“I won’t keep you out,” Redondo told Manchester. “I’ll even give you a key.”
He looked at Joey. It took a second for Joey to understand what was being asked of him.
“My key?” Joey said.
Redondo nodded.
“But I don’t—I want—” Joey sputtered.
“There’s no point in keeping it any longer. After tonight it will be just another key.”
“That’s right. You won’t be needing it anymore,” Manchester said, motioning for Joey to hand it over. Joey’s heart broke as he limped over to surrender it. He placed it in Manchester’s chalk-white palm. His only connection to the world of magic, gone. Manchester gripped the key, victorious. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Joey. To show my gratitude, I’m going to leave you be. Consider your part in the show finished. Don’t bother me, and I won’t bother you.” Manchester rested his hand on his own chest. “You have my word.”
Joey scoffed. “What’s that worth?”
“More than you think. Redondo, I told you I wouldn’t be leaving here empty-handed, and I meant it. This key is a lovely gesture on your part, but it’s not enough. I’m going to need some assurances you won’t change the locks on me while I’m gone.”
“What more assurances could you possibly need? You have Shazad.”
“Not just Shazad.” Manchester winked and held out his hat. Black smoke came billowing out of it like pollution from a factory smokestack. The dark cloud enveloped him and spread out to fill half the room. Redondo started coughing again as the smoke aggravated his condition. Joey felt Leanora rush past him and heard her let out a sharp cry, which was quickly muffled. “Leanora?” Joey said, reaching around blindly. “LEA?” She didn’t answer. Through the smoke, Joey saw a silhouetted figure wave goodbye.
“Until tonight,” Manchester said. “Farewell.”
When the smoke cleared, he was gone. So was Leanora.
Once he realized Manchester had taken another hostage, Redondo turned to Joey with a look of death. “I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
Joey was beyond devastated. He had been the one to set these events in motion. It was his fault, but Shazad and Leanora would be the ones to pay for his mistakes—either them or Redondo. “What are we going to do?” Joey asked, praying there was some way out of this.
“We?” Redondo’s lip twitched. “I’m sorry, did you say ‘we’? There is no ‘we,’ young Kopecky. We are through. Weren’t you paying attention?”
“Redondo, you don’t have to blame me for this, all right? I blame myself already, but you don’t think… You can’t possibly think I was working with him. Not on purpose.”
Redondo looked away, unwilling to hear Joey’s protestations. “Whether you meant to help him or not is irrelevant. You did his work for him.”
“He tricked me!”
“Of course he tricked you,” Redondo said sharply. “That’s what he does. Illusions, deceptions… These things are his stock in trade. I don’t blame Manchester for being what he is. I blame you for letting him win.”
“What?”
“You can’t let them win!” Redondo barked. “Isn’t that what you told me?”
“He didn’t win anything yet,” Joey said. “You still have the wand. You’re not going to give it to him, are you? Can’t you use it to get Leanora and Shazad back?”
A joyless laugh escaped Redondo. “Suddenly I seem to be capable of all kinds of heroics in your eyes. You’re right. I could try to save both them and the wand, but answer me this: What if I fail? What happens to Leanora and Shazad then? What do you think Grayson would do to them as punishment?” Redondo screwed up his face. “I don’t like to think about it. I’m sure it comes as quite a shock to you, but I actually do care about their lives.”
“I never thought you didn’t care.”
“Yes, you did. You thought I got my old assistant killed, and you were afraid that I was blindly marching the three of you toward that same fate. Don’t bother denying it. I know Grayson preyed on your doubts and fears to plant those ideas in your mind, but you were the one who chose to believe his version of events. The reality he created for you with subtle hints and bits of information… You gave it life.”
“You could have squashed it if you just told me the truth. Why didn’t you? You didn’t tell me anything.”
