck it,” Darius said, abandoning the remote and turning on the Xbox in the television cabinet. The TV automatically switched inputs, bringing up the console’s profile screen. “Who trying to get washed in NBA 2K?”
A wrestler snatched the player-two controller. Everyone else groaned, then scrolled on their phones. Troy cradled Mr. Meridian’s package and went for the TV in his room. He sat the box on his bed, gently, then turned his TV to the ongoing news broadcast and sent several texts to Mr. Meridian.
The news camera focused on another body bag being rolled to its final destination; the bag leaking pus-yellow gore. Someone with a badge on their belt thrust their hand in front of the camera to obscure the disturbing view.
Troy: Mr. Meridian your package came and I’m taking real good care of it. You’ll see.
Troy: If you want to pick it up tonight you can. Doesn’t matter how late. I’ll stay up. Just let me know.
Troy: Please.
Mr. Meridian: Who is this?
Troy’s heart plummeted.
The magician didn’t put people’s names in his contacts. Everyone had an alias. One day, after Troy had grasped a complicated sleight of hand gesture, the magician showed Troy his assigned designation with pride.
“You’re earning your nickname today.” Mr. Meridian held his phone for Troy to see.
Troy’s cheeks and forehead burned. He had to look away because he was so moved. It said The Protégé.
“Why?” Troy asked, his voice so low that if Mr. Meridian hadn’t heard him, he wasn’t sure he’d be willing to repeat it.
But Mr. Meridian did hear. He squeezed Troy’s shoulder and said, “Because someone who showed me there was more to life than the limitations I placed on myself once called me her protégé and told me we outsiders never need to introduce ourselves to one another. I won’t insult you by saying we’re the same because you’re going to be better than me! I can smell it!”
Troy smirked. “Smell it?”
“Feel it. Smell it. You know us old eccentrics get tied-tongue sometimes.”
“Tongue-tied.”
“My point exactly.”
Troy knew Mr. Meridian sometimes mixed things up, but people didn’t get tied-tongue in a text. If Mr. Meridian were answering his own texts—if he could answer—he’d know who Troy was.
Troy nearly responded to the message with his whole name, but some aggressive intuition shoved him to a different course.
Troy: Can you have Mr. Meridian give me a call?
Mr. Meridian: You might need a Ouija board for that, Protégé. That poser ain’t calling anyone ever again.
Mr. Meridian: So do what’s smart and tell me where you and MY package are?
Mr. Meridian: It’ll be worse if you make me work for it.
Troy’s thoughts knocked around like rocks in a can. Before he could respond, his phone chimed with an incoming photo.
It’s worse than guns in there.
Troy gasped. His phone clattered to the floor.
“Darius!” Troy shrieked. “Darius!”
Thunder cascaded up the stairs, and then Darius turned the corner into his room. “Dude, what’s wrong?”
Nearly hyperventilating, Troy pointed at the facedown phone.
Darius retrieved the device. “Is it Mom and Dad?” When he flipped the phone and saw the photo there, he tilted his head, disgusted. “The fuck?”
He swiped the photo away to get a view at the messages. “Dude from next door sent this to you?”
Troy blubbered, “Someone’s … got Mr. Meridian’s … phone.”
“Someone got your man’s phone and sent you picture of a gutted animal? Why?”
Darius hadn’t noticed the little details the way Mr. Meridian had taught Troy to do. Seeing everything at once helped him be a better showman. Along with the wet, glistening viscera and the jutting pink ends of snapped ribs, Troy saw the red-framed sunglasses in a jacket pocket and the sequined fabric reflecting the camera’s flash through all the blood. Not a gutted animal. A gutted magician.
But Troy was too busy sobbing to explain.
Shay, the girl Darius had been hoping to get some alone time with, said, “Your brother good?”
“He will be. I think.”
It was a little after ten, and they were on the porch, where the late-night june bugs bounced off the yellow light bulb overhead. Her car keys jangled. She was the last to leave.
