Night Magic (39 page)

“What a fool,” Michael said. Emily had been right, the old man was using him all along. What Michael had perceived as affection, even admiration for his cleverness, his aptitude, was just relief at finding someone gullible enough to walk into his trap. As in some cosmic game of tag, Michael was now “it.” The Great Wurlitzer had wanted to leave, and Michael was his avenue. How it must have amused him to see Michael’s avidity, his greed, so undisguised and all-consuming, for power.

And he had given it to him, Michael admitted, that much couldn't be denied. It was the master, not Michael, who had made him what he was. He knew things ordinary people didn’t, he saw things they would never see, could do things that astonished them, that challenged their disbelief. That had become vividly apparent to him from the first moment the Eye of Horus was placed around his neck, when its memory became his as well. When he walked into a room, he took the room, and when he left it, there was one subject on everyone’s mind: Michael Hawke, who was he, what was he, where did such power come from? Was it natural or unnatural?

An interviewer had asked him that once. He smiled, feeling smug, as he recalled his answer: a little of both. It was ironic, also, that in another day and age, he might have been burned as a witch. Now, he was merely a celebrity.

Then the fountain music ended, there was a pause. The next sound drove the self-satisfied smile from Michael’s lips. It was a high, almost shrill note, held, then dropped suddenly, entirely, to be replaced by another, a little lower, fuller, then a phrase of three notes, that declared to even the most unsophisticated listener its Oriental origin. It was the sound of Emily’s flute, carried into the air by Emily’s breath, as clear and direct as she had been. Michael groaned and covered his eyes with his hand, slouching in his chair as if recovering from a blow. Why hadn’t he remembered that this was on the tape?

He listened quietly, helplessly, and the music was like a floodgate that opened and poured in images of Emily. He could see the slight, ironic elevation of her eyebrows as she turned off the tape the first time she played this music for him, explaining that she had chosen it and arranged it in just this way because she thought it was “uplifting,” didn’t he agree? Then his memory wound backward, and he saw her as she was the night of Sami’s party in her princely Tamino costume, her thick hair drawn up under the huntsman’s cap, her flute carried jauntily in one hand; and as she appeared, breathless and indignant, that night she had tracked the master halfway across town only to lose him; and again as she leaned over him, her expression complicated by anxiety and love, as he struggled back to consciousness on the lawn in Central Park the day when she had stood by while he succumbed for the first time to the spell of the master. How brave she was, he thought, how strong and how honest. No one had ever loved him as she had, so sincerely, without question, though not without skepticism, for she knew him and she knew what he wanted and why, just as she knew, instinctively and surely, the difference between right and wrong.

And then the thought of that night, and of how she had looked, so peaceful and serene, when his will and hers had coalesced and she spoke to him for the last time. He didn’t, wouldn’t ever know how much of that strange, impossible event was attributable to his power, the power he had been given by the master, and how much of it was Emily’s own fierce and determined spirit, her will, which was stronger than he had ever, until that moment, understood.

Useless tears filled his eyes, and he dashed them away with the back of his hand. How beautiful this music was. How he longed for her. Hardly conscious of what he was doing, he slipped one hand inside his jacket pocket and withdrew the pack of cards that was always there. There was a trick, a simple sleight, that she had always loved. His hands worked the cards without his really attending to them; it was so easy, and he could see her delighted expression. She never tired of this trick. The cards spread out, stood on edge, appeared to collapse one way, but then, when it seemed he’d lost control and they must cascade onto the floor, they leaped back into his palm as if on command. “Do it again, Michael,” she said, as incredulous as a child. “How do you do it?” “It’s so easy,” he said softly into the dark that hemmed in his spotlight, into the still theater, while the delicate, ethereal music continued, and the tears rolled down his face, and his hands worked the cards, back and forth, skillfully, magically, for the only audience he really wanted now.

Thomas Tryon (1926–1991), actor turned author, made his bestselling debut with
The Other
(1971), which spent nearly six months on the
New York Times
bestseller list and allowed him to quit acting for good; a film adaptation, with a screenplay by Tryon and directed by Robert Mulligan, appeared in 1972. Tryon wrote two more novels set in the fictional Pequot Landing of
The Other
—
Harvest Home
(1973) and
Lady
(1974).
Crowned Heads
(1976) detailed the lives of four fictional film stars and
All That Glitters
(1986) explored the dark side of the golden age of Hollywood.
Night Magic
(published posthumously in 1995) was a modern-day retelling of
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1995 by Thomas Tryon

Cover design by Kathleen Lynch

978-1-4804-4232-0

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com