Chapter Text
There’s a girl robbing his audience.
Daniel lets his eyes gloss over her for the fourth time this evening. watching as she slips her hand into a pocket and it comes back with a wallet. She’s good, he has to admit — her target hasn’t noticed a single thing, and if he were any less familiar with pickpockets, any less well-trained in knowing what to look for — he likely wouldn’t have, either.
He has, though, and he can’t say he’s particularly appreciative of it.
The crowd cheers as he flicks his deck of cards into the air, pretending to make it disappear and feeling it slide safely back into the false pocket he’s sewn into his left sleeve, and plasters a blinding grin on his face. “Sorry, that wasn’t your card. Was it?”
His chosen audience member, a young man with bright eyes and a brighter smile leans closer, shaking his head perplexedly. Daniel tsks at him, brandishing his empty palms before deliberately turning back to the tree behind him, a murmur making its way through the audience as people start noticing the card that he’d pre-emptively hidden onto the stem, now being revealed as the flashlight he’d fastened above it earlier flashes on, earning him a dazzling applause for his efforts. “That’s because you’re looking too closely.”
Audience properly distracted, he risks another glance to the thief slinking past the furthest edge of the little crowd he’s gathered, only a few dozen people gathered for his unannounced pop-up show. Her hair glistens— pink? he wonders briefly, as she passes underneath one of the street lights, and then a watch disappears from someone’s wrist.
People are going to be pissed, he muses briefly, flicking his arm again to let the cards re-emerge from his sleeve and he folds them easily into a fan. “Thank you all for coming, and goodnight!”
It’s his closing speech, his way to announce the end of the night — and he lets the cards billow up, creating a showy display to distract people from looking at him while he hurries back to his pre-planned escape route. He’s halfway out of the park when there’s movement in his periphery, a shadow flitting along the other side of the fence, and when he looks over — he meets the wide, startled gaze of the pickpocket.
He quirks an eyebrow at her and watches as she pivots, sprinting off and leaping off a park bench to hop the fence just ahead of him and taking off at a breakneck speed, crossing the street and disappearing in a side alley.
He stares after her, near-indistinguishable footsteps rapidly disappearing, and he briefly debates going after her. New York has always been rife with pickpockets, and he knows that the crowds that gather at his pop-up shows are an easy target. It’s not ideal — there’s the chance that people will associate their missing valuables with him, which would be bad for his reputation, but—
There’s something familiar about it, he realises hesitantly, about having a shadow flit around at the edge of your periphery nimbly lifting wallets and watches and jewellery. He remembers similar brown eyes, wide and startled, staring up at him the first time he’d managed to catch Jack in the act, his hand firmly clasped in his own from where he’d felt it slip into his pocket — and he remembers the stories, the unhappy twist at the corner of Jack’s mouth as he’d told them all, late at nights, about harsh winters and cold winds and dodging security at shopping malls just to get by.
No one pickpockets only for the fun of it. It’s an art, and it’s a skill, and there’s a thrill in knowing you’re quicker than your target, in being fast and unnoticeable enough that you can take whatever you need from them without them ever realising — but it’s risky, out on the streets, and no one does it solely for the thrill of it.
He remembers the faraway look in Jack’s eyes as he’d told them about learning, about making mistakes and miscalculating and taking risks because the alternative was nothing — and though he’s sure Jack never quite told them everything, he’d told them enough for him to know that no one — not even bold, thrill-seeking magicians — pickpockets only for the hell of it.
He blinks, and the thief’s eyes flash in the back of his mind — bold eyeliner, smudged and cheap, nearly enough to distract from the wide-eyed, wary look she’d worn — and decides to let her go.
She might not have known who he was, and the chances of ever seeing her again are slim. Pickpockets don’t stick in one spot too long — it’s risky, and if she’s clever and quick enough to lift as much as she had tonight, then she knows better than to linger.
He sighs, shrugging his coat a little higher onto his shoulders and picks up the pace. It’s getting colder, the usual western October breeze steadily giving way for a colder, northern front. The days are getting shorter, darkness encroaching a little more early with the day, and it does nothing to keep the spiteful, cold thing in his chest at bay.
He briskly winds through the alleys, careful to check over his shoulder for anyone following him — but there’s no one at his back. He’s on his own, as he has been for the past few years since the Horsemen broke up — and he swallows thickly against the swell of bitterness that rises in the back of his throat, the same way it always does whenever he thinks of them. He thinks of them more often than not.