She stood on tiptoe to give him a too-brief good night kiss. “Maybe we can chill some next week.”
Next week. Fuuuuuck. Through a forced smile, he said, “I’d like that.”
Darius watched her little Prius putter out of the cul-de-sac, pushed what could’ve been from his mind, and focused on his brother crying upstairs.
After stopping by his room to change into some sweats and grab a sleeping bag, Darius then returned to Troy’s and dropped his gear in the floor. Troy was still whimpering. What would Dad say here?
Darius settled on “you don’t know, for sure, something happened to Mr. Meridian.”
Troy’s tear-drenched face did not look convinced. “Why hasn’t he come back for that?”
The box was still on Troy’s bed. Maybe there was a good answer to Troy’s question, but Darius didn’t have it. If the nasty pic was really Jack Meridian’s body, then yeah, his brother’s weirdo old magician friend had gotten axe murdered or whatever, and how did you get a fifteen-year-old kid right from that?
Yet another answer Darius didn’t have. So he unrolled his sleeping bag, then bundled up on the floor. “I’ll be down here all night. Okay? We’ll see what’s up in the morning.”
Darius squeezed his brother’s hand, and gratitude radiated from the distraught boy.
Troy cried himself to sleep. Darius killed the lights and dozed right after. Neither of them heard Mr. Meridian’s box move in the night, but they felt it in their dreams.
This didn’t feel like any dream Troy had ever had before. First, he wasn’t himself, but a woman. The star of this show.
It felt like playing a first-person shooter. A Call of Duty cutscene where you were a character you didn’t choose and couldn’t control. SHE got dragged kicking into a dank room where overhead pipes dripped, and disturbing rust-colored splotches stained the concrete.
Troy saw her curvy legs like they were his own. Those legs bucked against the golden chains looped around her ankles and knees, chains with symbols engraved in the links, symbols that glowed like magma. She swiped her manicured hand across the snarling white face of a man lifting her roughly by the torso; her nails raked permanent deep gashes in his flesh. Luminescent tattoos ran down her brown arm; they had the same angry glow as the symbols on her restraints.
“Get her down,” the man with the torn face yelled. “Now!”
A new chain snapped from the dark, whipped around her wrist, and held fast. Thin wisps of smoke rose where the chain seared flesh. Troy felt it and screamed! Or tried to. He didn’t exactly have a mouth here, but the woman whose body he inhabited did. She screamed plenty for them both.
The scarred man said, “Stop squirming. You know these restraint wards better than any of us. You’re not going anywhere.”
The woman was dropped onto a table, where the chains, moving on their own, affixed their dangling ends to the furniture, allowing the man with the bloodied face to step back and catch his breath.
Why did he look familiar? Troy wondered.
The woman’s head whipped toward the shadows, where other faces emerged. White. Mostly male. Various heights and sizes. All wearing rubber smocks like they were expecting a mess.
The scarred man prodded his wounds. “I told you this would be worse if you made me work for it.” Then, to the room, he said, “Where’s the chainsaw?”
The woman bucked again. Futile.
A redhead, the only other woman in the room, handed the scarred man an electric chainsaw that seemed bigger than her. Apprehension crept into her voice when she said, “I was expecting a more surgical approach. Won’t this damage the segments?”
“Belinda, you can take your foot however you want. Okay?”
Belinda, satisfied, returned to the shadows.
The scarred man revved the chainsaw. The woman Troy was connected to spit in the man’s face.
A shiny glob of saliva dripped off his chin. “Nona, you could’ve just taught us what you know. We would’ve paid well. But I don’t mind saving a few bucks.”
He revved the chainsaw again before addressing his accomplices. “Why y’all looking so squeamish? We’re magicians. Sawing someone in half’s like the oldest trick in the book.”
He lowered the churning blade. When it touched bare flesh, the soul-shredding pain sent the woman (and Troy) into convulsions and—
screams. Troy’s and Darius’s.
