Chapter 1: The Houdini Theatre
The Houdini Theatre smelled of stale popcorn and decades of dust. Eric Jones had been to a lot of strange places for the Agency, but this was the first time he'd been dragged to one by his girlfriend on a Friday night. The cracked vinyl seats in the balcony creaked beneath them as they settled in, and somewhere below, a small crowd shuffled through the doors, chattering and laughing in that pre-show buzz that never quite died in places like this.
Sophia Rossi sat beside him, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, a smile playing on her lips. She'd been humming along to the warm-up music, a forgotten pop tune from the eighties that the theater manager had probably had on cassette since the building's heyday.
"So who's this mystery woman you've been keeping from me?" she asked, nudging his shoulder. "Some old friend who taught you card tricks?"
"Something like that." Eric watched the empty stage, where a velvet curtain, faded to a dusty burgundy, hung in patient folds. The brass fittings that held it up had long since lost their shine. "She's a mentor. I haven't seen her perform in years."
"You never mentioned her. I'm almost offended." Sophia poked his ribs with one finger. "Keeping theatrical secrets from your dear girlfriend, Eric?"
"It wasn't a secret. It just never came up." He shrugged. "She's a mentalist. Stage magic, a bit of cold reading, some hypnosis. She was good." He paused, considered the word. "She was very good."
The lights flickered twice, a signal that every theater in the world seemed to share, and the audience hushed. A man in a battered tuxedo took the stage and announced, with the sort of theatrical flourish that would have been cheesy anywhere else, "The Houdini Theatre is proud to present the incomparable, the enigmatic, Madame Evantia Radu!"
"I think I've heard of her," Sophia whispered, sitting forward. "Isn't she the one who does that thing with the blades?"
"That's her."
Madame Radu walked onto the stage, and it was immediately clear that the theater was beneath her. She was tall, beautiful in the way that a hawk was beautiful, all predatory angles and stillness. Her black blazer was immaculate, her dark hair pulled so tightly back that it might have been painted on. She raised a hand, and the crowd quieted without her saying a word.
"Good evening/". Her voice carried the slight accent of somewhere Eastern European, and it filled the room with effortless projection. "I am told this theater has been here since 1923. It has seen its share of wonders." She paused, smiling. "It has not seen me."
The crowd laughed. Eric found himself grinning despite himself. She was still good.
The show was a masterclass. She read minds, or seemed to, pulling names and childhood pets from audience members with a smile that suggested it was nothing at all. She bent spoons without touching them. She levitated a silver ball that was almost certainly a trick but was beautiful to watch all the same.
But it was the hypnosis segment that caught Eric's attention.
Madame Radu called three volunteers from the audience, two men and a woman, and had them seated in folding chairs on the stage. She stood before them, her voice dropping to a low, melodic croon, and within minutes all three were slumped, eyes closed, breathing slow.
Sophia had gone still beside him.
Eric glanced at her, at first just a quick check, and then looked again. Her hands were clamped on her knees, her knuckles gone white. Her cheeks had turned a delicate shade of pink, and she was biting her lower lip as she watched Madame Radu guide one of the volunteers into a hypnotic suggestion.
The volunteer was told to forget the number seven. He was asked to count the audience members sitting in the front row, and gave a number that came up short, a note of confusion creeping into his voice. The audience roared.
Sophia let out a breath, slow and shaky. She shifted in her seat, crossing and uncrossing her legs. Her eyes were fixed on the stage, on Madame Radu's hands, which moved in slow, deliberate arcs.
Eric filed that away.
The show ended with Madame Radu walking through a wall of flame that produced, from thin air, a bouquet of roses she tossed to the front row. The audience applauded, and the lights came up, and Sophia was on her feet clapping with the rest of them, her earlier flush fading into something more ordinary.
"That was amazing," she said as they filed down the stairs and out into the cool evening air. "I mean, it was ridiculous, obviously. But amazing."
"Ridiculous?"
"It's all tricks. You know that. They just want you to believe." She linked her arm through his. "I just love a good bit of theatre."
"Right," Eric said. "Tricks."
Burt's Bar was a ten-minute walk down a side street, a place with a brick facade and a faded sign that had been painted over at least three times. Inside, the classic hardwood bar ran down one side, padded stools in front of it, while high-top tables hugged the other wall. At the back, a couple of booths sat in lamplit shadow, the vinyl cracked in the same patient way the seats at the theater had been.