It’s been seven years — more than enough time to get used to it, he supposes sardonically, but then again — he’s never been all that good at letting go of things he got attached to. There’s nothing else for it, though — they all went their separate ways after magnificently, spectacularly burning every single bridge they’d ever built together, spite and fear and grief all mingling together into an explosive, corrosive mixture that tore them apart better than anything else could have.
He doesn’t keep up with any of the others — he knows Merritt went off to Rosarito, years ago, but there’s no telling whether he’s still there or if he’s found a different dwelling place to haunt. Jack’s face had shown up on an advert for a cruise, a year or two ago — and he’d stared at it until he’d felt sick, the logo proudly displaying The Great J. Wilder like a mockery of all that they’d ever been.
Lula’s name had started buzzing in the circuit around the same time, shows of magic popping up here and there — she’d started doing magic on her own, apparently, and the last he’d caught of it was that she went off to try her hand at it in Europe. Henley’s name hasn’t crossed his radar in years — he hasn’t dared to google her after the last time, when she’d shown up in the alumni list of the University of California in Los Angeles, her smile bright and content on her student picture in a way he hadn’t seen in years.
They’re all gone, out of his reach and further out of his life — and he does his best not to think of them at all.
It’s useless, in the same ways most of his coping mechanisms are — he still makes his coffee with the same awful brand Merritt used to favour, and his clothes are sorted by colour in the system Lula explained to him after weeks of complaining about his previous sorting system.
The tune that Jack used to hum while brushing his teeth plays in the back of his head every time he grabs the tooth paste, and he stares in the mirror and forgets that he doesn’t have to watch his elbow anymore, that there isn’t anyone to complain about him taking up their space now that he doesn’t share a bathroom with Henley.
The worst of all is Dylan’s voice in the back of his head — he wonders, all too often, what Dylan would think of him, if he could see him now. He used to think Dylan would have been furious with him, with all of them — Dylan was in prison, left there forever, all because they couldn’t figure out how to get him out, how to make up for all the ways they’d ruined his life—
Over time, it’s lessened from something angry, an enraged and seething presence in the back of his mind to something colder — something disappointed. Dylan always had high expectations, demanded nothing but the best — and none of them had lived up to it. He wonders how Dylan’s doing, these days — he still hears the echo of his voice in the quiet mutterings of day-to-day life, recognises him in the cashier’s voice that falls in the same low register or one of his neighbours who has the same rough twist to his words.
He’d thought he was going crazy, at first — his heart stuttering and faltering in its rhythm, skipping a beat any time someone looked a little too much like Dylan, spoke a little too similarly, or— anything, really, that reminded him of Dylan, led him to think that maybe, maybe there was still a way he’d gotten out, gotten back to them.
Dylan was in prison, though, and the other Horsemen were long gone, presumably moving on with their life and finding other things to keep them occupied — and he’d drifted by in a haze, barely aware of time ticking past until he’d blinked and it had been eight months since that fateful performance, since they’d messed it all up and lost the most important person in their lives.
He’d snapped, in some way — all of a sudden it all got too much, the memories of everything that he’d lost and the quiet hope that clawed out of his ribcage any time he heard the jangle of keys outside his door and thought, for a second, it was one of them coming home, and the endless, mocking sight of Dylan’s name still on the deed of his safehouse.
He’d left everything behind, booked a plane ticket and disappeared into the Australian wilderness.
He doesn’t fully remember his time in Australia, if he’s honest — he’d floated in a half-awareness, trekking slowly through the Outback and barely remembering to resupply whenever he came across another town. It wasn’t until he’d blinked himself awake in a backwaters hospital, concerned hospital staff letting him know he’d been brought in with heatstroke and asking if there was anyone they could call — that he’d realised that however bad things had gotten, dying a John Doe in the remote Australian bush was worse.
None of that matters now, anyway — he shuffles past the cars parked out in front of his building and finds the entrance to his apartment, one of the Eye’s safehouses sequestered away in New York. It’s not the one they’d been in while preparing for their initiation shows — that one was raided by the FBI and requisitioned by the authorities, but he’d been surprised to find there was a whole list of safehouses scattered across the country, with several options in New York.
He hasn’t contacted the Eye in a while, other than requesting a place to stay — he arrived back in New York roughly a month ago, two of the Eye’s safehouses at his disposal just in case something happens and he needs to run. He’s currently staying in the house in Queens, close enough to several parks and underground places to host little pop-up magic shows, but far enough that he can rotate spots without growing predictable just in case the authorities figure out he’s here sooner than he wants.
