Houdini's Last Trick (The Burdens Trilogy) Read online

  Atlas walked over to the wardrobe and looked behind it.

  “What?”

  “Once you have the Eye, and use it however you intend—what are you hoping to leave to the world?”

  Atlas peered inside. Houdini prayed to anyone who would listen that the latch would stay shut.

  Don’t move, my son. Don’t say a word.

  The giant man rummaged through the clothes until he came to the back wall. He looked at it a moment, then threw the door shut.

  “I’ll leave a lesson,” Atlas said. “Strip away a man’s fancy clothes, his money, his titles and connections, and at our very core, we have only our strength to rely on. Humanity’s true leaders are the strong.”

  There was a creaking sound from the wardrobe. Atlas looked back, and stepped toward it again.

  Everything I love is in that wooden box.

  “Atlas!” Houdini said.

  He held up a loose fist and let the gold chain dangle out of it. Misdirection at its simplest.

  “If you want the Eye, you’ll have to wait until my show is over. You’ve never seen my disappearing act, have you?”

  Houdini slipped on the Ring of the Fisherman. Atlas’s big brows furrowed in confusion as he tried to zero in on the magician’s location.

  The dark beast was blocking the doorway, so Houdini thrust it aside. The tiny being was so light and fragile it went tumbling over and smashed into the wall. The magician then darted out of the room, making loud footsteps as he ran.

  Houdini didn’t need to look behind him to see if Atlas was following. The thunder of footsteps and the explosion of breaking walls was evidence enough.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  HOUDINI SPED PAST Marcel, the stage manager.

  “Houdini, is that you?” Marcel said, looking around. “The show is starting. Come on!”

  The magician had been running for the exit, but Marcel gave him an idea.

  The stage.

  Houdini stopped in his tracks and turned sharply left. He stuffed the gold chain into his pants pocket and jumped up the five steps onto the stage behind the curtain. A live orchestra was finishing the last few bars of “Charleston,” the song meant to cue him on. The curtains burst open: spotlights blinded the magician and applause deafened him. This was typically his element, but right now the external stimulation made it difficult to think.

  I have to buy as much time as possible.

  The applause died as people looked around at the seemingly empty stage. Houdini slipped off the Ring of the Fisherman and suddenly appeared. There were gasps and then more applause.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said as loudly as possible, “thank you for coming. Merci.”

  Atlas stormed onto the stage, every footstep cracking the wooden floor below.

  “Tonight we have a special guest—a strongman!”

  Atlas eyed the crowd uncomfortably. This was what Houdini had hoped for. Enough uncertainty to make the giant man pause.

  “Magic is the art of manipulating the eye. A good magician directs the audience where to look. And where not to.”

  Houdini stepped toward Atlas, who cocked his arm. The magician slipped on the ring and ducked just as Atlas took a wild swing at him. Gasps and applause from the crowd.

  “In this way, magic is much like life,” Houdini said, sneaking quietly across the stage toward a table of handcuffs. He knew people had a sense of him on stage, but they couldn’t quite get their eyes to look in the right place.

  “People will distract you, trying to get you to look one way when, really, you should be looking another.”

  He picked up a pair of handcuffs, which to the audience must have appeared to be levitating. Atlas ran for the table and smashed it in half with one fist. Houdini quietly stepped out of the way.

  “If there’s one escape I could teach you, it would be to escape what the world tells you is important, and instead look for what really matters.”

  At the back of the audience, Houdini saw two figures, barely more than shadows, sneaking their way toward the front door. He instantly recognized the outline of Bess in front, guiding Pickford with a sleepy little lump against her chest.

  “Ask yourself, what is worth dying for? Your work? Your status? Your wealth? All of those things die off when you do, maybe sooner.”

  Bess and Pickford stopped a moment to watch the stage.

  Run, my dear wife! Run and call the police!

  “I never believed in the supernatural, but I now believe there is magic. Magic in the love of friends and family. Magic in what you would do to protect them. When your love for someone transforms them for the better, it’s the greatest magic in the world.”

  Atlas lunged toward Houdini’s voice, quicker than the magician expected. Houdini jumped to escape him, but Atlas’s hand clipped his shoulder. Houdini landed hard, and the ring came tumbling off his finger. It bounced and then rolled to the front edge of the stage, about to fall into the orchestra pit.

  The giant man grabbed Houdini by the front of the shirt and pulled him to his feet.

  “There is no power in magic,” Atlas said. “But power itself is rather magical.”

  He pulled Houdini close to him.

  “I’ve heard you brag that you can withstand the punch of any man,” Atlas said. “Is that true?”

  Before Houdini could react Atlas walloped him in the stomach with massive force. Houdini flew across the stage and crashed into a stone column at the far end. Sharp, burning pain shot up and down his body. For a moment he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t even think about anything except the fiery bolts of pain.

  Houdini grabbed the decorative ridges in the column and pulled himself to standing.

  “It’s true,” he said, coughing up blood. “Only you didn’t give me the chance to brace myself.”

