Magic Trick

A/N: This vignette follows immediately after Silbrith's latest story (Witches' Sabbath), which is a crossover between TV shows White Collar and Supernatural.

In Silbrith's story, White Collar canon criminal Curtis Hagen has escaped from prison, seeming to vanish into thin air. Neal and Peter work with Supernatural's Sam & Dean Winchester to understand what happened.

I had two inspirations for this story. The first is the fun of a road trip with Neal and Peter, so the story opens with them driving back to New York. My second inspiration is the many fantasy novels I've read featuring wizards. Enjoy!

Agent Peter Burke's car, Connecticut. Monday morning. May 16, 2005.

They were driving through New Haven when Peter had a sense of deja vu. "Remember the last time we were here?"

Neal had been fiddling with the radio, again, and he stopped to look up at the town. It took him a moment to recognize it, and then he smiled. "The School for Wizards case," he said, referring to the popular novels.

"That's what you call it?" Peter asked. He'd almost forgotten about that aspect of the case. Neal's disguise, including a pair of glasses, in combination with performing a magic trick at dinner, had convinced a couple of kids that Neal was an adult version of the series' main character. Peter hadn't read the books, but his wife was a fan and they'd watched the movies together. "I'd go with a different series. I haven't read the Lemony Snicket stories, but based on their titles, I'd call the case A Series of Unfortunate Events. Too many things went wrong. First you ended up in the hospital, and then your cousin did. I was beginning to think..." Peter almost joked that he'd felt cursed to hang out in hospital waiting rooms on every visit to Connecticut, but he stopped. He couldn't joke about curses, not today.

"No hospital trips this time," Neal said. "That's an improvement."

Peter couldn't think of this latest trip as an improvement at all. "Are you going to tell your family?" Peter asked.

"About yesterday?"

Peter nodded.

"Nah. They'd probably think I was kidding if I described what we witnessed. Or they'd want to put me in therapy."

"Stress manifesting as hallucinations?" Peter suggested as a potential diagnosis.

"Yeah. What about you? What are you gonna tell Elizabeth?"

Peter felt a churning in the pit of his stomach. "It was different last time, you know? When we met the Winchester brothers in New Jersey last month, what we were investigating was more annoying than frightening. When I got home, I described what I experienced as a virus. That seemed more believable. Anyway, El laughs so hard whenever she sees the pictures of me from that trip, she doesn't have breath left to ask why Mozzie told her I was cursed."

Neal grinned, with good reason. The photos of Peter under the dorkiness curse represented a gold mine of blackmail-worthy material. So far none of the photos had made it into the office. Neal had abided by his promise to keep those events secret.

"Before we left New York, I told her we were researching prison video footage of Curtis Hagen disappearing into thin air."

"Like the Flying Dutchman disappearing into the mist," Neal added, referring to the name the White Collar team had for Hagen.

"She thought it was fascinating," Peter said. "She'd probably enjoy it if I told her the escape was like something from the School for Wizards movies. She'd laugh and think I was spinning a tale for her entertainment. But what if I managed to convince her it's true? We saw this weekend that there are real witches and demons out there. Bad guys with incredible powers." He didn't mention another aspect he found equally upsetting, that the witch they had encountered displayed a disquieting interest in Neal. "Should I expose El to that?"