Honest Illusions

  “Yes.”

  With a tentative finger, Luke reached out to touch one pale blue gem. “Why?”

  Max leaned back, sipping brandy and considering. “Why not?”

  Luke’s lips twitched at that. It was a good answer. One that satisfied him more than a dozen heartfelt justifications. “Then you’re a thief.”

  “Among other things.” Max leaned forward then, but resisted the urge to lay a hand over Luke’s. “Do I disappoint you?”

  Luke’s eyes filled with a love he had no words to express. “You couldn’t.” He shook his head in frantic denial. “Ever.”

  “Don’t be sure of that.” Max touched his hand briefly, then picked up the necklace. “The vase you broke that day was a thing—so is this. Things are worth only as much or as little as people believe.” He closed his hand over it, bumped his fists together, then opened both hands. Empty. “One more illusion. My reasons for taking what others value are mine. One day I may share them with you. Until then, I’ll ask you not to speak of it.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.” He’d have died first. “I can help you. I can,” he repeated, furious with LeClerc’s derisive snort. “I can make good money picking pockets.”

  “Luke, there’s no such thing as bad money. But I’d prefer you didn’t pick pockets unless it’s part of a performance.”

  “But why—”

  “I’ll tell you.” He gestured for Luke to sit, and the gems were back in his hand. “If you’d continued at the carnival, you might very well have been caught. That would have been untidy, and unfortunate.”

  “I’m careful.”

  “You’re young,” Max corrected. “I doubt if it occurred to you to wonder if the people you took from could afford to lose what you slipped from their wallets.” He shook his head before Luke could speak. “And your need was great at the time. It isn’t great now.”

  “But you steal.”

  “Because I choose to. Because, quite simply, I enjoy it. And for complex reasons you—” He broke off and chuckled softly. “I started to say that you wouldn’t understand. But you would.” His eyes darkened. “I was hardly older than you when LeClerc found me. I was hustling nickels and dimes with the Cups and Balls, card tricks. Lifting wallets. I, too, had escaped from the kind of nightmare no child should experience. Magic sustained me. So did stealing. I had a choice, and I chose to hone my craft on both paths. I don’t apologize for being a thief. Every time I steal, I take back something that was stolen from me.”

  He laughed and sipped. “Oh, what a psychiatrist would make of that. No, I don’t apologize, but neither will I play modern-day Fagan with you. I’ll give you magic, Luke. And when you’re older, you’ll make your own choices.”

  Luke thought it over. “Does Roxanne know?”

  For the first time a flicker of doubt showed on Max’s face. “I see no reason why she should.”

  That made it better. For Luke, knowing something Roxanne didn’t made all the difference. “I’ll wait. I’ll learn.”

  “I’m sure you will. And speaking of that, we should begin to see to your education.”

  Luke’s enthusiasm suffered a direct hit. “Education? I’m not going to school.”

  “Oh, but you are.” Casually, Max handed the necklace to LeClerc. “The paperwork should be simple enough. I think he should be my cousin’s boy, recently orphaned.”

  “It’ll take me a week,” LeClerc stated. “Maybe two.”

  “Excellent. Then we’ll be set for fall classes.”

  “I’m not going to school,” Luke repeated. “I don’t need school. You can’t make me go.”

  “On the contrary,” Max said mildly. “You will go to school, you certainly need it and I most assuredly can make you go.”

  Luke was prepared to die for him, would have been delighted with the opportunity to try. But he was not willing to suffer through several hours of boredom five days a week. “I won’t go.”

  Max only smiled.

  7

  Luke went to school. Pleas and bargains and threats fell on deaf ears. When he discovered even the softhearted Lily was against him, Luke surrendered.

  Or pretended to.

  They could make him go. At least they could make him get dressed, heft a bunch of stupid books and head toward school under LeClerc’s eagle eye.

  But they couldn’t make him learn anything.

  The smirky way Roxanne showed off her A’s and gold stars began to tick him off. It really got his goat when she’d smile at him as Max or Lily voiced their approval. And each night the little brat would sit backstage, industriously doing her homework between acts.

  Max had expanded her bit with the scarves.

  Luke knew he could get A’s. If he felt like it.

  It wasn’t any big deal—just numbers on a paper—but to prove that he couldn’t be bested by some snotty, monkey-faced girl, he studied for a geography test.

  It wasn’t so bad, really, studying about the states and capitals. Especially when he started counting up how many of those states he’d visited.

  Afterward he couldn’t wait to show off. But he made himself stay cool. If his geography test with the bright red A on it happened to slip out of his notebook backstage, it wasn’t his fault.

  He nearly exploded with impatience until Lily spotted it and scooped it up.

  “What’s this?” He saw Lily’s eyes go wide and bright with an emotion he’d seen so rarely he blushed to his toes. It was pride. “Luke! This is great! Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “What?” The foolish grin that spread over his face ruined his show of indifference, but he shrugged anyway. “Oh, that. No big deal.”