He hasn’t actually performed on his own in a while — not since they split, and the adoring crowds, the starstruck audiences and cheers and applause are not quite as he remembers. It feels hollow, these days, but he doesn’t have much else he can do, currently. He’d figured it was an easy choice to make — either he feels miserable while sitting at home, or he feels miserable while going out and bringing a little joy to the few magic-enjoyers still out there.
Ultimately, it’s for the greater good — or so he tells himself, jamming his key into the lock quickly and shouldering the door open. It’s good to get back in the game, show his face on the streets a little more often and find some of the thrill back in what he used to do.
Everything’s felt flat and boring lately, the world around him dull and gray as he’s let life pass him by. Perhaps running for his life from the authorities will bring some warmth back into his veins — and if it doesn’t, he’ll simply quit again and go back into hiding. It doesn’t matter much, in the end — there’s no team to wait for him, no Dylan to make plans and no Eye to deliberate with.
At least he’s managed to do something good, tonight — his audience had been elated with the few tricks he’d shown them, as many as he could fit in his self-allotted seventeen minutes before he needed to head out, still needing to be careful of the authorities.
With Mabry and Tressler both behind bars, with charges for attempted murder, racketeering and cybercrime on several accounts, a lot of the crimes the Horsemen had been held accountable for after their initiation shows were being reconsidered. They’re still wanted for more than enough crimes — their robbery of the Crédit Républicain de Paris, destruction of property after the stunt on the FDR bridge, obstruction of justice and withholding information—
It’s just that it’s mostly circumstantial evidence against them, nothing that definitively proves they were directly aware of and involved with Dylan breaking Thaddeus Bradley out of prison, amongst other things. Most of their show in London had consisted of trespassing and evading the authorities, but it wasn’t actually illegal to pretend to stop rain or do magic tricks on the streets, nor were there laws against pretending to fly a plane on a wharf on the Thames, though they hadn’t exactly filed for the correct permits.
Their crimes against Arthur Tressler and his company had been cast in a new light, however, with his involvement in Walter Mabry’s cybercrime and the abduction-slash-attempted murder charges he’d been indicted with.
All that to say — there was a pretty ambiguous legal gray area, with the disappearance of Dylan Rhodes and the Horsemen in the years after their London show. Allen Scott-Frank, one of the members of the Eye that had stepped up after Dylan had disappeared and the Horsemen had all but fallen apart, had contacted him two years back to offer the possibility of brokering a deal, to find a way to regain enough freedom to start doing shows again.
Daniel knows they arranged something for Henley, after she left the Horsemen, and he’s fairly sure Jack must have worked out some kind of deal given that he seems to be working out in the open — unless his cruise is in international waters, which is a legal loophole on its own. Whatever the case — he’d rejected the offer, decided he’d rather stay on his own and figured he’d try and fly under the radar where he could.
There haven’t been any specific searches for him, either way, but going out into the public eye to do little pop-up magic shows again might be toeing the line, drawing some unwanted attention, so he’s resolved to be careful nonetheless.
He locks the door behind him — both the key and a second, manual lock he’s installed. He’s overly familiar with lockpicks, and there’s no picking a lock that isn’t accessible from the outside. The safehouse is comfortable — there’s a stylish couch in millennial gray, petrol-coloured throw pillows and paintings doing little to bring some colour to it.
He doesn’t pay much attention to it — the other New York safehouse he has, down in Bushwick, is eerily similar to the apartment he’d stayed in the year between their show at Five Pointz and the Octa performance, and feels almost too familiar. Here, in the bland, almost inhospitably spotless apartment, it feels a little more like he does — temporary.
This isn’t forever, and this will end, someday — the exposed brick walls and with warm light falling through the large windows of the Bushwick apartment feel too much like a home. It doesn’t feel like he belongs there — it’s not his home, and the near-sterile white decor of the Queens safehouse feels a little more apt for the way he feels similarly empty, wiped clean of anything that made him him.
He goes into the world and the crowds find him, people whispering his name and seeing J. Daniel Atlas, the showman, grinning blindingly back at them, and he does his best to show them exactly what they want.
When he stares back at himself, in the mirror, he’s not quite sure who he is, anymore.