Troy awoke shrieking and gripping his stomach, where the chainsaw had … had …
He fell from his bed into the gap closest to his window, while Darius ejected from his sleeping bag and backpedaled into Troy’s dresser, knocking various action figures to the floor and clutching his own stomach.
Troy, still pushing through the fog of sleep and nightmare, said, “Were you there? Did you feel her, too?”
Darius nodded in quick jerks, admitting what would seem ridiculous in the light of day. “Who the fuck was she? Who the fuck were they?”
“Magicians,” Troy mumbled, those blazing symbols on that woman’s restraints seared into his memory as was the face of the white man she scarred. Where did Troy know him from?
The alarm clock said 6:02 A.M. Still dark out. He snatched the TV remote off the nightstand and turned to the local news.
“What are you doing?” Darius asked.
“I want to see if they’re still talking about what happened at the strip mall.”
And they were. Sort of.
The blond anchorwoman stared directly into the camera. “… gruesome and bizarre turn in the massacre that took place at the Hidden Hares shopping center last night. The body of one of the victims, Larry McDonald, better known as retired stage magician Jack Meridian, appears to be missing…”
It cut to a frazzled man in blue scrubs standing in a brightly lit corridor by a directional sign that read MORGUE: “We don’t know if there’s been some sort of processing mix-up, or something else altogether, but we can’t find him. It’s like he vanished into thin air.”
Troy hit MUTE. He couldn’t focus on processing mix-ups or whatever. They said “the body” was missing. Jack was gone. “He’s really dead. He’s—”
Darius shushed Troy with a wave. “You hear that?”
Thump. Th-th-thump.
The boys frowned. It came from the hall.
Th-th-thump. Thump.
Troy rounded his bed. Darius grabbed an old tennis racket from the closet. They entered the hall, peering down the corridor.
The golden-hour rays of the rising sun seeped through drawn blinds to light their path, but not much. Not enough. Whatever was making that sound remained obscured by early-morning gloom, forcing them to draw closer, to investigate, to do the things a hundred horror movies had told them not to. It was different when it was real, though.
Halving the distance between them and … whatever, they were better able to identify it. Yet it didn’t make sense.
It was Mr. Meridian’s box.
The object, which should’ve been inanimate, bumped the far wall. Repeatedly. It slammed itself forward—THUMP—then went for weaker ramming action—th-th-thump. Small cracks webbed along the drywall from the point of impact.
Darius lowered the tennis racket. “You had an animal in that box this whole time?”
“Not an animal,” Troy said, thinking like a showman. “Magicians never give you exactly what you expect.”
“What then?”
“I’m not sure.”
“So let’s open it.”
“I can’t. I—” But why not? Mr. Meridian hadn’t said he couldn’t. Even if he had, did it matter now?
Troy crept toward the animated box, then grabbed it like he would a finnicky cat. In his hands, it was still. He tore away the brown wrapping paper, then worked at the taped seal. Darius raised the tennis racket again.
“On three,” Troy said, preparing to fling the box open. “One … two…!”
He popped the lid and shook the box so the contents landed on the hall runner.
Darius backpedaled when the thing landed within inches of his toes. “Shit.”
Not an animal.
It was a polished human jawbone with two glistening gold-capped molars.
The boys shrieked when the doorbell rang.
“Mr. Meridian!” Troy said, hoping against hope because the jawbone had to be some sort of prop, right? So maybe the trouble at Hidden Hares was part of some elaborate trick. A hoax! That was why Mr. Meridian’s body was missing. Magicians didn’t give you what you expected; they gave you want you needed. Troy needed Mr. Meridian to be alive to explain this insanity.
He descended the stairs with so many maybes, he barely heard Darius saying, “Wait! Don’t open the—”
Troy tugged the door halfway open and recoiled.
The man on the welcome mat extended a badge across the threshold and said, “I’m Detective Monroe with the police department. Is there an adult home? I have some questions about an incident involving your next-door neighbor. Went by the name Jack Meridian.”
Darius bolted down the stairs like something was on fire, then stood protectively before his brother, his nostrils flaring.
