A Touch of Magic

by Isabelle Adler

  As far as explanations went, this was a good one, but Cary wasn’t sure he believed it. Ty was talking calmly and looking him straight in the eye, but Cary couldn’t shake the feeling he was being bullshitted somehow, and he tended to trust his instincts when it came to these things. He was pretty good at it. No illusion artist could hope for any kind of success if he couldn’t correctly read his audience. The part about the ring was probably true—that was something Cary wouldn’t mind having himself. And he’d seen it at work, when the mysterious woman couldn’t bring Ty down while he was wearing it. But the rest… Cary would have to watch his step with this guy.

  Ty was looking at him steadily with those sharp eyes, patiently waiting for him to come to a decision.

  “Do you know who hired you to steal my amulet in the first place?” Cary asked, stalling.

  Ty shrugged. “No idea. I get most of my jobs through my fence. He’s the one dealing with the clients, and I get the info from him.”

  It probably didn’t matter at this point, but Cary was still curious about who’d sent Ty after him. He bet lot of money had changed hands on this deal. Wouldn’t that client be as frustrated as they were about losing something they wanted so badly?

  “How do I know I can trust you?” Cary asked, though he already knew he was going to agree, despite all the reasons he shouldn’t. At the very least, Ty could be his lead to the whereabouts of the amulet, and then… A lot could happen.

  Ty offered a wry smile. “You don’t, and I don’t think I can say anything that would convince you. But hey, you came here looking for me, so who should be convincing who?”

  “Well, excuse me for worrying about being robbed again.”

  “Remind me again what it was you’ve done time for?”

  Cary huffed. “That was different. And how do you know I’ve done time?”

  “Yeah, whatever. I do tend to research my marks.”

  “Okay, fine, Mr. Professional,” Cary said pointedly. “We do it together. And just so you know, I was damn good at stealing people’s wallets. I just wasn’t good at taking the blame when my buddies decided it would be quicker to rob a convenience store than work a crowd of tourists on Fisherman’s Wharf. And while we’re on the subject of working the crowd, I must remind you that we had to leave my dressing room in a kind of a hurry, and I don’t have anything on me, including my phone and wallet. And I’m so fucking tired I could pass out. Wearing that thing sure drains energy.”

  The night had become progressively more and more crazy, but now, when there was no immediate danger, the exhaustion came back with a vengeance. Cary really did have a hard time staying upright at this point, and the thought of having to walk all the way home or to the Garland filled him with dread. He could ask Ty for a lift, now that they were officially partners in crime, but the other man looked no less beat.

  “That’s because you were using it wrong, genius.” Ty yawned widely, as if to illustrate Cary’s thoughts. “I guess you could crash here for the night,” he added, somewhat reluctantly.

  “Hey, it didn’t come with a manual,” Cary retorted. It was reassuring that this Ty character seemed to know a thing or two about real magic, but right now, Cary was more interested in the en suite. He was sweaty, his clothes were filthy from crawling between parked cars, and he wanted to take a shower so badly he almost didn’t mind doing it with an armed criminal in the adjacent room.

  “Dibs on the bathroom,” he announced, swooping inside, not bothering to wait for Ty’s response. He shut the door behind him and locked it. After two years of prison showers, he valued his privacy.

  The bathroom was shabby, but there was soap and a couple of towels, and that was all he cared about. As he let the hot water wash the grime off his skin, Cary thought about what he was going to do.

  The one thing he knew with absolute certainty was that the amulet’s magic had been real. His performances were always a massive success when he used it. Hell, he’d felt it working, as crazy as that sounded—a warm tingling all over his body, a rush he couldn’t quite put a name on. Logic dictated this wasn’t the only magical artifact out there, and that other people knew more about their existence than he did. How these people had found out about his amulet, he had no idea, but maybe Ty was right, and he’d been too flashy with it. Maybe. The question was—was he willing to risk messing with said people to get it back?