  “No big deal?” Laughing, she squeezed him against her. “It’s a huge deal. You didn’t miss one. Not even one.” With one arm still slung around him she called Max away from a discussion with Lester. “Max, Max, honey, come see this.”

  “What do I have to see?”

  “This.” Triumphant, Lily waved the test in front of him. “Look what our Luke did, and never said a word to anyone.”

  “I’d be glad to look, if you’d hold it still.” His brow lifted as he glanced down at Luke. “Well, well. You’ve decided to apply your brain after all. And with excellent results.”

  “It’s no big thing.” He hadn’t known it could be. “It’s just memorizing.”

  “My dear boy.” Max reached out and flicked a finger down Luke’s cheek. “Life is just memorizing. Once you learn the trick, there’s very little you can’t do. You’ve done well. Quite well.”

  As they moved off to prepare for the next act, Luke stood still, absorbing all the pleasure. It dimmed only a little when he turned and saw Roxanne studying him with wise eyes.

  “What the hell are you looking at?”

  “You,” she said simply.

  “Well, cut it out.”

  But even when he stalked away, she continued to look after him. As she would with anything that puzzled her.

  School wasn’t so bad. Luke discovered he could tolerate it, and rarely hooked more than one or two days a month. His grades were good. He might not have gotten consistent A’s like Roxanne, but he copped his share.

  Luke wasn’t a quick study in all things. It took a black eye and a bloodied lip before that last revelation came to him.

  Walking home bruised, disgusted and minus three dollars and twenty-seven cents spending money, he plotted revenge. He’d have taken them, he thought. He’d have taken all three of the bastard creeps if the principal, Mr. Limp Dick, hadn’t come along and broken things up.

  Actually, if Mr. Rampwick hadn’t spotted the tussle, Luke would have been sporting two black eyes at the very least, but adolescent pride colored the event differently. He just hoped he could get cleaned up at home before anyone saw him. He wondered if he could cover the worst of the damage with greasepaint.

  “What did you do?”

  Luke cursed himself for scowling down at the sidewalk instead of keeping a lookout. Now h
e’d all but run into Roxanne.

  “None of your goddamn business.”

  “You’ve been fighting.” Roxanne swung her pink bookbag over her shoulder and planted her fists on her hips. “Daddy won’t like it.”

  “That’s tough shit.” But it worried him. Was Max going to punish him? Max wouldn’t hit him—he’d promised he wouldn’t. As much as Luke longed to believe that, a part of him still doubted. And feared.

  “Your lip’s bleeding.” Sighing, Roxanne dug into the pocket of her blue skirt for a tissue. “Here. No, don’t wipe it with your hand, you’ll just smear it.” Patient as an old woman, she dabbed at the cut herself. “You’d better sit down. You’re too tall for me to reach.”

  Grumbling, Luke dropped down on the steps of a shop. He wanted a minute anyway, to prepare for Max and Lily. “I can do it myself.”

  She didn’t complain when he snatched the tissue. Roxanne was too interested in studying his eye, where a bruise was already blooming. “Did you make somebody mad?”

  “Yeah. They were mad because I wanted to keep my money. Now shut up.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “They? They beat you up and took your money?”

  The humiliation of that stung more than his eye. “That creep Alex Custer sucker-punched me. I’d have held my own if he hadn’t had two of his slimy pals holding me down.”

  “Where’d they go?” She was revved now, and surprised Luke by bounding up from the stoop. “We’ll go get Mouse and take care of them.”

  “We, shit.” He grinned and turned his split lip into fire. “You’re just a kid—a girl kid. Hey!” He grabbed at the shin she kicked. “What the hell?”

  “I can take care of myself,” she pointed out grandly. “You’re the one with the smashed-up face.”

  “And the broken leg,” he said, amused despite himself. She looked hot and ready and oddly dangerous. “And I can take care of myself, too. I don’t need help.”

  “Yeah, right,” she shot back, mimicking him. But she took a deep breath, letting the autumn breeze cool her heated cheeks. “Anyway it’s better not to fight. It’s more fun to be smarter.”

  “Smarter than Alex?” Luke hooted. “A head of cabbage is smarter than him.”

  “Then be a head of cabbage.” She sat again, devious rather than angry. “We’ll scam him,” she said, with quiet relish.

  “What’s this ‘we’ shit again?” But he was interested.

  “You don’t have enough experience to do it on your own. You’ve got to do the con so he doesn’t know he’s been conned.” She brushed her skirt smooth and put her flexible mind to work. “I know his little brother, Bobby. He’s always pinching girls and stealing food.” Roxanne smiled slowly. “Well, I was thinking about doing this job on Bobby, but I guess you could have it for Alex.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll show you later. We have to get home. They’ll start to worry.”