The man lowered his badge. “You boys okay? Do you need help?”
They’d been taught from a young age that the only thing they should ever say to a cop was they wanted to call Mom and Dad and/or a lawyer.
This was different, though, because this man was not a cop. Everything out his mouth was lies. They knew because of the puckered old scars stretched across his face. They remembered his chainsaw. They’d seen the truth of him last night.
There was more than the dream carnage splashing red recognition across Troy’s mind. This close, in this light, Troy knew this man’s name. Had seen him many times in his controversial TV specials and grotesquely compelling YouTube videos. This was the Macabre Marauder, Danford Dread.
Not so much a magician as a shock artist, Mr. Meridian had once explained when he caught Troy watching Dread’s videos on his phone. Dread’s thing was painful acts of endurance. He once hung himself on a meat hook in a slaughterhouse freezer for twenty-four hours. His signature Vegas act involved pinning his assistants to boards like science-class frogs and dissecting them in front of the audience.
“He perverts the art,” Mr. Meridian had said. “Plays to the worst in people. He’s dangerous.”
Recognizing this man and recalling his reputation did not ease Troy’s mind.
Dread said, “Can I come in?”
“No,” said Darius. “Come back when our parents are here.”
He tried to close the door, but it wouldn’t budge.
There was nothing obstructing it that they could see. Darius strained, and Troy added his own weight, changing nothing.
Dread sighed. “We got to this part sooner than I anticipated.”
Dread’s left hand hung at his side, the fingers working in a fluid rhythm that Troy knew in his gut was somehow keeping the door ajar. There were illusions, and there was magic. Mr. Meridian had been adamant about that. This was the latter.
Dread flashed his hand toward the boys. An invisible force sent Troy and Darius sprawling across the marble floor.
“Come on!” Dread called over his shoulder. Two individuals who’d been standing just out of view entered the home with him. Another flash of Dread’s hand, and the door slammed shut, sealing all five of them in.
Troy rolled to his knees, groaned. His breath caught when he recognized the petite redheaded woman—Belinda—from his dream. The third intruder, a tall man, wasn’t a face he knew, but that didn’t matter now.
Darius, wincing, got his feet under him. Then he darted forward, low, attempting to scoop Dread by the legs like one of his wrestling opponents. He’d always been brave like that.
The magician made another hand gesture, freezing Darius in place. The air around Darius’s limbs shimmered against his straining muscles. Troy, more terrified than he’d ever been in his life, choked back a frightened whimper and squeezed the muscles at the base of his belly so he wouldn’t pee his pants like a baby.
Dread turned his nose up, inhaling slow and deep. “I smell magic here. Which one of you is the protégé?”
Troy locked eyes with his brother and felt some relief from the fear he saw. If Darius, the bravest person he knew, was also afraid, then that meant Troy wasn’t being a baby. Or soft. Or something so drastically different from the courageous men in his family. In this moment of shared terror, Troy wanted to comfort Darius as his brother had done for him so many times. He wanted to tell Darius everything would be okay.
Darius told Dread, “Let me go, you bitch, and we’ll find out.”
“Brave.” Dread leaned into Darius, sniffing him like a dog. “But not you.”
The magician squeezed his hand into a fist. There was a wet crack as Darius’s sternum caved in, creating a sickening indentation in his chest. Darius’s eyes rolled to the whites. His own bones crushed his heart like a steak in a vise.
Troy shrieked.
His brother was well beyond all comforts now.
“Rick,” Dread demanded.
The tall man, Rick, tugged the destroyed boy to his feet.
Dread sniffed Troy. “Jack’s magic’s all on you, protégé. Like lilacs. Pussy magic.”
Troy could barely form a thought. “My brother.”
Dread gripped his chin. “Told you not to make me work for it. Where’s my package?”
Belinda sidled next to Dread, pointing toward the staircase. “Hey, Dan!”
The jawbone sat at the top landing. Then it tipped, toppling to the ground floor as if it’d been tossed. It hit the marble with a CLACK!
