Imperfect Magic (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 11)

by Patricia Watters

  Still, Dimitri allowed her to help him up.

  Once standing, though a little unsteady—whether it was a stage act or not, Maddy wasn't sure—when Dimitri raised his arms to address the crowd, he was again greeted with enthusiastic applause, which he answered, when the applause finally died, by saying, "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. It's good to be breathing again." That brought a round of laughter, and more applause.

  Dimitri was helped into his robe by a stage assistant, then taking one last bow, he thanked the audience for their participation and enthusiasm and bid them farewell, then took Maddy by the arm and guided her off stage. Once beyond the range of view, he said to her, "You were good out there. Maybe we could go to my dressing room and talk."

  "If it's about me working here and replacing your assistant, the answer is no," Maddy said. Her two days in Sin City were enlightening in ways she hadn't anticipated, especially when her roommates insisted they see the Chippendales, but no way would she live in such a city for any length of time. Ever.

  "Don't worry about working in this club," Dimitri said. "I'm filling in for my dad this week. My proposition has to do with learning about horses."

  Maddy eyed him, questioningly. "Learning what about them?"

  "Everything. You're a ranch girl and I've never even petted a horse."

  "Then go to a local stable and rent one," Maddy said. "They have horses for beginners."

  "I need to know more than that. I need to know how to handle them," Dimitri said. "I'd be hiring you to teach me all you could."

  "Why me? Why not Josh?" Maddy asked. "You could stay with him and Genie and in a week Josh would have you riding all over the ranch and taking care of your horse too."

  "That's what I originally planned," Dimitri said, "but when I got a contract for a month-long run at the Coyote Lounge at the Indian casino near the Dancing Moon Ranch, Genie talked me into staying at the ranch instead of the casino hotel, so I figure you could teach me about horses while I'm there. I'll pay you five-hundred a week."

  "Dollars?" Maddy said, stunned.

  "I'll get my money's worth," Dimitri replied, with the kind of confidence a man had when he was used to getting his way.

  "If you're thinking I'd be free to teach you about horses 24/7, that won't happen," Maddy said. "I have to help manage the guests and I also have ranch chores."

  "I'm thinking more like an hour a day and the rest at night."

  "Yeah, right. I may be new to your Sin City lifestyle, but I'm not naïve, and this smacks of some kind of proposition."

  "It is in a way," Dimitri said. "I'm without an assistant so I'm proposing you be my assistant during my run at the Coyote, which for you would mainly be standing in the background holding props."

  Maddy let out a sardonic laugh. "Tonight you'll be cutting me a check for five-hundred dollars for standing on stage twenty minutes, so why should I settle for five-hundred a week. The way I see it, if I'd be doing that every night for a month, I should be getting fifteen-thousand dollars."

  Dimitri laughed. "You drive a hard bargain. How about twenty-five-hundred for the month, since I'm only contracted four nights a week, and I'll help you with ranch chores. That way I'll learn about horses quicker."

  Maddy didn't know enough about Dimitri to decide if he was serious or not, but if he was, with the twenty-five-hundred dollars he'd be paying her as his assistant and the five-hundred for tonight's show, along with the money she'd already saved, she'd have enough to start building the arena for her therapeutic horsemanship program. But there was still a big unanswered question regarding what he was proposing. Looking at him with curiosity, she asked, "Why do you want to learn about horses? Are you planning to make one disappear or something?"

  Dimitri eyed her in bafflement. "How did you know?"

  "Wait, are you telling me that's what you plan to do, make a horse disappear?"

  "If I can design the illusion, yes," Dimitri said. "I've been offered my own show if I can, which would put me in competition with my dad." He smiled widely.

  "Then this is really about you trying to one-up your dad," Maddy said.

  "No, it's about me getting my own show, and I'll raise my offer to three-thousand for the month."

  When Maddy looked at him in bafflement as to why he was offering more money, he said, "The additional five-hundred is hush money because I'll have to reveal the secret to the Metamorphosis escape, since you'll be part of the act."

