Author's note: Ready for a 72 Chapter beast? Well then welcome to my new fic, Magic. It is finally complete and just in time as well, I had no idea what I was going to post this weekend. Full story is up for my backers, that being said. Welcome, I'll try and update at least twice a week. Remember take the time to review they make me happy, as I continue to work on stories, I like knowing that people are reading and enjoying, and engaging.

Song: Magic - B.O.B

Summary: After getting kicked out at sixteen for getting pregnant, Santana has worked hard to support her son Antonio and give him the best life she can as a single mother. Making minimum wage while trying to support a growing boy is difficult, but all that changes when she answers a strange add in the paper to become a magician's assistant.

Disclaimer: I don't own glee

Pandora's Antiquities.

Santana stared at the address that she had written down, and then looked back at the worn down shop. This couldn't be right. She had never even been to this part of the city before and it seemed old and weathered despite all the other shops around it. It looked completely out of place, like it was in dire need of an update. It looked like a store from way back in the day, before modern technology had hit and it didn't sit right with her. Even with all the other stores around, and the flats on top, the store didn't seem like it got a lot of foot traffic. It was almost enough to make her turn around and walk away, there was probably no way that they could pay the outrageous salary that they had promised in the advertisement that she had seen.

Thirty dollars an hour to be a magician's assistant? It sounded far too good to be true, but she figured it was just how much she would be making a show. A few shows a week—well even just two shows at an hour a piece was sixty dollars more than she would make working at the diner. A bit more cash would help out a great deal especially with Antonio. It was nearly back to school and she felt a bit guilty, she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to afford all his back to school supplies this year. For once she'd like to give her son something that hadn't been used before and clothes that fit properly. For him, it was worth trying at least. If it was a scam, then it was a scam but she needed to try.

Santana exhaled and grabbed the door to the store, feeling a buzz underneath her fingertips. She had worked in the service industry; she could do this. How hard could it possibly be to wear a few sequins and smile at an audience and maybe help with the illusions. She opened the door and walked in, fixing a pleasant smile on her face. She froze, there was no one in the store and instead of magic tricks and card tricks laid out on the table, it just seemed to be a bookstore. Her heart dropped a bit, and she looked around. "Uh—hello?" she called out. She walked up to the old worn down counter and spotted a bell on the counter. She glances at the doorway behind the counter. There's a black curtain hanging there to prevent any prying eyes and that feeling of unease is back, but she was here and there probably wasn't a crazed knife wielding psychopath behind the curtain, she looks at the bell again before hitting it.

There's a loud crash that comes from the curtain causing Santana to jump back in surprise. "No, no, no!" Came a male voice from behind the curtain.

Santana winces and takes a step back, if that was the person who was supposed to be hiring her then she had not made a good first impression, she could still salvage this. She just needed to be charming and—she pauses and glances down to the ground, she could have sworn that something green had just darted across the floor in her peripheral vision. "Uh?" She begins again only for the curtain to be pulled back and a man with wild blonde hair and startling hazel eyes comes tumbling out a sour look on his features. She had most definitely messed something up already and this didn't bode well for her future job. "Hello, I'm Santana and I'm—" She stopped when he held up his hands.

"Do you have any idea how long it took me to catch the damn thing?" He demanded angrily, he grabbed a towel and wiped what appeared to be some viscous fluid off his hands. He grimaced and tossed the towel away before studying the woman in front of him carefully. He squints a bit at her, "What are you even doing here? The sign says closed, and I'm pretty sure I locked the store."

Santana turns to glance at the door, "The only sign in the window says 'Help Wanted.' And the door was unlocked, when I tried it—look do you have a manager or someone you work for, I'm looking for a—" Santana glances at the paper and then back at the man in front of her. "Mr. Fabray? I saw this add in the newspaper and I came to apply for the job. You know as the magician's assistant—"

He squints at her again, and leans forward before looking at the shop window and then back at her, then back at the shop window again before looking at her. "You're hired."

Santana stared at him like he had lost his head, "Excuse me?"

"You're hired. When can you start? Tomorrow? Please tell me you can start tomorrow. As you can see things have been—hectic since my last assistant." He makes a face, "You have no idea what I've needed to do to survive! I don't know how people live like this."

"Like—?"

"I don't know this." He waves his hand around wildly. "How am I supposed to create magic like this?"

"Uh—" Santana began this was quickly beginning to seem like a terrible mistake. She had just met a crazy person, of course he was probably talking about his illusions. Then again he had just hired her just like that.

"So you're hired Samantha," he said eagerly.

Santana's eyes narrowed. "Santana. My name is Santana. Look, Mr. Fabray—"

"Ugh, don't call me that. That's my father's name. Mr. Fabray," he shudders at the thought. "The names is Charles Reagan Fabray. You may call me Charlie. Charles never really stuck, but whoever heard of a magician named Charlie." Charlie makes a face at his own name. "So is that a yes on starting tomorrow?"

He was definitely crazy, she should just turn the job down and walk away but she needed the money. Maybe she could negotiate with him. He did seem pretty desperate to hire someone and it wasn't as if this place was crawling with people either trying to apply. A position that paid thirty dollars an hour in this town, who had people who wanted to be famous—it was practically unheard of. "Look, uh Charlie, I've got another job and responsibilities and I'm not quite sure I can learn what I need to learn to help you do magic by tomorrow—what happened to your last assistant?"

