Page 38 of Borrowed Time

A chuckle escaped my throat, but luckily, no one except Seth was sitting close enough to hear me. And I doubted the magician could even see the way we were leaning into each other and exchanging commentary on the performance, not with the gaslights that ringed the stage throwing the audience into darkness.

After playing with the rings for a few moments, making them join and then “miraculously” separate, the magician — billed as “Lorenzo the Magnificent” — moved on to producing a birdcage with a live canary inside, presumably from thin air. I had to admit that trick seemed a bit more impressive than the others, although I knew it had to be no more than sleight of hand.

“And now,” he announced, moving closer to the edge of the stage, “I will perform the most challenging, the most dangerous, trick of all — the Ethereal Passage!”

From offstage came a low rumbling sound, and a large coffin-shaped box was rolled onstage by a pretty woman in a red silk bustle gown who I guessed was Lorenzo’s assistant, although this was her first appearance in the act. With a flourish, she opened the lid of the box and pulled out a set of heavy chains, and the magician climbed inside and allowed her to wrap the chains around him and padlock them in place before she closed the lid and draped a heavy black cloth over the box.

“This seems a little more complicated than the birdcage,” Seth observed, and I was forced to admit that he had a point.

“I guess it depends on what happens next,” I said.

The assistant stepped forward, while the black box, still draped in black fabric, remained a foot or so behind her. “Now Lorenzo will defy the rules of time and space!” she called out. Her voice was a sweet soprano, not nearly as well suited for carrying to the back of an auditorium as Lorenzo’s rich baritone.

“Indeed I have!” he called back, and the entire audience gasped.

The magician was standing at the very rear of the theater in the center of the aisle, the chains that had bound him gone. Seth and I stared at each other in confusion, but no one else there seemed confused at all.

No, they erupted into applause, more and more people rising to their feet to give him the standing ovation they thought he deserved.

Maybe there was a logical explanation for what had just happened. I knew in my own time, illusionists pulled off similar tricks all the time — in theaters that were specially prepared with trapdoors and whatever other mechanisms were needed to accomplish such a feat.

But here in 1884 Flagstaff, in a venue that was new to this traveling troupe?

That sure as hell didn’t seem very likely to me.

Which meant…what? That the man was really a warlock?

Only one way to find out for sure. Once we got close enough to him, our witchy senses would be enough to tell Seth and me whether Lorenzo the Magnificent was one of our kind.

“I think we need to talk to him,” I told Seth as I rose from my seat.

He got up as well, but I could tell by the way he was frowning that he wasn’t sure whether it was such a good idea, not when we were trying to do our best to blend in.

“How do you know they’ll even let us backstage?”

“I don’t,” I said calmly as I left our private balcony and headed for the stairs. “But from what I can tell, it sounds as if they’re going to be applauding him for a while longer, so we might as well sneak back there while we can.”

His dubious gaze moved to my gleaming teal silk gown. “You’re not exactly inconspicuous.”

Smiling, I settled my black cloak — which I’d grabbed as we left the balcony — around my shoulders. “There. Now I’m practically a ninja.”

“A what?” he responded, then shook his head. “All right, never mind.”

Still wearing a grin, I hurried down the stairs, which emptied into a narrow corridor. One side led back to the front entrance, but I had a feeling that if we went in the opposite direction, we might be able to make our way backstage.

I turned right, and Seth followed closely. He carried his overcoat rather than put it on, but because his frock coat and pants were black wool, he didn’t stand out nearly as much as I would have if I hadn’t covered my dress with that cloak.

Sure enough, the corridor dead-ended in a door. I put my hand on the knob, halfway expecting it to be locked — not that it would have been a problem if it were, since all witches could open locked doors — but it opened easily. Just beyond was a set of short stairs that I guessed led into the backstage area.

No one seemed to be anywhere close by, which surprised me a little. Then again, celebrity stalkers probably weren’t as big a thing in the 1880s as they were in the twenty-first century.

“I’ll go first,” Seth said quietly, and I waited for him to start up the steps. Maybe I should have argued, but it probably made sense for him to be the one to run interference. He was a lot more intimidating than I, especially in that frock coat.

However, no one stopped us. The backstage area was a clutter of boxes and trunks and the flimsy scrims they’d used as backdrops, and although I could hear voices, they seemed to be concentrated on the other side of the space and nowhere near Seth and me.

But then I saw Lorenzo the Magnificent. His assistant was nowhere in sight, but he was hurrying toward a trunk not too far from the spot where the two of us stood, although I doubted he could see us because of the way the shadows fell.

Not that he appeared to be paying too much attention to his surroundings. No, he reached for the lid of the trunk and lifted it, paused to give a quick, darting look all around, and then reached into the pocket of his tailcoat and pulled out what looked likesome kind of brass amulet, which he quickly stowed inside the trunk. Just as quickly as he’d come, he moved away from the trunk and headed toward the voices I’d heard earlier, which I assumed must belong to the other members of the troupe.

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