“Try the sock,” Shawn said.

Gus pulled the Gold Toe Executive Stretch off his foot. As it cleared his arch, something fluttered out. Gus picked it up and stared at it.

The five of hearts.

“Is this your card?” Shawn said wearily.

“But he was…,” Gus started, casting a glance back to where the putto, apparently failing another attempt at the Brazilian shuffle, knelt on the floor, scraping up cards in front of a young couple clearly here for a function more glamorous than Bud Flanek’s bachelor party. “How did he? And how did you?”

“You don’t want to know,” Shawn said. “It’s just going to make you mad.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that,” Gus said.

“And I was right the first time, wasn’t I?”

Gus had to admit it was true. “But why?”

“This is how stage magic works,” Shawn said. “They do a trick. You’re amazed. You can’t imagine how they pulled off something so miraculous. You’re dying to know. But they’ll never tell you.”

Gus slipped his sock over his foot, then stood into his loafer. “Because if you know the trick, then the illusion is ruined.”

“But why would that be?” Shawn said. “If they were really communing with the spirits or reading your mind or dancing with dragons, wouldn’t they want you to know?”

“Sure, but they’re not.”

“Obviously,” Shawn said. “But even if what they were doing was so difficult, so complicated, so challenging, knowing how they did it would only make you respect them more.”

“Yeah.”

“So why don’t they want you to know how they do it?”

Gus thought it through, but he still couldn’t see where Shawn was going with this.

“Just watch him.” Shawn pointed at the putto collecting his cards on the floor.

“What am I watching?”

“That. ”

It was just a flicker of movement. If Gus hadn’t been staring so hard at the magician’s hands, he never would have noticed it. But while the putto was down on the floor gathering his deck, one hand shot out and slipped a card into the shoe of the young man whose way he had blocked. Unlike every other one of the magician’s fluttering movements, this one was sure, direct, and clean.