  That got Maddy's attention. From the moment she saw the instantaneous trunk switch she'd been racking her brain to come up with a plausible explanation, and she'd drawn a big zero.

  "You'll still have to sign a nondisclosure agreement though," Dimitri added.

  Maddy couldn't argue that, nor did she intend to. The idea of learning the secret to the escape was exhilarating in a way she hadn't expected. "What about the water tank escape? Will I learn the secret to that one too?" Her enthusiasm was growing exponentially with the thought of learning all the trade secrets.

  Dimitri shook his head. "Houdini took that one to his grave and that's what I intend to do."

  "Houdini might have taken it to his grave," Maddy said, "but you just performed it, so there had to be a leak somewhere along the way."

  Dimitri smiled at her pun. "No leak, just speculation as to how he did it. I have my own means of escaping, but it might not be the way Houdini escaped."

  "Then you lied to the audience because that's what you told them," Maddy said.

  Dimitri shrugged. "Magicians typically say things they know are untrue. It's accepted as part of the show."

  "Maybe so, but after years of lying to audiences, does it carry over into your private life?" As soon as the words were out, Maddy realized they hinted at having a personal interest.

  "If you're asking if I know the difference between a stage untruth and a lie, I do," Dimitri said. "But what I do on stage isn't lying. It's asking the audience for a suspension of disbelief. But, I don't want a passive suspension of disbelief. For the duration of the show I want those watching to believe that the raising of my hands can make things levitate, and the snap of my fingers can make objects appear out of thin air, and on the count of three I can be free of shackles and out of a trunk and standing before an audience. But when the show's over, and the spectators re-enter the real world, if I've done my job there's still some lingering doubt."

  Maddy couldn't argue that. There was no logical explanation for his trunk switch, except maybe a little bit of magic. And now the golden key to Metamorphosis was being dangled in front of her. It was almost too tempting to pass up, except there was one minor glitch.

  "When are you contracted to work at the Coyote?" she asked. "I don't graduate from college until the end of May, so if it's before then you'll have to find another assistant and hire one of my brothers to teach you about horses."

  "I'm also in college and won't graduate until May," Dimitri replied.

  "A college for magicians?" Maddy asked.

  Dimitri laughed. "In a way. I'm at the University of Nevada majoring in mechanical engineering with a minor in Philosophy." When Maddy looked at him perplexed, because she had no idea how that fit into his profession, he shrugged and said, "Engineering's useful when inventing and designing illusions, and philosophy's the basis of magic. It all ties in."

  "Matthias!" someone called out. "The boss wants you upstairs."

  "Gotta go," Dimitri said. "I'll see you at the ranch in June. Before you go, stop by the front office and show your ID. You'll find a check waiting." He smiled, gave her arm a squeeze, and walked off, leaving Maddy feeling a little giddy.

  But that was followed by a slight sinking feeling in her chest.

  'The boss wants you upstairs' smacked of the warnings she'd been hearing ever since Jeremy and Billy were sucked into that black hole called witness protection where once you enter, you never come out. From what Mario Moretti, the marshal assigned to Jeremy and Billy, warned, Las Vegas was a hotbed of corruption. Billy's br
other-in-law broke ties with a crime family there to become a government informant in return for lifetime protection, and the trial was ongoing, which meant, Jeremy and Billy wouldn't be coming home any time soon, if ever.

  Even Genie acknowledged the organized crime element in Las Vegas and how zealously her father stayed clear of it, so Maddy had to believe that Dimitri had the same code of ethics. But then, it didn't matter because she had no intention of returning to Las Vegas. Dimitri's presence in her life would last one month, and then he'd be gone.

  She just wished she could scrub from her mind the image of him in his tiny black swimsuit, and the way he'd mesmerized his audience with feats bordering on real magic, and especially the way he smiled at her moments before. He'd smiled at the audience too, but that last smile had been solely for her.

  'Get a grip,' she told herself, then headed for the dressing room to change her clothes before rejoining her roommates.

