Once again, it felt like someone had come up and wrapped my favorite blanket around my shoulders, all familiarity and warm comfort. Alixandre’s voice washed over me, mellow and smooth, and full of so much familiarity, just the same as before. The frustrating part was that no matter how hard I’d wracked my brain all afternoon, I just couldn’t place how or where I knew Alixandre. And I was still completely convinced I’d never seen his face before.

  Yet, somehow, as I watched him in front of the crowd, I knew when he was about to make a little flourish with his hands, or when he’d grin, maybe even toss a wink to the audience. As if I’d seen him perform a hundred times before.

  Could it just be magic making me feel this way? A misfired potion, or some magician’s spell I’d never heard of? Did magicians even do spells? I wasn’t sure—Alixandre was the first magician I’d ever heard of (or met) who actually could do magic. But, returning to that exact subject, whatever this was, it didn’t feel like magic. I was familiar enough with magic to know the signs of someone messing with your senses, and this wasn’t like that at all. It almost felt… karmic. Like a puzzle piece clicking into place, which finally allowed the viewer to see the picture that had been forming all along.

  I struggled to watch the show instead of just the showman, and once I managed to drag my attention back from the movement of his arms, and how he used his body to speak with or without the aid of words, I could see that he was very good at what he did. Finn was leaning forward in his chair, expression rapt as Alixandre performed all the usual tricks with just a little bit more flair than I’d seen them done before.

  He produced silk flowers from nowhere, reminding me of my very real poppy in water back home which, strangely, hadn’t so much as even wilted in the days since Alixandre had gifted it to me. A twist of his wrist pulled the solid metal hoops of a large chain into separate rings, and he did a couple of card tricks that impressed even me, and I knew he was an actual magician and not just the stage kind.

  The crowd ate it up.

  There were oohs and ahhs, with every trick, cheers and applause. The whole atmosphere of the place felt electric and joyful. I looked around and saw nothing but people having fun, not a single bored face or person scrolling on their phone. That was almost more impressive than the actual magic I’d seen Alixandre perform.

  Around what I assumed to be the midpoint of the show, Alixandre clapped his hands together and turned his devastating smile loose on the audience. And wouldn’t you know it, his gaze settled on me. I felt myself shift uncomfortably.

  “Mom, he’s looking right at you,” Finn whispered.

  “I’m going to need a little bit of assistance for my next trick,” Alixandre said as that mysterious smile of his lit the ends of his lips.

  Oh, please no, I thought to myself. If I were anything, it was nervous about being in front of a crowd.

  “If there were a lady in the audience who would be so kind as to volunteer to give me a hand, I would be most appreciative.”

  Alixandre’s gaze never left mine, and I hoped he read the misgiving in my eyes.

  Before I could even react, though, Finn reached over and grabbed my hand, shoving it up into the air.

  “Finn,” I squeaked, embarrassed. The problem with being a fair skinned blonde was that when I blushed, I went tomato red from my neck to my hairline and I was fairly sure that was exactly the case now. It wasn’t a good look.

  Alixandre’s smile was easy, determined, pleased. I didn’t have a chance to pull my hand back down before he immediately nodded, his smile broadening.

  Those blue eyes took on a strange kind of intensity then, and I couldn’t look away. I just couldn’t shake the fact that I knew him, that we’d been in each other’s lives for years, decades even.

  “Many thanks to the lovely lady in the front row.” Alixandre held out his hand towards me, that devil’s grin curling his lips. But the easy smile didn’t match the look in his eyes, which were still locked on me—that look was much deeper, much more perplexed, studious even.

  “Wow, he picked you, Mom!”

  “Would you come up on stage with me, please?”

  “Go, Mom!” Finn gave my shoulder a nudge, all but bouncing in his seat with excitement.

  Somehow, I got up without tripping over my own feet, even though they felt like jelly. How I made it to the stage, I’d never know, because I couldn’t tear my eyes off Alixandre.

