Redondo exhaled loudly. He touched a hand to his forehead and then slid it down his cheek to rub his chin, giving the matter serious consideration. After much hemming and hawing, he locked eyes with Joey.
“No.”
The matter settled, he pushed through the doors into the lobby, leaving Joey alone in the auditorium.
Joey stared at the swinging lobby door, too stunned to speak. He thought for sure he was getting through to Redondo. Why was the old man being so thick? Didn’t he realize Joey needed this?
Joey gave the doors a good hard shove and stormed into the lobby. “You could at least show me how to protect myself if that guy in the top hat comes back. Or is that too much to ask? Do you even care if I get caught in the cross fire of your stupid fight?”
“It’s not stupid,” Redondo said matter-of-factly. “By the way, that’s a very hurtful word. I was under the impression children were being taught not to call things ‘stupid’ these days. And I do care. I care enough to keep you safely removed from it. You don’t have to worry about the Invisible Hand.”
“How do you know?”
“Becau—” His reply was interrupted by a coughing fit that he was hard-pressed to stop. He put up a finger, signaling for Joey to wait as he turned away and doubled over, violently hacking into a handkerchief. When the coughing finally subsided, Redondo looked back, red faced and teary eyed. “Because they’re only coming after you to get to me… and I won’t be here much longer.” He folded up his handkerchief and put it away. This time the bloodred stain on the cloth was unmistakable.
Suddenly Joey understood something he had completely missed during his first trip to the Majestic Theatre. One of the little details he was so good at noticing had escaped his watchful eye. Redondo had said the Water of Life contained regenerative properties. He hadn’t been practicing a trick. He’d been practicing medicine—on himself.
“You’re sick?”
Redondo gave a grim nod. “Cancer.”
The fuse on Joey’s temper was snuffed out instantly. “I’m sorry,” he said, unsure of the right thing to say in that moment. “Is it… bad?” he added awkwardly.
Redondo considered the question a moment before answering. “I’ll put it to you this way. You know the kind of cancer people eventually triumph over?”
“Yeah,” Joey said hopefully.
“I’ve got the other kind.” A rogue’s smile formed on Redondo’s lips. As he found comfort in his own gallows humor, a horrible realization struck Joey:
“I smashed your aquarium,” Joey said, feeling heat rise to his face. “You were using that to get better. Did I ruin that? Your—your chance? I didn’t realize—I didn’t know!”
“Stop. Stop right there,” Redondo said, but not unkindly. “That was just meant to give me a boost. A magical shot in the arm, if you will. It wasn’t a cure. What I’ve got… the stage I’m at… there is no cure.”
“Are you positive? Isn’t there some treatment you could try? What did your doctor say?”
“It doesn’t matter what she says. It won’t be the cancer that gets me. It’ll be them.” Redondo pointed at the door to the street. Joey jumped when he saw the shadow creatures gathering outside. He’d been so focused on Redondo, he hadn’t noticed them creeping up. Joey cringed as they hissed and rattled the door, trying to get in. Redondo eyed them with the cool detachment of a nanny waiting out a child’s tantrum. “Don’t worry,” he told Joey. “They’re not here… not yet,” he added quietly. As the shadows pounded the walls outside, the lobby lights dimmed and flickered. Dust fell from the chandelier overhead, but the doors held.
“What are they?”
“Magicians,” Redondo said matter-of-factly. “Dark magicians,” he added, just to be clear. “Agents of the Invisible Hand. This is how they appear in this place. Only those who pose no threat can physically enter this realm. All they can do is lurk in the shadows.”
“If they can’t get in here, why did you think I was with them?”
One of the dark magicians beat a defiant fist against the door, and a light fixture fell off the wall, crashing to the floor with a bang. Redondo grimaced. “Things are changing. I’m not as strong as I used to be. The walls I put up around this place… they’re crumbling. I give it about a week. Maybe less.”
“What happens then?”
