Until this night that is. Twenty-two years later and Sean had come for his sister.

He had not been able to confront the magician that night at the Magic Castle. He tried to tell himself that it was because it was too public, or because he wasn't certain that the magician performing that night was the same as the magician that had stolen his sister away from him. This magician went by a different name, for one - the equally simple name of Dan Lot. Yet there was no mistaking that low voice, nor those angular cheeks and tight skin; this was the same man, and he hadn't aged a single day in over twenty ears.

No, it was neither a doubt of identity, nor a lack of seclusion that prevented Sean from confronting the magician that night. Sean had been too scared to face this man. That was the pure and simple truth.

And that fear had almost let the magician, his magician, escape. Sean spent nearly two months searching for Dan Lot after that night. Outside of an appearance every year at the Castle (for the past five years, before that no one had heard of him), Mr. Lot stayed under the radar. He primarily worked gigs at small hide-a-way venues – dives that attracted a forgettable clientele. These shows were difficult to track and publicity for them was minimal at best.

Yet in the months after the Castle, Sean had Googled and Wikipediad every magic venue in the greater Los Angeles area. He hit four or five every week. His work was slipping, but he didn't care. He went each night looking for the man that took Carrie away from him; the man that had forced his secret upon him and robbed Sean of his childhood.

Two months into the search and he'd found a flier for 'The Amazing Magic of Dan Lot.' The show had been a week earlier, but Sean visited the bar anyway. He got a feel for the places his Mr. Lot frequented – and he did think of him that way now, as his Mr. Lot, or his magician. Sean felt a bond growing between them the more that he followed this man... the more that he came to know him.

He hit these dives for a reason. Celebrities, the well-to-do's, the power hitters and elite, they would be missed. The sad patrons of these filthy establishments, when they vanished few would come looking; and on the rare instance that someone did, the cost of such a search would never be justified, the tax dollars too high for a bottom feeder of society.

Sean inhaled then snuffed out the butt of his cigarette. He reached for another, but his pack was empty. He was stalling.

He had been stalling for weeks. A few days after finding that flyer, Sean had found his magician. Since then he'd been showing up to all of his shows. Somehow, he knew where to find him. He'd pick a bar, the sleaziest most run down shit-hole he could find, and there he'd be, the great Dan Lot.

Each night was the night, the night he would confront him; and yet each night, he stayed in the back watching from afar, afraid. He would watch the show, thinking, 'I'll do it after he's done.' Sometimes his magician would perform his infamous vanishing act. Each time when the cloth dropped the patron would be gone, but always you could assume it was nothing more than illusion. Sean tried to convince himself of this at times, but if you looked hard enough you could find their faces a week or so later on missing person flyers. Sean didn't have to look hard. He knew the system. He'd become all too familiar with it as a child.

'How many men and women had disappeared with that act? Where did they go?' Sean wondered.

More importantly, Sean wasn't sure that he could deny his own culpability anymore. Each time he sat through a show, denying what was before him, he was playing his part. He was letting his magician steal away another life.

Tonight it would end.