by Jeff Strand
ALSO BY JEFF STRAND
A Bad Day for Voodoo
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The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever
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Copyright © 2017 by Jeff Strand
Cover and internal design © 2017 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Nicole Komasinski, Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover images © Daniel Diebel/Getty Images; sserg_dibrova/Thinkstock
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
Dedicated to everyone who has asked or been asked: “Is this your card?”
1
“Is this your card?” asked Marcus Millian III, holding up the nine of hearts.
“It is!” said his mother, eyes wide with surprise. “How did you do that?”
Marcus sighed. “Seriously, Mom?”
“What’s wrong?”
“That wasn’t the card, and you know it.”
“Well, true. But I didn’t want you to feel bad.”
Marcus grabbed his mother’s hand and led her out of the kitchen into the dining room. The meatballs on her plate of spaghetti had been arranged to form the number two and a club.
“You were supposed to say no. Then I’d look all disappointed and say, ‘Okay, I guess I need to practice the trick more.’ And then we’d sit down for dinner, and you’d see your card number in the spaghetti.”
“That’s pretty clever.”
“I can’t become a master illusionist if you’re just going to humor me. The magician is supposed to deceive the audience, not the other way around.”
“You’re right. You’re right,” Mom said.
“I’m fifteen. That’s something you do with a six-year-old. I can take criticism. Do you think Penn & Teller’s parents fibbed to them about it being the right card?”
“You’ve made your point. It won’t happen again.” Mom smiled. “Next time I’ll throw the card down in disgust and say you’re not my son. Go call your father for dinner.”
Marcus had been testing a trick in which the picture frames on the wall in his father’s office would rearrange themselves to spell “DINNER.” It would require a fairly complex pattern of fishing line that he could manipulate from outside the room that he hadn’t worked out yet, and there were only enough frames currently on the wall to form “DIN,” but once it was perfected, he knew Dad would freak.
Until then, Marcus would have to resort to walking upstairs like a primate to pass along the message.
“Hey, Dad, dinner’s ready,” he said.
“Thanks.” Dad saved the file he was working on, pushed back his chair, and stood up.
“Got time for a quick trick first?” Marcus asked.
“Of course.”
Marcus shuffled his deck of cards, though it was a fake shuffle that kept the two of clubs on top. His favorite card was the jack of diamonds, but the two of clubs was easier to construct out of meatballs.
“Cut the deck anywhere,” Marcus instructed.
Dad cut the deck in half perfectly. Marcus frowned and furrowed his brow, pretending that the trick was ruined, and now it was going to be embarrassing and uncomfortable for everyone.
Misdirection—one of the most important skills for a magician.
Marcus set the two halves of the deck on the desk. “Look at the top card, but don’t show it to me,” said Marcus.
Dad complied, taking the card and glancing at it. He thought he was looking at the card where he’d cut the deck, but he was actually looking at the top card of the full deck.
“Stick it anywhere in the deck,” said Marcus, and Dad slid the card back in.
Marcus did a full shuffle. “Would you like to shuffle it yourself too?” he asked. The order of the cards made no difference now, so he’d let Dad think he had more control over the outcome than he really did.
“Sure.” Dad gave the cards a quick shuffle and then handed them back to Marcus.
Marcus stared at the deck, then pulled out a random card. The ace of spades. “Is this your card?”
“Nope.”
Marcus feigned disappointment. “Are you sure you remembered it right?”
“Yep.”
“Huh. Sorry. I guess I need to work on this trick some more.”
“No big deal. It’s all about practice,” Dad said.
They went downstairs and sat at the dining room table.
“Looks great, sweetie,” Dad said to Mom. He twirled some spaghetti on his fork, jabbed a meatball, and popped it into his mouth. “Delicious.”
He quickly ate another bite. “So good.”
He took a third bite. “Mmmmmm.”
Marcus sat there stunned, staring as Dad had three more bites.
“What’s the matter?” Dad asked. “Not hungry?”
“Did you notice the formation of your meatballs?”
“What?”
“You didn’t look at them?”
Dad glanced down at his plate. “Is there something wrong with them? They tasted fine.”
“They formed a two of clubs.”
“Oh. Okay, yeah, no, I didn’t notice that.”
Marcus sighed.
“What? I don’t analyze my dinner before I eat it!” Dad said. “You should have told me the magic trick was still going on! I would’ve paid more attention!”
