I stare at Nero’s email, worried the strain has made me hallucinate.

Great job, Nero’s email says. Keep it up.

How could I have done a good job if I barely had any time to do proper analysis? More importantly, how can he even know if my recommendations are good so quickly? Did he give me more stocks that he had illegal “intuitions” about?

Rubbing my eyes, I check my phone and see two texts from Felix.

The lunch is on Friday at one, at Nargis Café. Here’s a link to its Yelp page.

I follow the link. The menu and the reviews are very promising, but the place is located in Brooklyn, which means a longer lunch (good) and, obviously, a trip to Brooklyn (not so good).

I’ll be there, I reply.

I then read his other text.

I checked info on previous tenants in our apartment. They don’t sound even remotely Russian, plus no one ever died here. I did find out something you’ll never believe, though. Call me.

Intrigued (as was Felix’s intent), I ask my phone to video-dial Neophile—my private nickname for Felix due to his obsession with Neo from The Matrix.

Felix’s smiling face shows up in a few moments. Behind him is a wall of at least a dozen monitors and a contraption that must be the latest in ergonomic keyboards. It looks suspiciously like the keyboards in The Matrix.

“I knew you’d call.” Felix whirls in his black dentist-like chair, giving me a view of a giant room that looks like a datacenter filled with supercomputers. “And trust me, it’s worth it.”

“I’m having a crap day,” I say. “Can you just spill it?”

“Guess who owns our building?” Felix says in a sing-song voice.

“The President of the United States?” I say, trying to sound jovial despite the deep sense of foreboding that suddenly overcomes me.

Felix shakes his head. “Hint, hint, he also owns the building you’re sitting in at this very moment.”

“No,” I say, the foreboding becoming a certainty. “No way.”

“Nero Gorin,” Felix says triumphantly. Then he frowns. “Are you okay?”

I must look as uneasy as I feel. Until now, I figured I could become homeless by one route only: Nero firing me. Now he can also not renew my lease if I piss him off enough. I love our place and—

“Seriously, what’s up?” Felix asks in a hushed whisper.

The concern on his face is touching. If he were here, he’d probably get a hug despite how awkward he acts when I hug him.

“Just a lot of work.” I point my phone at my screens that still have a bunch of articles up. “Nero isn’t exactly my favorite person right now.”

As though in reply to my words, my work email dings, and I glance at the screen to find another email from Nero in my inbox.

I turn the phone camera back toward myself. “I have to get back to work. Thank you for looking into this domovoi thing for me. I owe you one.”

“No problem.” His grin is contagious, so I return it and then hang up.

Nero’s new list of stocks is slightly smaller than the previous one (but still a couple of days’ worth of work), and my deadline is “before market open tomorrow.”

I order Mexican delivery and get to it. By the time my food comes, I’m so tired I’m barely thinking, and after I eat my burrito, the food coma combines with exhaustion to severely reduce the quality of my already-dubious research.

By 8:37 p.m., I type up my email report for Nero, but I don’t actually send it. Given my deadline, I schedule the email to go out at 6:00 a.m. the next day. This should give Nero time to take action and will make it seem like I worked extra hard on it—maybe all night.

Doing my best to pretend I’m just going out to stretch my legs, I sneak out of the building and start walking without thinking.

As I cross the street, I begin to get an uncomfortable feeling, an itch of sorts between my shoulder blades.

I glance around but don’t see anyone watching me. Still, the feeling persists.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think someone from the office decided to follow me—but there’s no way my hedge fund colleagues are that nosy.

It takes me a few minutes to realize where I’m headed.

A magic store.

Usually, I buy my magic books and props online, but nothing compares to the soothing qualities of walking into a brick-and-mortar magic shop. Before I hit puberty, a magic store was my Toys’R’Us and candy store rolled into one. As I grew boobs, however, I started frequenting magic shops less often due to excessive drooling attention from the predominantly male customer base.

A chime rings out as I walk in.