None of that matters, in the end — something has to give, eventually, and there will be something to shake him from the endless slew of days floating by in unremarkable mundanity.
Until he finds it, he’ll keep doing what he does — and he’ll survive.
Chapter 2
Summary:
June, Charlie and Bosco attend another show — but things don't go as expected.
Notes:
woah hi i'm back already. do not be fooled by the word count because i was initially planning to have every chapter be around 3k words for "consistency" (ha. as though i've ever been consistent a day in my life) but uh. well. let's just say chapter 3 and 4 are both already 5k so i truly have no idea how long this is ultimately going to be.
anyway june pov my beloved. the ponies all love each other so much and i'm insane about them in case you can't tell. the first two chapters of this are essentially just creating the setting and world of this and making sure the dynamics are laid out but things will be speeding up from chapter three onwards. promise.
anyway i hope you enjoy!! <3
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“There’s another pop-up show tonight.” June looks up as Bosco storms in and throws his bag down into the corner of the room, clanking dully onto the cement floor. “If you wanna be there, you’ll need to be careful — but it’s gonna be in Fort Totten. Just make sure you don’t get caught.”
“Relax, it’s fine,” June scoffs, rolling her eyes as Bosco frowns at her worriedly. “Atlas totally spotted me, he just doesn’t care.”
“Until people start realising that they’re getting robbed at his shows,” Charlie helpfully points out, leaning across the floor to lean into June’s space. She huffs and digs an elbow into the side of his ribs, then shoves him away.
She turns her attention back to the mirror she’s balancing between her knees — her eyeliner’s a little uneven, on the left side, but the effort it would take to correct it doesn’t seem worth the effort. She’s leaning against the furthest wall in the empty building they’re squatting in — it’s a little drafty, given that one of the windows on the far end is missing, and occasionally there will be noises somewhere downstairs of someone else passing through, but it’s been a good hiding spot overall.
They’ve been bouncing between spots in the city, making sure never to stay in one spot for too long and keeping all their important stuff with them at all times. Charlie volunteers at Tannen’s Magic Shop every Friday, which means the owner, Mr. Blumenthal lets them use the backroom to stash things on occasion and grants them all access to the bathroom and shower when they need it.
June hadn’t been sure what to expect, at first — after she’d arrived in New York, she’d spent a few days roaming the streets and finding something to do, a place to stay — and she’d been completely enamoured with the display of Tannen’s Magic Shop. Mr. Blumenthal had invited her in, and there she’d met Charlie — who’d taken an instant liking to her.
He’d taught her a silly trick — something small, making a handkerchief disappear into her palm and having it reappear in her mouth, but it’d been… magical. A tiny spot of brightness in the hazy terror of doling around, wondering whether she’d be safe, whether she’d find a place to get through the night. She’d spent the afternoon there, and Charlie had seemed equally attached to her — and she’d left the shop with great difficulty.
She couldn’t make herself walk away, though — and she’d lingered at the edge of the road after closing, watching Charlie wave goodbye to the shop owner and disappear in the streets. She’s still not sure what, exactly, it had been that had encouraged her to follow him — but she had, and she’d trailed him all the way to the dilapidated first floor of an abandoned building, and there he’d caught her.
He hadn’t been mad at her, though — he’d been wary, convinced that she was going to rob him, but then they’d simply… talked, and he’d told her about his parents, about being alone and running away from his last foster home and dreaming of one day leaving it all behind, becoming more than what they’d turned him into — more than just a headline.
June had grinned up at him — equally disillusioned with the world, having come to New York to find the unfindable and still not knowing where to begin, ever-searching for the world in the palm of her hand and wondering when her moment would be — and she’d reached over to stomp him gently in the arm. “You just need to become a bigger headline,” she’d vowed, “something bigger and better than anything that came before.”
It had been simple, somehow, the two of them — and they’d stuck together ever since, standing at each other’s back and slowly starting to dream of something more than what they’d had. Charlie taught her magic, had been the one to let her dream of not just taking something but making it fully disappear, and in return she taught him what she knew of picking pockets and locks.
They’d been a team, just the two of them, until their latest hideout had been discovered and they’d had to run. They’d gone to Fort Totten, intent on sneaking into the abandoned Endicott Battery ruins — until a low voice had snarled at them to go away, fuck off—
That’s how they’d found Bosco — huddled in a corner, blood smeared across his knuckles and a split in his lip, staring back at them wildly. He’d been jumped, he’d told them later — he’d taken a gig playing a mascot for some show and hadn’t hidden the payout well enough. He’d managed to get away, but lost the money — and the fight.