  Before I knew it, his hand was warm on mine, long fingered and elegant, but strong. Alixandre tugged me up onto the stage beside him, spinning me with a little flourish as I gave off a little yelp and then came to a standstill. All the while, he didn’t drop my hand.

  “Can we all give a round of applause for Ms. Poppy Morton for being kind enough to volunteer to assist me?”

  The crowd dutifully clapped, as I startled. How had Alixandre known my name? I’d never actually told him my full name when we’d met. So how did he know it?

  Maybe the Half-Moon staff were all in on this and had drawn up some sort of seating chart? If Alixandre had separated Finn and me from the rest of the crowd with our golden tickets, he could have easily asked Roy or someone else at the Half-Moon what our last name was? Yeah, that made the most sense.

  Or, maybe he’d done some homework way before he’d come to my assistance outside my shop, or even after he’d left there, if he was worried about who had Ouire.

  Both were very reasonable explanations. Sound explanations. There was a mundane answer to a lot of problems, in the end, and I’d never heard of any magic or spell that just… provided you with someone’s name.

  But there was also a first time for everything…

  Alixandre turned to face me, still wearing that practiced grin that made him look a little roguish—like he was playing the part of a scallywag pirate who was busily flattering you with attention while he robbed your pockets.

  “Hello, Poppy,” he whispered.

  “Hi, Alixandre,” I said in an equally soft voice, like our greetings were something meant only for the two of us.

  He gave me a strangely secretive smile and leaned in and without even realizing what I was doing, I inhaled. And he smelled like… familiarity—like a breath from another life that happened to be spicy, musky and male all at the same time.

  “Call me Andre… please.”

  The nickname echoed through me like a fork tapping a water glass, clear and sweet. It only made me more flustered. I couldn’t even speak, and I was sure that my flush was bright enough that NASA could have taken pictures of it from orbit. But Andre gave my fingers a reassuring squeeze and a little of the anxiety ebbed away. It wasn’t scary being up there on stage in front of everyone, or not as scary as I was worried it might be.

  Fortunately, the first trick I ‘assisted’ with didn’t really involve me doing anything but standing there. Andre proceeded to pull a ribbon out from behind my ear. It reminded me a bit of Ouire’s bookmark, long and thin and bright, bright red. I’d never seen silk or satin with that brilliant a color before.

  Andre seemed a little startled as soon as he saw the ribbon, which confused me since it was his trick, after all. He paused when the first hint of scarlet appeared between his fingers, the hesitation so small that I was pretty sure the audience missed it. But I was standing beside him, and hyper aware of every move he made. So, I was also the only one to hear it when he said, “interesting,” in a subdued murmur.

  Chapter Nine

  If we hadn’t been on a stage in front of fifty people, I would have pressed about what was so ‘interesting’ about the red ribbon, but I let it go and just smiled towards Finn who was completely thrilled that it was his mother standing on stage with this captivating man.

  He waved at me and I waved back at him as Andre chuckled.

  Laughs started up from the people in the audience as the ribbon just kept coming. Andre was pulling it hand over hand, yards of satin piling up on the stage around our feet, draping over his shoulders, and slipping down his arms. There was so much of it that it started to tangle around us both, pulling us closer together with every tug he gave. When the ribbon ended up tangled around both of us so heavily that we looked like Las Vegas’s version of mummies, the crowd started laughing even louder and clapping, cheering us on.

  I was only half aware of what was going on off the stage. I kept up my slightly embarrassed grin, wanting to be a good sport, especially with Finn looking so excited for the show. But as the ribbon tangled us closer and closer together, the air started to heat up between our bodies like a pot of water coming to a boil. And I was fairly sure it wasn’t just me… the temperature was actually rising. And from the red splashing across Andre’s cheekbones and down the back of his neck, I wasn’t the only one feeling inexplicably flustered.

  Our eyes met, and I had to swallow at what I saw in his face. That strange intensity, focused all on me, brought a fluttery feeling to my stomach. Thank goodness for all the tangling ribbon, because without it, I might have done something embarrassing like reach up to touch his face and see if his stubble was as soft as it looked.

