Illusion Town by Jayne Castle Page A

rather clever thus far. Perhaps she was the one manipulating Coppersmith, not vice versa.
    The Collector picked up the nearest object, a drinking glass, and hurled it against the wall. He watched the glittering shards cascade down to the carpet.
    He could not bring himself to abandon the project, not as long as there was even a slim chance of success.

Chapter 9

    Hannah’s phone rang just as she got out of the taxi. It was not the first call she had received since returning to the surface. She had dumped the first two, both of which had come from Grady Barnett.
    She reached into her clutch, intending to terminate Grady’s third call. Then she noticed the sleek steel blue Cadence parked at the curb.
    â€œWell, what do you know?” she said, taking out her phone. “Your car did survive the night.”
    Elias finished paying the cabdriver and turned toward her. Virgil was on his shoulder clutching the Arizona Snow doll by one little booted foot.
    â€œYou thought the car would have been stolen overnight?” Elias asked.
    â€œOr stripped. It’s not that we don’t have a pretty good neighborhood watch set up here in the DZ—we do. Butit’s designed to keep the local residents safe. Visitors are usually okay if they stick to the parking lots of the clubs and casinos because there’s plenty of private security. But leaving a fancy car like yours on a side street overnight is a risky move. It must have been a big temptation to some of our less scrupulous entrepreneurs.”
    â€œMy car can take care of itself.”
    â€œReally?” The phone in her hand rang again. She glanced at the screen, expecting to see Grady’s number. A jolt of alarm spiked through her when she saw the identity of the caller. “Uh-oh.”
    â€œSomething wrong?” Elias asked.
    â€œIt’s my aunt Clara,” Hannah said. “Pretty early in the day for her. She’s a night person.”
    Elias glanced at the newspaper stand on the corner. It featured the latest copy of the
Curtain
. The headline about their marriage was in very large font.
    â€œWhat could possibly go wrong?” he asked.
    She gave him a withering look. “Don’t worry. Even if she happened to see a copy, Clara knows you can’t believe everything you read in the
Curtain
.”
    â€œEveryone says that. But they read it anyway.”
    Hannah ignored him and took the call.
    â€œGood morning,” she said, trying to infuse her tone with an upbeat note. “How are you and Aunt Bernice doing today?”
    â€œHow are we doing?” Clara repeated, her dark, smoky voice much sharper than usual. “I’ll tell you how we’re doing. We would both have fallen out of our rocking chairs,if we had rocking chairs. The headlines in the
Curtain
say you married Elias Coppersmith last night. It says his family controls a huge chunk of the hot-rock mining rights in the Underworld. It says he’s rich. It also says he’s a scion. What the heck is a scion? Sounds like some kind of refrigerator or a car.”
    Clara Stockbridge was normally a monument of unflappability. When she had arrived in Illusion Town several decades ago, her name had been Clara Stockton. She’d had the height, the great bones, and the figure to get a job as a showgirl. She also had the intelligence, creativity, and savvy understanding of an audience, which had allowed her and her lover, Bernice Bridge, to create the masterful Ladies of High Magic show. The act had endured for nearly thirty years before Clara and Bernice had gracefully closed it down.
    Somewhere along the way Clara and Bernice had married and combined their last names into Stockbridge. They had insisted that the baby girl they had found on their doorstep call each of them “aunt” not “mother” because, as Bernice said, Hannah had a mother. Marla Sanders was dead but Clara and Bernice had been her friends. They were absolutely certain