The earlier paranoia doesn’t completely go away, and I feel as though the imaginary nosy coworker is standing outside and looking at me.

Oh what the hell, let them look. I have a life outside of work, and I’m not ashamed of it.

The magic store clearly isn’t doing well—I guess I’m not the only one who took her magic shopping online. Half the shelf space is now taken up by practical jokes such as fart cushions and fake piles of poop.

The store is empty during the moment it takes me to look around, but then a mustachioed hipster about my age comes out. His eyes widen as he sees me, and his mustache seems to elongate in both directions.

“You’re that Sasha girl,” he exclaims. “I saw you on TV. You were amazing.”

“Thanks,” I say, happy he omitted the YouTube debunking fiasco. “Do you have books on the bullet catch illusion?”

After the events of the other day, I’ve been wondering if I should get myself a gun. I’m not a gun person like Ariel, but I’ve always wanted to explore gun-related illusions one day. Maybe all those zombie attacks were the universe telling me that “one day” is now.

“All we got is this.” The hipster guy reaches into a large bookshelf and hands me a small booklet.

I glance at it. The advertising on the back describes an effect where a performer heats up a bullet with a match, causing it to fire, only to end up inside the performer’s mouth.

In short, this trick is missing the most dramatic part of the illusion—the gun.

“I want something of a bigger caliber,” I say. “Pun intended.”

“That’s all we have.” He twirls his mustache.

I’m not that surprised. The bullet catch is a ridiculously dangerous illusion. At least six very famous magicians died while performing it. Still, every major TV illusionist that I can think of has done a version, and I always figured I’d have to join the club—that is, until being Cognizant ended my hopes of getting on TV.

“I have this Russian Roulette routine.” The guy grabs another, slightly thicker booklet from the shelf and puts it in front of me. “The effect is that you put a bullet in a revolver, spin it, and ‘shoot yourself’ in—”

“I know what a Russian Roulette routine is,” I say, trying not to let my irritation show.

The guy flushes. “I didn’t mean to imply that you don’t. Timothy makes us explain effects to all customers. Regardless of gender.”

Regardless of gender.

That’s like starting a sentence with “I don’t mean to sound sexist, but…”

“I’ve invented my own Russian Roulette routine,” I tell him. What I don’t say is that without a gun, I’ve never tested my idea in front of an audience, so it could be bad.

“That’s awesome,” he says overexcitedly, clearly wanting to cover up his snafu. “Will you publish it?”

What a great question.

Now that I can’t perform any illusions, should I publish my ideas now, instead of posthumously like I half-jokingly planned, so that other magicians can use them?

No.

The effects I invented are like my babies, and giving them to other illusionists would be like leaving them at an airport for some other family to find.

“Nope,” I say firmly. “I’m taking all my stuff with me to the grave.”

The guy looks genuinely disappointed—which probably means he doesn’t know how I did something on the TV show and hoped to learn the secret in my book. Likely, he wants to know how I got the host to name the Queen of Hearts before showing it tattooed on my arm.

“Listen,” he says conspiratorially and glances at the security camera. “Usually, I’m the one demoing effects, but I was wondering if you can show me something?”

If his goal was to redeem himself, he just succeeded with flying colors. There’s no bigger compliment a magician can pay another than to request to see something. Usually, everyone just waits their turn to show off their own skills.

I hesitate for a second, remembering the Council’s prohibition on my performances, then decide that this won’t violate it. This guy will never in a million years think that I’m for real; he knows how most of the effects are done.

Wary of showing something I invented myself lest it get stolen, I repeat for him what I showed Fluffster at breakfast. Few things in that routine should fool a guy who works at a magic store, but hopefully, he can appreciate my execution of all the moves.

“That was great,” he says when I’m done. He strokes his mustache thoughtfully, making me think I underestimated my fooling abilities after all.

“Not bad,” a raspy new voice says. “Your palming skills are very decent. For a girl.”

