“It’s different for everyone.” I pull the flask out of my coat with the flourish of a true performance sorcerer. “You’ve got to try it for yourself.”
Lana wraps her hands around mine, which are wrapped around the flask, and gasps. “Are you serious? I can have this?”
“Of course, doll. But better drink it tonight. Shine’s magic only lasts a day—that flask will just be water again tomorrow.”
She looks around, then takes it from me slowly, as Warren mutters, “Stealing government property now too?” But I ignore him, just relish this moment of having something to offer.
“Drink it now,” I urge her, “so it’ll hit you right as you walk into the party.”
She nods, like I really am some unquestionable expert, and then takes the flask to her lips and downs it in one gulp.
“When will I feel it?” she whispers, giggles, as she passes the flask back to me.
“Any minute.”
We’re moving closer to the front, now maybe one or two groups away. A narrow white door to what looks to be a broom closet stands half-open about ten feet ahead, and a nice if nondescript-looking man sits on a stool next to the door. As we take another collective step forward, Lana gasps, stops.
“Oh. My. God,” she whispers, arching her neck back. “Holy Mother. Holy effing Mother.”
She closes her eyes, licks her lips, purses them. I haven’t hit the stuff myself in a long time, but I know the stages of a shine trip inside and out, from working with my father, and now the Unit—at least the stages of a trip before your body comes to need the stuff. First comes the euphoria, the flood of magic out of the bottle and into your blood. Then “the clarity,” where things take on a different sheen, like the world is coming together. Like there’s been a secret, evasive all your life, that’s now being whispered into your ear. Then, as our Unit guidebook clinically states, comes a “heightened sense of invincibility, increased sociability, and the ecstasy of the senses.” Which, in layman’s terms, basically means that the world becomes enchanted.
“Good?” I ask.
Lana laughs, seductive, guttural, looks me right in the eyes, her pupils two tiny specks. “Perfection.”
“You ever think these kinds of tricks could land you right alongside your old man?” Warren digs, as Lana stumbles to my other side, so now I’m in between them.
“Relax, Warren,” I mutter, as Lana wraps her arm around mine. I try to focus on her, but Warren won’t let it go.
“I still remember what you told me, right after his indictment, how you never wanted to be like him. Ever.” Warren leans in. “Every time you ask me to take you out, I think about that, how ironic it is. ’Cause it’s like you’re trying to be him,” he adds. “It’s like you can’t help it.”
Warren’s words hit me hot and quick, the shock of his jab quickly settling into angry shame. “I guess neither of us is man enough to change,” I cut next to him. “Jealousy still looks bad on you, Warren.”
We reach the cleaning closet, come face-to-face with the man on the stool sporting a black jacket, black pants, and a bowler hat. He gives us a smile and folds his hand out like a welcome toward the door. “Your turn, folks. Step inside.”
Lana, Warren, me—we all peer into the closet out of instinct. There are cleaning supplies stashed in the dusty corners, an old broom, buckets. No light.
“But it’s not a closet.” Lana looks at me with those wide eyes. “It’s a test.”
The doorman nods with an almost cringe-worthy, put-on flourish. “Very wise.” He smiles at me. “Appearances can be deceiving.”
Lana takes me by the hand, and Warren and I follow her into the broom closet.
The closet is a double-sided trick, it has to be: linking two objects together through time and space, so that guests walk into one door, only to instantly walk out of another located somewhere else. Sure enough, as we pass through the broom closet, we magically exit a different door that leads into a low-lit, windowless hallway faintly smelling of mildew. My guess is that we’ve been transported into the cellar of the house.
A double-sided trick, a link, isn’t particularly difficult—like all magic manipulations of reality, it just takes the right words of power, the right objects, and of course, the magic touch—but it’s definitely a crowd-pleaser. And it’s real sorcery, not one a puffer could try to fake in a pathetic attempt to flaunt himself as magic. So my guess is that Warren’s buddy Sam has shelled out quite a lot of cash for this little party to go down. Sorcerers aren’t the typical frat-house fare—you hear whispers of performances in higher-echelon circles, you find them in the city’s shining rooms owned by the mob. And even though magic itself doesn’t wow me, the keys to it—money, influence, power—that’s a bag of tricks I still can’t accept that I’ve lost.
“Don’t leave me,” Lana says dreamily. She works her hand up to my bicep as we walk down the hall. “You’re an angel, you know that? You’ve brought me something amazing. You’ve brought me light.”