Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

had Serena, so close and yet so far.
    Max kept his own tension bottled, his limbs as loose as linguini. He could see Serena frown as she detected this.
    Don’t worry, lady, he thought, lean produce the requisite tension when needed.... Which was not now, when everyone expected one and only one outcome for this charade: Max would fail because the Phantom Mage would fail to appear.
    He knew they suspected that Max and the Phantom might be one and the same person. The Phantom’s performing gear, mask, and cloak certainly made his identity doubtful.
    Beyond the glass, music was ratcheting up to introduce the night’s featured act: the Phantom Mage, aka Max.
    Inside the glass, someone smiled pleasantly at the Czarina.
    Max.
    Breaths were held. Not his.
    The space beyond the window remained mere space.
    Then! A caped form swooped past the window, caroming off the dark sides of the narrowing apex of the pyramid-shaped building, strewing light wands and iridescent glitter.
    He came plunging directly toward the one-way glass window. He saw it as only another of the Lucite mirrors positioned to reflect the neon fireworks. He touched toe to the surface and rappelled off like a mountaineer in Batman guise.
    For a moment, the vision was face-to-face with Max. Or mask-to-face, rather.
    Breaths released audibly behind him.
    “The bastard!” Max exploded, tense now, so tense that Serena released him and reflexively jumped back. His muscles were knots of indignation. “He’s ripped off my old act’s finale. No wonder you wanted me to see this so-called act. The bloody bastard. Punchinello on a stick! This is a travesty.”
    “Exactly so, lad,” Sparks said. “This is why the Synth exists. The true artists remain, uncorrupted. This is why we have to make a statement.”
    “Damn right.” He turned to regard them with burning eyes. “Consider the Czar’s scepter your joystick.”
    They stood as one, and applauded.
    “But I expect fifty percent of the proceeds for setting up my comeback act.”
    The applause never died.
    Max bowed and melted into the black and featureless passage.
    He wiped the infinitesimal mustache of sweat from his upper lip and headed up into the pyramid’s apex, by ways even the Synth hadn’t found yet.
    Gandolph awaited him up top, sweating as he retracted the flexible dummy in Phantom Mage guise.
    “Did we reel in our fish?” he asked.
    “The entire school.”
    Gandolph collapsed against the wall, so close in these close quarters. “I’m too old for such shenanigans. This thing weighs a ton.”
    Max pulled the dummy onto the narrow catwalk and Peeled off the costume.
    “They were suspicious. It was crucial to give this fellow a chance to swing.”
    “I’ve been called a ‘puppet master’ in my counterterrorism years, but never so literally, my boy. So you’re in like Flynn.”
    “No, I’m in like Max Kinsella, cat burglar.”
    “Cat burglary is always an elegant sideline for a magician. I’m pleased to see you expanding your repertoire.”
    Max quickly donned the dummy’s costume: the halfmask, the tool belt, the swirling cape.
    “Can you do what they want?” Gandolph asked, stuff- j ing the dummy into a large dark garbage bag like a dead body.
    “Without getting caught?” Max, accoutered as the Phantom Mage, poised on the brink of plunging into the darkness below on a bungee cord. “Not easily. Why else set up the challenge? I’ll have to do it, though, if we want to embed me deeper in the real heart of the Synth.”
    He swung out over the abyss, half Batman, half Spider-Man, all magician.
    Gandolph would leave by the secret tunnels honeycombing the building, which he’d found even before Max had first come here, sniffing around.
    For Max, there was no way out of the Synth’s challenge but to mount a one-man raid on a major casino museum. Get caught and he’d satisfy Molina’s deepest wet dreams, for sure.
    Get caught and he’d betray and wound Temple past any patience and passion she still held for him. No matter what he did to lay his undercover past to rest for good, he only augered in deeper. And Temple paid as much in the present as he had. He was neglecting her, dangerously, risking their relationship in the hope of breaking free to enjoy it forever. Again.
    If he didn’t get caught he’d be an actual thief on a global scale, but he’d have won the trust of the darkest j levels of the Synth. He’d be well on the way to finding out who really backed this cadre