Page 52 of The Rising Tide
Well, Scoutwould.Would what, he wasn’t sure yet, but he’d definitely do something.
“Since you two are coming up and we’ve got double the fun,” he said, improvising as he went, “I need my friend up here to help me with this trick.” He gestured to Piers. “Coming up is my cousin, Lightning Gestalt. He’s going to stand across from me and catch this ring as I throw it and then throw it back. Can you do that, Lightning?”
“Sure can, Great Gestalt!” Piers said with aplomb, trotting up the stairs to the staging area in front of the store. He managed to beat the two guys in camo, both of whom were clunking up their set of stairs with grim purpose. As he reached Scout, he murmured, “What’s doing?”
“Follow my lead,” Scout whispered back before positioning Piers across from him, both of them with their profiles to the crowd. “Everybody see the rings?” he asked, showing them to the audience. He was gratified by the nods he got before he turned to Piers. “Test them out,” he said, and this had been part of the practice, so Piers relaxed infinitesimally. “Nothing on the sides,” he said, and Piers ran his hands along the rims.
“Nope,” Piers said. “Nothing on the sides.”
“You sure?” Scout asked him, winking.
“Positive,” Piers said, and Scout turned toward the audience and, holding the three chrome-plated rings in one hand, neatly flipped one in the air, holding the second ring so they would clang in exactly the right place….
With a perfect tone, the two rings met and married, and he caught the top ring, allowing the second ring to dangle from the bottom.
“I’m not sure if we can trust him,” Scout said to the audience, and he got a laugh and a smattering of applause. “Try it again,” he said to Piers. “Anything in the center?” He held the last ring out for Piers to thrust his arm through, which he did, while the two gangsters lurked in the background, waiting for an invitation. This time, he turned the remaining ring toward them. “Anything in the center?” he asked, standing far enough away that they could only shake their heads.
“Only your ugly face,” one of them said, trying to be funny.
Scout grinned at him. “Well, if that’s what you see, they’re obviously magic,” he replied pertly, and the audience laughed along, ignoring the nastiness of the asshole on the stage with him. As the guy started to snarl, he turned so the audience could see the rings, as well as the two gangsters, and flipped the third ring in the air, catching it neatly on the other two as it came down.
“Ta-da!” he said brightly. “Like I said, magic!”
More laughter, more applause, and he kept the rhythm going. “Okay, Lightning, you stand there,” he said. “No moving now! Keep your feetgluedto the cement.”
Piers’s eyes widened, as they should have because Scout’s magic, wild and angry at the thought of losing Lucky, was starting to thrum in his blood.
“Will do,” he said, flashing the crowd a purposefully apprehensive smile. The crowd laughed appreciatively, and Scout thought maybe he’d have to ask Piers to help with the act more often, and then he welcomed the two men who had joined them. “You two,” he said, “stand right there. Give room for us to throw the rings between us, but stand in the gap—” He ran behind them and positioned them so they faced the crowd. “—like so.”
They smelled… metallic, he thought. Dangerous. Like metal and salt water. As much as he loved the smell of the ocean, this tang was altogether different. It rang of unwashed bodies and too much alcohol. Oh, if Scout hadn’t known a thing about Lucky’s past, he would still have wanted these two people off his island.
“Okay, Lightning,” Scout said. “I’m going to throw this one, and you catch it.” He tossed the first one in an eight-foot arc, and Piers reached up and caught it, bowing faintly to the crowd.
“Want it back?” he asked, throwing it in front of the two gangsters again.
“Sure! Have another!” Scout tossed the next ring to Piers, and he tossed it back. And again, and again, while he talked to the crowd, to Piers, to the men standing behind the passage of the tossed rings, watching intently, giving that path of spinning chrome through the air more and more credence, more and more belief, until Piers and Scout might as well have been carrying a big glass pane between them, as opposed to tossing shiny chrome rings.
“Thank you, sir!” Piers said to his last toss. “And have another!”
They had developed a rhythm such that one ring was always in the air, and Scout knew he was lucky—it usually took a lot of practice to get to this place, but Piers seemed to sense what he needed. Concentrating, with his magic dancing at its most intricate, he set that middle ring to spinning, alone in the center between them, hovering and spinning, so natural that it took a moment for the audience to catch its breath.
Scout grinned at them devilishly, keeping his magic in check, and turned to Piers. “Don’t be shy,” he said. “Throw me the next ring!”
Piers, eyes wide, did.
Scout caught it with his magic in midair, and it clanged with the other ring hovering, and the two of them began to spin together, whirling, the center of the spin the contact point of the rims.
“Well, that’s awkward,” he pronounced. “Here, let’s see if this balances it out.”
He threw the third ring, and they joined in a triskele, the space in the center of the three rings in contact acting as the fulcrum for their spin.
“What in the hell!” said one of the gangsters, obviously in awe.
“You guys ready to do your part?” Scout asked, sensing that same need he’d felt on the day he’d made the portal to rescue Kayleigh. This time, the need wasn’t to rescue anybody, though, it was to send these guys far away. Far,faraway, but there was only one place he knew that was far away.
“Whatever,” the other gangster snapped, staring at the whirling rings as though afraid and trying to hide it.
“Really simple,” Scout said, holding his hands out to the rings as though that was the force keeping them in check. “Do you see the gateway?”
