The Magician's Assistant

By L.F. Blake

When Rain answers an employment ad for a magician's assistant, he gets far more than he bargained for. 'Seeking,' the advertisement reads, 'a discreet young man to assist master magician in live performances. Apply in person...' But this magician is no charlatan. His magic is as cold and real as he is, and twice as deadly. Desperate for the job, Rain submits to a trial by blade and magic. But the lesson each man can teach the other may ultimately be a lesson neither is prepared to learn. Desire, submission, and the darkness of the heart...

The Magician's Assistant
An 11,000-word erotic fantasy romance novelette

• Language: English
• Publisher: L.F. Blake
• Release date: Feb 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310454721

L.F. Blake

L.F. Blake is a jewelry metalsmith, an amateur artist, a student of the tarot, and a lover of nature. She lives with too many houseplants, six furry children, and a large number of fish. Her first novel, The Far Away Years, was published when she was twenty-two. Her current work is set in the fictional city of New Berlin, where paranormal citizens outnumber humans, and darkness is always brewing.

Book preview

The

Magician’s Assistant

L.F. Blake

The following is a work of fiction. Names, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, events, or organizations, is coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

The Magician’s Assistant

Copyright 2015 © by L.F. Blake

All rights reserved

Smashwords edition: February 2015

___

The Magician’s Assistant

___

THE DOORS OF CHICANERY were made of iron, massive slabs going to rust in the constant rain and snow of New Berlin. Despite their neglected state, they remained imposing, as hard and cold as the winter was turning out to be. Before he ever set his gloved hands against the metal, Rain knew that opening them would not be easy. This club, he thought, had its own ideas about who was worthy to enter. And who wasn’t.

Rain didn’t know if he was worthy. All he knew was that he had to get inside. And after a minute of straining, his boots slipping in the wet snow, the big doors groaned and gave way.

Heat from inside hit him like the blast off a furnace as the doors swung slowly inward. At Rain’s back, the winter sun was setting slowly over a horizon of crumbling old brownstones and distant skyscrapers. Inside it was dark already, true darkness, black as the deepest pit of hell.

Without a backward glance, he stepped over the threshold.

The heavy doors clanged shut behind him, making him flinch even though he expected the sound. Every noise was more ominous when you couldn’t see anything. And Rain couldn’t. He stood still, waiting for his eyes to adjust. They did so slowly, very slowly.

The dark wasn’t absolute, only it hung like a shroud over the cavernous space of the room, broken here and there by the unsteady light of wall sconces, which flickered in a pale imitation of fire. Rain could see, finally, the room itself, a deep room with a low ceiling, a shabby stage hiding in the shadows at the fore. Tables were set out in front of the stage, but they were mostly empty at this hour. The few men sitting at them looked exceedingly normal in their cheap suits and tidy haircuts, their smooth hands cradling bottles of Neu Lager and the occasional glass of whiskey. They were nothing to Rain. He turned his back on them and headed for the long, gleaming bar at the back of the room.

The bartender was polishing a row of highball glasses. He was a tall man with broad shoulders, attractive yet instantly forgettable. Something about him made Rain’s eyes want to slide away.

The man radiated a calmness that didn’t break even when Rain slapped a newspaper clipping down forcefully onto the bar. He merely looked at Rain, and then looked down at the paper. In scarlet ink, Rain had circled the classified ad so hard that he’d nearly torn through the page.

Seeking a discreet young man to assist master magician in live performances. Apply in person at Chicanery on Striver Street.

I’d like to apply, Rain said.

The bartender raised a speculative brow. For a moment the man simply stared at him while Rain’s pulse tapped a nervous beat at the back of