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It wasn’t all good, especially with Bernadette winking knowingly at me over the rim of her martini glass. But I just had to get through the next five minutes—or however long it took for Garrett to finish his trick—and then I could return to my seat and continue flirting with Will—I mean, enjoying my evening.

I hurried back up to the stage and found Garrett standing there, his hands stretched out in front of him. “Ms. Wright. If you will.”

“Of course.” I snapped the cuffs into place—extra tightly, since Garrett wasn’t my favorite person at the moment.

He didn’t flinch, however.

“And now,” he said, raising his chin. “If you will do me the honor of untying my cape and using it as a curtain to cover me while I dematerialize.”

I stared at him. “What?”

He rolled his eyes at my ineptness. “Untie my cape and use it as a curtain to cover me while I—what, children?”

“Dematerialize!” roared the kids in the audience.

“Honestly, Ms. Wright,” Garrett said, in mock indignation. “It’s almost as if you had no knowledge whatsoever of the spirit world.”

Realizing this was evidently a well-known part of Garrett’s act, I untied the strings that held Garrett’s cape secure beneath his chin and then, when the garment fell from his shoulders and into my hands, held the heavy purple velvet to my side, high enough so that the audience couldn’t see what he was doing behind it.

“Professor Eurynomos will see all of you soon,” Garrett called to his audience as he pressed an emergency release button on the side of the handcuffs and slipped them back into his pocket, “when he returns from the other side of the spirit world!”

“Really?” I whispered to him from behind the cape. “This is your big magic trick? I was expecting something a little more dramatic.”

“No, Jo,” Garrett said to me with a pitying smile. “That isn’t the magic trick.Thisis.”

And then, still hidden behind the cape I was holding before him, Garrett walked to the deck railing behind him, swung his legs over it, and dropped into the sea.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I’m not going to lie: I screamed.

Then I dropped the cape, pressed my hands to my cheeks, and cried, “Oh my God!”

It’s not my fault that this only added to the drama of what most people in the audience thought they had seen: a man disappear before their very eyes. Only those farther down the pier saw what I had—Garrett drop over the deck railing.

And only those closest to the stage heard what I had—the splash as his body hit the water below.

One of those people happened to be Will. As everyone around him applauded Garrett’s amusing trick—and my apparently even more amusing reaction to it—Will came sprinting from his chair and headed straight to the deck railing where I was standing, still paralyzed with horror.

“Did he still have the handcuffs on?” Will asked me as he gazed into the water, looking for some sign of Garrett.

“N-n-no.” For once I was the one who could barely get my words out. “They were trick cuffs. He put them in his pocket.”

Will looked relieved—but only slightly. “Thank God.”

Will and I weren’t the only ones leaning across the railing to peer down at the water where Garrett had gone in. Farther down the pier, others were doing the same thing, pointing down at the cold waves and calling,There he is!

And then,No, that’s just a fish. No, wait, there! No, that’s not him, either.

The drop from the dock to the water wasn’t far—less than seven or eight feet—and the water directly beneath the Cracked deck was lit by harbor lamps so that diners could gaze into it while they ate. The water was so clear that I could see all sorts of different fish swimming beneath the waves, and a variety of sea grass, too.

The only problem was that there was no sign of Garrett. And beyond those circles of light cast by the lamps? Only a vast, literal sea of darkness.

“Do you think he got sucked beneath the dock?” I asked Will worriedly.

“The current here is strong, but it flows the other way.” Unfortunately, Will pointed toward the darkness. “I’m more concerned about him being carried out toward the Gulf of Mexico.”

I swallowed. I wasn’t Garrett’s biggest fan, but I didn’t like the idea of anyone being helplessly carried off by the current into all that black nothingness—especially when dressed only in a pirate costume.