The Vanisher

They whispered his name in hushed tones like a rumor, velvet-soft as a knife's keen edge: Elric Vane.

He was nowhere to belong, but he'd played every casino from Monte Carlo to Macau, leaving wide eyes and empty vaults in HIS wake.

But Elric was NOT the average card shark or street swindler. NO, he was a magician. Not the top hat, rabbit variety. The variety who could make your wallet vanish during a chat, your secrets spill from your mouth like wine on the table, and your past bend into something you never knew.

Illusion was his ART.

Deception was his brush.

And every job was a masterpiece.

Tonight, his stage was the opulently decorated cruise ship The Argent Dawn, halfway between Cairo and Venice.

The audience was precisely what he adored—wealthy, distracted, hungry for something thrilling. Elric stood atop a gilt-embossed podium, rolled-up sleeves, bowtie opened just so to imply risk.

“Tonight,” he declared, “I shall do the IMPOSSIBLE. I shall make something vanish that NO man ever has.”

Laughter.

Challenge accepted.

The audience was unaware, but under their velvet seats were sensors. Elric's sidekick—a hacker named Quill—was already reading information off all the electronic equipment on board. Passports, bank accounts, identities.

A vanishing act for the digital universe.

The trick? A floating diamond. Elric took the ship's gem, “The Eye of Horus,” and said he'd float it over his palms, spin it around in the air, and then gently place it exactly where he initially touched it, without a scratch, in its glass case.

The lights faded...

Silence descended...

He breathed into a spell in a word that nobody knew, but was in fact a reversed Latin cookbook recipe for marinara. The diamond ascended, rotated within his palm, glowed—and disappeared.

Gasps.

Cheers.

Show over? Not yet.

As he bowed, a lone clap lingered too long. A woman in RED emerged from the audience.

Bluestone EYES.

Smoky voice.

“You vanished the diamond,” she told him, “but can you RESTORE the life you took?”

The crowd was silent...

Elric blinked AND losted.

He didn't know HER name.

But he knew those eyes.

They were the eyes of the girl he'd performed his magic in Paris.

The one who'd vanished in a fire ten years ago.

.

To be continued…

.

.

AUTHOR's NOTE:

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!

Part-2 will be written by Rowan Finley and to find his profile, follow the link below: