Relaxing. It was a kind of meditation for him, card tricks, and of course, it got the girls to lean closer. That was never a bad thing.
When the queen of hearts spun out this time, flipping in midair to land faceup, they all squealed. He followed it with the rest of the suit, in order, never looking down. It was his own trick, invented on long, lonely nights when he hadn’t felt like company. He didn’t sleep much, never had. He’d been up at dawn this morning, down on the beach with a cup of Starbucks’ finest, watching the sun gild the waves in rolling gold.
“Wow,” Heather breathed and looked up, delight shining in her eyes. That was what he loved about magic…. It really did magical things, even if it was only illusion. It made people feel a sense of wonder, and that could never be underestimated. “Stefan, you are amazing!”
He winked at her. “Better save your praise. We just met. I could get better, you know.”
They all laughed, breathless and excited. He couldn’t understand what his attraction was for women; he couldn’t really see it when he looked in the mirror. He was a collection of flaws: not tall enough, a little broad in the shoulders, gypsy-dark skin at least three shades off the golden glow that Californians seemed to crave. His hair curled, and he’d given up styling it; it just cascaded wild and black around his face and down past his collar. His nose was too large, his eyes so dark brown they looked black. No, he was hardly the California ideal, and he was overdressed for the nearly naked dress code of Venice Beach in loose low-slung jeans and a roomy black cotton shirt over a red sleeveless undershirt.
And yet, he was surrounded by girls so hot that he was surprised the wooden floor didn’t catch fire around them. Ah well. His cross to bear, he supposed.
Heather slid onto the bench beside him, and a girl in a blue thong bikini slipped in on the other side. “Ladies,” he said. “Are you trying to distract me? Or learn my secrets? I promise, there’s nothing up my sleeves.”
Heather leaned over, and her tongue touched his earlobe, a gentle wet caress that made him pause in his shuffling and close his eyes to control a deep, satisfying shudder. Oh, yes. He liked Venice Beach. “How about here?” she asked, and her hand moved on his leg under the table.
“Naughty,” he said, and actually jumped when the girl on his other side moved, too. “Okay, that’s—naughtier.”
They giggled. Stefan started shuffling again, fumbling one or two cards, trying to think how to get himself out of this gracefully. Or at least how to retain as much of his mystery and dignity as possible while succumbing. After all, if it was beyond his control, who could blame him….
Over one of the girls’ bronzed shoulders a TV was soundlessly playing on a twenty-four-hour news channel. He fixed on it, trying to take his mind off the girls while still enjoying what they were doing, and read the text crawling at the bottom of the screen. BREAKING NEWS, it read. DUAL ABDUCTION IN PHOENIX…
It hit him in a rush of light and color and sickening sensation. Cold. Cold metal floor. Vibrations. Light leaking in through tinted, curtained windows. Fingers going numb, tied too tight. Sharp pain in bound ankles. Knees, too. Wet gag in his mouth, on the verge of choking him. No way to spit it out. The cool, gritty feeling of tear tracks on his face. Grim anger and fear, a trace of panic held down with difficulty.
A girl was lying across from him on the van floor, similarly bound, her purple-streaked blond hair falling over her face but not quite concealing her frantic eyes. There was a bruise on her face, dark even in the dimness.
Two men sat on benches, one on each side. Couldn’t make out their features in the darkness. One was smoking, the stink of it filling the van and making it even harder to breathe around the gag….
He jerked back into himself, gasping, and dropped the cards. A strange sound sawed at his ears, and after a couple of seconds he realized it was the girls, giggling. He was still in the coffee shop, in Venice Beach. He was safe. His heart was racing, his palms sweating, and he couldn’t get away from the feeling of fear and foreboding and claustrophobia in the vision.
He stood up, gathered the cards and jammed them into his pocket. “Sorry,” he said, and pushed through the crowd of girls to achieve the open air outside. He stood there, breathing deeply, trying to slow his pulse. Blue sky, warm sun, pounding surf. Laughing people. Weight lifters on the beach, displaying their oiled muscles and as much skin as legally possible. Skating, scantily clad girls. Jugglers. Sidewalk artists. Musicians. Normal life, by the community standards. Stefan stood there shaking, struggling to put himself back in his own body. He was unable to forget the bleak terror the girl was feeling.
DUAL ABDUCTION IN PHOENIX.
They were in a van, and they were in terrible danger.
He needed to tell someone.
He sat down on a bench facing the ocean and dialed his cell phone slowly, thinking hard about what to do. In the end, he did what he always did.
He called home.
“It’s about time,” his mother said. No hello because she already knew it was him—she always knew. “Are you all right, Stefan? I had a dream.”
“Did you?” He closed his eyes and smiled. “What about?”
“You, obviously. You were somewhere dark, and you were in danger. Where are you, my dear?”
“Not in the dark,” he said. “And not in danger. I think you had an echo of what I just had, Mom.”
“Ah. Vision?” She was businesslike about it, but then, she would be: it was her business. Rose Blackman, psychic to the stars and Hollywood nobility. A genuine talent. She’d taught him all about showmanship, too. “Tell me about it, peanut.”
“Mom, please don’t call me that.”
“Just tell me.”
He did, in as much detail as he could remember. Unlike some of his other visions, this one wasn’t fading like a nightmare—it remained immediate and frightening in its vividness. “Mom, I think it’s the girls who were on the news. In Phoenix. I think I should call the cops.”
“The cops? Oh, no. That’s the worst thing you can do. Believe me, I’ve been down that road before. Even in L.A., the police don’t believe in psychics, and you’re talking about Arizona? Pffft. You might as well claim to be from outer space.”
“What about the FBI?”
“What about them? Do you have any real information, Stefan? Anything that could really help those girls right now?”
He thought it over. The impressions had been immediate, but limited to the van, the pain, the fear. He couldn’t describe the exterior of the van, or even the faces of the abductors.
His heart sank, and he bent over to rest his aching forehead on the heel of one hand. “Then what do I do?”
“Whatever you do, son, it will be the right thing. I know this, because I know you.” Rose Blackman’s voice had softened, as if she could sense his distress. Maybe she could, even at this distance. It had been a source of annoyance and comfort to him all his life, that he couldn’t hide anything from his mother or—to a lesser extent—his father. They always knew, somehow, what he felt, if not what he was thinking. “Are you working today?”
“No.
