Illusory

"Evanescit!" Van's voice rang through the theater, sailing over the heads of the hundreds of audience members and echoing up into the rafters. The red curtain before me vanished momentarily, my eyes registering only darkness, and I appeared in a hidden place back stage where even the stagehands couldn't see me. My eyes burned for a moment, blinded by the dim lighting after facing such an impermeable darkness, but my vision quickly returned. I found myself staring at an ugly red sheet that was nothing like the one on the stage right now but that I had seen just as many times before.

There were gasps in the crowd, cries of amazement, murmurs of the awestruck and cynical alike. I sighed and looked around the cramped little storage closet, waiting for the time when he would stop showboating and finally bring me back. I noticed a mirror leaning against a dusty shelf before me, coated in grime but still useful. I smoothed the short skirt of my red dress, straightened a bit of the gold trim where it had begun to curl, and fluffed a few carefully curled tresses of chestnut-brown hair. I told myself that I was just making myself more presentable — you know, for Van's sake — but really, I was admiring myself. I mean, with long, sexy legs and milky white skin like mine, who wouldn't check themselves out every now and again?

Yeah, don't answer that.

I was just leaning forward to take a peek at my own cleavage when a shout of "Resurgit!" rumbled through the vast space. I reappeared in the coffin-like clear box that I'd vanished from, finding when my vision returned that I was still safely hidden behind the prettier red curtain. I had just enough time to straighten and put on an overwhelmingly cheery, teeth-baring grin before the curtain was jerked from my view, revealing me in all my magically reappeared glory. I pushed the plastic door open and stepped onto the stage, throwing my arms in the air as if to yell, "Surprise!" The crowd cheered wildly, applause and shouts and whistles coming from every direction, and Van took my raised hand in his and brought us both into a deep bow.

"Thank you, ladies and gentleman!" he said to the audience, his voice once again booming to every corner of the theater through the overpowering sound system. "Thank you very much!" The sincere gratefulness to his tone turned my forced smile into a real one, and I laughed as I straightened and then took us both into another low bow. He smiled at me, and when we rose to our full height again, he skipped from the stage and dragged me right along with him.

When we entered the darkness behind the scenes, he was laughing with me, and he didn't let go of my hand. "Didn't that go well?" he asked, an excitement to his voice that was only ever present after a show.

I grinned. "Of course it did. It always does. You're amazing on stage!"

He returned my grin, his smile oddly lopsided. "We wouldn't have such a massive audience without you, you know," he said slyly. "Most of the men only come to see you."

"Or they come because their wives drag them along," I countered, smirking. "You know, because they want to see you."

He laughed lightly and, with my hand still in his, started down a flight of stairs to the basement area, where our dressing room was located. "But they don't want to see me for the reason you're implying."

"Oh, really?" I asked, cocking an eyebrow at his know-it-all grin. "And you know this for a fact?" We made our way down a long, white hall filled with harsh florescent light, actually walking side-by-side for once. The perpetual hurry he seemed to be in had vanished for the moment, and I was able to keep up easily.

"Well, not for a fact." We reached the door to the dressing room, and his hand finally slipped from mine to turn the knob. "But I'm well aware that my physical appearance is nothing in comparison to my magical abilities." He pushed open the heavy wooden door.

"I wouldn't say all that," I remarked, but my playful attitude faded when I saw his face go slack. I turned from him to the room, and my jaw dropped. "Oh, no." The place had been trashed, every drawer of the antique dressing table pulled out, every item of clothing lying on the floor, every scrap of paper strewn about. A single spell book lay on the floor only a foot from the door, spread open to show that several pages had been torn out. "Not this again!"

Van rushed to the book, snatching it up and beginning to flip through the remaining pages. He muttered to himself with each turn of a page, and though I could only catch small snippets of speech — "still there," "the heating spell," "has to be here" — I knew that he was taking stock of what was left, likely to figure out what was missing.

"All of the dark spells are gone," he said after I'd spent three full minutes waiting patiently for just this bit of information. He turned to face me, but his eyes remained on the book, his brow furrowed as if he were deep in thought. "A few of the light spells, too, but most of those appear to be in place." His eyes flicked to my face. "They only took the ones that could potentially harm people."

I frowned, looking from a crumpled white dress shirt to a messy pile of papers to the black mini-dress I'd worn to the theater before I finally looked at the book in his hands. "Do you think it was the same person who took the other books?" I asked quietly, saddened by the destruction.

"I see no reason why anyone else would do this," he said simply, his frown mirroring my own when I looked up at him. "It has to be the same person."

"Have you thought of how to find them yet?" We couldn't let this person keep stealing dangerous spells. I couldn't keep seeing Van like this.

