I Learned Magic for All the Wrong Reasons

Dante asked whether they still wanted to inspect the theater with another version of him missing. Miss Vale said nobody would enter before security checked it, then reminded him that saying yes today didn’t prevent him saying no tomorrow.

He spent Tuesday night in his room while Mrs. Han checked the corridor, watching his door settle into its frame. Its little rune turned green when locked, a useful improvement on the childhood method of placing a laundry basket where an intruder might trip.

By Wednesday morning, public spaces had been searched and the remaining stores secured, but the second figure was still missing. Investigators moved the examination into the theater control room, using only the recovered player and copied records while the stage stayed disconnected.

Dante checked his cracked phone before leaving, then put it back in his bag. There were easier ways to spend a morning than listening to someone use his voice, but Jett had already spent enough time being told what Dante supposedly wanted.

Bell met him outside with his bird investigating a coat button. The nurse had approved ordinary walking and observation, not unsupervised casting, and Bell made him repeat that distinction before they passed through the side entrance.

Posey arrived with her notebook against a cream sweater, while Anika wore an emerald blouse tucked into dark trousers. Dante tried concentrating on the door and discovered his attention had chosen an entirely different entrance to admire.

”Your witness statement belongs upstairs,” Anika told him, catching the glance without sounding offended. She straightened his jacket’s collar with two fingers, then released it before his imagination could promote the adjustment into something worth rehearsing.

Posey asked whether he was nervous, and he admitted it. At the stairs, he quietly offered her his good hand, waiting while she tucked her notebook beneath her arm and took it. She stayed beside him until they reached the room.

Miss Vale introduced Inspector Senn, a gray-haired man in a brown jacket with a paper notebook. He asked Dante to separate what he recognized from what he suspected, which seemed like an attack on the foundation of his personality.

The technician, a narrow woman with a cropped black fringe and a pencil behind one ear, showed them the cleared desk. The isolated player had a visible power source and no network connection, with copied recordings ready for comparison.

In the adjoining room, the recovered figure remained boxed behind a barrier while a second officer watched through the connecting doorway. Before anyone sat down, Senn pointed to the door leading back into the corridor and told them they could leave at any time.

Anika asked where visitors would wait if someone needed a break. Senn pointed out a staffed room downstairs, and Posey wrote the number inside her notebook. Dante appreciated that neither woman treated attending with him as a promise to remain through anything he might decide to tolerate.

Dante put his bag beneath his chair and asked the technician to compare complete passages before playing the edits. Anika questioned the dramatic breathing, and he admitted that part was entirely his fault while Posey generously blamed microphone distance.

Bell said distance hadn’t caused the threat to make mountains kneel. Dante considered whether protective custody offered a new face, then supplied the original file name because embarrassment wasn’t a useful reason to stop helping.

The next recording made him forget the joke. A woman asked an applicant to remain still during compatibility assessment, using the polite voice that had come from his bedroom and later from the cube in Miss Vale’s locked room.

He explained exactly where he remembered hearing it, refusing to claim every word matched. Miss Vale confirmed the assessment voice sounded similar, keeping her dressed wrists visible on the desk while Bell asked the technician to stop the playback.

Senn requested the file details, and the technician showed him an equipment label referring to the missing second figure. It connected a recording to a device, she warned, without proving who spoke or whether anybody was currently inside it.

Anika asked whether Mercer commissioned the alterations, but Senn said that remained under investigation. The supplier reported changes after delivery, and he wanted records instead of deciding guilt from whichever surname looked most comfortable on an expensive watch.

Dante thought of the scar beside Mercer’s watch and wondered whether the inspector had done that deliberately. Posey touched his sleeve and quietly asked what was bothering him. ”I keep thinking about that photograph,” he told her. ”It was dated before my assessment, but I still don’t know if that date was real.”

Senn said they still needed to check the date, so Dante asked him to get the supplier’s original photograph. The copy had scared him into believing someone had seen what would happen to him, and he wanted to know whether it had been changed. Senn wrote down the request and said they would check the original.

The technician removed the playback card, slipped it into an evidence sleeve and left it beside the empty player. A woman’s voice continued through the theater speakers anyway, asking why the applicant had brought witnesses to a private assessment.

Bell moved everyone away from the glass while Miss Vale called the officer at the corridor entrance. The technician disconnected the player entirely and held up the loose cable, but the voice repeated Dante’s name from somewhere beyond the control room.

He wanted a shield before remembering Jett beneath one, then asked Bell what to do. Bell told him to stand behind the barrier he was making, drew a hooked shape and closed it with the rolling Korean words.

A clear wall rose between the desk and the window, leaving the exit behind them accessible. Bell’s bird flew to the doorframe, proving the animal had strong opinions about workplace safety despite its complete lack of professional qualifications.

The stage lights switched on around an empty lectern and a young man in a black university jacket. Dante recognized his own messy hair, shoulders and face before the figure lifted its eyes toward the glass.

Posey said his name while looking between them. The figure raised a hand like the stolen classroom demonstration, then shifted its weight while Dante remained still, ending his hope that it was merely reflecting him.

Senn ordered the adjoining officer to keep the route clear while Miss Vale guided Posey toward the exit. Anika followed close behind, and Dante stayed beside Bell, trying to remember how an ordinary person breathed while watching himself smile.

The other Dante drew nothing and spoke no incantation before a white barrier rose across the control room doorway, stopping Miss Vale before she reached the handle. Then it looked directly at Posey through the glass and asked, in Dante’s own voice, which of them she believed.