Perhaps I Shall Make You Disappear.

"bravo," and it's the same voice he's heard before, the bodyguard, this woman's voice coming from eisenheim's chambers, "encore." it's this little flash like something out of the corner of his eye, and then it's gone. it's been a month or maybe six since they've left vienna - it's all the same, really, once you get out into the countryside, towns they roll into so eisenheim can perform and snatch them a bit of gold. it's not the same since leopold stopped chasing them.

eisenheim always tells him, the mystery is in the man watching him work, not in the illusionist himself. eisenheim talks a lot about mystery. it was what he was looking for, after all, when he'd come to him five, seven years before.

but what he really thinks is that maybe there isn't any mystery about anything, maybe it's all within this magic-man, conjurer extraordinaire. edward abramovich, that's the real mystery. the man who defied the vienna police and the empire and is yet remarkably well put together. he subtracts a few dark rings beneath the other man's eyes, maybe, a few hundred tiny lines in his face that weren't there before, but hell, they're all getting older now.

it's late at night and he's bringing eisenheim his dinner when he hears it again. it's familiar, like music he heard in a shop somewhere decades ago and that just sparks the edges of his hearing. the voice is saying, really, could you have really made him disappear? with just a hint of derision. the assistant, the bodyguard, slides the tray under the door and tries to snatch a look but this is eisenheim we're talking about. he's there in an instant, polite crowd-charmer smiles, thanking him with the sadness in his eyes.

the ghost trick fools the most cunning of audiences. the bodyguard works overtime at country performances because they're the more likely to jump onstage and generally make the show all the more difficult to carry on with, and the bodyguard's trying to find a reason for his frustration at them but it isn't that he doesn't quite speak the language yet, they're gibbering at him incessantly like heathens, but it's that eisenheim looks tired. he'll glance onto the stage at his employer, now-man, and shove the audience a bit harder. sometimes he wishes he'd had the balls to do that when uhl was on the case.

the bodyguard knows how the ghost trick works.
first, eisenheim stretches his hand out across the stage, straining, a concentrator.
second, the spirit appears.

it's really not that simple but the bodyguard's never been a man of whirring lights and sounds. or whatever it ends up being.

the night he catches them is the same as all of the other nights, only this time eisenheim lets him see the inner workings of the illusion.
"edward," the woman's voice says, "edward."
the door's cracked open and the bodyguard edges toward it, eisenheim with his back to him. in the room eisenheim's practicing, he thinks, he's conjuring a ghost woman for the next performance.
eisenheim reaches out his hand like always, trembling under the strain. it's very quiet, just the rustle of clothing and muscles, the fabric of souls. eisenheim says, "sophie," and tucks a bit inward as she fades away at the edges. eisenheim doesn't really do that part in public.
the illusion's breaking. the ghost woman says, you've got to stop doing this, edward, and eisenheim says, "I know," in a defeatist kind of way. they can just almost reach each other - just almost enough - until it's all over and she's gone.


sometimes edward abramovich tells him lies he doesn't tell the others
he smiles at him one day and says, "it's just smoke in mirrors,"
which really won't work because there are neither of both of them on stage,
neither of both of them in the illusionist's chambers.

to illustrate his point
eisenheim palms a plum from the table between them and holds it at the tip of his fingers.
he's tired and fraying like a mummy as he says,
smiling at his teeth but not his eyes,
now you see it; now you don't