"No."

"Are we going to get help now?" His family had to have some idea as to what was going on or, at the very least, of how to find out.

"Yes."

-?-

Van only had to ring the doorbell once, and within seconds, a servant was opening the front door. "Van, sir," he greeted the man with a cheerful smile, eagerly stepping aside with a sweeping gesture to the house's interior. "Please, come in. Your father is waiting for you in his study."

"Thank you," Van said with a small smile of his own. He took a few steps into the house, then stopped to glance back at me. "Are you coming?"

I nodded, my head tilted back as far as it would go without tipping me over, my mouth hanging open in awe as I stared up at the massive house. Everything was so clean, so white, so glowingly pristine. There was even one of those cute marble fountains with a little cupid spitting water out of its mouth in the middle of the front yard. These people were rich.

"How come we don't come here more often?" I asked when I finally managed to force myself through the door and into the cavernous foyer. A statue of some Greek goddess stood to either side of the door — Aphrodite? Athena? Artemis? — and I couldn't help once again noticing that these people weren't just rich; they were sickeningly, overwhelmingly, filthy rich.

"Because I knew you would react how you're reacting now," he said laughingly as he led the way through a door and up a flight of stairs. "You're embarrassing yourself painfully right now."

My head was nearly spinning in circles as I tried to take everything in, and I tripped up the stairs. "I have no idea what you're talking about," I said indignantly, even as I got to my feet with the help of a shiny golden railing. "I'm reacting in a perfectly acceptable manner, and I'm not at all embarrassed."

He chuckled. "That's because you have no shame." He reached the top of the gently curving stairwell and went left down the hall, his footsteps fading rapidly as I stopped to gawk at another statue at the top of the stairs. This one was a gray marble version of the Nereid Oceana. I only knew that because the name was engraved at the statue's base; really, all it looked like to me was a naked woman with a tiny waist and a tiny chest. I reached up to grab a small stone breast, but Van called my name from down the hall, and I hurried after him. Luckily, he'd already disappeared into a room down the hall and hadn't seen me preparing to grope a Nereid. Phew.

"Ember, this is my father, Alex Tamerlane," Van said the instant I'd walked through the door, gesturing to the man smiling at me from behind a desk. He looked younger than he really was (he had to be at least 40-something, after all; Van was 24), with a kind, relatively unwrinkled face and a head of light brown hair untouched by the gray of old age. His narrow eyes were of a muddy brown, and it made me wonder how Van had gotten those unique olive-green irises of his. "Father, this is my assistant, Ember Oakley."

I stepped forward to offer him my hand, which he took in a firm grip and gave a hearty shake. I was about to tell him what a pleasure it was to finally meet him when he blurted, "Damn, she's got some fine legs!" My face instantly reddened, and I stammered a thank you that was lost beneath Van's exasperated shout of "Dad!" The older man laughed and let go of my hand, leaning back in his creaky chair with a grin.

"Sorry, sorry. You know how I am with the young, pretty girls." He offered me a quick wink, and Van sighed.

"Look, Dad, we need your help," he said, lowering his eyes in shame. I took a couple of steps backward, away from the old man's desk, and stopped at Van's side. My cheeks still burned, and I just barely managed to fight the urge to hide them beneath my hands.

"With those books being taken?" Mr. Tamerlane asked, and Van nodded. The old man waved his hand dismissively. "There's nothing to worry about."

Van's eyes lit up, and he raised his head hopefully. "Have you located them?"

"Of course not," the man said flatly. "What would be the point? They're just a bunch of old spell books that we've gone through already. They were in storage for a reason."

I could almost hear Van's jaw clench. "And they were each in a different storage place for a reason," he ground out, trying to sound calm but failing. He was already embarrassed that he'd had to come to his family for help; I didn't blame him for being a little annoyed at his father's dismissal of the situation. "They're too dangerous to be in the possession of anyone outside of a knowledgeable magician's family. Don't you care about what these spells could do in the wrong hands at all?"

"Frankly, son, it's not my problem," Mr. Tamerlane said in the same flat tone as before. "If some maniac wants to run off and kill people with stolen spells, more power to him. The police can deal with it, not me."

"But the police won't have any idea who to look for," Van argued, and I noticed that his hands had balled into fists behind his back, though his face remained calm. He was only moments away from snapping. "They won't be able to do a damn thing about it, and dozens of people will likely die because of it." Gently, I touched the side of a clenched fist with the tips of my fingers, then slid them along his skin until I was cupping his hand. He wouldn't look at me, but I felt his fist rub lightly against the palm of my hand.