  As potentially valuable as the thing was, he was loath to do anything that might get him in trouble with the law again. He’d been there, done that, done the time for it, and he was trying his best to clean the slate and start over. Chasing down the amulet would most likely entail doing things that weren’t strictly (or at all) legal, and he could hardly afford being caught at it again. He couldn’t trust Ty to have his back if whatever plan they came up with went south, so the probability of Cary ending up taking the fall for the both of them was pretty damn high.

  And this was before he even considered how dangerous these guys were. Men with bodyguards and women with freaking superpowers were definitely out of his league. Whatever this Giordano character wanted the amulet for—he wasn’t going to take well to the possibility of losing it again. And as opposed to Cary, he probably had more resources at his disposal to ensure against that.

  Cary switched off the water and stepped out of the shower. He wiped the steam off the mirror and stared blearily into his red-rimmed eyes. His muscles ached as if he’d run a half-marathon, and he was ready to fall over. Any fateful decisions would have to wait until he’d had some sleep, though he suspected he was going to go through with it, regardless. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been sharing a motel room with a complete stranger. Okay, he had shared motel rooms with strangers, but that was for purely recreational purposes, and no guns or weird magic were involved. Only cheap thrills and cheap alcohol.

  He actually wouldn’t have minded spending the night with Ty under different circumstances. Whoever and whatever the man was, he was hot. Cary liked his sort of rugged good looks and easy attitude.

  He emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. Ty was still sitting in the chair, frowning at his cell phone. He glanced up, and from the look he gave him, Cary suddenly had the distinct impression he wasn’t the only gay man in the room.

  He cleared his throat, and Ty reverted his gaze to Cary’s face.

  “So what’s our next move?”

  Ty dropped the phone into his jacket pocket. “I’ll find out more tomorrow. Tonight, I suggest we get some rest.”

  Well, that certainly curtailed the planning. Cary was kind of glad, since he didn’t have the energy to stay sharp. However, there was another hurdle on the path to a much-needed rest. The room only had one bed.

  Ty must have caught him staring at it longingly, because he suggested, “I can sleep on the floor.”

  “Really?” Cary asked. “On a motel carpet?”

  Ty shrugged. The possibility didn’t seem to fill him with the same disgust as it did Cary. “I’ve slept on worse.”

  Ty did owe him for putting him through a hell of a scare, so sleeping on the floor in the way of apology was only fitting. But Cary had never been a petty person, and it appeared as if neither of them would be shy or put off by sharing a bed with another man. Ty didn’t behave like someone prone to outbursts of violence. In fact, ever since they’d entered the room, he’d been quietly subdued. He could be wrong about that, and all of it could be attributed to the aftermath of being hit over the head, but Cary had a feeling he wouldn’t jump him in the middle of the night. He’d known some really brutal assholes in his life, and Ty didn’t give off that kind of vibe.

  Sharing a bed with a guy who had mugged him only a few hours ago would certainly be a fitting way to cap this bizarre day, wouldn’t it?

  Cary got into the bed and shed the towel from beneath the covers. “Nah. It’s big enough for the both of us. As long as you don’t poke me with that gun of yours.”

  Ty grinned. “It’s a deal.”
>
  He got up and pulled a large black duffel bag from under the bed, which he took with him into the bathroom, also locking the door behind him. Cary briefly considered waiting to see him come out without any clothes on, but his eyelids suddenly seemed to have other plans and fell shut all by themselves.

  Chapter Five

  CARY WOKE UP suddenly, his mind clutching futilely onto the fragments of the nightmare. He couldn’t remember what had scared him so much, but his heart was racing and his skin was clammy with cold sweat. He sat up, taking deep, steadying breaths. The stale air left a sour aftertaste in his mouth.

  Next to him, Ty stirred and turned to face him, instantly awake. The room was dark, but the streetlights shone enough through the narrow gap in the curtains that Cary could make out his silhouette on the other side of the bed.

  “Something wrong?” Ty asked, his voice husky from sleep.

  Cary shook his head. It must have been all the excitement of the previous evening messing with his head or something. He touched his chest, where the amulet used to hang on its chain. Its absence felt like the phantom pain of a missing limb, and his lungs constricted as if he was suddenly out of air.