I turn and see that the newcomer is a pudgy, white-haired man in his sixties. I’ve got to give him props; he managed to appear as if out of thin air.

“Timothy.” The sales guy looks like a cornered rabbit. Like me, he didn’t notice his boss sneaking up to peep at my performance.

I meet Timothy’s watery gaze and frown. “What exactly do you mean by ‘for a girl?’”

I’ve actually heard of Timothy Bandicoot, the owner of this store. He’s semi-famous in the magician community of New York, mostly because he’s a bit of a contradiction. Though he’s an owner of a magic store, he also has a YouTube channel where he posits his theories on how famous magicians accomplish their illusions. Having watched his show once, I was disappointed at some of the elaborate and impossible theories he proposed as the methods behind the magic.

Now it seems like he has no customer service skills either. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised at all the fake poop on the shelves.

“I meant that as a compliment,” Timothy says, rubbing the shiny bald spot on the top of his skull, as if for luck. “Palming is difficult for someone with hands as small and delicate as yours.”

“Riiight.” I roll my eyes. “So you’re saying you saw me palm the cards, right?”

“But of course,” Timothy says. “Individual cards and the whole deck.”

“That’s odd,” I say. “Because my routine didn’t involve palming an individual card.”

“Impossible,” Timothy says. “That time the card ended up in your pocket—”

“Care to put money where your mouth is? You have me recorded.” I point at his security camera. “We check the tape, and if it shows me palming a card, you get a thousand dollars. If it doesn’t, you give me five hundred.”

Timothy looks pleadingly at his mustachioed minion. In my peripheral vision, I see the sales guy shake his head.

“We’re closing soon,” Timothy says. “No time for games.”

“Then I’d better go.” I head triumphantly toward the exit.

“Here,” the sales guy says, catching up with me. He hands me a booklet with a Russian Roulette routine. “A thank-you gift for showing me your tricks.” His eyes also seem to add, “And an apology for my boss being an asshole.”

“Thanks,” I say, reaching for the door handle. Over my shoulder, I add, “You might want to work for an online magic retailer.”

I close the door with a loud bang and head for the subway.

The feeling of being watched returns. Could Nero have driven me crazy with all that research? I wish I had Lucretia or some other mental health professional on speed dial to check this theory.

Pushing the thought away, I get on the subway and start reading my gift. It makes the time go by so fast I nearly miss my stop.

As I exit the station, I realize my mind is still too muddled to head home. Fortunately, I have a perfect remedy for that—a stroll in Battery Park.

Named for the artillery batteries that were positioned here in the more violent past, this park is by far my favorite place in the city. There’s just something about walking by the water of the New York Harbor that’s incredibly soothing. Even my earlier feeling of being followed subsides.

Almost, that is. k^1^2

I leisurely walk on the promenade to the marina.

As usual, New Jersey is lit up on the other side of the shore, as is the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. The promenade is fairly crowded, but when I get to the marina (i.e. sneak in/trespass), there’s no one around.

Stopping next to a multimillion-dollar yacht, I park my butt on the pier and swing my legs over the water. Taking out the magic book, I resume reading it by the light of the antique-looking lamppost.

The book catalogues many interesting methods for Russian Roulette. Some involve a trick gun, some use trick bullets, and others rely on sleight of hand when it comes to inserting a real bullet into a real gun—which is what I considered doing when I fantasized about performing this illusion.

A deep sense of foreboding suddenly overcomes me.

Did I just subconsciously picture myself making a mistake and blowing my brains out during a performance?

My subconscious must’ve forgotten that my TV career ambitions are over. And even if Ariel let me do it, I wouldn’t risk my life over an effect just to entertain my roommates.

Well, at least I don’t think I would. Maybe on Felix’s birthday—

The lamplight behind me dims.

I’m about to turn to look at it when something inexplicable happens.

One moment, I’m sitting on the pier, and the next, I’m plummeting into the water.

My head slams into something metallic, and the world goes fuzzy.