Redondo gave Joey a harsh look. He was in no mood to be lectured. “I told you that you’d have to make a choice. Are you going to inspire wonder or terror? What did you inspire in Leanora and Shazad when you convinced them to go digging into my past?” Redondo shook his head, disgusted. “How little you must think of me. Do you honestly believe I would have let any of you in here if I had been responsible for the death of a child?”
“I’m sorry. I was scared. I didn’t know what to believe.”
“That’s the problem. You didn’t believe in me any more than you believed in yourself. As soon as things got difficult, you started looking for an excuse to quit. An escape. A way out. Well, now you have one.”
Joey was miserable. Redondo looked the same. He started up the steps, traumatized and defeated, presumably heading back to his office.
“What about Shazad and Leanora?” Joey called after him. “What’s going to happen to them?”
Redondo paused halfway up and took out his special deck of cards. “I’ll get them back,” he said, tapping the box against an open palm. “Whatever the cost.” Redondo drew a single card: Death.
Joey swallowed hard, looking at the picture of a hooded figure, scythe in hand. “He’s going to kill you.”
“Redondo the Magnificent died a long time ago. Grayson’s just going to finish the job.” He took a sad, last look at the posters in the theater lobby. “You were right about this place. It is a ghost world.” Joey didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say. A grimace formed on Redondo’s lips as he fit the Death card back into his deck. “I told you at the beginning: This is the end.” He raised his hand, poised to snap his fingers. “Goodbye, Joey.”
Snap!
Joey felt himself losing his balance for a fraction of a second. The disorientation passed quickly, and when he recovered, he was back in Exemplar Academy. Joey recognized the hallway. He was right where Janelle had left him when she’d run off to make sure she didn’t accidentally destroy the world with an artificially generated black hole. It was almost funny. Now Joey felt like he was the one more likely to bring about the end of the world as they knew it.
The lights were off inside the gymnasium. Joey didn’t hear Esteban or his trainer inside. He’d been gone for hours. Joey felt as though he had aged years in those hours. Still shell-shocked, he looked around for a place to sit down. The pain in his ankle was returning. Joey had deprioritized the injury in his mind after Manchester had crawled out of his own hat, but now there was nothing to distract him. He was about to sit down in the middle of the hallway when his parents came hustling around the corner with Dr. Cho.
“There you are!” his mother said, relieved. “We’ve been looking all over for you. Why haven’t you been answering your pho—OH MY GOD, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?”
16 Don’t Dream It’s Over
Joey’s mother broke into a run, with Dr. Cho close behind, looking equal parts confused and alarmed. Joey’s father brought up the rear with a not again look on his face. As Joey’s mother fussed over his wounded ankle and rattled off questions he couldn’t possibly answer truthfully, he exaggerated his pain, trying to buy himself more time to come up with a plausible explanation for both his absence and his injuries. Meanwhile, Joey’s father put his hands on his hips and shook his head, unable to get over the second mysterious disappearance of his shoes—both shoes this time! He kept asking Joey what happened to them. He knew Joey had had them on when they’d left the apartment that morning. He’d checked. Joey had to know something. The shoes had to be here somewhere. Thankfully, the interrogation stopped when Joey’s mother angrily shushed his father, pointing o
ut that their son was a bloody mess. She forbade him from asking any more questions about the shoes until after they got him some help.
Reluctantly tabling the matter for the time being, Joey’s father helped him up. They went straight to the nurse’s office, where Joey’s ankle was cleaned and wrapped up in a bandage. After that he had no choice but to start talking. He didn’t know where to begin, but that was decided for him. The first thing everyone wanted to know was where Janelle had been when he got hurt.
“Where is she now?” Joey’s father asked. “Wasn’t she supposed to be showing you around?”
“Don’t be mad at her,” Joey said. “This isn’t Janelle’s fault. I kind of ditched her.”
“You what?”