Dread approached the prize he’d come to claim. When he reached for it, the jawbone flung itself into the air with force and crashed through a window facing Mr. Meridian’s house. It was almost silly. Troy would’ve cackled with Darius about it if Darius weren’t dead and Troy weren’t completely hollow right then. Glass shards rained to the floor, and a second crash could be heard as it continued its trajectory through Mr. Meridian’s window and into his home.
Dread, Belinda, and Rick exchanged concerned looks.
Belinda said, “It ever do anything like that when you had it?”
Dread shook his head. “We need to get in Jack’s house.”
“I tried last night,” said Rick. “It’s warded.”
Dread said, “Not against his protégé, I bet.”
Belinda voiced her concerns. “What kind of wards?”
Dread looked appalled. “You’re scared of Jack Meridian’s shit magic? For that, I should make you go first. Come on.”
Troy got dragged away from his brother’s body, wishing he’d said no when Mr. Meridian asked him to claim the package. Wished he’d said no the first day Mr. Meridian offered to teach him one damned trick. But in all their talk of magic and illusions, wishes had never come up once.
“Jack ever tell you about us, protégé?”
Dread chattered like he did in his videos. Nonstop. Incessant. Troy had wondered if that was his way of distracting marks from his sleight of hand. Now it felt like goading. Another form of torturing those around him.
“We’re the Order of the Veil. Ancient magic. Brutal shit. Jack tried to worm his way in with us once but couldn’t hack it.” Dread nudged Troy on Mr. Meridian’s porch. “Now get us past Jack’s wards, or I’m going to break some ribs.”
Mr. Meridian had a keypad lock. Troy knew the code to that but knew nothing of “wards”—he’d been fumbling the Ambitious Card just yesterday. Yesterday, when Darius was still … still …
Troy sobbed.
Dread didn’t bother with magic, just delivered a hammer fist to Troy’s side, buckling his knees, though Rick held him upright.
With a shaky finger, Troy punched four digits into the pad; the dead bolt retracted. Dread waved Belinda closer, and she laid a hand gently on Troy’s shoulder. He still flinched.
All three of the magicians maintained physical contact with Troy as he opened the door.
“Cross the threshold slowly,” Dread instructed.
Troy extended his right foot into Mr. Meridian’s home. He’d crossed this threshold many times, but he’d never felt what he did in this moment. It was like dipping a toe into a pool. That instant of breaking the water’s surface. A scrim of something barely tangible stretched across the entrance. And now, in the doorframe, Troy saw what had never been visible before. Symbols drawn on the wood. Squiggly lines and sharp angles glowing with amber light.
It’s because I’m with them, Troy reasoned. Their magic and Mr. Meridian’s were reacting somehow.
Troy also reasoned if he was the key and Mr. Meridian’s magic was the lock, then he might have a chance here …
He continued across the threshold, his head and the shoulder Rick gripped breaking through the magical scrim.
Then he ran, ripping free of the magicians.
Only Rick’s hand had crossed the warded threshold. As soon as he lost contact with Troy, there was an electric crackle, like a mosquito in a bug zapper, followed by what seemed to be an optical illusion. For an instant, time slowed. Rick’s arm remained extended, the part beyond his wrist—beyond the threshold—slid down. It left a slug trail of blood on what presented like a pane of clear glass. On the other side of the barrier, where the hand had disconnected from Rick’s arm, a clean cross-section of skin, fat, muscle, and bone was visible, as neat as a biology diagram. Then Rick snatched himself away. Time sped up. His severed hand plopped on the floor.
The man screamed, clutching his spurting stump. Neither Belinda nor Dread offered aid. They only stared at Troy.
Dread calmly said, “I’m going to skin you for that.”
Dread began chanting in an unrecognizable language and making gestures with his hands that looked like martial arts stances, with every strike aimed at a glowing symbol in the doorframe. One symbol vanished in a whiff of smoke. Dread focused on the next, and the same thing happened. It would take some time for him to erase all twenty plus that prevented his entrance, but not much. Not enough.