They hadn’t left when he’d told them to, though. Instead, June had fished in her backpack for the last of the Twinkies she and Charlie had been saving, and held it up as a peace offering. The first few days had been… rough, to say the least — Bosco had been suspicious, endlessly stand-offish and guarded, and she and Charlie had already been close enough by then that they’d made him feel like an outsider, completely—
They hadn’t left, though, and neither had Bosco, and within a week she couldn’t imagine life without him, anymore.
That had been almost a year ago, and the three of them had been inseparable since. Bosco was bold, a little rough around the edges but endlessly protective of the both of them, and looked out for them in the little ways that counted. The moment he’d found out Charlie loved magic had been a turning point for all of them — they threw themselves into it, all three of them, finding new tricks just to surprise each other, drawing up entire shows and performances during the cold nights when the world seemed too wide and cruel for them to find a speck of warmth, still, and when they had a lucky score and were able to breathe a little easier — they’d sneak into the library and find new magic tricks, dazzling performances.
It’s how they’d found the Horsemen, ultimately — old videos of four magicians accomplishing the unimaginable. They hadn’t been seen in years, magic lost to time the same way so many other things had — but June still dreams of something like that happening, some days.
Money falling from thin air, enough to keep them all afloat without worry — or a card, a promise of a future ready to whisk them away to something safer, something better. Magic at her fingertips, crowds at her feet — it seemed impossible, too far away to ever dare look at, and still—
Some late nights, underneath the colours lights of a blinking neon sign or with the shining lights of street lanterns glinting down on them — she could see it happen, some day. Charlie, bright and grinning, quick and clever as a fox, and Bosco, all easy charm and gleeful smugness, and her — the three of them in the lights, one day, standing bold and daring and worth it.
It’s a pipe dream, though — nothing more, and the fact that her heart had skipped three beats upon seeing the J. Daniel Atlas suddenly standing in a spotlight in a forgotten corner of a park, the living and breathing symbol of magic, of achieving the impossible and one of the Horsemen, greatest magicians of their time—
None of that had meant anything, to her. It couldn’t. She had to be pragmatic — crowds meant easy blending, easy pockets to pick and wallets to lift. This was an incredible chance — not to learn magic, or find something better, something more — but to get a good score and surprise Charlie and Bosco with something nice. Something to keep them safe.
She’d come back with her pockets fuller than they’d ever been before, enough to keep them afloat for weeks, and the moment she’d caught wind of a second show she’d known she had to go. She couldn’t miss it — not when it meant cheerful nights with wide grins and splurging on a fizzy drink and the chocolate that Bosco loves but offers up to them every time nonetheless.
It means watching the worried frown on Charlie’s brows smooth over and watching him breathe a little easier, watching Bosco smile easier and brighter than before and letting herself slump down onto their sides, throwing her legs over one theirs and closing her eyes and focusing solely on the fact that she has two incredible people here, always having her back, and how grateful she is that she gets to have them.
Atlas had spotted her the first time, she’d been fairly sure — and he’d definitely spotted her the second time, and Charlie’s right to be cautious even if she doesn’t want to admit it.
He’d been right between her and her escape route — she hadn’t expected to run into him, and neither had he. He’d stared at her, and he’d deliberately stood still and let her go — and she couldn’t, for the life of her, understand why.
It didn’t matter, in the end — all that mattered was that she’d made it home, pockets filled and a skip in her step that had Charlie and Bosco cheering at her before she’d even made it through the door. All that mattered was that Atlas knew what she was doing and was letting her.
All that mattered was that there was another opportunity tonight, in the same place that she’d first met Bosco — and she wasn’t going to let it go to waste.
“If anything, it’s his reputation that’ll be ruined,” June offers quietly to Charlie, shooting him a reassuring smile. “People getting robbed at his show means all eyes will be on him. If he was going to stop me, he’d have done it last time — and I can be quick. It will be fine.”
“I still don’t like the idea of you going alone,” Bosco mutters, and shares an indecipherable look with Charlie. “If anyone catches you, it would be good to have us there to cause a distraction.”
“Yeah,” Charlie agrees, a little too quickly, “we should probably come along, just to be sure.”
