Andy the stage manager checked his watch. “Two o’clock straight up. Ready?”

Focus, girl. They need you now, all your emotions, your whole mind, your best.

The music changed to a fanfare. She crouched, just as they’d rehearsed. Things worked pretty well the last several times they tried it; here was hoping. She steeled her muscles; her hands clenched involuntarily.

“One, two, three …”

Ba-boom! Smoke exploded around the Dumpster, the people jumped and shrieked, and like a pink Peter Pan, Mandy shot up from behind the Dumpster and landed like a feather on the lid, striking a pose. That got an excited round of cheers and applause. Good start.

With a wide, exaggerated wave and a pull on thin air, she beckoned a wireless microphone to come to her and it did, circling around her, then plopping into her hand. The crowd stirred at that one. They were with her.

She noticed the folks were wearing jackets, hats, even some gloves. The sun was out, which helped, but a sign across the street said the temperature was fifty-seven degrees. Not bad, really, for the pit of winter.

But she couldn’t wait to get into the stunt and into some coveralls.

“Helloooo, everybody, and welcome to the Orpheus, where anything can happen and dreams can come true!” Vahidi must have written that opener. It was her job to say it. “I’m Mandy Whitacre, opening tonight in the Prospector’s Lounge, bringing you a Different Kind of Magic.” She flung her hand out, and Lily the dove appeared. One more fling and Carson followed Lily as they circled over the crowd. While the doves did a circle, and then, to everyone’s astonishment, a series of vertical loops, a police siren sounded and a Las Vegas Police Department squad car pulled out from behind some landscaping.

“Oh-oh. Aerobatic birds without a license!” she quipped. She extended her arms and the doves came to rest, one on each arm.

Oh, the folks loved that!

Andy brought the doves’ cage and they tucked themselves back home as an officer stepped onto the stage, handcuffs in hand.

“Officer Steve Dykstra of the LVPD!” she announced.

They applauded, though a few booed. The Las Vegas cops were great sports. She put her hands behind her and he handcuffed her. Then he did the same to her ankles. “Don’t worry,” she said, “you’ll get ’em back—I hope.”

She hopped into a large canvas bag that lay open on the stage, then Andy and crew member Carl pulled the bag up around her and cinched the top closed.

The Orpheus liked doing things big. They’d hired a crane just to hook that bag and hoist it into the Dumpster. It was noisy, it was big and noticeable, it was great show business.

And she was blind to the world, trying to keep her body moving, kicking a little so they’d know she was still in the bag as it dangled on the end of the cable. They’d worked this through. Come on, don’t let me swing too much …

She felt Andy and Carl’s hands steadying her as the crane lowered her into the Dumpster. Eeesh. The Dumpster was empty but it still smelled like garbage inside. She touched down and settled to a sitting position against the Dumpster wall, Andy unhooked the cable, and then SLAM, the lid closed and she was in the dark.

Now for the trick, and quickly, before the garbage truck arrived. She drew a breath, relaxed, and thought of the ranch, the white rail fence and the three aspens, the long driveway. She reached outside herself … and nothing happened.

He never loved me. He was in love with his wife. He said so.

She winced, concentrated. Reach out … if not the ranch, then—no, not the hospital. Don’t go there.

My invitation is still open.Was she supposed to feel flattered? Seamus was such a child! At least Dane Collins showed a little honor, a little respect!

But he told me to go away and never come back. He’s in love with her, and I just look like her.

She could feel the wad of cloth in the bottom of the bag, a pair of coveralls she was supposed to slip into after she got free of the cuffs. Other magicians would have picked the locks by now; they would have been free of the bag, they would have been wearing the coveralls and using some trick to get out of there—a double, a secret panel, a mirror system, a false bottom.

But she had no trick. She was still stuck in this world, this present where the handcuffs were cold, tight, and unyielding.

She reached in her thoughts, her will, but the ranch would not clarify in her mind; she wasn’t welcome there.

She wriggled against the cuffs, but that was pointless.

I never told him my real name. At least that would have been honest.

Oh, no. She could hear the garbage truck roaring around the corner of the hotel. Concentrate!

On what?

The crowd was stirring—and growing—as a garbage truck rumbled up to a ramp on one side of the stage and lurched to a halt, brakes hissing. Climbing out of the cab like it was just another day, another Dumpster, the driver and his partner walked up the ramp onto the stage and rolled the Dumpster down the ramp toward the truck, the huge casters grating and shrieking, the lid on top rattling.

The floor of the Dumpster was jittering and banging under her backside, and the sound of the lid clapped her on the ears. This was a new experience. She was supposed to be out of the Dumpster by now.

The driver went to the levers on the side of the truck and operated the boom. Down came the forks like an elephant’s tusks, ready to pluck the Dumpster into the air. The crowd was stirring, getting playfully nervous. She’s not in the Dumpster anymore, is she? It’s all a big act. Isn’t it?

The handcuffs hurt, as real and secure as cold steel could be. The cloth of the bag was scratching her face; she was starting to sweat.

Rumble … scrape … clank! The garbage guys rolled the Dumpster forward, pushing the slots on the Dumpster over the forks on the boom.

Oh, dear God, now or never. What if there’s no soft garbage in that truck for me to land on?

With a powerful roar from the truck and a surge of hydraulics, the Dumpster arced into the air over the cab of the truck, over the container in back, and tilted completely upside down.

The crowd screamed, laughed, waited to see …

The lid wouldn’t fall open. The driver jerked the levers, jerking the boom, shaking the Dumpster like a salt shaker, which made the crowd groan and gasp, feeling the pain for the poor soul inside.

chapter

36

Finally!

Just before the shaking, Mandy reached for the last place on earth she wanted to go: the hospital. It sprang into her reality and she let herself fall into it, slipping out of the bag and handcuffs, out of the Dumpster, and into a wavering, tilting, tea-stained reality she’d come to loathe, the same hallways, doctors, nurses, signs and labels, medicinal smells, beds, gurneys, wheelchairs, that same, ominous door with the red letters on it. Why did she have to keep coming back here?

Her feet touched down on the linoleum—it felt like a soft rubber mat under her feet—but she didn’t step into this world. She had to get back to the hotel, the garbage truck, the show. She reached, groped, thoughtfor another fold of reality, another curtain she could pull back.

She found an opening, slipped through it …

She was … where? It looked like the inside of a house under construction. It was empty, with no fixtures, just bare walls and the smell of fresh paint. It was almost solid; she could see the ghost of another world through the walls.

No, still wrong, still lost.

“Whoa! Who are you?”

The voice scared her. She almost lost hold of the in-between and fell into this place, but she recovered and held back. She couldn’t get stuck here.