"Son," the man sighed, a hint of aggravation slipping out with his breath, "it's not my problem. And it's not yours, either. We're not at fault for anything that this person has done or will do with the spells in those books."

"But Dad-"

"It's not our problem," the man said, a glare further narrowing his small brown eyes. "Now, you should go see your mother. She's been talking about you since you called about those books the other day."

"Fine," Van said tightly, then spun on a heel and stormed out of the room, his hand slipping out of mine. I offered his father one last awkward smile and quickly followed.

"I can't believe he doesn't care," Van grumbled once I was at his side. He walked past the stairs, heading down to the other end of the hall, and I couldn't stop myself from giving the statue of Oceana a glance. "His books are missing; his black magic is in some inexperienced magician's hands. Shouldn't he feel at least a little bit responsible?" I wasn't sure what to say to that, remaining silent until he pushed open a door and stormed through it just as he'd stormed out of his father's study.

We were in a library now, and instead of a perverted old man with an inappropriate love of the 'young, pretty girls,' we stopped before a woman in a blood-red armchair much too vast for her tiny body. Her hair was more gray than Mr. Tamerlane's had been, displaying only a few strands of the dark brown of her youth, her face a little bit more wrinkled, but she appeared to be just as vibrant and lively when she smiled up at us, the expression softening her harsh, pinched features.

"Donovan, sweetie!" she cried, leaping to her feet so fast that the book she'd been holding flew from her fingers. She threw her arms around Van, paying no mind to the book. "I was wondering when you were going to stop by!" Van hugged her tightly, a small smile playing across his lips, and I smiled. He was never this affectionate.

"I'm sorry I don't come around more," he said, his arms slipping from around the woman when she took a step back. She had to tilt her head back significantly to see his face, as he towered over her five-foot frame at a height of nearly 6'3, and my smile turned into a full-on grin. "I'm always busy with shows and creating new material, and I'm not in town very often."

"It's all right," she said, wearing a gentle, motherly smile. "I understand. Work is work, and your magic's your work." Her smile vanished suddenly, and she asked, "Did you come to see your father?" Van nodded once. "Did he give you any trouble?"

"He won't help me to locate the books that have been stolen," he said with a bitter frown. "I know it's only two books, but those two books contain enough spells to do some serious damage in the wrong hands." He opened his mouth to continue, but her eyebrows had risen in surprise. "What is it?"

"Didn't he tell you?" she asked, and he shook his head slowly, worry furrowing his brow. "It's not just those two books anymore. He had all of the books checked on, and they've all disappeared."

His eyes widened. "All of them?"

"All twelve of them," she said with a sharp nod.

"Has anyone else been killed?" I asked, not realizing I'd put a hand over my mouth until I heard how muffled my own words were.

She turned to me, frowning in confusion, as if she'd just noticed that I was there. "Two individuals and three families," she answered, then asked, "Who are you?"

I felt sick at the thought of so many more bodies practically lain at our feet, but I swallowed back the rising vomit. "Ember Oakley," I said, not even bothering to force a smile or a pleasant greeting. "I'm Van's assistant."

The puzzlement left the woman's eyes, and she exclaimed, "Oh, that's right! Van told us about you." She turned to her son, lips pursed in a scolding scowl. "Van, aren't you going to introduce us?"

"Ember, this is my mother, Karen," Van said with a roll of his eyes. "Mother, Ember."

"It's nice to meet you, dear," the woman said with a broad, pleasant grin that made the wrinkles on her cheeks all the more obvious. She held her hand out to me, and I took it, finding her grip to be much stronger than what I'd expect from such a small woman. She gave my hand a single rough shake, then pulled her fingers from my grasp. "Do you do any magic?" The question was asked innocently enough, but I knew mothers, and I knew that this was probably her way of evaluating whether I was good enough for her son or not. But I was just his assistant, not his girlfriend, not even his lover. I'd barely gotten into the friend zone with the bastard. Why did she need to evaluate my worth?

"Um, a little," I said after a brief pause, looking from Mrs. Tamerlane to Van and back again as my hands began to fidget nervously. My nail polish glinted red in the room's bright light with every twist of my fingers. "Only the basics, really. The stuff that Van has taught me."

Her eyebrows shot halfway up her forehead, and I felt another blush beginning to burn my cheeks. "So you never studied magic before?"

"No, ma'am." My eyes flicked to Van again, then darted back to his mother. I was fighting the urge to begin one of my spastic dances; jumping from one foot to the other repeatedly wouldn't make a very good impression.

"So you don't come from a magician family?" she asked, and I could see disapproval in her scowl.

"N-no, ma'am."

"Mm." She stared at me for one more unbearably uncomfortable second, then turned her attention to Van. "Do you have any locator spells at your disposal?" It was as if I'd never even been there.

