The assistant clinked her long, glass flute against mine. Hers sparkled with bubbles and wine, and mine was empty. I had promised my best friend I wasn’t going to drink that night; she was at a bar down the road, and I was the designated driver.

I wondered for a moment, catching the depths of the assistant’s deep brown eyes, why I hadn’t skipped the place entirely and joined Olivia down the street. It would have been a safer bet, as rowdy as that bar got. It wouldn’t put me at the mercy of someone so far above me.

Literally, first of all. Her stiletto heels gave her elevation I did not have the advantage of, and to meet her gaze, I had to crane my neck upward slightly. It made me feel a little bit stupid, like I was in high school all over again looking up at my crush, at the time a girl who was two years six inches above me and way too cool for my own good.

But also, she was above me in status, in proximity to the reason I was at the little bar on the street corner in the first place at the early hour of seven in the evening. She was the assistant to the magician across the room, and I was… what was I? I was no one.

“This is your first one, isn’t it?” the assistant asked. “I know the crowd well, and I don’t think I’ve seen you around here.”

“It is,” I confirmed. Not only no one, but new no one.

“I could swear I’ve seen you before, though. I wonder from where…” The assistant winked, and I shrivelled into my too-tight going out clothes. It had been a while since I had needed them, and they kept me conscious of my movements so I didn’t pop half of the starry blue sequins off.

“I don’t know,” I said quickly, swallowing the lump in my throat. Flame flashed in my peripheral vision, and I returned my attention to the magician, who swallowed the flame promptly.

As the fire descended beyond them, my focus wandered to her lips. The same lips that had pressed against mine in the washroom of the university during an after-hours event two years before. Suddenly I wanted to disappear or maybe die, if I could be revived later in different company. To be the magician’s assistant, the woman so close to me had to know the magician well. Could she detect it on me, my embarrassment? Could she read the memory of my making out with the then-stranger in the locked stall right out of my mind?

“It looks like that excited you,” the assistant said.

“It’s fire. She just ate fire,” I stammered.

“If that’s the only reason.” The assistant placed her hand on my shoulder.

She knew something, and I didn’t know exactly what she knew.

“I’ll tell you what. Hand me your glass so you don’t have to worry about holding it. Why don’t you look closely at her fire? You’ll be able to see the trick behind it if you look closely enough.”

It was a strange idea. I went to a magic show to be amazed, not to poke holes in the technique and figure out how it was really done. It didn’t matter to me how it was really done, as long as I could lose myself in the moment. And watch Sadie—that was the magician’s name, which I’d gleaned from the engraving on the delicate necklace she wore years ago, the one my lips had grazed as I lowered myself down beyond her collarbone—in her element.

Not to take orders from someone who totally knew her better than I did. I glanced back at the assistant again, I couldn’t help it. Her lips were turned upward in a half-moon smile, and I wondered if Sadie knew them like she had briefly known mine.

I looked away sharply. Not my business. Not my business. Not my business. Arguably, I was crossing the line of what a sensible person would have done by slipping into the audience of Sadie’s magic show.

Still, I quickly delivered my glass of sparkling wine into her hand, and she set it down on the nearest table.

To avoid looking at the assistant any further, and because Sadie lined up another stick of fire to gulp down effortlessly, I watched the glowing orange flames, relieved that something in the room burned hotter than the flush that crept down my neck.

The assistant put her hand on my right shoulder, pressing down on it so slightly. It was distracting, and I strained to focus on the fire, to specifically not focus on her touch. Did Sadie know that touch? Did she know Sadie’s? God, I was so stupid. Watching Sadie had me so entirely out of my mind.

Sadie was stunning. Almost as radiant as the fire itself. Her blonde hair streaked with faint light brown was tied up into a ponytail, perhaps to keep it from being set alight. Her eyes, whatever colour they were, sparkled in the glow. Her suit fit her in all of the right places, and goodness she had so many right places, and if I let my thoughts drift off for a moment I could almost feel her waist against my hand as it used to be, for so brief a time.

I hadn’t noticed the sigh I expressed until the assistant’s grip became ever so slightly more firm on my shoulder. “Have you figured it out?”

I shook my head and murmured my dissent.

“Watch closer. Follow her hand. See how she brings it up, holding the flame before us. Don’t you see it?”

Sadie held her hand forward, letting her next flame drift in a pretty arc.

“It makes you feel good to watch her. I don’t even have to ask about that. Your body is telling me everything I need to know,” she hummed. “The way you stand so focused, rigid, fixated on her. The heat radiating off of you. Lean into that feeling. She aims to please with her act, and she’d be quite happy to know how pleased you are. Relax. What’s your name?”