Troy went for the phone in Mr. Meridian’s kitchen, dialed 911, but instead of an operator, he heard Belinda’s voice whisper-chanting in a language he didn’t know, though the sound made him queasy. He dropped the phone.
He considered taking the back door, hopping the fence, and running. But where? Where was safe from the fuckers who’d killed his brother with a flick of the wrist?
Before he could take his chances, he spotted Rick limping along the side of the house to cut off any backyard escape.
Thump. Th-Thump.
The sound came from the walk-in pantry. Troy flipped on the light.
The jawbone. It threw itself at the back wall over and over between toppled cans of soup and a ruptured bag of macaroni. Settle, hurl. Settle, hurl. Like a practical effect in a goofy old horror movie where you could see the strings. Noodles crunched under Troy’s feet as he approached, cautious.
There was a door, moderately hidden, a light Mr. Meridian must’ve left on shining through the paper-thin seams. Troy swept everything to the floor, searching for a latch. The jawbone continued its battering ram act. There was a subtle ring embedded in the wood. Troy tugged it, needing a bit of extra strength to slide aside all the food he’d knocked to the floor. When the gap was wide enough, he wedged himself through.
The jawbone followed.
It flung itself down a short flight of stairs like a grisly boomerang, then hit a hard aerial U-turn. Troy chased it but skidded to a halt when he saw what the jawbone collided with.
A coffin.
It was composed of wooden planks. Cheap. With gaps between the slats wide enough to slide a pinky through. It was propped upright against the basement wall, and rusty hinges on its side were slick with fresh oil. The jawbone bashed against the upper portion of the coffin repeatedly, with speed and force that would soon break the wood or the bone. One gold tooth knocked free and skipped across the floor like a tossed die.
A wave of nausea hit Troy at the thudding footsteps overhead. Dread had broken the wards.
“Hey, protégé! You’re gonna think your brother got off easy when I’m done with you.”
Since Darius’s brutally quick death, Troy had been drowning in fear and sorrow. But hearing Dread speak of Darius so … so … smugly made something in him surface. From the moment the light had left Darius’s eyes, Troy understood he’d probably die today, too. Dread might even keep his promise and kill him horribly. But horrible wouldn’t mean easy. Troy assessed his surroundings. Mr. Meridian’s worktable was within reach, atop it a few of the everyday carry items a magician might have—a Sharpie marker, a deck of cards, a simple wristwatch. Then there were actual tools that might double as weapons: a ball-peen hammer, a wrench, a box cutter.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
What was in that coffin?
As the footsteps drew closer, Troy had nothing left to lose. No discovery more terrifying than the torment Dread had in store for him. His only slim chance for a fighter’s death, if not salvation, was bravery in this very moment. He grabbed the jawbone as if it were the hilt of a sword, felt energy vibrating in it, then flipped the coffin’s lid.
Oh God, Oh God, Oh God …
It was a person. Maybe a woman. She was naked except for gauze shrouding her biggest joints—the shoulders and hips—while neat stitching zippered her exposed flesh at smaller joints—ankles, knees, wrists. Her flesh was as dry as the jerky Darius had snacked on incessantly during wrestling season. Her eyes were milky glass. She looked to be screaming, but that was because anybody with a missing jaw would look like they were screaming.
The jawbone in Troy’s hand no longer jerked with ramming speed. An invisible force tugged at it, steady but not quite strong enough to break Troy’s grip.
Release me.
It was as faint as a whisper in a dreamer’s ear. So low, Troy misheard. The voice repeated, clear with purpose.
Unleash me.
Dread thundered down the basement stairs, an orb of swirling fire hovering an inch above his hand to light the way. Belinda and Rick trailed. A gleeful trio of monsters advancing on cornered prey.
Rick said, “Let me take his fingers. One by one.”