  Houdini took a rasping breath and looked inward. Three of his vertebra were fractured and the nerves going to one of his legs were damaged. There was a soft, squishy mass above his bladder that he had trouble identifying until he realized it was what remained of his appendix. His pancreas had been bruised and a section of his small intestine had been severed clean in half. Houdini gingerly touched a bulge that was forming to the side of his belly button. There was massive internal bleeding.

  In short, I am dying.

  He collapsed onto his hands and knees. Somewhere in the far reaches of his mind, he heard people in the audience murmuring to themselves in concern. His head was spinning with nausea and the corners of his sight had gone dark. Through his blurry vision, he saw the Ring of the Fisherman, teetering on the front edge of the stage.

  A voice came to him. Calamity Jane. She had said something to Houdini so many years ago. What was it?

  Men would kill for talent like yours. Don’t you ever let them.

  Why it was so important, Houdini didn’t know. He pulled the gold chain from his pocket and bunched it into a ball.

  “You win, Atlas,” he said.

  He stood, and with as much strength as he could muster, he threw the chain into the dark recesses of the back stage. Atlas scrambled for it.

  Houdini stumbled over to the ring. He flipped open the cap and pulled out the white tablet Pope Benedict had told him about. He stuck it on his tongue. It was unbearably bitter, but he forced himself to swallow.

  Dark must die.

  He didn’t know what the chemical was, but he could tell it was powerful, and that it would work quickly to finish him—much faster than Atlas’s blow to his stomach. The ring tumbled from his grasp and clattered into the orchestra pit.

  When Houdini looked up, he saw that Bess and Pickford were gone. They were safe. He had bought them enough time to escape. There was a faint sound of sirens in the distance. Houdini doubted the police could subdue Atlas, but they would delay him even further. They would buy more time.

  Once Atlas discovered Houdini’s ruse, would he chase Mary Pickford down, or was her identity still safe? And what would she do with the boy
? If the giant man continued to hunt her, it would be too dangerous to have him with her. He could only imagine how Atlas might use him, what his unexplainable power might do for the other Burdens. Pickford needed to send him away. But could she bear to part with him?

  As he observed his dying pulse pumping the poison through his body, he noticed his son’s strange drop of blood still inside him. His body had not absorbed it; rather, it resided there, comfortable and self-sustained, as if it were its own entity.

  Houdini focused all of his gift on that one drop, every last bit of energy he had.

  I love you, my son. The sacrifice is worth it.

  He held onto that drop in his mind, cradling it as if it were the boy itself. There was a calmness in knowing there was nothing left for Houdini to do but die. He had done his job. He had left his magic to the world. And he had discovered his true legacy.

  —THE END—

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A life of adventure doesn’t begin until we take risks.

  That has been a defining mantra of the past year for me. It has guided me into new relationships and led me to new cities. It has given me the courage to pursue my writing while taming the fears over finances and job stability. It has helped me live the past year with an open hand instead of a closed fist.

  Thank you to my parents and sister for supporting my pursuit of adventure. It’s the enduring love of family that gives us the strength to adventure in the first place. Love is home, and it’s easier to strike out into the unknown when we have a home to which we can return.

  Thank you to Tino for being my partner in the adventure. And for also being the adventure itself. Change is not easy, and growth even harder. You push me to grow every day, and I am grateful for it (usually in retrospect, after I moan and groan about it).

  Thanks to the Burbank Writers Group for their feedback on early drafts of this novella. Thanks to my proofreaders (Tino, Dyanne, and Ben) my cover designer (Tamara) and my illustrator (Francesca). And thanks to everyone who read this book in advance and gave feedback.

  If you’ve enjoyed this book, please leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. There’s more adventure to come. If we’re open to it, there always will be.

  THE

  SIXTEEN

  BURDENS

  The first book in

  The Burdens Trilogy

  C H A P T E R O N E

  CHAPTER ONE

  EVEN THE SUN was conspiring against Nina Beauregard, she was sure of it. It bore down upon her face like a celestial spotlight, revealing every laugh line, every forehead crease, every sunspot that her Yardley’s English face cream had promised to remove.

  What do the British know about sun?

  She stepped out of the car and pulled on a hat with a brim so wide it could have been a flying saucer. It hid her from the daylight and, she liked to tell herself, the jealous eyes of pedestrians on Hollywood Boulevard.

  The harsh sunlight reminded her of that fateful screen test she had done for Mr. Selznick—the one where the gaffer had neglected to use a light filter to smooth out her face. He had done it on purpose, she was convinced, because he favored Vivien Leigh for the role. That was why Beauregard had lost what was bound to become the greatest role in 1930s cinema—that of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind.

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  The man who had driven her handed her a pair of shaded glasses. They looked like the typical sunglasses that were becoming the fashion, but when she put them on they completely blocked her vision. There were even small flaps on the sides that prevented a peripheral view.

  The driver took her arm in his to guide her down the sidewalk.

  “If I may.”

  You certainly may.

  Although he was older, he was one of the most attractive men Beauregard had ever met. His strong jawline, his salt-and-pepper hair, his piercing blue eyes—she couldn’t believe he was merely someone’s help. He should have been a star, like her.