“Leya,” I replied. My name sounded so unfamiliar to me. It was a distraction from Sadie, from how she lifted the fire stick vertically, then brought it down toward her waiting mouth.

“Relax, Leya. Sadie’s not tense, is she? And she’s eating fire. Loosen up. Just focus and relax. You came here to see the magician, so watch her.”

As Sadie swallowed the fire, she lifted a baton with her free hand. My eyes darted between her face and the baton, unsure of where I was supposed to look.

With a snap of her fingers, the wand lit up in flames. She tossed it into the air in a twirl, the gleaming end circling around and around in a dizzying display.

“It’s getting so hard to concentrate, isn’t it?” the assistant asked. “So hard to understand. When the fire goes out, so can your attempts to think of any of it. Just watch Sadie and listen to me, and we’ll teach you how the magic works.”

Following the flames had made my eyes heavy, and I could not understand how the flame was so suddenly produced, nor how she had consumed them with such ease. There had to be a trick to it, but the assistant had a point: it was hard to concentrate.

“When the fire goes out, just relax all the way for me and give into the magic.”

Sadie caught the baton in her hand, and the flames went out completely. All of the tension dissipated from my body, more than I expected, and I fell almost limp until the assistant steadied me upright again.

“Very good. You can just listen to me, now. I know about the magic, so you can listen to me. I’m Sadie’s assistant, so you can listen to me.”

She held the sides of my arms and guided me further from the stage, as Sadie produced vivid red, orange, and yellow silk handkerchiefs from the same mouth she had swallowed the fire with, the same mouth she had kissed me with.

“Where are we going?” I mumbled. “Sadie—”

“Sadie's really busy tonight. The show’s almost over, and you wouldn’t want to hold her up. After all, I’m her assistant. I’ll attend to you.”

My head pulsed with dreamy confusion as the assistant led me outside through the single glass door.

“Call me Ava,” she insisted.

“Yes, Ava.”

“Stand where I tell you to. See the sign over there?” She gestured to a No Parking sign, and suddenly, it was the most important thing there was, except for Ava’s smooth, certain voice. “Go stand against the wall beside it. I want your back to the bricks.”

In a warm daze, despite the cool summer evening air outside, I drifted toward the wall near the sign and placed my back to it. My upper back was uncovered by fabric, due to the cut of my dress, and the ridges in the bricks stung against my exposed flesh.

Ava walked up to me and pressed her body against mine. Her breath fell warm on my cheek. She breathed deeply, and I breathed deeply, and I focused deeply on the magician’s assistant.

“Do you feel special right now, Leya?”

I nodded languidly. I had had chance encounters before, the one with Sadie having been one of them, but I had never been pulled specifically out of a crowd before. I’d certainly never been hypnotized and led away. That was what she had done to me, and I knew it, even through the haze that made my thoughts come so slowly to me. Hypnotized. I felt so very hypnotized.

“You know, this happens all the time,” Ava cooed. “Did you think Sadie doesn’t have women flocking to her every week? There are at least three more inside right now. I can tell by the way they watch her.” Her words were my entire focus until she slid her hand along the base of my neck, upward into my hair. Their meaning was distant, but my body burned with the embarrassment my mind could not quite comprehend. “And you? I noticed you right away.”

She closed her hand into a tight fist, tangling my hair inside of it in a quick, sharp motion. My knees quivered.

“Aw, are you finding it hard to stand? How cute. But you’ll keep standing for me, won’t you? You’ll do anything I say.”

It was true, and my legs took on a certainty they had not had a moment before.

“And why do you think that is?”

I mumbled something. I didn’t know what. My words didn’t matter. What mattered was Ava, her words, and her hand gripping my hair.

“That’s right. I’m Sadie’s assistant, so being good for me is being good for her.”

Was that what I had said? I hadn’t managed that many words. But it didn’t matter. She was right. Ava acted for Sadie, and if Sadie wanted Ava to have me…

Ava ran her free hand along my side, then gripped my waist. She pulled me in closer to her.

“Focus on my lips,” she whispered. “I’ll tell you how this is going to work. You want to feel the magic, don’t you?”

I nodded along, watching her waiting lips so eagerly. “Yes, Ava.”

“You’ve already done so well for me, letting me hypnotize you. Or should I say, letting Sadie hypnotize you? You should have seen yourself, so spellbound watching her. I want you to give me the same consideration. After all, I am her assistant. And what are you?”

What was I?

“You’re whatever I want you to be. And tonight, I want you to be mine. Now show me what you did with Sadie the last time you two saw each other.”

When Sadie had made out with me, it had been a spontaneous, curious encounter. Ava, on the other hand, claimed me like she owned me, and for the night, she did.

“When we’re done here,” Ava said with my lower lip between her teeth, “I’ll bring you to Sadie, and you can tell her all about this.”