back when Rico was consulting for him, and he was just too good. If I watched his act, I would be intimidated and lose my nerve. The moment his opening music started, I turned off the TV and went out into the corridor to pace.
I stopped in my tracks as the door closed behind me, the hiss of the pneumatic hinge like a loud whisper in the concrete hall. Kellar stood six feet away, talking on a tiny, antiquated flip phone. He looked up when I came through the door, and I realized it was the first time I’d ever heard his voice. Silence was Kellar’s trademark; the man hadn’t said a word in public for almost forty years. I turned to walk back into my dressing room—but then I heard the flip phone snap shut.
“Ms. Dante,” he said.
I turned. “Hi.”
“I’m Kellar.” He approached and stuck out his hand.
I shook it. “I know. My dad took me to see you when I was ten.”
He squinted. “Did we do the Bullet Catch?”
“Yeah,” I said, remembering. “Everyone was quiet before Flynn pulled the trigger, but I totally shrieked. You shot me this look from the stage, and the whole audience cracked up.”
“That was you?”
I laughed—as if he would remember something like that six years later. “Yeah, that was me.”
Kellar smiled, put his hands in his pockets, and rocked back on his heels. There was something childlike about him. “Listen, I heard about your father, and I just wanted say I think it’s very brave what you’re doing.”
“Or crazy,” I said.
He shrugged. “You say tomato.”
“Thanks for letting me do it.”
He waved away my comment as if allowing the unknown daughter of a washed-up magician to perform on live TV was no big deal.
“You know,” he said, “I was watching the night your dad did the first Truck Drop.”
“You were?”
He nodded. “Broke my heart. But, you know, the road to fame is paved with the corpses of magicians far better than Flynn and me.” He shrugged. “You’ve got to find a way to live, onstage and off.”
“Yeah.”
He rocked on his heels again. “I’m stalling,” he said. “I can’t watch Gongora. He’s too good.”
“Right?”
He laughed.
Just then, a voice called from the end of the corridor.
“Ms. Dante? You’re up.”
In my midsection, those butterflies flapped up a hurricane.
“Don’t suck,” Kellar said.
I smiled. “I’ll try not to.”
I took a deep breath, turned, and walked down the corridor toward the stage.
When I met him in the wings, Clemente frowned and barked into his headset.
“Makeup, I need somebody stage left, stat.” Then, to me: “You’re sweating. No, don’t touch—let the pros handle it.”
Sometimes during an upswing, I perspired uncontrollably. It was murder on makeup.
While a girl in a black apron powdered me down like a donut, the wardrobe assistant arrived to aggressively check and double-check all the snaps and closures on my outfit.
There was a burst of orange light from the stage—Gongora’s finale—and then an explosion of cheers and applause. As he passed me on his way offstage, he smiled and wished me luck. I don’t remember how I responded. I was already in the zone.
Ella, ella, eh, eh, eh . . .
The next two minutes lasted an hour as the network cut to commercial, and then Flynn Bissette took the stage to a crush of applause. He motioned for the audience to be quiet.
“More than any magician on this stage tonight, our next performer deserves your respect and attention, and I’ll tell you why. A decade ago, the Uncanny Dante took a big risk on live television. But instead of succeeding and cementing his legacy, he failed—and ruined his career.” Flynn crossed downstage. “We magicians love to forget performers like Dante. We love to forget, because each of us knows we’re only one mistake away from ending up just like him.”
I was riveted—and I could tell by the silence in the auditorium that the audience was, too.
“I offered Dante a chance at redemption. I invited him to come here tonight and re-create the illusion that failed so spectacularly ten years ago. Unfortunately, he’s not here with us tonight. Two days ago, he suffered a severe heart attack, right here on this stage.” An ohh reverberated through the auditorium. “But I spoke to him on the phone this morning, and there’s something he wanted me to tell you.”
My breath caught in my throat. Flynn had talked to my dad?
“Dante told me that, at first, he didn’t want to come on our show. That he hadn’t even received my invitation until