June narrows her eyes at him, before letting her gaze slide back to Bosco. Bosco’s pursing his lips ever so slightly, his expression just a tad too neutral, and all at once she realises what they’re getting at. “You guys just want to catch the show.”
Charlie maintains his carefully curated expression for all of two seconds before breaking into an excited grin. “Come on, this is J. Daniel Atlas! He’s, like, one of the biggest names in magic — of course we wanna catch the show!”
“His tricks were kind of lame, though,” June teases, uncrossing her legs to get herself to her feet. “He did that stupid disappearing trick that you did to me a few months back.”
“Oh, the one with the sleeve?” Charlie perks up, heaving himself to his feet to stand beside her. He tilts his head at her, seemingly running over the trick again, and then he bounces on his heels. “I’ve been wondering whether he uses his index or ring finger to flick the card down. This is gonna be so exciting—!”
“Just don’t hover around me, okay?” June levels them both with a firm glare, and then pokes Charlie in the shoulder for good measure. “If you give my position away, I’m going to kill you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bosco shrugs, a shit-eating grin on his face even as he shrugs on his jacket. “We got it, boss. Come on, the show’s starting in a bit — we gotta get there early if we want a good spot.”
The show starts off as normal.
June weaves between the people milling at the edges of the crowd, blending in where she needs to to get around and flashing unassuming smiles at anyone that glances her way. She’s still mapping out the place — nothing has changed since the last time they’d been here, really, aside from the sheer amount of people that are here now — when she feels her jacket rustle in an unnatural way.
She’s ducking away in an instant, whirling around to face whoever tried to sneak something from her pocket — but there’s only a startled couple, staring back at her with wide eyes before turning back to look expectantly at the stage.
She’s patting down her pockets in an instant, a near-desperate need to make sure she still has everything, that she hasn’t lost anything— and her hands wrap around the cool, smooth surface of a playing card.
She tugs it out of her pocket, squinting as she steps underneath one of the lights hung up around the ruins of the old building — and her breath catches in her throat as she stares at the blank, white front of a playing card with a messy ballpoint scrawl on it.
Don’t lift anything. Spiller Road cross-section. Come after the show.
There’s no sign-off — but it’s not necessarily. There’s only one person who’d know she’d be here, and why — much less be able to get close enough to plant it on her without her realising until it’s too late.
She whips around, trying to find Bosco and Charlie through the crowds, but they’re somewhere in the middle, and she can’t see them now.
There’s a choice here, she knows — one that feels a lot bigger than it likely is. She could go against his wishes and lift whatever she can, make sure to go out with one final big score before never showing up to any of his performances again just to be safe… or she can sit back and enjoy the show and see what he wants afterwards.
It could be a trap. He knows she’s taken everything that his audience is missing, that she’s the one behind it all — for all she knows, he’s setting her up for a trap and all that’s waiting for her at Spiller Road is the back of a cop car.
It’s… unlikely, though, as much as she hates to be an optimist about this. That’s usually Charlie’s job, and she grumbles to herself as she realises his endless enthusiasm and positive outlook might have finally rubbed off on her.
Atlas wouldn’t call the cops — they’d be just as likely to arrest him as her, and he let her go last time. That means something — it has to.
She’s going to have to trust that this is real, that this will be fine — and she breathes in deeply, closes her eyes to calm her racing heart and tucks the card away again in one of her pockets. Steady. She opens her eyes again just in time to watch light flash and J. Daniel Atlas step onto the stage, an easy smile on his face and the light giving him an almost ethereal glow.
He looks completely at ease — and it’s unfair, she thinks irrationally, that he’s just done something to throw her entire world off-kilter, to have her hands tremble where she’s tucked them into the lining of her jacket, anticipation and nerves making her more jittery than she’s been in months, and that he’s still completely fine.
The show starts, and it passes her by in a blur — she catches sight of Charlie and Bosco once in a while, all three of them drifting through the crowds and occasionally managing to check in on each other, though Charlie and Bosco each seem completely enraptured by the tricks Atlas throws at them.
Bosco quickly schools his face into something neutral any time he catches her looking — but there’s no mistaking the quiet awe on his face, the wide-eyed adoration of watching something impossible unfold, of knowing how the tricks work but choosing to let himself be fooled either way.
Charlie’s a lot more obvious about it — there’s a glint in his eyes that she recognises from his afternoons in the magic shop, and there’s an awestruck smile on his face that doesn’t diminish for the entire evening.
