When Mel Snow meets the magician Toby Warring in a lonely Nevada saloon, she is instantly drawn to the brilliant perfor mer whose powers are not an illusion. After a whirlwind romance and a Vegas wedding, Toby and Mel settle into a routine of vaude - ville magic shows, which slowly attract attention for their unmis - takable 'realness.' As his renown grows, Mel starts to realize that Toby's powers are unstable and learns that he once made his assistant disappear completely, and couldn't bring her back. Then the unthinkable happens: a trick goes terribly awry during his Vegas debut. Toby is exiled from the stage and shunned.

Mel and Toby travel to Amsterdam, where a cabal of old-time magicians, real magicians like Toby, try to rescue him from his despair. But he's haunted by the failed trick and obsessed with testing the limits of his power. Mel insists that she doesn't need magic to love him, but she's left wondering how to determine whether the love she believes in is real or an illusion?