Magic City

by Paula Guran

  She fell back and clung to Grant’s arm until her heart sank from her throat.

  “He knows we’re on to him,” Grant said. “Are you sure you want to help?”

  “I didn’t see it. I didn’t even look.”

  “You expected the car to be there. Why should you have to look?”

  She would never, ever take a blind step again. Always, she would creep slowly around corners and tread lightly on the ground before her. “Just like no one expects a housewife or a businessman from the Midwest to cheat at table games in Vegas.”

  “Just so.”

  The elevator doors slid shut, and the hum of the cables, the ding of the lights, returned to normal. Normal—and what did that mean again?

  “Maybe we should take the stairs,” Julie murmured.

  “Not a bad idea,” Grant answered, looking on her with an amused glint in his eye that she thought was totally out of place, given that she’d almost died.

  Down another hallway and around a corner, they reached the door to the emergency stairs. The resort didn’t bother putting any frills into the stairwell, which most of its patrons would never see: the tower was made of echoing concrete, the railings were steel, the stairs had nonskid treads underfoot. The stairs seemed to wind upward forever.

  “How do you even know where he is? If he knows you’re looking for him, he’s probably out of town by now.”

  “We were never following him. He’s never left his room.”

  “Then who was at my table?”

  “That’s a good question, isn’t it?”

  This was going to be a long, long climb.

  Grant led, and Julie was happy to let him do so. At every exit door, he stopped, held before it a device that looked like an old-fashioned pocket watch, with a brass casing and a lumpy knob and ring protruding. After regarding the watch a moment, he’d stuff it back in his trouser pocket and continue on.

  She guessed he was in his thirties, but now she wasn’t sure—he seemed both young and old. He moved with energy, striding up the stairs without pause, without a hitch in his breath. But he also moved with consideration, with purpose, without a wasted motion. She’d never seen his show, and thought now that she might. He’d do all the old magic tricks, the cards and rings and disappearing box trick, maybe even pull a rabbit from a hat, and his every motion would be precise and enthralling. And it would all be tricks, she reminded herself.

  After three flights, she hauled herself up by the railing, huffing for air. If Grant was frustrated at the pauses she made on each landing, he didn’t let on. He just studied his watch a little longer.

  Finally, on about the fifth or sixth floor, he consulted his watch and lifted an eyebrow. Then he opened the door. Julie braced for danger—after the empty elevator shaft, anything could happen: explosions blasting in their faces, ax-wielding murderer waiting for them, Mafioso gunfight—But nothing happened.

  “Shall we?” Grant said, gesturing through the doorway as if they were entering a fancy restaurant.

  She wasn’t sure she really wanted to go, but she did. Leaning in, she looked both ways, up and down the hallway, then stepped gingerly on the carpet, thinking it might turn to quicksand and swallow her. It didn’t. Grant slipped in behind her and closed the door.

  This wing of the hotel had been refurbished in the last few years and still looked newish. The carpet was thick, the soft recessed lighting on the russet walls was luxurious and inviting. In a few more years, the décor would start to look worn, and the earth tones and geometric patterns would look dated. Vegas wore out things the way it wore out people. For now, though, it was all very impressive.

  They lingered by the emergency door; Grant seemed to expect something to happen. Consulting his watch again, he turned it to the left and right, considering. She craned her neck, trying to get a better look at it. It didn’t seem to have numbers on its face.

  “What’s that thing do?” she asked.

  “It points,” he said.

  Of course it did.

  He moved down the hallway to the right, glancing at the watch, then at doorways. At the end of the hall, he stopped and nodded, then made a motion with his hands.

  “More magic?” she said, moving beside him.

  “No. Lockpick.” He held up a flat plastic key card. “Universal code.”

  “Oh my God, if the resort knew you were doing this—and I’m right here with you. I could lose my job—”

  “They’ll never find out.”

  She glanced to the end of the hallway, to the glass bubble in the ceiling where the security camera was planted.

  “Are you sure about that? Am I supposed to just trust you?”

  His lips turned a wry smile. “I did warn you that you probably ought to stay out of this. It’s not too late.”

  “What, and take the elevator back down? I don’t think so.”

  “There you go—you trust me more than the elevator.”

  She crossed her arms and sighed. “I’m not sure I agree with that logic.”

  “It isn’t logic,” he said. “It’s instinct. Yours are good, you should listen to them.”

  She considered—any other dealer, any sane dealer, would have left the whole problem to Ryan and security. Catching cheaters once they left the table was above her pay grade, as they said. But she wanted to know. The same prickling at her neck that told her something was wrong with yesterday’s businessman and today’s housewife, also told her that Odysseus Grant had answers.

  “What can I do to help?” she asked.

  “Keep a look out.”

  He slipped the card in the lock, and the door popped open. She wouldn’t have been surprised if an unassuming guest wrapped in a bath towel screamed a protest, but the room was unoccupied. After a moment, Grant entered and began exploring.

  Julie stayed by the door, glancing back and forth, up and down the hallway as he had requested. She kept expecting guys from security to come pounding down the hallway. But she also had to consider: Grant wouldn’t be doing this if he didn’t have a way to keep it secret. She couldn’t even imagine how he was fooling the cameras. The cameras won’t even pick up what I did, he’d said. Did the casino’s security department even know what they had working under their noses?