Redondo scowled, facing the dire future. “They’ll come in. And they’ll take everything. All the secrets… all the knowledge… every magical item I’ve managed to save over the years. All of it.”
“What about you?”
“Oh, I expect they’ll make short work of me. People like you will be hard-pressed to find any magic in this world after that. They’ll control it all.”
“No…,” Joey said, struggling with Redondo’s bombshell.
“On the plus side, the Invisible Hand will leave you alone. As I said, you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“No!” Joey said again, this time more forcefully, refusing to accept the situation. This was terrible news. Not just Redondo’s condition, but the condition of the world at large… Joey had just found out that a magical light he’d never known existed was real, and it was about to be extinguished. “Can’t you stop them?”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do all these years?”
Not much, judging by the looks of this place, Joey thought. This time he had the good sense not to voice that opinion. Instead he said, “You can’t give up. You used to be a great magician.”
“Great?” Redondo was offended. “First of all, I was never merely ‘great.’ I was magnificent.”
“Sorry. Magnificent.”
“Second, I thought you said you’ve never heard of me.”
“That was this morning. I’ve been up all night reading about you on my phone.”
“On your phone.” Redondo rolled his eyes. “Saints preserve us.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Everything. I’m surprised you could find any mention of me using one of those things. They’ve done their best to erase me from memory.”
“But I did find you. And I found this place. Coming from ‘the least magical place in the world,’ I believed enough to find my way here! That should count for something.”
Redondo stroked his mustache, thinking. “It should. You’re right; it should.”
“Of course it should! Don’t let whatever’s in here die with you. Don’t let them win. You can’t!” Joey waved at the posters of Redondo’s glory days, hung throughout the lobby. “Look at you up there. What happened to that guy? Where’d he go?”
“He was diagnosed with lung cancer.”
“You’re not dead yet, are you?” Joey knew he was being harsh, but he was too desperate to care. “What about your legacy? Don’t you want to leave something behind. If magic was your life’s work, keep it going. Pass the torch.”
Redondo cast about, struggling with the decision. “You don’t know what you’re asking.” He had a pained expression on his face. “I swore I wouldn’t… I can’t.”
“You can,” Joey implored Redondo. “My dad told me something this morning. He said, ‘Whether you think you can or you can’t… you’re right.’ What do you think? It’s your decision.”
Redondo nodded ever so slightly. He let out a sigh. “Shamed by an accountant. What’s the world coming to?”
“Teach me what you know. I promise, you won’t regret it.”
Redondo’s eyes fell upon a poster where he was depicted onstage working alongside an assistant, a young boy he was about to saw in half. “You might,” he said, a note of foreboding in his voice.
Joey studied Redondo. “Is that a yes?” His chest inflated. His eyes lit up with hope. “What are you—what are you saying right now?”
“I’m saying…” Redondo took a breath, possibly second-guessing himself. Joey couldn’t read his expression, but this was it. Redondo was either going to send him home or invite him in. This was the moment. Joey h
eld his breath and waited.
“I’m saying, onward, young magician. We have work to do.”
6 The Nature of Magic
“I should warn you, this isn’t going to go the way you think,” Redondo told Joey as he led him back into the main house of the theater.
“Nothing has so far,” Joey replied. “I’m getting used to it.”
“Good. Don’t expect that to change. In fact, from this point on, expect only the unexpected.”
“Got it.”
“The first thing you need to learn is I won’t be teaching you anything.”
Joey stopped dead in his tracks. “Okay, I wasn’t expecting that. Didn’t we just agree that you were going to teach me magic?”
“When did I say that?” Redondo continued down the aisle without breaking his stride. “If you recall, my exact words were ‘we have work to do.’ Work, young Kopecky. I’m not going to teach you; I’m going to test you. This isn’t an apprenticeship. I’m not running a school of witchcraft and wizardry here.”
Joey pointed. “I knew you got the Hogwarts reference!” he said, hustling after Redondo.
