Jayne put her fists on her hips. “It had better be. Because if you get married and I’m not invited, you’re in big trouble.”
The house lights flickered. “We’d better sit. Show’s about to start.” Even so, I leaned in. “Why don’t you come to dinner with us and my parents after the show?”
Jack looked at Birdie. “What do you say, sweetheart? Sounds good to me.”
“Me, too.” She glanced at me. “We’d love to. Thank you for the invite.”
Jayne squeezed my arm as she whispered softly, “Thank you. That was kind of you.”
I shrugged. “Birdie’s family.” I meant it too. After all she’d done helping us plan our wedding, we were indebted to her for life.
I wondered if my parents had orchestrated her and Jack being in the audience tonight, knowing that we’d be here as well. I’d have to ask them later.
The house lights dimmed, and seductive but slightly eerie music started up along with fog and atmospheric lighting. The show had begun.
Ninety minutes flew by, and as the end of the show approached, I found myself getting nervous for the big new trick.
Jayne must have been feeling the same thing because she suddenly grabbed my hand hard. Her gaze was glued to my dad on stage.
He was alone under the spotlight and slightly off to the left. “Ladies and gentlemen, if there’s one thing the dead understand, it’s cold storage.”
He gestured dramatically toward the center of the stage. A new spotlight flared to life, illuminating an enormous, crystal-clear block of ice.
I sucked in a breath.
My mother was frozen inside, suspended like a rag doll. Only her hands stuck out from the ice on either side. She wiggled her fingers, the best she could do for a wave.
The audience gasped appropriately, and a hum rose up as all around us, people murmured in speculation of what was going to happen next.
I wasn’t sure myself. Jayne’s grip on my hand increased.
My father walked up to the block of ice, easily four feet taller than he was. He knocked on the side of it, the thunk of his knuckles reverberating through the theater. Then he walked all the way around it, knocking on the other three sides. “Solid as a rock.” He grinned. “Good thing she loves me.”
My mom made a thumbs-up with her right hand. Then a thumbs-down with her left.
The audience laughed, but the sound had an edge of nervousness to it.
My dad, ever the showman, paused just long enough to increase the tension. “All right, I guess I should get her out of there.”
He snapped his fingers, and an enormous black silk floated down from the ceiling to cover the block of ice almost all the way to the floor. Beneath the silk, my mom’s hands moved enough to show she was still in there.
At this point, I knew my parents’ magic well enough to know my mom was probably no longer in that block of ice. Somehow.
My dad, who’d gone just offstage during that distraction, returned with a menacing chromed sledgehammer over his shoulder.
The noise from the crowd increased again.
He stopped a few feet from the ice. “What? How do you get your wife out of a block of ice?”
He twirled the sledgehammer a few times to show just how weighty it was. He held it out to someone in the front row so they could confirm it was real, which they did. Then he squared up to the block and took a couple of slow practice swings like a baseball player preparing to knock one out of the park.
“On three,” he announced. “One…”
The audience counted with him.
“Two.”
My mom’s hands were still moving under the silk. Pretty sure that was just another of my dad’s illusions.
“Three.”
He struck the block squarely, and the ice beneath the silk exploded into a million tiny pieces. At the same time, the silk got yanked back up into the ceiling so the audience could see that nothing remained but shards of ice.
My mother was gone.
My father turned, his gaze on the very back of the theater, the cool, calm look on his face telling me that my mom was about to appear there any second.
Like everyone else in the audience, I turned to find her.
A spotlight illuminated the closed double doors we’d come through an hour and a half ago. Any second, she’d open them and walk through.
I glanced at my dad. He didn’t look quite as cool and calm. Then he looked offstage. Had something gone wrong?
I turned my attention back to the doors again.
My father’s voice rang out. “Fooled you.”
Everyone looked at him in time to see my mother step out from the rear of the stage, just beyond the melting ice shrapnel. She gave a little wave, then went back behind the curtain.
A roar of applause went up from the crowd, and a second later, the curtain fell. I stared at the stage, trying to work out what I’d just seen.
Jayne let go of my hand to clap. She glanced over at me. “Why aren’t you applauding?”
I shook my head, the sinking feeling in my gut almost making me sick. “Because that wasn’t really my mother on stage. That was another one of my father’s illusions.”
Chapter Twelve
Jayne
“What are you talking about?”
He shook his head again, looking about as worried as I’d ever seen him look. “We have to get backstage now.”
“Sin, you’re freaking me out.”
“Babe, I’m already freaked out. Come on, we need to move. I have to know what went wrong.”
Nothing had seemed wrong to me. Maybe a little delayed, but I trusted that Sin knew his parents’ act well enough to know if something had gone amiss. I grabbed Birdie’s hand. “Come with us. Backstage. Both of you.”
She didn’t argue, just told Jack to follow her, and he did. Sin went straight up to security, flashed an ID card I’d never seen before, had a few words with the guard, and we were escorted through.
Sin got on his phone immediately. After a moment, he spoke. “Dad, we’re on our way to your dressing room.”
He looked at me. “No answer, voice mail.”
“Are you sure something’s wrong?”
“Yes. For one thing, there was a delay, and the look on my dad’s face said that was not supposed to happen. For another, when my mother appeared on stage, she was in black dance flats. She wears those for practicing. For dress rehearsals and stage performances, she wears heels.”
I hadn’t noticed the change in footwear. It wouldn’t have meant anything to me even if I had. I wanted him to explain it in plain detail. “So what does that mean that she was in the wrong shoes? Couldn’t she have changed?”
“Sure, but why would she? That would have impacted their timing. What I think it means is that when she didn’t come through the theater doors at the back of the house, my father covered by conjuring up the last image of her that he remembered. The only one that would make sense. Her waving to him on stage at their last practice. His magic is strong enough that no one would realize they were seeing an illusion and not mom in the flesh.”
Birdie had been listening intently. She hustled a little closer. “Why didn’t she come through the doors?”
“I have no idea, and that’s what’s bothering me,” Sin said. His brow was furrowed, and something that looked very much like dread darkened his eyes.