“It was a simple card force. I wouldn’t mess up a move that easy.”
“How am I supposed to know how easy a trick is? That’s between you and Grandpa Zachary.”
Grandpa Zachary was actually Marcus’s great-grandfather, who went by the stage name Zachary the Stupendous. Now eighty-nine years old, he’d retired twenty years ago and was mostly forgotten in the world of magic, but Marcus idolized the cranky old guy.
The two generations of Millians after Zachary had gone into respectable careers—teaching and nursing. Marcus had no intention of being respectable. He was going to bring the Millian name back into show business where it belonged.
If it were up to Marcus, he’d practice magic all day every day. Unfortunately, the law said that he had to go to school. At least he liked his teachers and studied hard. After all, the more he learned, the more material he’d have to create new tricks.
He loved close-up magic like card and coin tricks, but he wanted to create big, elaborate illusions that made people’s jaws drop and their eyes bug out. And constructing those wasn’t cheap. So he also mowed lawns in the neighborhood. Right now he was saving to buy some large mirrors that he wanted to use as part of a box he could climb into to make it look like he’d disappeared.
Since his family didn’t own a riding lawn mower, his part-time job should have given him muscular arms. Sadly, thus far, muscles had eluded him. He was short and stick-thin, and he had curly red hair and freckles instead of the jet-black mane that would make him look more like a magician. He was working to grow a mustache and goatee without much success.
After dinner Marcus loaded the dishwasher. It would be a really cool trick to put dirty dishes in there, close the lid, open it up a few seconds later, and—gasp!—the dishes would be totally clean.
The original dishes would be covered with a thick layer of dried-on food. Maybe they’d even stink to better sell the illusion. When the dishwasher was full and he closed the lid, the rack would slide to the left, and a mechanism would replace it with an identical rack of clean dishes. This would involve cutting out both sides of the dishwasher and adding false sides that would fit perfectly when the second rack slid into position.
Of course, he couldn’t actually perform this trick. Mom and Dad would not be okay with him cutting out large pieces of their dishwasher. He’d have to wait until he got his own place before he started destroying major appliances.
When the dishes were loaded and his homework was done, Marcus sat down at his desk with three plastic cups and three red balls. The trick was to make the balls disappear from one cup and reappear under another. Street performers often used this illusion to swindle tourists. The concept was simple, but it required quick sleight of hand and a lot of practice. He wasn’t quite ready to show it to his friends yet.
Using the plural form of friend was probably inaccurate. More like one friend. Kimberly lived three houses down the street, and she enjoyed being his test audience. Yet oddly enough, she’d never said, “Since you’re so good at magic, you should be my boyfriend!” Not that he’d ever tried to prod her in that direction, mostly for fear of messing up a perfectly good friendship.
And that was basically it for his social life—Kimberly and Grandpa Zachary.
Oh well. Marcus didn’t mind. Much.
• • •
“What is this slop?” asked Grandpa Zachary.
“Shhhh,” Mom hushed.
“Marcus, do your magic. Turn this food into something edible—wait. No magician has that much talent.”
Marcus was with his family at a fund-raiser potluck for a local animal shelter. Since his retirement, Grandpa Zachary had focused his attention on raising money for charitable causes, although he had trouble sticking with any particular cause for very long. Last month he’d been saving the red-tailed hawk, which he later discovered was nowhere close to being an endangered species.
“I wouldn’t feed this slop to the dogs we’re trying to help,” said Grandpa Zachary.
“Shhhh,” Mom repeated.
“I’m speaking at a very low volume. The people who brought this vile gunk won’t hear.”
There were about fifty people in the park. Admission was five dollars. Plus you were supposed to bring your own dish of food to share. Grandpa Zachary didn’t generate a lot of money for his causes, but he did give most of his free time.
Grandpa Zachary dipped a pretzel stick into the translucent goo and popped it into his mouth. “Actually, that’s infinitely better than it looks. I withdraw my criticism.” He snapped off the end of his pretzel so he wouldn’t be accused of double dipping. (Grandpa Zachary hated double-dippers.) Then he plunged the pretzel into the sludge again. “Marcus Three, do me a favor. Find me a paper bowl so we can take this home with us. It’s delicious.”