  “Just a bad dream,” he said, swallowing hard. “Sorry I woke you.”

  “S’okay,” Ty said, relaxing again.

  Cary lay back down, facing away from him, and tried to do the same, but this time sleep wouldn’t come. He was still tired, but now he was too wound up. Having another person in bed right next to him, radiating tantalizing body heat, didn’t help either. A mental picture of Ty’s naked form under the blanket—completely imaginary but no less appealing for it—sprang unbidden to his mind and refused to go away, not matter how hard he tried to shake it off.

  “It’ll pass soon,” Ty said suddenly, making Cary start guiltily.

  “What?”

  “It happens sometimes with strong magic. The withdrawal. Less intense than with drugs, but just as dangerous in the long run. That’s why you need to be more careful when using it.”

  “What do you know,” Cary muttered, staring at the wall. The shadows painted strange shapes on the plaster, all sharp edges and wrong angles, pulsing in time with his heart. He blinked, dispelling the fancy.

  “Believe it or not, I know quite a lot. It’s my job,” Ty said.

  Cary turned around to face him. Ty’s eyes gleamed in the darkness, reflecting the faint light, their warm hazel color indistinguishable now in the darkness.

  “What is your job, exactly?”

  “People in the occult community pay me to get them the objects they want. Books, artifacts, ancient relics, you name it. If it’s magic, I’ll find it.”

  “‘Occult community’? What is that, some kind of secret society where you meet up wearing robes and chant at each other under a full moon?”

  “It’s not a cult,” Ty said. “There is no secret society that governs magic practitioners. Not the real ones, anyway. But there aren’t many of them. They do tend to stick together, or at least know about each other. And there are some basic rules they adhere to, which are mostly based on simple common sense.”

  “Do these rules allow you to be a thief?” Cary asked, and then immediately regretted his tone as, strictly speaking, he was probably the last person who should have been giving anyone a hard time about thieving.

  “When it’s expedient,” Ty said. “I’m can also be a businessman, or a mercenary, or a grave robber when I have to.”

  “If you’re a part of this community, does that mean you can you do magic, like that lady did?”

  “I’m a thief, like you said, not a sorcerer. I only get magical stuff for people who can do actual magic and use them. I don’t…have the talent for it like most of them do.”

  “If you’re not a sorcerer, or whatever, how come you know so much about it? How’d you get into this business in the first place? How does one find out about this secret underworld you got going there, anyway?”

  Ty was silent for so long Cary thought he wasn’t going to answer.

  “I was lucky to be picked up by a sorcerer thief,” he said finally. Cary felt the reluctance in Ty’s voice, as if he wasn’t sure admitting this was a good idea. Or maybe it just brought up some unpleasant memories Ty was hesitant to share with someone he barely knew. “His name was—is—Leland Bernard. I was young, basically living on the street. He took me in, taught me all he knew. Not just magic—the little I could take in, with my limited abilities—but the basics of his trade. How to do research, how to plan ahead, how to break in and get out without being caught on cameras, that sort of thing. He was my mentor for many years.”

  “Do you still work with him?”

  “We parted ways some time ago,” Ty said with a finality that made Cary swallow his next question.

  There was a pause as each of them became lost in their thoughts.

  “You could have offered me money for the amulet,” Cary said accusingly, but with much less vehemence.

  “Would you have accepted?”

  Cary thought that over.

  “No,” he admitted reluctantly. “I wouldn’t have. It really did belong to my grandfather, you know. He raised me all on his own.”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah. I was too little to remember when my dad left, but my mom took it kinda hard. She died in a car crash when I was eleven. She was DUI. So my granddad took me in. He was a stage magician, had been since the seventies. He taught me all the tricks, but I wasn’t into magic at all when I was a teenager. I gave him a lot of grief back then.”