  She looked back in the room to check his progress. “You expected that watch, that whatever it is, to lead you right to the guy, did you?”

  “Yes, it should have,” Grant said, sounding curious rather than frustrated. “Ah, there we are.” He opened the top bureau drawer.

  “What?” She craned forward to see.

  Using a handkerchief, he reached into the drawer and picked up a small object. Resting on the cloth was a twenty-five dollar chip bound with twine to the burned-down stub of a red candle. The item evoked a feeling of dread in her; it made her imagine an artifact from some long-extinct civilization that practiced human sacrifice. Whatever this thing was, no good could ever come of it.

  “A decoy,” Grant said. “Rather clever, really.”

  “Look, I can call security, have them check the cameras, look for anyone suspicious—they’ll know who’s been in this room.”

  “No. You’ve seen how he’s disguising himself; he’s a master of illusion. Mundane security has no idea what they’re looking for. I’ll find him.” He broke the decoy, tearing at the twine, crumbling the candle, throwing the pieces away. Even broken, the pieces made her shiver.

  Then they were back in the hallway. Grant again consulted his watch, but they reached the end of the hallway without finding his quarry.

  They could be at this all day.

  “Maybe we should try knocking on doors. You’ll be able to spot the guy if he answers.”

  “That’s probably not a good idea. Especially if he knows we’re coming.”

  “How long until you give up?” she said, checking her phone to get the time. The thing had gone dead, out of power. Of course it had. And Grant’s watch didn’t tell time.

  “Never,” he
murmured, returning to the emergency stairs.

  She started to follow him when her eye caught on an incongruity, because the afternoon had been filled with them. A service cart was parked outside a room about halfway down the hallway. Dishes of a picked-over meal littered the white linen tablecloth, along with an empty bottle of wine, and two used wine glasses. Nothing unusual at all about seeing such a thing outside a room in a hotel. Except she was absolutely sure it had not been there before.

  “Hey—wait a minute,” she said, approaching the cart slowly. The emergency stair door had already shut, though, and he was gone. She went after him, hauling open the door.

  Which opened into a hallway, just like the one she’d left.

  Vertigo made her vision go sideways a moment, and she thought she might faint. Shutting the door quickly, she leaned against it and tried to catch her breath. She’d started gasping for air. This was stupid—it was just a door. She’d imagined it. Her mind was playing tricks, and Grant was right, she should have stayed back in the casino.

  No, she was a sensible woman, and she trusted her eyes. She opened the door again, and this time when she saw the second, identical—impossible—hallway through it, she stayed calm, and kept her breathing steady.

  Stepping gently, she went through the door, careful to hold it open, giving her an escape route. Her feet touched carpet instead of concrete. She looked back and forth—same hallway. Or maybe not—the room service cart wasn’t here.

  “Odysseus?” she called, feeling silly using the name. His stage name, probably, but he hadn’t given her another one to call him. His real name was probably something plain, like Joe or Frank. On second thought, considering the watch, the universal lockpick, his talk of spells, his weird knowledge—Odysseus might very well be his real name.

  “Odysseus Grant?” she repeated. No answer. Behind one of the doors, muted laughter echoed from a television.

  She retreated to the original hallway and let the door close. Here, the same TV buzzing with the same noise, obnoxious canned laughter on some sitcom. She could believe she hadn’t ever left, that she hadn’t opened the door and seen another hallway rather than the stairs that should have been there. This was some kind of optical illusion. A trick done with mirrors.

  The room service cart was gone.

  She ran down the hall to where it had been, felt around the spot where she was sure she had seen it—nothing. She continued on to the opposite end of the hallway, past the elevators which she didn’t dare try, to the other set of emergency stairs. Holding her breath, she opened the door—and found herself staring into another hallway, identical to the one she was standing in. When she ran to the opposite end of that corridor, and tried the other door there, she found the same thing—another hallway, with the same numbers outside the rooms, the same inane voices from the television.

  Bait. The room service cart had been bait, used to distract her, to draw her back after Grant had already left. And now she was trapped.

  Casinos, especially the big ones at the mega resorts on the Strip, are built to be mazes. From the middle of the casino, you can’t readily find the exit. Sure, the place is as big as a few football fields lined up, the walkways are all wide and sweeping to facilitate ease of movement. The fire codes mean the casino can’t actually lock you in. But when you’re surrounded by ringing slot machines and video poker and a million blinking lights, when the lack of windows means that if you didn’t have your watch or phone you’d have no way to tell the time, when the dealer at the blackjack table will keep dealing cards and taking your chips as the hours slip by—you leave by an act of will, not because the way out is readily apparent.

  More than that, though, the resort is its own world. Worlds within worlds. You enter and never have to leave. Hotel, restaurants, shopping, gaming, shows, spas, all right here. You can even get married if you want, in a nice little chapel, tastefully decorated in soft colors and pews of warm mahogany, nothing like those tawdry places outside. You can get a package deal: wedding, room for the weekend and a limo to the airport. The resort makes it easy for you to come and spend your money. It’s a maze, and as long as your credit card stays good they don’t much care whether you ever get out.