  We stayed frozen like that for only a few seconds, but those seconds stretched out to eternity. My heart kicked against the inside of my ribs like it wanted to pound its way free of my chest. Andre’s eyes were locked on my face, and I was close enough that I could feel the stutter hitch of his breathing. It felt like time slowed, stretching that moment out into an eternity. I could see every movement of his face, the way his brows furrowed ever so slightly, the movement of his eyelids, the way his lips parted for the next shaky inhale.

  You have a boyfriend! I yelled at myself as an image of Marty forced its way into my head. You can’t be thinking about another man like this! It’s not right!

  Visibly blinking himself back to awareness, it was almost as if Andre had access to my own thoughts. He cleared his throat, gave a shrug and a roll of his arm, and the scarlet ribbon fell to the floor, freeing us at last. The crowd cheered, and I turned with a smile, letting Andre pull my arm into the air like we’d just won a championship or something.

  I only half listened to what he was saying, still trying to figure out what the heck was going on with me. I would have been more alarmed, and more embarrassed by my reactions if it was just me suffering them. But as much as he tried to tamp it down and hide it, I could see that Andre felt it too, whatever it was. He was just better at hiding it.

  Andre then began describing his next trick to the audience.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, I shall make myself and my lovely assistant disappear.” He tugged a length of black cloth out of his coat with a practiced gesture, which was pretty impressive because I wasn’t sure how he’d hidden something bigger than a tablecloth under his well fitted suit.

  Even with all the amazing, inexplicable things I’d seen Andre do, part of me was pretty skeptical of this whole ‘disappearing’ act when he twirled the cloth over us like a matador’s cape. I’d never heard of any sort of magic that allowed people to vanish and then reappear from one place to another. I figured Andre would have to shuffle us somewhere out of the way once the audience was suitably distracted.

  But when he let the cloth drop, the stage, the audience, the Half-Moon Bar and Grill, all of it was… gone. And now? Now we were somewhere small, and dark, and very cramped. The close quarters were responsible for the fact that I was shoved right up against Andre’s chest, his face close enough that I could still make out his features even in the extremely subtle silver light. Everything else was in shadows.

  He was so warm, even through the layers of his suit and my own sweater, I could feel his heat seeping into me. There wasn’t enough space for me to step back, but part of me didn’t want to. Part of me wanted to see if I could get closer, meld us together from chest to thighs. We were close enough to kiss, and my traitorous libido was waggling its eyebrows in interest, completely unconcerned that I had a wonderful, sweet and loving boyfriend.

  But, no, all I was concerned with was the fact that if I stood up on my tiptoes, and Andre bent down just a few inches, we’d be able to slide our lips together, and part of me desperately wanted him to close that gap, erase the space between us.

  “I… I have a boyfriend!” I blurted immediately, hauling myself and my wandering thoughts back, trying to at least pretend to have things together. It didn’t help that when I licked my suddenly dry lips, Andre’s gaze dropped to watch the movement, blue eyes zeroing in like a hawk eyeing a field mouse.

  “I see,” he answered, but made no move to separate himself from me, not that he necessarily could because wherever we were, it was definitely cramped.

  “So, we… we can’t do this.”

  He smiled that smile again that caused my stomach to seize on itself. “And what, pray tell, were we about to do, Poppy?”

  I breathed in deeply and then felt embarrassment claiming me from head to toe. “I… I don’t know. It just seemed like…”

  “The moment our lips touch, it will be owing to the fact that they were meant to, that the timing was right,” he answered in a purr. “It will be the way it was meant to be… the way all things are.”

  I didn’t know what to make of his statement, of him, of myself or the fact that we were stuck in a closet somewhere—tilted on the corner of a distant planet, for all I knew.

  “Where… ah. Where are we?” I managed to squeeze the words out, grateful they came out relatively normally.

  Andre hummed, and I felt the vibration through my chest.

  “Well, that depends.” His voice was lower than I remembered, rougher.

  I had to fight the urge to whisper in the darkness, like we were sharing secrets under the blankets. “Depends on what?”