"Poached," Charlie explains his face twitching in annoyance. "What happened to loyalty?" Charlie mused.

Santana sighed as he turned around and began to rummage through one of the many drawers, "Look, Charlie, I'm sorry your assistant got poached but I don't think this job is right for me. I mean, this place seems pretty run down and I don't know how much business you get—I don't really want to wear sequins or you know smile all the time—"

"So don't? I don't have a dress code or anything, just no open-toe shoes. There was an incident with my last assistant—it was a mess. You can wear sequins if you want, I'm not going to stop you, and you don't have to smile if you don't want to. It's weird when people smile and they aren't happy." Charlie insists not bothering to look at her as he continued to root through the drawer.

"Okay, so what are the hours—I mean you have a schedule right, practice time? It's going to need to be flexible, I'm working at a diner and that's a bit of a commute but—I really need the flexibility because I have a six-year-old."

It's enough to get Charlie to turn to her. "So quit, this is a full-time job." Charlie insists slamming a drawer closed and opening another. "You can be as flexible as you want when it comes to your child, I understand that being a mother must be difficult, my mother informs me of this fact every time I see her, but you're not going to have time for another job." He snorts derisively before slamming another drawer shut. "I can't believe they took my brownies. I mean come on."

"Brownies?" Santana asks before she can stop herself. She shakes her head when he turns to look at her. "Never mind, look I just don't think that this is going to work out—"

Charlie looks up incredulously. "I can offer you more money if that's what this is about. Fifty dollars an hour. Or do you want a salary? I can do a salary—" He cocks his head at the side, "Forty hours a week at fifty dollars an hour, that's twenty thousand a week?" He frowns. "No, wait two thousand—" He pauses and thinks about it for a second, four times five was twenty and then add two zeros. "Right, two thousand."

Santana gapes. There has to be something wrong with him. "You're talking real money, not like monopoly money or some other—"

"I can pay you in euro's if you want."

"No I don't want euro's—" Santana closes her eyes and tries to shake herself back into reality, "What's the catch?"

"Catch? There's no catch? I mean unless you see anything running around here. You might have to catch a creature every once in a while, but—" A bang interrupts him from the back and he frowns. "Look, I really need you to start tomorrow. What will it take?"

Santana frowns. It almost sounds too good to be true but from everything he's saying she has no reason to say no. Still, he seems desperate and she's not about to give in to his first offer. "Well it is a little bit of a commute."

"So move into one of the apartments upstairs. I own the whole building and you can have whatever one you want. Hell, you can have my last assistant's apartment. She renovated it so it's pretty modern and I think there are schools nearby, I see teenagers all the time."

"And you know I've never done this before."

"I hope not. I can't deal with another unionized assistant; I couldn't even pay one of them to work with me." He adds the last part under his breath. He hates the union. Especially since most of them thought they actually could assist him.

Santana's eyes narrowed skeptically. "Why not?"

"Because, they've already been taught. Every magician is different; I don't have time to break bad habits or correct things. I need someone who has never done this before so I can teach them what I need them to know. The last thing I need is another incident, because someone decided to not listen to my instructions." Charlie studies Santana, "Don't cut corners, and listen to me and you'll be fine."

"I'll be fine?" She repeats. He almost makes it sound like something dangerous. "You said your last assistant was poached."

"She was, so was my first one, the one in the middle well—look I need an assistant and since you're new I'll take the time to teach you what I need you to know, I won't ask you to do anything that you're not ready for."

Santana can't believe it. She had been kicked out at sixteen when she got pregnant with Antonio and barely got her GED. A job earning over a hundred thousand dollars a year? She would be able to go back home and show her parents that she had made something of herself despite having a child. One they had wanted her to get rid of. "Okay, before I agree you're going to need to tell me about the benefits. Do you offer dental?"

He nods quickly, glad that his turncoat of a former assistant had at least forced him to get a standard benefit package. And by standard he meant the best package that was available. "Vision too."

"What about a signing bonus?" She asks, mostly just shooting for the stars at this point. She can't think of a single reason to say no and if it gets Tony out of the terrible public school he's currently in and away from the gangs that seem to pour out of their subsidized government housing, she's all for it.

Charlie crinkles his nose, even though he was paying her tremendously less than a unionized assistant, she was definitely bargaining like one but he really was desperate. It had been two months since he had put the sign up in the window, and she had been the only person to see it. Not to mention to see his ad in the paper and come down to the store. "Fine, just be here first thing in the morning." He stops and looks at Santana who seems to be interested in pushing her luck. "Anything else?"

"Can I see the apartment beforehand?" She would need to fill in some paperwork, but with the signing bonus she could hire someone to take care of all the moving for them. Then she could do some research on the schools in the area and maybe she could send Antonio to a really good school.

Charlie nods and opens another drawer, and frowns. He was definitely going to go out later today and get a new family of brownies. At least then he'd be able to find things again. He grabs a set of keys and motions for Santana to follow him out of the store so she can see her new apartment. He should probably get some papers drawn out so she doesn't get poached.