  That, too, was a certain kind of magic.

  Grant climbed two flights of stairs, the single hand on his pocket watch giving no indication that anything untoward lay beyond the door at each landing, before he noticed that the earnest blackjack dealer was no longer with him.

  He paused and called down, “Julie?” His voice echoed, and he received no response. He thought he’d been cautious enough. He looked around; the staircase had suddenly become sinister.

  One of the notable characteristics of a very tall staircase like this one was that it all looked the same, minimalist and unwelcoming. This landing was exactly like the last, this flight of stairs like the first six he’d climbed up.

  The number painted on the door at this landing was five. He turned around, descended a flight, looked at the door—which also read five. And the one below it. Climbing back up, he returned to where he’d stopped. Five again, or rather, still. Five and five and five. Somewhere between this floor and the last, his journey had become a loop. Which meant he was in trouble, and so was Julie.

  There were still doorways, which meant there was still a way out.

  Five was one of the mystic numbers—well, any number could be mystic to the right person under the right circumstances. Go to the casino and ask people what their lucky numbers were, and every number, up to a hundred and often beyond, would be represented. But five—it was a prime number, some cultures counted five elements, a pentagram had five points. It was the number of limbs to the human body, if you counted the head. A number of power, of binding.

  What kind of power did it take to bend a stairwell, Escher-like, upon itself? This magician, who’d orchestrated all manner of tricks and traps, was drawing on an impressive source of it. And that’s why the culprit hadn’t fled—he’d built up a base of power here in the hotel, in order to initiate his scheme. He was counting on that power to protect himself now.

  When turning off a light without a switch, unplugging the lamp made so much more sense than breaking the light bulb. Grant needed to find this magician.

  He pocketed his watch and drew out a few tools he had brought with him: a white candle, a yard of red thread, and a book of matches.

  Julie paced in front of the doorway. She thought it was the first one, the original one that she and Grant had come through, but she couldn’t be entirely sure. She’d gotten turned around.

  How long before Grant noticed she was missing? What were the rules of hiking in the wilderness? Stay still, call for help, until someone finds you. She took out her phone again and shook it, as if that kind of desperate, sympathetic magic would work. It didn’t. Still dead. She’d be trapped here forever. She couldn’t even call 911 to come and rescue her. Her own fault, for getting involved in a mess she didn’t know anything about. She should never have followed Grant.

  No, that hadn’t been a mistake. Her mistake had been panicking and running off half-cocked. This—none of this could be real. It went against all the laws of physics. So if it wasn’t real, what was it? An illusion. Maybe she couldn’t trust her eyes after all, at least not all the time.

  She closed her eyes. Now she didn’t see anything. The TV had fallen silent. This smelled like a hotel hallway—lint, carper cleaner. A place devoid of character. She stood before a door, and when she opened it, she’d step through to a concrete stairwell, where she’d walk straight down, back to the lobby and the casino, back to work, and she wouldn’t ask any more questions about magic.

  Reaching out, she flailed a bit before finding the doorknob. Her hand closed on it, and turned. She pushed it opened and stepped through.

  And felt concrete beneath her feet.

  She opened her eyes, and was in the stairwell, standing right in front of Odysseus Grant. On the floor between them sat a votive c
andle and a length of red thread tied in a complicated pattern of knots. Grant held a match in one hand and the book it came from in the other, ready to light.

  “How did you do that?” he asked, seeming genuinely startled. His wide eyes and suspicious frown were a little unnerving.

  She glanced over her shoulder, and back at him. “I closed my eyes. I figured none of it was real—so I just didn’t look.”

  His expression softened into a smile. “Well done.” He crouched and quickly gathered up items, shoving thread, candle, and matches into his pockets. “He’s protecting himself with a field of illusion. He must be right here—he must have been here the whole time.” He nodded past her to the hallway.

  “How do you know?”

  “Fifth floor. It should have been obvious,” he said.

  “Obvious?” she said, nearly laughing. “Really?”

  “Well, partially obvious.”

  Which sounded like “sort of pregnant” to her. Before she could prod further, he urged her back into the hallway and let the door shut. It sounded a little like a death knell.

  “Now, we just have to figure out what room he’s in. Is there a room five fifty-five here?”

  “On the other end, I think.”

  “Excellent. He’s blown his cover.” Grant set off with long strides. Julie scurried to keep up.

  At room 555, Grant tried his universal key card, slipping it in and out of the slot. It didn’t work. “This’ll take a little more effort, I think. No matter.” He waved a hand over the keycard and tried again. And again. It still didn’t work.

  A growl drew Julie’s attention to the other end of the hallway, back the way they’d come.

  A creature huddled there, staring with eyes that glowed like hot iron. At first, she thought it was a dog. But it wasn’t. This thing was slate gray, hairless, with a stout head as big as its chest and no neck to speak of. Skin drooped in folds around its shoulders and limbs, and knobby growths covering its back gave it an armored look. Her mind went through a catalog of four-legged predators, searching for possibilities: hyena, lion, bear, badger on steroids, dragon.