It was the illusion that made me famous.

It wasn’t entirely my own and I’d been honest about that even from the get-go, even though the man who’d helped me perfect it had told me I didn’t have to keep crediting him.

After all, Mac had come up with far better illusions than the Sleeping Beauty one that I had developed in response to Thea’s letter, and her unspoken plea…

Wait for me.

So many years later, and I was still doing that.

Her mother was in hospice, and I was tempted to travel back to Baton Rouge, back to St. Gabriel, and beard that dragon in her den one final time.

But Thea had made it clear.

I’ll come to you. Will you wait for me?

As I performed the illusion on stage at Casino Torrid in front of an audience that topped out tonight at just over a thousand, I gave her my answer again.

Yes.

This was the only actual illusion in my act, the Thea look-alike floating in the middle of the stage while I fought a dragon made of lasers and lights. The Floating Lady illusion was one of the oldest in the books and when it was done, I’d run my sword across the top and bottom of her body—look, ma, no strings—which actually kind of made it look like I was severing the dragon’s hold on her.

The Thea look-alike would then sit up, in midair, naturally and we’d embrace.

The dragon was defeated.

On stage.

In real life, she was still doing her damnedest to keep me and the woman I loved apart.

And my patience was about to snap.

* * *

“Your timing is off! Focus, LeVan, damn it!”

The words came from Sly O’Malley, the man who’d appointed himself our de facto leader.

We let him get away with it in part because I was too fucking lazy to do it and Mac didn’t care enough.

But if he kept jumping down my throat…

As he came stomping my way, his gingery red hair looking like it hadn’t seen a brush in two days, his eyes hooded, wearing a tight t-shirt, jeans, and a pair of motorcycle boots, I figured out pretty fast what the problem was.

“You’re still half-drunk from whatever party you fell into last night, asshole,” I advised. “Lay off.”

Under most circumstances, I tended to play peacemaker and Mac was the one telling Sly to kiss his ass.

It’s not that we weren’t friends.

We were.

Each one of us would die for the other.

For the longest time—even now—we were all each other had.

After Thea had given me her ‘Until later, John’ letter, I’d all but poured myself into a bottle for a while, something I’m still not too proud of. I’d almost lost the job at the nightclub where I’d been slowly but steadily building myself a name.

That was where I’d met Mac. His real name was Devin Xavier Mackenzie Knight, but that was a fucking mouthful. Friends like me called him Mac.

A few years later, we’d headed out west and hit Reno. There, we’d met Sly and eventually, we’d come to Vegas. We didn’t exactly own the town, but we sure as hell had made our mark in the few years since we’d arrived, going from an opening act to having our own show at a hotel we’d bought ourselves—okay, Mac and I had fronted the money. The three of us rotated nights, although we had a big show every week with the three of us.

That was the only other illusion I committed to and…

“The hell my timing was off,” I snapped when Sly got in my face, sneering at me. He stank like he’d just gotten off a two-day bender. It was possible he had. Sometimes, the man’s demons seemed to want to eat him alive.

That didn’t mean they got to take a bite out of my ass.

“I almost missed my cue because you had your head somewhere else!” Sly shouted.

Mac got between us.

Normally, that was my job.

But Mac didn’t use the tactics I would’ve used. He just shoved the two of us apart and considering the man topped my six feet by several inches—and outweighed me by a solid forty pounds of muscle—it wasn’t a surprise when both of us went stumbling back.

No, the surprising thing was when Sly swayed a little.

I thought maybe he looked a little green.

“Maybe you should go puke the rest of it up,” Mac suggested.

“I’m fine,” Sly bit off.

“How about if we fry you up some eggs and bacon? Maybe the eggs could be a little runny…the bacon kind of burnt? Or a steak…nice and rare?” I offered.

Sly grimaced. And I was right. He was green.

“Sly,” Mac said, voice far more patient than I would’ve expected. “Go eat some fucking toast or something. Get some ginger ale and nap for an hour or two. You’re not doing any of us any good and the next time you get in LeVan’s face, he can just punch you—knowing him, he’ll do it right in the gut and you’ll throw up all over the place. That’s sure as hell where I’ll aim if you pull that shit on me.”

Sly flipped him off.

But it wasn’t a surprise when he turned on his heel and left the mocked-up theatre we used for rehearsals.

They had a bond I’d never share, and honestly, it wasn’t one I wanted to. There were some things that were born of pain and misery and I wanted no part of it.

“Thanks, man,” I said, shoving my dreads back. They were sweaty and in the way and the weight of them was getting on my nerves more and more these days.

“Don’t thank me.” He shot me a dark look. “Your timing was off, LeVan.”

I opened my mouth, then snapped it shut.

Mac wasn’t one to take his temper out on anyone else. Sly took it out on himself—and everyone around—but that wasn’t Mac’s style.

Blowing out a sharp breath, I looked away for a long moment, debating on what to say, if anything.

In the end, the decision was made on a subconscious level.

“Her mother is worse,” I heard myself saying. “I talked to my cousin, Shemar. He said that hospice has been called in. And I haven’t talked to her in years!”

I swung around and threw the water bottle I’d been holding.

It flew across the room and hit the far wall with a metallic clang—rather satisfying sounding.

The last communication I’d gotten from her had been a package. Not a letter, not a card. But a package. Inside it had been a tiny little metal knight, his suit of armor polished to a high shine. There had been no note, but I knew who it was from. The knight still sat on my desk in my study at home and it crossed the country with me. Every time I traveled, the knight went with me. Crazy shit there, a man toting around a little knight in his pocket. But it was my one connection to Thea while we waited this out.

“You’re still waiting, then,” Mac said, his voice neutral.

“What else am I going to do?”

“Move on?”

Slowly, I turned. “Move on?” I shook my head, the idea so…so…foreign, I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. “How do you move on from someone who is so much a part of you, you two might as well be one?”

Mac eyed me, his pale gaze taking me as he pondered the question. In the end, he shrugged. “I can’t answer that. I don’t know what in the hell that would be like, but it sounds pretty miserable.” He waited a beat. “You so certain you’re doing this to yourself for a reason?”

I thought about her letter, the knight. I thought about the times we’d been together—what we were together.

Then I thought about everything keeping us apart.

Not that there was much.

It was just that one person…no, two.

The bitch that birthed her. And Thea herself, and her determination to protect her brother.

I could only love Thea more for wanting to take care of Nicky, even though I hated what it was doing to us. Even when I wished she’d have chosen me, I thought about the poor kid who’d been put in a home simply because his mother had chosen to use him as a pawn.

“Who else was she going to choose?” I muttered, hating myself a little bit right then.

“What?”

Mac knew the barest details, but that was all.

I hadn’t told him everything and I’d told Sly nothing. Sly could be ass, but he was fiercely loyal and if he knew anything about what was going on between Thea and me…

No. It was better he knew nothing, not right now.

“Just thinking,” I told Mac, slanting a look at him.

Judging by the look on his face, he knew exactly what I was thinking. “Don’t,” I advised him. “Don’t start in on me about this, okay?”

“Hey, I’m not going to.” He jerked up a shoulder in a shrug and looked away. “You hurt over this and that pisses me off. But something I understand…fucked up families. Loving your brother, your sister. If I was in her shoes, I don’t know that I could’ve chosen any different. It’s just…” He looked down for a long moment and thick, heavy hair fell to hide his face. When he looked back at me, there was a world of tension in his gaze. “People change a lot, LeVan. I don’t want you to be disappointed if in all that time, you’ve been clinging to a fairy tale that just doesn’t exist anymore.”