Marcus went off in search of a bowl, grabbing an oatmeal raisin cookie along the way. The band, which had arrived half an hour late, was finally set up and ready to perform. The lead singer was wearing sweatpants, a white hat, and nothing else. He had dark circles under his eyes and looked like his latest shower was a distant memory.
“Good evening, everybody,” the singer said into the microphone. He held onto the stand as if to keep himself upright. “We’re Banjo Dan and the Wham Zaps. We’ve been drinking since nine-thirty this morning. Enjoy the show.”
He plucked a few strings on his instrument, which Marcus was pretty sure was a ukulele and not a banjo.
“This is a benefit for an animal shelter, right? So here’s a little song we wrote called ‘Your Wife Is Uglier than a Dog.’”
“Nope, nope, nope, we won’t be hearing that,” said Grandpa Zachary, hurrying up to the stage. For an eighty-nine-year-old, the man could move.
Still, he wasn’t fast enough to get there before Banjo Dan passed out. The other two members of the band just stood there, staring awkwardly at their fallen leader.
“What other songs do you know?” Grandpa Zachary asked them.
“Uhhhh…we actually just stand here and pretend to play.”
“Begone!” cried Grandpa Zachary. “Take your snookered friend with you. Shame, shame, shame!”
The Wham Zaps dragged Banjo Dan away.
Grandpa Zachary picked up the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for that crass spectacle. What a disgrace.” He shook his head and started to scan the audience. “But the show will go on. Let us amuse you with a different act.”
Marcus suddenly felt sick to his stomach. He began to sweat. It was hard to breathe. His feet hurt, even though he couldn’t explain why.
Grandpa Zachary’s gaze fell on him, and Marcus started to tremble. He loved to perform tricks for Kimberly. Loved to perform tricks for his great-grandfather. Loved to perform tricks for his parents. But he was terrified of performing in front of an audience. He’d never done it before.
It was a fear he knew he’d have to overcome to pursue his dream of being a famous magician, but he sure wasn’t over it yet.
Grandpa Zachary cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together in a warm welcome for Marcus!”
2
Marcus stared at Grandpa Zachary in horror. He wouldn’t really call him up to the stage to perform a magic trick in front of fifty strangers, would he?
He shook his head a bit, hoping to telepathically convey his message of NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!
Grandpa Zachary smiled in a way that implied he had not received the message. “As most of you know, I used to be Zachary the Stupendous. How many of you like magic?”
Since Grandpa Zachary had not specified the method by which the audience was supposed to answer, people in the crowd raised their hands, app
lauded, cheered, and/or said, “Me!” A woman standing next to Marcus folded her arms in front of her chest and scowled.
“You there,” said Grandpa Zachary, pointing to the woman. “Surely you enjoy magic!”
The woman shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I guess I’m just no fan of the devil.”
“This isn’t that kind of magic. I assure you no goats will be sacrificed here, especially since we’re raising money for an animal shelter. The magic of which I speak is the art of illusion.”
“Oh, that’s okay then,” said the woman.
“Ladies and gentlemen, everyone has to start somewhere. Before the great William Shakespeare wrote some of the most enduring works in the English language, he almost certainly wrote about a dolphin on the moon and spelled most of the words wrong. Before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he probably invented a prototype that burned your ear like a hot iron.”
Marcus narrowed his eyes. He understood the point that his great-grandfather was trying to make, but he was making it very poorly.
Grandpa Zachary harrumphed. “I can see by the expression on a certain young man’s face that my analogy is insulting instead of inspiring. So I present to you the first-ever public performance by the amazing, the astounding, the gobsmacking…Marcus Millian the third!”
“No, thank you,” said Marcus.
“Don’t be hesitant,” said Grandpa Zachary. “Do you know what happens when you throw a non-swimmer into the ocean?”
“They drown?” asked Marcus.
“Nope.”
“They get eaten by sharks?” someone else volunteered.
“Sometimes, but that’s not where I’m going with this.” Grandpa Zachary looked out into the audience. “Does anybody else have an answer?”
“The kid was right. They usually drown,” said a man standing in the back. “It’s a horrible way to go. Way worse than falling onto a pit of spikes. If you ever have the choice of how to die, go for the spikes. Trust me.”
“Could we hear from somebody less ghoulish?” asked Grandpa Zachary.
A woman with an overflowing plate of peanut butter crackers raised her hand. “They learn to swim.”