  CHAPTER 2

  Grand Ronde, Oregon – nine weeks later

  As Christopher Black wheeled the limousine out of the parking lot surrounding the casino complex and headed down the highway toward the Dancing Moon Ranch, he said to Dimitri, who was sitting in the back seat, "So then, the only places to go for nighttime entertainment around here are the casino and the Coyote Lounge."

  "There's a town down the road a little ways from the ranch," Dimitri mumbled, while trying to decipher one of the numerous documents in his inch thick file of diagrams, illustrations, and crumbling yellowed manuscripts, some almost a century old, while searching for clues that would unveil the secret to Charles Morritt's Disappearing Donkey illusion. If he could figure it out, he could apply the principles to a disappearing horse illusion.

  His father acquired the folder over thirty years before, when he purchased the contents of a file cabinet owned by a once-famous magician who ended up broke and alcoholic shortly before he died. Among the hundreds of documents and illustrations in the file were diagrams that the old magician had drawn while trying to figure out certain illusions, including Morritt's Disappearing Donkey illusion. Dimitri was certain his father knew the secret, but as always, his father expected him to figure it out. The only hint his father gave him on turning over the folder to him the week before was, "Pay attention to the clown," meaning the clown in the diagram, which was also the assistant who led the donkey into the stable box.

  Chris angled his head slightly, while saying, "If the town down the road's like the other backwoods towns we've been through, the main attraction will be watching cloud formations."

  "You'll survive. It's only for a month," Dimitri said.

  Still, he couldn't argue Chris's point. The Las Vegas strip, Grand Ronde was not. He was sorry now he'd let Genie talk him into staying at a ranch where, according to her, conversations centered around moving cows, riding horses, and keeping track of the price of grain and beef. For him, the sooner he could learn the basics of handling a horse and return to civilization as he knew it, the better.

  "A month at the end of the world," Chris mumbled.

  Glancing at the back of Chris's head, Dimitri said, "Sorry, pal, you're not drumming up any empathy here. While you'll be lounging around in one of Oregon's swankiest hotels, sipping drinks and tossing tokens on the tables, I'll be trapped in a cabin from a different century." He'd seen photos of the log cabins on a Dancing Moon Ranch flyer Genie sent him, and what came to mind was he hoped his cabin would have running water and an indoor toilet.

  He returned his attention to the diagrams and studied another faded drawing. The 'stable box' in the illustration showed a large box on short legs so it was off the ground, meaning the audience would see the donkey's legs if it left by a hidden door. So the way it worked, the clown would lead the donkey into the box through a pair of doors in front, leave the donkey in the stable and shut the door. The magician would say some special words, after which he'd open the doors to show the audience that the donkey had disappeared.

  A few miles down the highway, the limo slowed and Dimitri looked up to see that they were turning, presumably onto the road leading to the turnoff to the Dancing Moon Ranch.

  "You never said anything about gravel roads?" Chris groused, as he slowed the limo to a snail's pace. "I doubt there's a car wash for miles around."

  Dimitri looked ahead through the windshield at a gravel road that followed the course of a valley bordered on both sides by pasture that sloped upward to meet forested hillsides. The road stretched into the distance, broken only by a rooster tail of dust from a vehicle speeding toward them. Chris lowered the window and waved frantically at the driver to slow him down, and a pickup truck pulled to a halt beside the limo, mainly so the driver could gawk inside, and say, "Are you lost, or is this a wine tour?"

  "Neither," Chris replied. "We're heading to the Dancing Moon Ranch."

  "You're about fifteen minutes away," the driver said.

  "Is the road like this the whole way?" Chris asked.

  "No," the driver replied. "Just ahead the county's putting down molasses so it won't be so dusty."

  "Molasses, like pancake syrup?" Chris asked, in an uncertain voice.

  "That's what the locals call it," the driver replied. "You'll know why after a few miles. Good luck." The man stepped on the gas, leaving a cloud of dust behind.