  “Sometimes, this is the box I use when I do sword tricks or a solo disappearing act. But sometimes, it can be a door.”

  It was hard to focus, with his face so close to mine. I could feel the warm brush of his breath against my skin, minty and sweet. My throat was dry, and I swallowed carefully so that my voice wouldn’t crack. “A door to what?”

  Magic doors made me twitchy after my trip through Betanya’s Veil went down the way it had. But somehow, standing there with Andre, I wasn’t afraid, or even nervous. The only thing I found mildly alarming was the fact that standing this close to him, feeling his breath on my face, it felt… right.

  Andre smiled, flashing strong white teeth in the shadows. “A door into your dreams, your subconscious mind.”

  From anyone else, that would have been the cheesiest pick-up line in the history of cheesy pick-up lines. If someone else had tried the same on me, they would have gotten an eye roll, at best. Wanda would have destroyed them on the spot with a scathing arch of a jet-black eyebrow.

  But coming from Andre, the comment sounded and felt completely serious and reasonable. I could believe this man possessed a door to my dreams—it almost seemed to make some sort of ridiculous sense.

  “What are you?” I whispered the words into the velvet dark.

  “I’m a magician.” His eyes were full of that strange intensity again, brilliant blue and drowning deep.

  That hadn’t really answered any part of my question and had only left me with new ones. I opened my mouth to press, but Andre held up one long finger.

  “There will be time enough for questions, as many as you like. But for now, we’ve been gone over-long, and the crowd will be getting a mite restless.”

  I closed my mouth and nodded. Finn could be getting concerned about where I’d vanished to, and the last thing I wanted to do was cause him any more worry than I already had.

  My breath caught in my throat as Andre leaned into me, one of his arms reaching past me, and I heard the click of a lock releasing. A door opened behind me, and I almost toppled backwards onto the stage with the suddenness of it.

  Andre caught me before I could hit the ground in an undignified flailing of arms and legs, his arms sliding around my waist and shoulders until it must have looked like we’d just been dancing and he’d simply swung me down into a dip.

  My heart gave a painful thump, and if I hadn’t had both of my hands tightly fisted on Andre’s lapels, I would have reached up and smacked myself.

  I already had a wonderful boyfriend—I reminded myself for the umpteenth time. Marty was a great guy, and my best friend. I loved spending time with him, talking to him, hanging out with him, and Finn loved him just as much as I did. I had absolutely no business getting all aflutter over some random magician I’d just met. Especially not a weird one, at that.

  And Andre was definitely weird.

  It didn’t matter that he made my heart pound and my skin tingle. I was too old to go getting goo-goo eyed over a stranger. This was what silly adolescent teenage girls did—it wasn’t what experienced women did—they knew better.

  The crowd cheered and applauded as Andre effortlessly swung me back up to my feet. He might look lean, but there was definite strength under that tailored suit. He leaned in close enough that his breath brushed my ear when he spoke, and I had to curl my hands into fists to keep from shivering at the sensation.

  “Have you brought Ouire with you?”

  I didn’t trust myself to speak without embarrassing myself, so I just nodded.

  “Wonderful,” he whispered. His cheek just barely brushed my hair, and a little thrill shot up my spine. “Shall we meet after the show at the Creamery for a trade?”

  He didn’t wait for my answer, which was probably for the best because I wasn’t sure what I would have said, but it probably would have been humiliating. Andre escorted me to the edge of the stage, and then back to my seat. The wink he shot me was entirely unnecessary, but the crowd loved it.

  I wasn’t sure what he meant about a trade. Wasn’t I just supposed to give the book back? Maybe he meant a trade as in he was going to treat us to ice cream in return for the book? Yeah, that’s probably what he meant.

  Being up on stage in front of the crowd with a stranger should have had me ready to be sick, or at least so jangled I could barely sit still. But sinking back into my seat next to Finn, now lost among the audience once again, I was relaxed, darn close to being at ease. I just couldn’t seem to feel on edge with Andre around, other than about my physical reactions to him.