  John Westfield hadn’t been the perfect parent. He hadn’t had the first clue about raising a grieving child. While he still had his health, he was too busy with his shows and appearances to pay much attention to Cary beyond dragging him along to hang out backstage, just on the edges of the limelight. He couldn’t make sure Cary kept up with his schoolwork or monitor his questionable friends, but he had cared about him, in his own gruff but kind way, and tried to provide for him as best he could. He was the only family Cary had. It certainly wasn’t his fault that Cary went out of his way to make life difficult for the both of them.

  Cary didn’t know why he was telling Ty all this. Most likely, he didn’t care either way, but at least he was willing to listen. Even in the darkness, Cary could feel the intentness of his gaze.

  It was almost embarrassing how much he missed his granddad, and it was the first time since he’d died that Cary was actually talking about him with someone else. And he never had the chance to say goodbye, or say he was sorry. His granddad died suddenly of a myocardial infarction last year, when Cary was still serving his sentence for grand larceny. Granddad’s stage name and his collection of magic show paraphernalia, left in his rental apartment and storage unit, was all that was left of him. That was where Cary had found the amulet, just lying there in a pile of other trinkets and cheap jewelry. For some reason it had caught his eye, though it wasn’t nearly as gaudy as the other stuff. It felt nice in his hand when he’d picked it up, almost warm, so he’d tucked it in his pocket without thinking. At the time he thought nothing of it. The whole magic act came much later, and then it proved invaluable, as mind-boggling as it was.

  He was silent for another moment and then added bitterly: “That amulet… It was my only chance to make it. I’ve invested everything in this gig. I’d just begun breaking even. I don’t know how this magic thing works, but it did, and it made everything work. And now…” He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. He couldn’t make it all work without the amulet. Ty was right—that thing could do real magic, and it wasn’t just a trick of his imagination. When he was wearing it, anything he did on stage enthralled the audience; his illusions appeared to be real acts of wizardry. All he’d had to do was recreate his grandfather’s old act from forty years ago, pepper it with some fake mind reading, jokes, and smooth talking, and the audience was ready to eat out of his hand. And now it was all going to slip away like smoke.

  “Hey.
” Ty pushed himself up on one elbow. “Listen, if you’re serious about this whole stage illusionist thing, you don’t need the amulet to succeed. Sure, it helps a lot, but you can make it on your own, even if it means you’ll have to work harder.”

  “Thanks for the input.”

  “I mean it. I’ve watched you perform. You’re a natural. The crowd loves you. Your repertoire needs refreshing, but you’ve got the knack for the stage, and that’s what’s important.”

  Cary said nothing, mulling over this unexpected encouragement. He wasn’t sure how to respond. He’d rarely had people express support for anything he did, and this brusque praise threw him off balance.

  All of a sudden Ty’s presence was too acute, as if his words had created a new link between them, filling the space with something more tangible than the darkness. Acting on pure instinct, Cary reached for him, closing the distance between them. Ty recoiled slightly at the movement and then held himself still as Cary ran his fingertips tentatively across his jaw.

  “I thought you didn’t want me poking you,” Ty murmured.

  “Maybe I’ll do the poking,” Cary replied and leaned in to kiss him.

  Ty’s skin was still sleep-warm, but he was definitely wide-awake now. His lips were a little chapped, but the kiss was sweet, slow at first, and then growing gradually more heated. It was good, and it was something simple and familiar, something Cary could lose himself in for a while and not think about all the weird shit going on around him. He pushed the other man flat onto his back and slid down, throwing off the covers. Ty’s muscles bunched and relaxed under his touch, and he could feel the light dusting of hair on his chest, the long jagged line of scar tissue on his right side. Ty shifted under his touch, and Cary moved down again, sliding over the hard abs and settling between Ty’s legs.

  Ty was still wearing his briefs, but Cary helped him out of those, taking his time to run his hands over thighs and abs. He couldn’t see much, but Ty definitely felt fit. Just like he’d imagined. Muscular, but not overly ripped. His cock matched his build perfectly, sporting a nice length. It hardened rapidly under Cary’s hand, the velvety feel of it fueling his own need.