Not wanting to get Janelle in trouble, Joey spun a tale about feeling overcome with anxiety. He said he had a panic attack, or something close to it, and felt a sudden need to get away. Central Park was right across the street from the school, which was convenient for Joey’s story. “I started feeling claustrophobic. I needed air,” he said, inventing wildly. “I ducked out and went for a walk in the park. I took off my shoes,” he added, throwing in important details to help sell the story. “I don’t know.… It’s a nice day out.… Feeling the grass under my feet… helped calm me down. I was on my way back when someone’s dog came out of nowhere and bit me.”
The last part had the benefit of being true. His parents believed him. After fending off a few more questions about the fictitious dog in the park, Joey was allowed to rest while his parents left the room to talk privately with Dr. Cho. He lay down on the cushioned bench for patients in the nurse’s office, relieved his part in the conversation was over. Outside the room, he heard his mom fire off a series of questions. “What do you think? Should we be worried? Are we pushing him too hard? Is this too much too fast?” Joey’s father tried to allay her fears, but she shushed him again, wanting to hear what Dr. Cho thought. Joey sat up, trying to eavesdrop, but Janelle appeared in the doorway with a few questions of her own.
“There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Sorry.” Joey dropped back down. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Forget about me—look at you! Are you okay?”
“Eh.” Joey jangled his foot, testing his ankle. The bandage and athletic tape constricted his movement, which helped with the pain. “I’ll live.”
“What the heck happened?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Joey said, sullen. “What about you? Everything okay in the basement? Don’t worry. I didn’t say anything about your project.” He had actually forgotten about Janelle’s glitching supercollider until he’d gotten back to Exemplar. At the moment Joey was strangely numb to the prospect of a black hole swallowing up the universe. He might have even viewed it as a welcome escape.
Janelle hedged a bit. “Things didn’t exactly go as planned, but it’s all good. Completely unstable.”
“Unstable is good?”
“Unstable black holes are. They shrink away to nothing and collapse. What we don’t want is a stable black hole that’s going to stick around for any real amount of time.”
“Right.”
“Don’t tell anyone. I’ll get in so much trouble.” Janelle looked over her shoulder. The grown-ups were returning. “I’ve got to go check on it. I’ll show you tomorrow if it’s still here. Are you coming back?”
Joey didn’t say anything. He didn’t know the answer. There was no telling what tomorrow held now.
* * *
Dr. Cho offered to send the family home in a car service so Joey wouldn’t have to limp through the streets of New York without any shoes on. Joey was grateful for that, because it enabled him to pretend to sleep the whole ride back to Hoboken and avoid discussing what had happened any further with his parents. It was hard enough enduring his mother’s worried looks and his father’s judgmental glare without actually talking about it. All the excitement and positivity his mom and dad had exhibited on the way in that morning was gone. The last thing Joey saw before he closed his eyes was his father looking at him like Joey had blown his shot at the big time. Joey couldn’t blame him for being disappointed. He had to admit, Exemplar was cooler than he had expected. Janelle had been right about that. Any place the Invisible Hand wanted to keep Joey out of had to have something going for it, but that was the real problem for Joey—Manchester and the Invisible Hand. Exemplar Academy didn’t matter anymore. Joey thought back to what Manchester had said, wondering what was going to happen when the man finally got hold of Houdini’s wand. Could he really take over the world? It seemed impossible, but then, there wasn’t a single thing that had happened to Joey in the last forty-eight hours that wasn’t impossible.
Joey remembered how he had felt wielding Houdini’s wand, and he was a novice! Manchester had twenty years of magical experience or more. Surely he’d be able to take charge of the Invisible Hand with that kind of power at his fingertips, and with their support, he was capable of anything. The Invisible Hand was made up of the most ruthless, powerful, and manipulative magicians in the world. If Redondo, Leanora, and Shazad were to be believed (and Joey had no reason to doubt them), the group was practically running the planet already. Manchester had told Redondo he wanted to come out of the shadows and take his rightful place center stage. The more Joey thought about it, the more he became convinced that a comic-book supervillain-style global takeover was in the works and there was nothing he could do about it. There wasn’t anyone he could tell. The only people he knew who would believe him were Redondo, Leanora, and Shazad. Redondo had kicked him out, and Leanora and Shazad were in no position to help.