Redondo grunted. “Of course I got the reference. I’ve been living off the grid, not under a rock. The fact remains, if you’re expecting a magical education, you’re going to be disappointed. That’s the stuff of storybooks and movies. This is the real world. If you want to learn magic, you’ll do it by watching and absorbing. By picking up whatever you’re able to pick up. You figure it out as you go; that’s how I did it. That’s how it’s always been. Do you understand what I am saying?”
“Are you sure we’ve got that kind of time?” Joey asked, trying to make his point delicately. Surely Redondo didn’t need to be reminded that he only had a week to live.
“Don’t worry about time. If you’re successful, there will be plenty of time later.”
“How? You mean you might beat the cancer after all?”
Now it was Redondo’s turn to stop dead in his tracks. He turned around to face Joey, looking like he smelled something he didn’t care for. “No. I told you that already. Please don’t keep bringing up my condition. It’s depressing. That’s not the kind of energy we need right now.”
“Right. Sorry,” Joey said, hopelessly confused.
“Follow me.” Redondo marched down the aisle past the front row. He turned before he reached the stage, heading for a hidden door in the wall. He paused before opening it. “Bring the Mystery Box,” he told Joey.
“I thought you said we didn’t need that anymore.”
“It’s not the box we need, but what’s inside it.”
“It’s empty.”
“Is it?” Redondo cocked an eyebrow and waited. Joey gave in and climbed up onstage to retrieve the magic set. He gave it a good shake as he picked it up by the handle. It felt empty to him. Coming back, he caught Redondo rubbing the burned portion of his hand as he stood facing the burned-out stage. He had a haunted look in his eyes. Joey wanted to ask him about the fire, but he decided to hold off on it. He didn’t want to put out any more bad energy. Upon his return, Redondo clicked his tongue and pushed the door open. “Through here.”
From there they went downstairs to a storage area filled with props: a man-size safe, a guillotine, and in the corner, a birdcage with three perfectly folded origami birds perched inside. Redondo threw a sheet over the cage, then pulled it away to reveal three white doves flapping their wings. Redondo took one bird out of the cage, held it close, and released it in Joey’s face, shouting, “Hassan!”
Joey threw his hands up to keep the bird from hitting him, but it disappeared en route, and he was left waving at empty air. Redondo tittered, reaching back into the cage for another dove. “What was that about?” Joey asked.
In lieu of a response, Redondo tossed a fresh bird at Joey, this time shouting, “Valkov!” Joey flinched again, but his reaction was less pronounced the second time around. Once again the bird vanished after leaving Redondo’s hands.
“Not bad,” Joey said, looking around for the doves. They were both gone. “Were those magic words?”
“No,” said Redondo. “Magic birds.”
“Okay,” Joey said, not really understanding. He was impressed by the trick, but he wasn’t sure what, if anything, he was supposed to have learned by watching Redondo perform it. He wasn’t even ready for it when it happened. Each bird vanished too fast for him to see how Redondo had done it, but there was one more left in the cage. “Can you do that again? I totally missed—”
“This way,” Redondo said, already moving on. “We’re nearly there.”
“Where are we going?”
Down another level, they pressed on through an underground library. Weaving their way through the labyrinthine stacks, they eventually arrived at a black door with a sign that read THEATER MANAGER. Behind that door was the kind of mess that made the rest of the theater look clean. It was overflowing with ideas, plans, random thoughts, and distractions. There were papers piled high on a desk and towers of books on the floor. A mosaic of multicolored Post-it notes and index cards papered the walls.
“This is some office,” Joey said, trying not to sound critical.
“This is where I’ve been planning my comeback for the last twenty years.” Redondo paused to tap at a dying bulb, trying to coax more light out of it. “It’s a process. At least, it was. As you said, it’s time to pass the torch.”
“I’m ready.”
“You’re not ready,” Redondo said, taking a seat behind the desk. “You don’t know the first thing about magic.”
