CHAPTER ONE
Clarissa was a long way from comfortable when she arrived for the audition at the old theater, and not just because of the dress she decided would show off her figure to best effect in front of the director.
It was more to do with how quiet the theater was. Here in Vegas, the assumption was that everything that mattered was open 24-7, constantly glowing with neon lighting and as loud as possible to grab attention from all the other venues around; but the theater was silent and dark now. It was slightly dilapidated, not even on the main strip. It was the kind of place that Clarissa’s instincts said she ought to just walk away from.
“Stop it,” Clarissa told herself, in her sternest tone. She knew that was just nerves. She always got them before an audition, always felt like she should just run away. Even the auditions she made it into, those nerves came through. It was why it was taking so long to break through here, in spite of Las Vegas being one of the performance capitals of the world.
She had to embrace the nerves this time, use them to charge her performance and make it better. It didn’t matter if the script she’d been sent wasn’t good, or just a bit narration part in some magic show, or if the venue was small, or even that she was out there in the middle of the night for an audition.
What mattered was that, if she got this, then it was a part in a professional production, in Las Vegas. She could say that she’d been in a show, and that would make it easier to get parts in other shows. Slowly, Clarissa would build herself up, her name would get hot, and eventually…
Eventually it would be her name up on a billboard, drawing people into a show, in one of the big casinos or theaters. She would be the one making the big bucks as a star here. And if, for the moment, Clarissa could also make enough money from this show to actually pay her rent on time this month, that would be great too.
For all those reasons, Clarissa made her way around to the stage door, where the email asking her to the audition had told her to come. She checked her appearance carefully in a makeup mirror, wanting to make sure that she was perfect, primping her dark hair, applying one last layer of eyeshadow around her dark eyes, adjusting her deep blue dress.
She took a breath and then headed inside. The door was propped open by a brick, and Clarissa must have knocked it as she went through, because it slammed behind her, locked tight. The place was eerily quiet. Clarissa had been expecting someone to meet her at the door, but there was no one there. The only sign of life at all in the theater was that there were lights on, rows of them seeming to lead the way through it.
When they led up to the stage, Clarissa started to relax just a little. She was here to perform, after all.
“Hello?” Clarissa called out. “My name is Clarissa Bale. I’m here for the audition?”
She couldn’t help a note of uncertainty in her voice. It wasn’t just the usual audition nerves now. It was the strangeness of this whole situation. There should have been other girls there, reading for the part. There should have been someone there.
Her nervousness wasn’t helped when music started playing out of nowhere, spotlights suddenly shining down on the stage, moving in arcs.
“Read your part,” a voice said, coming out of one of the speakers.
In a way, that instruction was almost comforting, because at least it meant that someone was there. Clarissa had memorized her lines, of course. She wanted to be off book for the audition to show that she was a professional. Not that the part was that complex: a simple piece of narration.
“Chung Ling Soo, real name William Ellsworth Robinson, was one of the most famous magicians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using his adopted persona to claim access to mysterious secrets, he told the world that he could catch bullets in his teeth. He kept going with his trick until a tragic misfire claimed his life in 1918.”
Clarissa paused for emphasis, taking the opportunity to show that she could add more drama to the part. This might be a small narration gig, but Clarissa was going to fight hard for it.
“Since his death, the bullet catch has claimed the lives of more magicians than any other effect. Tonight, the greatest of those dead has risen again for your entertainment!”
The speakers poured out canned applause, presumably to give Clarissa a sense of what it would be like when a real audience was in there. It was one note of creepiness too much for Clarissa.
“Look,” she called out. “What is all this? I came here for an audition, not for… whatever this is!”
There was no answer. Clarissa had enough. She turned to leave the stage, determined to find some other way out of there.
A figure moved onto the stage as she did so, wrapped from head to foot in bandages like a mummy. He was wearing a long leather coat and a fedora hat, the combination strange and incongruous.
He was carrying a large box with the word “bullets” scrawled on the front in red ink that would presumably be visible from back in the audience. Clarissa hesitated as the figure lurched towards her almost comically, playing the part of the risen dead almost perfectly. A part of her still wondered if this was all part of the same act, trying to get some kind of reaction out of her.
The rest of Clarissa was filling up with fear, making her back away, hands raised as if that would be enough to protect her.
“Look, I’ve had enough. I just want to go home. I don’t even want the part, not if things are going to be like this!”
The figure kept advancing, lurching forward, playing his part.
Clarissa turned to run then, spinning on her heel. Impossibly, she found herself facing the bandaged man again. Somehow, he’d gotten behind her in an instant.
“Catch,” he called, tossing the box of bullets to Clarissa.
She caught it without thinking, and in that moment, he leapt.