Joey felt a fresh pang of guilt thinking about Leanora and Shazad trapped in Manchester’s magic top hat. It should be me in that hat, he thought. It would have been him if Shazad had not stepped up to rescue him from the wolf. Joey blamed himself for everything that had gone wrong that day. They wouldn’t have even been in Siberia if not for him. Manchester had been right—his doubt and fear had infected everyone.
Joey cursed himself for letting Manchester get inside his head. Why did he have to go digging into Redondo’s past? If he was afraid about what Redondo had done, or what might happen to him if he stayed on, he should have just left. Taken himself out of the competition for the wand. Either Shazad or Leanora would have won it, and everything would have been fine. Shazad would have kept the wand safe in Jorako. Leanora would have taken the wand on the road and used it against people like Manchester.
What would you have done with it? Joey asked himself. He still didn’t have an answer for that, any more than he had an answer for what he could do to fix things. He wanted to make up for what he had done and help Redondo in some way, but how? He couldn’t even get back into the theater. He was out, and it was over. Manchester was going to kill Redondo and take the wand. There was nothing to stop him now.
The car pulled up in front of Joey’s apartment building and he “woke up” without needing to be roused. His ankle still hurt when he put pressure on it, but he declined his parents’ offers of assistance and went inside under his own steam. He was determined to keep his mom and dad at arm’s length until he was ready to talk, and he couldn’t do that if he was using one of them as a crutch.
As soon as they were back in the apartment, Joey said he was still tired and wanted to go lie down. His mother said she thought that was a good idea. His father didn’t say anything, but he stepped aside and gave Joey his space as he went to his room and closed the door. Joey collapsed onto his bed. He wasn’t lying about being tired. He really was exhausted, both mentally and physically. Joey reached for his phone, but stopped himself before he got it out of his pocket. Ordinarily he would have cycled through various social media and video apps until he nodded off, but now he felt like the phone was one of the Invisible Hand’s digital fingers. He powered it down (after turning off the location services feature).
Depressed and dejected, Joey pulled a pi
llow over his face. Hiding away from the world, he tried to go to sleep for real. At least then he wouldn’t have to think about his problems. Or so he thought. Sleep came to Joey quickly, but it brought him no relief, as Manchester haunted his dreams. Joey had nightmares about Manchester taking over New York, standing in Times Square and using the wand to call down tornadoes and hurricane-force winds as shadows overran the streets. In his dream Manchester thanked Joey once again for his invaluable assistance, saying that he couldn’t have done this without him. “You made this possible, Joey. You were the one!”
“No,” Joey moaned in his sleep, denying the truth his subconscious mind knew all too well. “I didn’t know! You did it—you tricked me!”
Manchester laughed. “You didn’t make it very difficult, did you? After all, I met you only yesterday. Some genius you turned out to be!”
The words cut Joey deep. He already felt responsible, but in his dream he felt ridiculous, too. How had things gone so wrong so fast? Why had he fallen for Manchester’s tricks so easily? He had always been the one who saw through the tricks.
“If you’re wondering how this happened, it’s simple really. I’m a magician. You’re a norm. This is the way the world works. It’s always been like this—you just never knew it before now. A magical life was never in the cards for you, Joey. You finding magic is like being the one dog at the pound who’s not color-blind. Naturally you’re very proud and excited, but what does it amount to in the end? You’re still a dog when all’s said and done, and dogs are meant to obey.” The magical winds that Manchester was controlling swept Joey up into the air. The silhouetted magicians of the Invisible Hand took to the sky as well, soaring over the city and out into the world beyond. Manchester waved at them like the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. “Fly, my pretties! Fly! Fly!” He cackled. “Oh, and, Joey? Remember when I said I would leave you alone after this?” he asked. “I lied.”
Order of the Majestic Page 20