“I know you have to believe.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Tell me. Whatever it is, I’m in.” Joey pulled up a chair across from Redondo, accidentally knocking over a sprawling house of cards in the middle of the floor. It was like a mansion of cards, it was so big. Joey started to apologize, but cut himself off midsentence as the card sculpture flew apart, then re-formed, bigger and better in the shape of the Statue of Liberty. “Okay, how does that work?” Joey asked. “Magic cards?”
“Not exactly.” Redondo held up his deck of fortune-telling cards. “This is a deck of magic cards.” He pointed to the sculpture. “Those are merely enchanted.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I’m getting to that.” Redondo settled into his chair. He seemed to be wondering where to begin. Joey said nothing. Redondo looked like he was finally getting ready to drop some knowledge. Joey waited him out, and was rewarded for his patience. “If you’re going to understand what magic is, you first need to understand what it was.”
Joey scooted forward, eager to learn. “I’m listening.”
“It used to be everywhere,” Redondo began. “Magic. It was a part of life. Part of nature. Everyone believed. Ages ago, long before your time—or mine—magic flowed through the air like the breeze… an unseen energy touching everything… connecting everything.”
“Like Wi-Fi,” Joey said.
Redondo pursed his lips. His eyes were cold. “Not like Wi-Fi.”
“I’m going to shut up now,” Joey said. He mimed locking his lips and tossing away the key, then waited for Redondo to pick up where he had left off. Redondo grumbled, but he went on with the tutorial.
“People today believe it was just the stuff of legends, but in Merlin’s day—what? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Joey didn’t even realize he’d been making a face, but it was the second time Redondo had mentioned Merlin. He couldn’t contain his surprise. “Merlin was real?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, I do!” Joey said quickly. “Trust me, I’m ready to believe anything at this point. I just didn’t expect…” He trailed off and touched a hand to his forehead, trying to order his thoughts. “I guess I’m just one of the people who always thought those stories were legends. Also, I thought that was a whole other kind of magic. People like you and Houdini… Aren’t you different from wizards like
Gandalf and Merlin?”
“Actually, Gandalf was fictional, but otherwise, no, we’re not. Magic is magic, young Kopecky. The only difference between Houdini and Merlin was the fashion of the era in which they lived.”
“Really? So, they were like… the same power level?”
“I believe so.” Redondo bunched up his lips. “I suppose it’s debatable. It’s not as though we can check the back of their baseball cards and compare statistics, but I assure you, the answer to your question has nothing to do with their wardrobe. Would you think me to be a more capable magician if I were to wear a funny hat or grow a long bushy beard? I don’t think so. This isn’t medieval times; nor is it Brooklyn.”
“Got it. No beards necessary. Should I be writing this down?”
Redondo stared at Joey for several seconds, looking like he was debating whether or not to continue. “Moving on,” he said gruffly. “After Merlin’s death things changed. Magic was cut off. Locked away. We don’t know how. We don’t know why. There are, of course, stories. There are always stories, but little is known. We do, however, know magic is still out there. It exists as an elemental force, but the world somehow has less of it. Less access. Today we rely on magical objects. Relics. Unique artifacts and places that were infused with magic back during the lost golden age. Ancient castles, secluded forests… Even the ground upon which this theater was first built is one such place. The Majestic itself is full of rare and powerful relics. Some are more powerful than others. This…” Redondo pressed his palms together as if in prayer, and then slowly drew them apart. A classic magician’s wand, black with a white tip, appeared and hovered between his hands. “This is the most powerful of them all.” The room brightened with a warm, golden light. “What you see before you once belonged to Harry Houdini.”
“You knew him?” Joey ogled the floating wand before him. Redondo nodded. “He taught you?” Joey asked.
Redondo shook his head. “I learned from him.”
“How?”
“After I inherited the wand, the ghost of him lingered inside it. For a time.”
Order of the Majestic Page 7