It should be a perfect night. They’re all here, and Bosco and Charlie are both so happy — they haven’t looked this light in weeks, and the roar of the crowd is electric, almost enough to get her to join in — but the card is burning a hole in her pocket, the promise of something unknown hanging above her like a noose waiting for her to fasten it around her own neck.
It’s over before it starts, almost, and when the lights turn off and on again, the stage empty as Atlas makes his escape, she’s already dodging through the crowds to find Charlie and Bosco.
“June, what’s going on? I didn’t even see you do anything—” Charlie tries to check in on her almost instantly, smile disappearing as though clouds covering the sun the moment he clocks her worried expression. “Is everything okay?”
“Spiller Road,” she bursts out, and then immediately shushes herself, reaching out instead to clasp her fingers around his wrist. “We have to go, come on, come on—”
“Woah,” Bosco calls out from behind her, popping up over her shoulder as though summoned, “June, what’s happening?”
“He knows,” she breathes out by way of explanation, plucking the card from her pocket and flashing it up to both of them quickly. “We have to go there, right now. Something’s gonna happen.”
She’s not sure why she’s in such a hurry — she doesn’t even know what is gonna happen, much less whether it’s actually going to be good or not, but there’s something in the back of her mind screaming at her to hurry, hurry, you’re gonna miss it, this is your chance, you have to go—
“Shit,” Charlie curses, reaching up to drag a hand over his face before meeting her eyes seriously. “Okay. Okay, that’s fine — we can do this. There’s three of us. We’ll stick together — this will be fine.”
“If anything happens—” Bosco starts, and June reaches over to grab his arm, too.
“No time — let’s move!”
They set off at a breakneck speed, dodging people and stragglers as they disappear from the Endicott Battery, street after street passing them by until they’re at Sergeant Charles M. Beer Road, shoes pounding across the asphalt as they make their way to the cross-section with Spiller Road.
“We’re here,” June breathes out, once the place is in sight, “wait here. I’m going on ahead on my own.” There’s a hand on her shoulder instantly — Bosco’s, she recognises, and she turns to stare at him. “I got this, seriously.”
Bosco nods at her, and then lets go. “We’ll be right behind you.”
June grins at him, nodding back at both him and Charlie, and then spinning around, breathing still a little more ragged than usual as her heart beats wildly, blood roaring in her ears from their sprint here.
She’s got this. She’s just here to meet one of the greatest names in magic in a desolate road, after getting caught robbing half his audience. Nothing will go wrong. Nothing will go wrong.
She reaches the cross-section and turns to glance around her. Bosco and Charlie are lingering a couple paces behind, looking for all the world like two incredibly suspicious people, and she flashes them a nervous smile when she faces them. The street is empty, other than them, and there’s no cards or lights, no clues to indicate that this is the spot — and just when doubt starts creeping in, a niggling worry slowly getting stronger and stronger that this isn’t real, maybe this is all a mistake—
“Excuse me?”
She whirls around at the voice behind her, awfully familiar and awfully pretentious, and when she turns back, J. Daniel Atlas is standing right in front of her. “Hello, thief.”
Notes:
cliffhanger. sooo mean i know. i always write chapters ahead of time which means it won't be too long before the next one pops up — i just have to finish ch5 and then we're good. in the meantime — feel free to let me know your thoughts and/or yell, because i love reading out your thoughts even if i'm a little slow in responding sometimes!! just know i appreciate everyone and hope you're all having a good time <33
doyoueverjustYEET on Chapter 1 Fri 12 Dec 2025 01:01AM UTC
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serra_says on Chapter 1 Sun 14 Dec 2025 10:52AM UTC
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myfallfromgrace on Chapter 1 Fri 12 Dec 2025 02:38AM UTC
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serra_says on Chapter 1 Sun 14 Dec 2025 10:53AM UTC
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e_va on Chapter 1 Fri 12 Dec 2025 04:30PM UTC
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serra_says on Chapter 1 Sun 14 Dec 2025 10:58AM UTC
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manisanythingnottaken on Chapter 1 Sat 13 Dec 2025 02:41PM UTC
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serra_says on Chapter 1 Sun 14 Dec 2025 10:53AM UTC
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nevermore_evermore on Chapter 1 Sun 14 Dec 2025 06:45PM UTC
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manisanythingnottaken on Chapter 2 Sun 14 Dec 2025 02:56PM UTC
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e_va on Chapter 2 Sun 14 Dec 2025 10:28PM UTC
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