  After the dust dissipated some, Chris started out again, still at a snail's pace, while muttering, "So, I'm supposed to make this run between the casino and the ranch twice a day?"

  "That's what you're being overpaid to do," Dimitri replied. He glanced beyond Chris's head at a gravel road with dust still hanging over it, but now the road was broken by a herd of cows that were crossing over, followed by a guy on a horse and a couple of dogs.

  Chris was right. It was going to be a hell of a long month, especially with his re-instated hands-off policy when it came to his personal assistant. He'd dropped his guard with Karla, but that wouldn't happen again. True, Maddy Hansen caught his eye as far back as Josh and Genie's wedding, and in Vegas she filled out the sequined gown in a way he hadn't expected, though different from the way Karla's overly shapely body had—Maddy being more like a sleek feline—but now it was back to business as usual, which meant, there was a greater probability of hell freezing over before he'd ever get involved with his assistant again, unless she was his wife, which was so far in the future it wasn't worth considering.

  ***

  Maddy reread the email she'd received from Dimitri two weeks before, informing her of the date of his arrival and affirming that he hoped she was prepared to get him acquainted with horses as well as work as his assistant. She'd emailed back that she was prepared for both. The problem was, whereas her family knew Dimitri would be staying at the ranch during the month he'd be working at the Coyote Lounge, she'd put off telling them about her agreement to work as his assistant and teach him about handling horses.

  A couple months back, when her parents learned, in a round-about way, that during spring break from college she and her roommates had gone to Las Vegas, her father had been furious. Not only had she spent three days in a city funded by drinking, gambling and nightclubbing, but it was off limits to her family as long as Jeremy and Billy were under witness protection.

  Three years before, when Mario Moretti arrived at the ranch with Billy and Jeremy, in order to inform the family what they could and could not do while Billy and Jeremy were in witness protection, Maddy had been so shocked by Jeremy's announcement that he was getting married—while at the same time evaluating the woman who'd managed to clip his wings—that she'd missed most of what Mario Moretti was telling the family.

  Still, she couldn't deny that she knew Las Vegas was off limits, or at least to be avoided. Her decision to tag along with her roommates had been an impulsive, last minute one. She figured they'd have three fun-filled days while lost in a sea of other college kids, and no one would know. But after hearing her father's tirade on learning what she'd done, she decided that informing him about her a
greement to assist Dimitri at the Coyote Lounge, while he'd be staying at the ranch was easier put off until later, which was now.

  She couldn't deny there had been two factors involved in her decision to accept Dimitri's offer—the money, and learning the secret to the Metamorphosis escape, which continued to haunt her. There was simply no way two people could instantaneously switch places in a trunk. Well, maybe there were three factors in her decision to work for Dimitri. She still couldn't shake the image of him in a swimsuit that was little more than a black pouch with side bands. Seeing his muscular male body was different from anything she'd ever experienced, including seeing the Chippendales. That had been an eye-opening evening of beefcake gyrating, bumping and grinding their well-endowed male hunks in women's faces. But after the show was over, the sight of those men vanished from her mind's eye, while nothing about Dimitri's amazingly well-conditioned body, along with the way he'd mesmerized his audience with feats that bordered on magic, had slipped away.

  Okay, zero hour, she decided.

  Shutting down her laptop, she went downstairs to attempt to convince her parents that standing on stage with an ax in her hand was tantamount to being a guardian angel, in a convoluted sort of way.

  She found her mom and dad in the family room, sitting on a couch in front of a coffee table covered with travel brochures. They were trying to decide which cruise they'd be taking for their thirtieth wedding anniversary. Everyone knew a cruise had been her mother's dream for years, and since her father would volunteer to die a slow death before seeing her mother unhappy, he informed her that they'd be going on a cruise, and for her to pick the destination.

  "Mom, Dad, can I interrupt you for a few minutes?" Maddy asked.

  "Of course, honey," Grace replied. "Dad and I are just trying to decide between a cruise up the Inland Passage to Alaska and a Caribbean cruise in the Bahamas."