"No," Van answered, once again dropping his eyes in shame. "The only locator spell I knew of was in one of the stolen books, and, well, that's not really an option anymore."

"You don't have anything memorized or written down somewhere?" Her voice was heavy with condemnation.

"No, ma'am," he mumbled, now in the very same uncomfortable situation that I'd just been in. It made me want to giggle, but I knew better than to make myself look even more stupid.

She sighed, perching her hands on her hips and shaking her head. "And here I thought it was just the girl who was incompetent." I scowled at her back as she turned from us and began walking toward one of the many shelves that lined the walls, scooping up the book she'd knocked to the floor as she passed it. She said nothing, dropping the book onto another chair, a blue one, near the shelves while scanning the hundreds of bindings. She made a soft "ah" as she reached for a book on the fifth shelf, having to lean onto the tips of her toes to reach it, and even then, she had to strain her arm. "There should be something useful in here," she said, tossing the book to Van. He caught it, and I peeked over his arm to read the shiny gold letters against their deep blue background: Lord Claret's Guide to Basic Magic.

"Who's Lord Claret?" I murmured to Van.

"A rich old man who lived a few centuries ago," he whispered back. "The rich liked to play with magic back then, and this particular rich guy liked to publish books, too."

"The book doesn't look old, though," I remarked, my head tilting to one side as I studied the puzzling perfection of the book's front and back cover as well as its tight binding. There were no tears, no scuffs, no stains or pencil marks, none of the imperfections that centuries of use would spawn.

"That's because the book is still being printed today," Mrs. Tamerlane answered, and the raw annoyance in her voice made my cheeks redden once more. I looked at her, but quickly dropped my gaze when I saw her cold, superior stare. "It's in every magician's library around the world." She turned her attention to her son and pursed her lips. "Except for yours, of course. What kind of magician are you, anyway?"

His lips tightened for a moment before he responded dryly, likely tiring of her condescending comments and questions, "One who doesn't require the inanities of cracking nuts from afar or changing hair color on a whim." Except I knew for a fact that he had that spell memorized. He'd taught it to me before.

She smiled a hard, mean smile. "Or the locator spell that's on the second page of the book?" He didn't speak, didn't move, merely staring at her with his lips pressed together in his subtle version of a glare. "Well, go on," she said, pointing to the book. "Look at the spell and tell me if it's too inane for you." Her smile changed now, becoming more mocking than mean. She'd won, against both me and Van, and she knew it.

He watched her for a moment longer, his jaw shifting as he clenched his teeth, until he finally accepted his pathetic defeat and opened the book. Right there, on the second page, was the locator spell. "Thank you, Mother," he grated, and I thought for sure that he was going to choke on the words and die right then. "I appreciate the help."

Her smile altered again, though it shifted for the better this time. "It's no problem, dear," she said warmly, taking a few steps closer and giving him a gentle pat on the arm. "Just try to ease yourself off that pedestal of yours before you fall off."

He chuckled. "I'll try. May I take this with me?"

"As long as you don't let it get stolen," she teased, giving him a light tap on the cheek.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, laughter brightening his words. He leaned down to give her a quick peck on the forehead. He probably would've gone for the cheek on another person, but on his mother, that was another few inches that he couldn't crouch comfortably. "Thank you again for all your help."

"Just call me if you need anything else," she said, retrieving her book from the blue chair she'd left it on. "I don't know why you didn't do that in the first place. You know how your father is."

Van laughed. "All right. Goodbye, Mom. Enjoy your book." He started out of the room without so much as a glance my way, and I looked awkwardly at his mother, feeling like I should give her some farewell even though she seemed to dislike me already.

But when she looked back at me, she smiled a sweet, lovely smile and said, "It was nice meeting you, Ember. Keep him out of trouble if you can."

I returned the smile, though I was sure mine wasn't nearly as nice or as pretty. "I'll do my best," I said, and fled from the room.

Van was waiting for me at the top of the stairs, watching my approach with patient tranquility. "Do you want to help me cast the spell?" he asked before I'd even reached him, and I stopped beside the statue of Oceana, shocked. He never let me help with the important things.

"W-what?"

"Do you want to help me cast the spell?" he repeated just as calmly as he had before, as if this were an everyday occurrence.

"Isn't that dangerous?" I asked in return, taking those last few steps forward.

"Do you plan to mess it up?"

"Well, no, I never plan-"

"Then it's fine," he cut me off, smiling. "Would you like to try it?"

I stared up at him for a moment, searching his face for any signs of trickery, but I found none. A broad grin spread across my face. "Well, if you wouldn't mind...Hell yeah."