Touch of Magic (36 page)

At last there was only dust settling. He heard
sound first, the slapping of a helicopter coming in. Almost afraid to look, he raised his shoulders. He
turned his head toward the room where they'd
been imprisoned.

She stood in the doorway.

Free of the straitjacket.

"I told you I could get out in another minute," she
said.

Twenty-six

"...and the king of hearts is
upside down."

Channing concluded her trick and sat back in her
chair in the Magic Castle. It was a private club, a
hangout for professional magicians where she'd
spent many an evening with Gramps once she was
old enough to be admitted. Some of the men who
sat at the table with her, or stood making approving
sounds around it in the gracious old upstairs bar,
had known her forever and welcomed her back like
a prodigal. To others she had been introduced as
the Great Sebastian's granddaughter. Everyone
seemed to know she'd just finished a two-week run
of her own at Palacio Sol.

Two weeks, she thought. Incredible that she'd
stayed and finished it like a real engagement. But
she'd had nothing better to do, and performing af
ter all these years had been like a tonic.

"That was
Yussuf
Bashim's
trick," someone said as
she gathered the cards.

Her smile was faint but steady.

"Yes. He left it to me."

They didn't know about
Yussuf
. They never
would. And the part of him that had been good, the
part of him that had been their valued colleague,
would live on through her each time she performed
this effect with the cards.

The tape that had caused her so much trouble,
the trick that
Yussuf
had left her, had proved a part of him had been genuine. In the end, his friendship for her had been real. His love for magic had been real. She never could forgive what he'd been, let
alone understand it. Still, the invisible things repre
sented by that tape gave her a certain peace.

"Drink, Channing?" asked one of the men at the
table.

She shook her head.

Restless now, she excused herself and stood up,
hugging the sleeves of the dark green dress she'd
found in a shop two days ago. It had pockets in all the convenient places where they were usually missing in women's apparel. It had seemed like an
omen, a promise of new beginnings. Yet in spite of
the dress,
Yussuf's
trick, and the warmth being of
fered her here tonight, she felt adrift. She wan
dered past the dining room with its stained-glass windows and ceiling fans, past the theater where a
live show was in progress, through happy murmurs
of conversation, and back to the bar again.

She had come here to meet Oliver Lemming. He was late. It annoyed her. But she knew her irritation
was directed at herself and the wisps of emptiness
that kept creeping up on her when she was unwary.

She hadn't seen Bill Ellery since the night he'd
saved her life more than two weeks ago. Even be
fore he had picked himself off the floor after the bomb blast, Oliver and other armed men had burst in. There had been a fury of questions, shouted orders, and suddenly, as
Serafin
pressed close to her and someone asked for the third time if she was all right, Ellery was being hustled away toward the
helicopter. He'd looked back at her.

She'd thought he was about to pull away and cross
the room to speak to her. He hadn't. She'd thought she'd hear from him the following morning. She
hadn't.

Now she realized she'd probably never see him again. Logical, of course. Whatever had sprung to life between them had been colored by the danger
they'd faced. Both of them were old enough to real
ize that. It was better this way. And less compli
cated.

Yet the knowledge was forcing her to face some
thing she didn't want to see. It was more than her estrangement from magic that had driven her since she'd lost Gramps and Tony. She had gone from country to country, from challenge to challenge,
filling her time, filling her head with thoughts so she
wouldn't be forced to confront her own loneliness.

It was effective, she told herself. Maybe it was even healthy.

She could do it again.

She and Bill Ellery never would have worked out.

At one end of the bar a young man in full evening
attire was doing the cups and balls beneath the approving eye of two older men. Two men at a table were challenging each another with their dexterity with coins. The little group she had left was exchanging card tricks. All the other women in the
room were wives or girlfriends. Channing felt a
keen and piercing sense of being a hybrid -- an odd
ity of nature -- alone.

Seeing Oliver's silver head appear amid the others in the room, she straightened herself and went
to meet him. He had stirred her curiosity with his
phone call yesterday. She had thought their business was finished, and all accounts settled.

"Say, this is quite a place," he said, looking around
with almost youthful delight. "Would they have
kept me out if I hadn't said the magic word to that
owl downstairs?"

Channing smiled. Brief as their contact had been,
she'd come to like this man. He'd been brisk yet
concerned the night they had managed to thwart
Max's plan for their premature funerals. Even as Oliver had stood in that deserted clinic barking or
ders, he'd scanned both her face and
Serafin's
for
signs of strain. She had seen how his presence
brought out the best in the men who were with
him. She could understand why Ellery had been so
torn by the possibility of his crookedness.

"How're
Rundell
and
Serafin
?" he asked as they
settled down at a table for two with drinks in front of them.