He collided with Dread when the leader froze in his tracks, clearly unsettled by the corpse standing upright in the coffin like a wax statue from Hell. “Nona?”
UNLEASH ME!
The jawbone jerked in Troy’s grasp.
Belinda, her voice shaky, said, “Hey, kid. Bring that bone over here, okay?”
Troy’s gaze flicked from the jawbone to his brother’s murderers.
“Don’t let it go,” Belinda said. Begged.
Troy said, “A showman never gives the audience exactly what they want, but he does give them what they need. I think you need this.”
“No!” Dread rushed forward.
Troy released the jawbone.
It flipped end over end before affixing itself in the right spot on the desiccated corpse as if magnetized. Troy would reflect on what happened next for decades to come.
The entire basement blazed in amber light so bright, Troy thought he might be permanently blinded. But it did recede. Into the coffin. Into Nona.
Her once dried flesh was brown, supple. The stitches holding her joints together fell away, unnecessary now. The tattoos Troy and Darius had dreamed of during her gruesome dismemberment glowed with the same power that had robbed them all of sight a moment before. Her glassed-over eyes weren’t that anymore … they were rage and damnation, but not for Troy.
Belinda said, “Nona, wait! Please—”
Nona ejected from the coffin, her arms limp, her toes inches off the ground, and levitated to Belinda in a breath. Nona’s head cocked sideways as the flesh of Belinda’s cheeks split in bloody tears, exposing her full set of teeth. Then the skin peeled backward while Belinda screamed. Kept peeling from Belinda in wide strips that exposed the musculature of her entire shrieking skull. Kept peeling until it sloughed away beneath her clothes and spilled unsettling amounts of blood. Kept peeling until she was writhing meat on the floor. Then she was still.
Clutching his ruined hand, Rick sprinted for the stairs, but only halfway up, Nona cut her eyes at him and shouted something in a language that reverberated like she’d spoken three times from three different mouths. The steps under Rick’s feet opened into a black portal that he fell through. A second portal opened in the far corner of the basement, six feet above the floor. Rick hollered, his head and good arm dangling from the aperture in space-time like he was peeking through a skylight. He tried clawing his way free, but ragged gray hands kept clutching at his clothes, hair, and skin, dragging him back.
“Nona, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
Nona uttered another reverberating foreign phrase. The sound was like a spike through Troy’s skull, and fresh blood trickled from his nostrils. The portal winked away, severing Rick’s remaining hand. Though that was likely the least of the man’s concerns.
Dread did not run. Did not beg. He was all defiance and, maybe, a bit of pride. “I guess Jack Meridian’s tricks weren’t all shit. I thought he only had a few pieces. No clue he’d pulled all of you back together, Nona. I got a few new tricks, too. Care to—”
Nona winked away. There and gone like a popped soap bubble.
Troy’s heart sank. “No, no, no, no, no!”
Sorcery Lady, don’t exit like a showman now!
Dread didn’t seem shocked. “Bitch knew what was good for her. Bad news for you, though, protégé, because I keep my promises. And since I’m not getting her jawbone back, I’ll take my time claiming yours.”
Troy grabbed the hammer off Mr. Meridian’s workbench. Dread flicked his hand, and the hammer flung itself away.
“Did Jack tell you about any of this, protégé?”
Troy looked for something to fight with. Anything.
Dread drew closer. “My order, we’re extreme knowledge seekers. We hunt objects infused with great power. Some years ago, we stumbled across a woman who radiated more power than we’d ever seen. It was in her blood and bones. So we acquired her. Divided her among ourselves. Jack Meridian had known her, been her friend. When he started stealing her pieces from my brothers and sisters, I thought he was simply trying to take us down a peg. I never even considered he might be reassembling Nona.” He turned contemplative. “Wonder what would happen if I caught her and chopped her up again?”
He shook off the grisly thought and refocused on Troy. “I owe you some pain. But I’m going to give you a chance to decrease your burden. What sort of things did Jack teach you?”
Troy didn’t understand.
“Tricks, boy!” Dread roared, and produced that tiny sun in his palm again.