  He didn’t nag her only because he didn’t want to seem too interested. And secondly, he was worried about the reaction when he walked in the kitchen door. He’d probably get yelled at, he decided, dragging his feet. Or worse, infinitely worse, Max would give him that long, slow look and say those awful words.

  You disappoint me, Luke.

  They did yell when he followed Roxanne in the kitchen door. All of them at once, but it was hardly what Luke had expected.

  “Happy birthday!”

  He jumped back as though he’d been struck. They stood around the kitchen table, Max, Lily, Mouse, LeClerc, with a big lushly iced cake lit with candles. As he gaped, dumbfounded, Lily’s beaming smile turned to an O of dismay.

  “Baby! What happened?” Max halted Lily’s forward rush by snagging her wrist. His eyes stayed on Luke’s, and while there was a flicker of anger, his voice was calm.

  “Had a tussle, did you?”

  Luke only shrugged, but Roxanne picked up his banner. “There were three of them, Daddy. That makes them cowards, doesn’t it?”

  “Indeed.” He leaned forward, gently cupping Luke’s chin in his hand. “Choose your odds more carefully next time.”

  “Try this.” LeClerc chose a bottle from a shelf and shook some of the contents on a clean cloth. When he pressed it to Luke’s swollen eye the worst of the ache faded. “Three?” he said and winked. “This is some of their blood on your shirt, oui?”

  It was the first time he’d ever felt LeClerc’s approval. Luke risked opening his lip again and sneered. “Damn right.”

  “Well,” said Lily, “you’ve just given us as big a surprise as we planned to give you. I hope ours is better. Happy birthday, baby.”

  “Better blow out the candles,” Max suggested when Luke merely stood, staring. “Before we burn down the house.”

  “Don’t forget to make a wish.” This from Roxanne, who was angling herself into the frame as Mouse focused a camera.

  He only had one, and that was to belong. It seemed that had already been granted.

  The dazzling excitement of his first birthday cake, of opening presents that had been bought just for him, wiped all thoughts of Alex and revenge out of his mind.

  Roxanne was more single-minded.

  Two days later, Luke found himself in the middle of a sting that could bring him great satisfaction, or a broken face.

  He had to admit it was clever. Even—to borrow one of Roxanne’s ten-dollar words—diabolical. Following Roxanne’s advice, Luke made certain Alex and his two juvenile henchmen saw him saunter into a market on the corner a block from school. He paid for the bottle of grape Nehi—Alex’s personal favorite—popped the cap and took a long swig as he stepped back out.

  Then he pretended to spot Alex for the first time, forced himself to appear afraid. Like a shark scenting blood, Alex needed no more than that to pursue.

  Little peabrain had it right, Luke thought as he darted down an alleyway, uncapping the vial that held one of LeClerc’s home remedies.

  With quick hands, Luke dumped the strong laxative into the Nehi. He trusted Roxanne knew what she was doing, and that he wasn’t about to kill anyone. Though his conscience wouldn’t have suffered overmuch.

  Stuffing the empty vial back in his pocket, he whirled, as if in panic. He’d chosen the blind alley cold-bloodedly. They might pound on him again, but at least one of them would pay for it later.

  “What’s the matter, fart breath?” Seeing his quarry pinned, Alex puffed out his chest and grinned. “Lost?”

  “I don’t want any trouble.” Luke buried pride under vengeance and made his voice and hands shake. “I ain’t got no money left. I spent it on this.”

  “No money?” Alex grabbed the bottle before shoving Luke back against the wall. “See if he’s lying, Jerry.” Alex took a long pull on the spiked soft drink and grinned under a purple moustache.

  Luke whimpered, allowing the other boy to poke and prod through his pockets. He wanted to make sure Alex emptied the bottle.

  “He’s got nothing,” Jerry announced. “Give me a sip, Alex.”

  “Get your own.” Alex tilted the bottle back and drained it. “Now.” He tossed the bottle aside. “Let’s kick ass.”

  But this time Luke was ready for them. When you couldn’t fight, you ran. He ducked his head and plowed into Alex’s gut, knocking one boy into the other until the three of them wobbled like a house of cards. He dashed to the mouth of the alley. He was faster, he knew, and could have gotten away before they’d sorted themselves out to come after him. But he wanted them to chase him. A little exercise, he thought, should get things moving through Alex’s system.

  He led them on a chase, toward Jackson Square and down Royal, skidding around the corner at St. Ann and hotfooting it over to Decatur. A glance back showed him Alex’s face was sheet white and running with sweat. Luke made it to his own courtyard and was debating whether to race out and continue, when Alex groaned and clutched his belly.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?” Jerry pulled at him. “Come on, man. He’s getting away.”
br />   “My gut! My gut!” Alex dashed toward some rhododendrons and squatted.

  “Je-sus!” Jerry shouted in disgust. “That is gr-oss.”