  They walked two or three blocks, though in which direction Beauregard couldn’t tell; the man took a number of sudden turns that must have been intended to confuse her. After walking across some uneven pavement, he placed Beauregard with her back against a concrete wall and told her to wait. The wall was hot against her back.

  She was sweating heavily underneath the green, long-sleeve crepe gown, but she didn’t show her arms in public anymore. It was all because of that wretched screen test with Mr. Selznick, when she had taken off her caped coat underneath the hot studio lights, and they had stared at the skin hanging from her arms, jiggling like twin turkey necks. True, Beauregard was more than a decade older than Scarlett O’Hara was described in the book, but she had better experience and better credentials than the rest of the actresses combined. She was from Georgia by way of Louisiana. She had grown up on a plantation. Her grandfather had been a Southern general in the war, for heaven’s sake. If anyone deserved to be Scarlett O’Hara, it was Nina Beauregard.

  And instead they give it to an Englishwoman.

  She heard the man’s footsteps; it sounded as if he were pacing back and forth. After a few moments there was a sound of scraping stone and the man took her arm again. They walked down a steep flight of stairs, descending into air that was cold and stale. They reached the bottom of what must have been a small room, because Beauregard could hear the sound of her heels echo off nearby walls.

  “Please sit,” he said. She obeyed.

  Beauregard became aware of someone else in the room, someone standing just inches from her.

  “If you do this, there is no going back.”

  The voice was a whisper, so soft and neutral that Beauregard couldn’t pick out any defining characteristic. It could have come from a man, a woman, even a child. It might have come from the wind itself.

  “There are dangers,” the voice said. “Not in the procedure. In the outcome.”

  “Yes, yes,” Beauregard said. “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t already decided. Continue on.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you simpleminded? I said continue on!”

  “Very well.”

  The driver removed Beauregard’s glasses, but it did her little good. The room was dim, lit by only a single line of tiny glowing lights in the ceiling. The figure in front of her was wearing a baggy white doctor’s coat and white pants. Covered with a surgical mask and hygienic head covering, the person revealed no more information than when Beauregard couldn’t see. Even the doctor’s eyes were covered in strange medical goggles.

  “Will it hurt?” Beauregard asked.

  “Yes,” the doctor said.

  “Good.”

  Anything worth doing has a cost.

  Beauregard didn’t mind pain for a purpose. She was already suffering from a face that, year after year, looked less like her July 1926 cover in Photoplay. Wasn’t that pain enough? If the results were even half of what the driver promised, she’d gladly swallow a burning coal and wash it down with metal tacks.

  The doctor removed a small object from a box. It was polished wood, conical in shape with one end larger than the other. Both ends were flat and had circular pieces of glass set into them, secured by brass bands around the edges. It looked less like a medical device and more like a trinket from an antique store.

  “Look into it,” the doctor said, holding up the larger end to Beauregard’s eye. She leaned in and looked into it. There was nothing to see. It was dark, with only a hint of light coming in through the other side.

  Beauregard saw the doctor crouching down to be at eye level with her. She heard the doctor remove one side of the goggles.

  Then Beauregard saw a blurry eye looking through the other end of the device. When it came into focus she saw that it was big, hazel, and quite attractive. But before she had the chance to consider it, the eye seemed to fracture into a thousand little eyes in a kind of honeycomb pattern. One of those tiny eyes began to glow. It became bright very quickly, and Beauregard had a sen
se of staring directly into the sun. She was about to pull away when there was a sudden jolt, as if she had been shocked by electricity. Then she did pull away, but apparently that was the end of the procedure because the doctor took away the device and quickly pulled the goggles back on.

  “Go,” the doctor said.

  Beauregard stood, but she felt disoriented. She had a fading blind spot over one eye and she had the sense of tingling all over, the way a limb falling asleep feels when it starts to wake.

  “That’s all?”

  The doctor turned away and said nothing more.

  “How do I know it worked?”

  The driver, who had waited in the corner, grabbed Beauregard’s elbow and turned her to a wall. He reached for something and flicked on a switch. Lights flooded Beauregard’s face, so bright that she had to close her eyes. She was standing in front of a dressing room mirror lined with bulbs.

  She slowly opened her eyes and looked at herself. She saw nothing especially different. Not at first. But after a moment, she saw a quivering near her eye, as if she had developed a small twitch. The crow’s feet around her eyes rippled like a current in the ocean, and then disappeared altogether, smooth as a glassy sea. The same happened to her laugh lines and the creases on her brow.

  At first she thought it must be her eyes adjusting to the light, but she next noticed her lips swelling to a fullness she’d never had, not even when she was eighteen and full of curves. Although she had lipstick on, she could see the natural color of her lips deepening. Her eyelids pulled upward like someone retracting a curtain, leaving her fresh-faced and youthful looking. Beauregard’s brittle hair was dyed black, but she could see it becoming full, glossy, and shiny before her eyes, with a fullness even the best stylist in Hollywood had never been able to give her.

  She smiled, and saw that even her teeth were whiter and seemed stronger. The front right tooth, which had always been slightly crooked, had straightened itself out.