Troy peered over Dread’s shoulder. “Th-the Ambitious Card.”
Dread motioned to the deck on Jack’s worktable. “Show me. If you do it good, I’ll kill you quick.”
Troy shook the cards out, did a hasty side shuffle, then showed Dread a ten of diamonds. He reinserted the card in the deck, and it was at this point he should do the slide-control move Mr. Meridian had shown him to transfer the ten of diamonds to the bottom of the deck, where he could do more with it. But Troy had already messed the trick up because he couldn’t stop looking over Dread’s shoulder. At Nona.
Dread savored Troy’s fumble. “Ah, well, I guess it’s agony for you. Too bad, protégé.”
Nona was close enough for her newly restored breath to rustle a lock of Dread’s hair. He understood a second too late as Nona’s fingers sank into the soft skin of his neck as if his flesh were clay.
Dread shrieked. Then the sound multiplied by a hundred, a whole stadium of agony. Troy clapped his hands over his ears. He wished he’d closed his eyes, though. Because as copies of Dread’s face—eyes, nose, screaming mouth—puckered all over the magician’s body like blisters, Troy found he was unable to look away. Every visible inch of skin was occupied by faces, one butting against another with only a razor-thin divider of unmarred skin between.
Nona yanked her bloody fingers free, and all of Dread’s faces hollered.
Nona grinned, then slashed a hand across the air.
Dread collapsed into a pile of evenly divided faces. Not dismembered but diced.
All the faces kept screaming.
Troy felt his sanity slipping. If it was close before, his entire mental sanctity was now tipping at the edge of a void.
Nona—terrible, terrible Nona—levitated to him, avoiding the gushy screaming pile of Dread. Troy couldn’t bring himself to run, and when Nona reached for him, he braced for pain. But her hand was gentle.
“I’m sorry you’ve seen so much,” she said. “Away from this cursed place.”
Troy slipped into a dark sleep.
He awoke in his own bed but didn’t even start down the road of it was all a dream because Nona sat in the chair beside him dressed in jeans and a Hampton University sweatshirt she must’ve taken from Mom’s closet. She looked like someone about to make a Target run, not a—a—
“What are you?” Troy asked.
“Someone who’s grateful to your former teacher. I could hear him, you know. The more of me he reassembled. He was chatty while he worked. He spoke of you fondly.”
Troy sat up, stared into the hall, thought of Darius lying beyond. “You were dead, but you came back. Can you bring my brother back too?”
She shook her head. “They didn’t kill me. Just divided me. I repaid the favor.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Peace. Believe me when I say your brother’s the lucky one.”
“But … but…”
Nona placed a hand on his knee. The blood on her fingertips was dried and crusty. “You can choose to stay. I assume you have people who will return. But you’ve been exposed to a hidden world, and my scent is on you now. More like Dread will come. They will do to your loved ones what they did to your brother.”
“They’d kill my mom and dad.”
“Or worse. And their friends. And their friends’ friends. The truly demented in our circles know no boundaries, particularly when pursuing power. I got sloppy, and I paid a steep price. It won’t happen again. That won’t stop them from trying.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Supposed to? I can’t say. Your choices are your own. But if you choose to come with me, I will honor Jack Meridian. I’ll teach you, protégé.”
“You mean leave? Forever?”
Nona shook her head. “Forever? No. However long it does take, when you’re ready, you can return and protect your loved ones. You can get your own vengeance.”
Troy’s phone rang. The caller ID said Mom. He was supposed to pick up, no matter what.
But the boy Mom was calling was not the same boy she’d left behind mere days ago. There were new rules in the world, and to give his family a chance, he had to play by those now.
He placed his phone on his comforter. Took Nona’s hand. They vanished from his bedroom as the call went to voicemail. It wasn’t a showman’s exit because no one was around to see it, but Troy would return. He’d come for the remaining members of the order that had taken Mr. Meridian and Darius—that he swore.
When he did, he’d show them all.