"Fine. I broke down and bought
Serafin
his own
setup for video games so I wouldn't go bankrupt.
They're both getting pie-eyed playing them."

Channing sat forward, smoothing her sleeves
again.

"Get to the point. Your department's paid for my Jeep -- and my other expenses. What's left to talk about? And why didn't you want to come to the
house?"

She thought his eyes gave a twinkle.

"That little pitcher you took in has big ears. I
thought things were better discussed somewhere neutral."

He leaned forward.

"I thought you'd like to know those phony pass
ports have already helped nab some people intending to blow up part of an airport. They'll do a
lot more good before
Ballieu's
outfit figures out what happened. Incidentally, there's a rumor
Ballieu's
in the hospital with some ailment and won't likely be coming out."

She was silent, trying to square her image of
Ballieu
with that of a man dying in an ordinary hospital.

"Any word on Max?" she asked.

"We've got him." Oliver's eyes betrayed a glint of satisfaction. "We're huddling with the Mexican gov
ernment on an extradition agreement."

He looked down at his glass and frowned.

"This is a sales pitch, Dr. Stuart. You went in cold,
and you did an amazing job for us. It's hard to find
good people -- men or women -- for our kind of
work. You've got what it takes. Bill thinks so, too,
though I don't mind telling you he was skeptical when he first met you.

"What I'm leading up to is, would you go on work
ing for us? It wouldn't be full-time. We'd want you
to go on with your own work in hydro-geology. It
gives you the kind of cover we couldn't invent if we
had to. We'd want you to undergo some training first, and then we'd call on you whenever some
thing came up where we could utilize your skills."

Channing formed her fingers into steeples and
thought about things she'd discussed with Ellery: a
kind of global warfare. And she could make a differ
ence. She'd be using her magician's know-how, not
in the way her forebears had but in a way that suited
her. She could feel the Stuarts of the past giving
silent approval.

There was
Serafin
to consider, of course. She had
responsibilities now. Yet she'd like to think it was
partly for
Serafin
and other unknown kids that she'd
agree to Oliver Lemming's offer. Maybe the reluc
tance to get involved was the very weakness on
which people like Henri
Ballieu
counted.

"I'll do it," she said quietly.

Oliver Lemming sighed his relief and downed part of his drink.

"I ought to have some pretty speech," he said.
"But the fact is, I don't know what to say except
'thank you.' It's from the heart, and from a lot of
people who'll never even know they ought to say it
for themselves."

Channing traced the rim of the table. She
thought she kept her own question casual,

"Speaking of Bill Ellery, did his shoulder heal?"

She was thirty-two years old, but the man across
from her looked at her as though he found her very
young and very amusing.

"Why don't you ask him?"

He nodded toward the bar behind them. Chan
ning turned and saw Ellery standing at the far end,
eyes resting on her. All the poise she had accumulated over a lifetime slipped for a moment, and she
was vulnerable. She felt the temperature of her body change from warm to cold and back again.

"Excuse me," said Oliver Lemming cheerfully,
getting to his feet. "I forgot to feed my cat."

Ellery could almost read his boss's words, but too much of his attention was fixed on the woman now
facing in his direction. She was as stubborn and
enigmatic-looking as he remembered, Ellery
thought. He watched her rise.

Oliver threaded his way out of the room, and then, even though there were people all around
them, there were just the two of them. Ellery took a
step forward.

She began to walk toward him. She was bristling.
Holding herself very tightly. He understood that part of it. He'd vanished like one of the colored
scarves she used on stage. He wanted her; he
wanted to be a part of her life. Yet he knew he
wasn't willing to give up his work, and a woman
would have to be crazy to settle for what he could
offer with that. Besides, he still wasn't sure how
completely she'd gotten over her doctor.

He'd spent two weeks on recuperative leave, off
by himself, fishing and thinking. Now he hoped the
decisions he'd struggled to reach were valid.

They met in front of a vacant stretch of bar.
Channing turned, planting her elbows on the solid
edge behind her and leaning against it.

"I figured you were saying good-bye when you
walked off without a word back there in that clinic,
Ellery."

Her voice would have sounded steady to a
stranger. But not to him. She didn't look at him.

"Yeah. Well. I meant it to be," he said.

Channing could feel him take a step closer. He
was looking down at her hair.

"I got to thinking about what you said -- about
nothing in life being guaranteed." He turned and
braced against the bar as she had done. His jaw
worked once before he spoke again. "I need a part
ner for a job in Belgium next month. Wondered if
you'd be interested."

His eyes were waiting as hers flashed up. They both understood it was more than professional in
volvement he was offering. He'd taken the first
step, and it was scary for both of them. Instinctively
Channing knew he'd never reached out to anyone
before. And she'd lost Tony.