For a moment, she felt as though she were standing outside herself, noting the way the edges of her lips were turning blue. Watching as she gasped, tipping her chin up as though drowning and seeking the top of the wave.
When Charlie opened her eyes, she found herself on the tiles. She could breathe again, although inhaling hurt.
Charlie looked up at the mirrored ball on the ceiling and saw a figure standing behind Hermes, arm pressed to his throat. But from their blurred shape, she couldn’t identify the new person. Their arrival must have been what made Hermes call his shadow back.
She began crawling slowly over the glass-covered floor, telling herself that when she made it to the open area of the lounge, she was going to run for the back doors, hit them hard with her shoulder, and not look back.
“You’ve let your shadow feed for too long tonight.” Impossibly, it was Vince’s voice she heard. But it had gone all wrong. Soft and menacing. As oblivious to Hermes’s squirming as if it were irrelevant. “There’s not much of you left. Can you feel the strain, like something spooling out of you?”
The man made a choking sound, twisting his body, trying desperately to break free.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
Charlie almost couldn’t recognize this Vince, standing in the middle of the empty club. Tightening his grip.
Then came a sound like a wet branch breaking.
She caught her breath.
Reflected in a dozen tiny mirrors, the bearded man hung limply in Vince’s arms.
9
THE PAST
Charlie took to pickpocketing like it was what her fingers were made to do. At twelve, Rand set her up to study with a retired magician who had learned to lift wallets and watches as part of her act, and every Tuesday and Thursday after school, he would drop her off at Ms. Presto’s house. He told Charlie’s mom that it was for piano lessons.
Ms. Presto smoked, and her whole house reeked of it. It was a small place, over in Leeds, with barely any backyard. Inside, it was stuffed with antique memorabilia, including an automaton that had once graced a department store but now stood in a corner wearing a top hat, with half its face missing. “The only magicians people have heard of are men, but some of the greats were women,” Ms. Presto would say, waving her cigarette around. “And let me tell you something, the best grifters were always the females. We know how people think. We’ve got the nerve. And we don’t get caught.”
Charlie liked the way Ms. Presto included her in that declaration. We. And she especially liked the idea that she might dodge any consequences.
“So the first thing you have to understand is the tap. You tap somewhere on the body of the mark while you make the lift. Maybe you bump into them if you’re walking or touch their shoulder if they’re sitting in a crowded restaurant. People think the tap is misdirection, but that’s not it. The brain can’t process the feeling of being touched in two places at once, so it only alerts the mind to the harder hit.
“Tap ’em on the shoulder and they don’t feel your hand in their pocket or purse. There’s no real finesse. Just grab.”
Charlie thought about that. Ms. Presto gave her a cardamom hard candy out of a silver skull on her coffee table. “What if you stick your hand in a purse and there’s too much stuff? Or what if it’s zippered?”
“Ah, now, that’s where misdirection comes in,” she said. “Surprise them. Razzle-dazzle them. Or just pick an easier mark. Lots of fish in the sea. And some of them are wearing solid-gold chains.”
“What about clasps?” When Ms. Presto had first started talking, it had seemed simple. But the more Charlie thought about it, the harder it seemed. It took her three tries to put a necklace on, much less take one off of someone with one hand, all while razzle-dazzling them.
“Hand on the back of the neck, a little pressure, and clever fingers,” said Ms. Presto. “It’s all the same. Let’s start practicing.”
First they hung jackets on the automaton and strapped watches onto the arms of chairs. Then, when Charlie had mastered that, Ms. Presto would walk around her house so that Charlie could pretend to bump into her, or be walking up to her in a crowd.
Finally, they were ready to go out.
One afternoon, Rand drove her to the Holyoke Mall instead of Ms. Presto’s house.
“We going shopping?” Charlie asked.
Rand didn’t even seem to mind her tone. He grinned like the joke was on her. “Your lesson is here today.”
Ms. Presto met her in Macy’s, where she was buying a pair of sneakers. “Never hurts to have a bag on you,” she told Charlie. Then she smiled. “Or an old woman with you.”