The audience was eating up his act like they usually did. Jett opened his arms to them, smiling as he heard their roars of approval. They had already watched him make a series of objects, from a small statue to a lit candelabra, disappear from tall, narrow tables on the stage after having placed a box over them. They were the smaller tricks, but Jett knew all too well how important it was to add the classics in. Everyone came for the biggest part of the show, but they needed to see some old-fashioned magic as well.

Riley stood to one side of the stage, watching Jett has he bobbed and charmed his way through the audience’s attention. Jett caught her eyes at one point, tipping a wink in her direction and grinning at her returning one. She was normally an engaging and helpful presence on the stage, but Jett was noticing she seemed more engaged than usual as she helped him through various tricks. Distantly, he wondered if maybe she had found herself someone new and interesting who was bringing a little more lightness to her step. He made a mental note to question her about her new mood over drinks after the show.

Turning his attention back to the crowd, he began to slowly build up his act. While he didn’t use animals very often, he had found it helped to bring them into the mix every now and then. For the latest batch of shows, he had started using classic doves.

It began simply with a few disappearing eggs. Appearing in one hand, only to disappear and show up in the other. He had already built some anticipation with his earlier tricks, so the audience looked eager rather than bored as he showed them the simple trick. Just before he reached the point where he might have overdone the buildup, he slapped two of the eggs together. Instead of a mess of yolk, a dove sat safely on one hand, fluttering its wings and gazing out onto the surprised audience with indifference.

Jett grinned as he watched the surprise turn to wonder, slowly moving his hand through the air so the audience could admire the dove. After a moment’s pause, he flipped his hand toward him, and then back up so it was flat once more. There were two doves sitting on his hand, crowding around his palm. The audience cheered, and the doves cooed softly in his hand as he coaxed one of them to hop over onto his other hand.

“This doesn’t do much to answer the old question about the chicken and the egg, huh?” Jett asked with a devilish grin.

Before the audience could reply, Jett repeated the same hand gesture with one of the birds. It disappeared, and its place was one of the eggs from before. The other hand repeated the movement, and that dove, too, disappeared, replaced with another egg. The crowd cheered up at him and Jett inclined his head in a quiet thanks.

He eyed the eggs thoughtfully, speaking to the audience once more. “I guess I didn’t really help with the answer, did I?”

Jett placed the eggs in his pockets, moving over to one of the tall tables where the boxes he’d used to make various objects disappear still stood. The audience’s attention was completely on him as he laid his hands on each side of the box and stared out at them.

“After all, these aren’t chickens, they’re doves,” Jett said, lifting the box and revealing a small group of doves on the tabletop.

It was enough for the audience, who laughed as they cheered, clapping hard. Jett knew it was his time, bowing before them and letting them cycle through their excitement. With a harder audience, he might have pulled out another few tricks. But the audience he had that night was a good one and they were all too eager to cheer him on as he worked the stage. They had more than earned the right to see the trick they had all heard talked about.

After they had calmed down enough, Jett opened his arms to them in welcome. “Now, I’m sure all of you didn’t come out here to watch me make a few things disappear, or make a few birds appear. Did you?”

When they called back to him, Jett grinned. “You know, I hear a few cries out there for an explanation. Haven’t you ever heard how a good magician never reveals his secrets? Come now, do you want me to stand up here and tell you every little detail, or did you come out here to watch me possibly get chopped up into little pieces and turned to ash?”

The crowd laughed at his joke, though he didn’t miss the air of eagerness around them either. They could all laugh at his comment about coming to see him possibly go to his death, but he knew the truth. It was just as he had told Rico, everyone in the audience wondered if they would be the ones to witness the great escape artist finally fail. Even if they didn’t, they would be able to say they saw the legendary trick in person. Whether tragedy or mystery, human beings were always sure to flock to watch.

Jett turned to where the conveyer belt had been set up. “I present to you the deathtrap I will be escaping from. For all of you out there who might be looking for a darker end, if I should fail, I will find myself cut in two and then dumped into the compartment at the end, which will incinerate me to ashes.”

He waited as the stage hands brought out the open box to set on the conveyer belt. Together, Jett and Riley slapped on the cover to the box and let it go through the motions of traveling down the line. Jett waited in silence as the box was destroyed with a shrill scream of metal on wood, then torched before the audience’s gaze.

Jett nodded at the machine. “The next box will contain me. I will be handcuffed, thrown into the box, and the box will be bound with thick rope. Before anyone gets any smart ideas, the rope isn’t to make it easier, it just burns a lot better than metal chains do.”

When the crowd laughed, Jett turned to them, giving them another open armed gesture. “Now, who wants to see if I can escape the claws of death once again?”

Their cheers were all he needed.