Eric ordered two lagers and a plate of chips and carried them over to a high-top. Sophia hopped onto her stool and grabbed a chip before he'd even set the bowl down.
"So," she said, dunking the chip in the little pot of gravy on the plate, "what was she like? Madame Spooky."
"Evantia." Eric settled across from her. "She was intense. Still is, apparently. She took me under her wing when I was nineteen, showed me the ropes. I did the college circuit for a couple of years, a bit of street magic, some private work. She was the one who taught me the good stuff."
"Like the hypnotism." Sophia shook her head slowly, still crunching. "That was the best bit, honestly. Watching those people pretend to forget numbers. They were very committed. I should give them marks for performance."
"They weren't pretending."
"Oh, come off it." She gave him a look that was half amiable, half dismissive. "You're not going to sit there and tell me you actually believe that rubbish. Hypnosis: the realm of questionable hypnotherapists and daytime TV."
"I do believe it." Eric took a sip of his lager. "I've done it. I've put people under."
This stopped her. She set her chip down, coated in ketchup, and regarded him with new interest. "You have never once mentioned this."
"Doesn't come up much in intelligence analysis."
"Go on then, tell me. What's it like?"
Eric considered how to put it. He was methodical by nature, an analyst to his core, and the truth of hypnosis was something he had spent years thinking about. He wanted to get it right.
"It's not like the movies. There's no swinging pocket watch, no, 'You are feeling sleepy.' It's more like a guided conversation. You help someone relax, build a rapport, then give them suggestions that their mind accepts because they're in a state where the usual barriers are down."
"Barriers." Sophia raised an eyebrow.
"The critical faculty," Eric said. "The part of your brain that says, 'That's ridiculous, I'm not going to do that.' In a trance state, that part goes quiet. You can't make someone do something they truly don't want to do. Hypnosis won't make you rob a bank or jump off a bridge. But it can lower barriers a person didn't know they had. It can bring things to the surface that they've kept hidden. Especially if they want to be hypnotized."
Sophia snorted, a sound that was equal parts amusement and disbelief. "You're telling me that if I wanted to be hypnotized, if I was secretly, desperately longing for it, you could just... wave your hands and I'd be putty?"
"That's not what I said."
"That's exactly what you said." She leaned forward on the high-top, elbows on the scarred wood, her chin resting on her fists. Her emerald eyes sparkled with challenge. "Go on then. Prove it."
Eric blinked. "What?"
"Hypnotize me." She gestured at the space between them. "Right here. Go on. Put me under. Show me this mystical 'critical faculty' business."
The bar hummed around them. Glasses clinked. Somewhere near the door, someone laughed too loudly at a joke. A football match murmured from the television mounted in the corner, muted and forgettable.
Eric set down his lager. "Sophia, I haven't done this in years. It's not a party trick. And this isn't the right environment. Hypnosis needs focus, comfort, trust. You need to be able to relax."
Her smile widened. "So you're scared."
"I'm not scared. I'm being practical."
"Practical." She tasted the word like it was slightly off milk. "You're scared, Eric. You've been outed as a secret stage hypnotist by your mysterious Eastern European mentor, and now you're scared it won't work. So you're hiding behind 'environment'."
He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. She wasn't wrong, not entirely. The thought of putting someone under again, of wielding that particular skill, made his palms itch. He had buried that part of himself deliberately, filed it under things that were clever but dangerous, things that made people look at you differently.
"It's not that I don't think it would work," he said carefully. "It's that it wouldn't be fair to you. You'd be distracted. The noise, the people. It wouldn't be a fair test."
"Fair test." Sophia's grin turned coy. She picked up her lager, took a long sip, and set it down. "Alright then. So where would be a fair test? A controlled environment? Somewhere quiet and private where I feel comfortable and unobserved?"
Eric felt the trap close around him a moment too late.
"My apartment," she said, as if it were the most natural suggestion in the world. "I've got a sofa. It's quiet. I'll even make tea. Would that be a fair enough environment for you, Professor?"
He was caught. He could see it in the way she was looking at him, the challenge burning in those green eyes. She wasn't going to let this go. And somewhere beneath his anxiety, beneath the careful layers of years of routine and analysis, a small part of him was interested. Curious. That part he had tried so hard to silence.
"It would be a better environment," he admitted.
"Then finish your lager." She slid off her stool, retrieving her jacket from the back of it. "I'm not going to let you wriggle out of this one, Jones. You've made a claim, and I intend to see it tested."