Summary: Grift to save the world... twice before Friday. One day Alec Hardison meets someone who looks exactly like Eliot Spencer, except he's catching gigantic animals for living and apparently works with a witch. Turns out the hitter has a secret twin, go figure. Things get even more complicated when Eliot is visited by a mysterious woman, who asks him to find someone for her – or she comes after Jacob.

Notes on what to expect: Flynn is not going to appear in this fic, so don't expect any Evlynn. So far, there are no non-canon ships, but that might change. I'll just see what are the characters going to do next, because right now it doesn't feel like I'm in control much.

Note on the title: The title is taken from a song „Smoke and Mirrors" by Poets of the Fall. I recommend it!

Alec Hardison was having a weird day, and for a man who had impersonated a voodoo priest in Haiti, an eccentric painter prodigy in San Francisco and an aloof millionaire in Baltimore, all in past three weeks, that was really saying something.

The first weird thing was the disheveled, yet gorgeous blonde with torn clothes bumping into him in the street. She didn't ask for help, she didn't even look very scared, more like pissed off. Hardison saw this expression on Eliot's face from time to time and it always meant that somebody was going to get hurt. The blonde muttered something that remotely resembled an apology and ran on to the giant bird.

Oh yeah, and there was a six feet tall bird currently feasting on the contents of an overturned hot dog stand.

Hardison rubbed his eyes, but it didn't go away. His best explanation was that Parker put something in his morning soda as a joke. It would have been pretty good, if the people around him didn't see the bird as well.

A man suddenly walked up to the creature. He held a bucket in his hand and waved a piece of a raw meat.

"C'mon boy, I have a nice piece of goat here. Want some? C'mere..." he lured it.

About ten feet from him a pretty little redhead was moving her hands as if performing a magic spell. She didn't notice the blood dripping from her nose, she was concentrated on an empty spot behind the bird. The man tossed the meat in the bird's direction and it caught it and swallowed it whole. The man pulled another bit from his bucket when the blonde reached them and disappeared into thin air.

Hardison blinked.

He had seen Parker disappear so many times, but it was always a matter of skill and stealth and people looking away. This time he didn't look away, he was sure he didn't even blink. The woman just was there and the next second she wasn't.

The man tossed the second piece of meat and as the bird caught it, a net flew out of nowhere and entangled the animal. It screeched, but the man leaped forward, caught one edge of the net and got to work. The blonde reappeared and between the two of them and a young Asian they managed to make a neat package out of the bird.

Hardison was the only person paying attention to the strange redhead, who had blood dripping from her chin and on her shirt by now. The danger was over, so he went over to see if she's okay. He reached her just in time to catch her as she fainted. Even after seven years spent in the vicinity of Eliot Spencer, Hardison knew next to nothing about first aid, so he was happy when the girl started to open her eyes in the matter of seconds.

"Oh, hi there," she smiled weakly and tried to wipe the blood off her face.

"Cassandra! Are you okay?" The young Asian ran to them, closely followed by the man who fed the bird and the blonde. "Told you the invisibility spell would melt her brain," he said to his companions.

"I'm fine, Ezekiel, really," the redhead, who was obviously called Cassandra, protested and tried to get up, but she got dizzy and fell right back in Hardison's arms.

That's when the others noticed him and the feeding man stepped forward.

"Thank you, we'll take care..."

Hardison looked up from the redhead and for the first time he actually noticed the man's face. And he knew him.

"Eliot?"

It slipped out, Hardison didn't mean to actually say that, because in their line of work, it was the safest to play along, but they didn't have any job and Hardison had seen Eliot just that morning and he didn't expect to find him feeding giant birds.

The other man tensed for a moment, then paused and sighed. "You know Eliot?" he asked. "He in town?"

"Yeah. So I gather you are not Eliot?"

The not-Eliot rolled his eyes. "No, I'm his brother. Where is he?"

Hardison hesitated. There were secrets that weren't his to tell, but on the other hand, the resemblance was uncanny. Maybe they could meet on a neutral ground first, check each other out, so he gave the not-Eliot an address of a coffee shop near the Brewpub and told him to be there next day at ten o'clock. That should give them enough time to prep.

He set off to the Brewpub, hoping that after he tells Eliot, he'd still have all his fingers intact.

After they stored the giant bird (Jenkins insisted it's called a roc) in one of Library's special rooms and made sure that Cassandra really okay, Eve asked Jones to do a background check on the coffee shop and the mysterious man. She wished she could consult with Flynn, but he was somewhere in the Himalayas and left no way to contact him, so she went to find Stone.

He was, just as she expected, sitting in his favorite armchair in the architecture section of the Library, staring at a book, but not really reading it. Eve sat down in the opposite armchair, startling him.

"So," she crossed her legs, "who's Eliot?"

It took a moment before Jacob spoke and Eve could see how difficult it was for him. "He's my twin brother," he said. "Right after high school he enlisted in the army and we haven't seen him since. Called a couple of times, visited his high school sweetheart, but never stopped by at our place. Then he disappeared completely. When I came here, I tried to find him, but apparently he's not in the army any more. I don't know what to think."

"That's why you didn't leave," Eve realized. "You didn't want your family to lose you both."

"Eliot got in a huge fight with Pop before he stormed out. Real nasty, it went on for hours until they were both hoarse. Left Mom crying for days, the younger kids went to my aunt's so they didn't have to hear it."

Eve noticed that Jacob didn't say anything about himself leaving and she knew he was in the room for every second of that fight, torn between the loyalty to his father and to his brother, and finally choosing chains over freedom, because of the kids hiding in a different house. She had the feeling that Jacob was the one who sent his younger sibling's away to protect them, because that was what he did, what they both did – shoulder the weight so the others didn't have to.

"Are you going to meet him?" she asked carefully.

"I s'ppose I am. I just don't know what to say to him after twenty years of... after twenty years."

She briefly wondered what he wanted to say. After twenty years of cleaning up the mess his brother made? After twenty years of trying to be both brothers at once?

"You know, Pop never said his name again," Jacob confessed. "Never acknowledged his existence after that day."

"That's why you should go tomorrow. You should talk to Eliot, at least this once. You don't have to be brothers again, but just don't have to be enemies either."

Jacob silently nodded and Eve left him. She needed to talk to Jones about running a quick check on Eliot Stone, because something about the name rang a bell.

"Look at this! I told you there was giant bird!" Hardison gestured to the screen. Most of the footage of the incident had disappeared mysteriously, but Hardison was a wizard when it came to discovering hidden data.

On the other hand, everything the hacker said since he came back from his shopping was borderline crazy and the giant bird babble was way past crazy.

"Forget about the bird!" Eliot snarled. "Give me the intel!"

Hardion pulled up the first picture. Even though he didn't get all of the footage from the bird site, he found his mysterious foursome on other traffic cameras. First on the list was Jacob, Eliot's exact copy except for the hair.

"So this is your twin brother?" Parker asked, looking at the picture. "He has a different last name."

"I changed my name when I went off the grid. I didn't want to be traced back to them," Eliot shrugged. "What about the others?"

"I have to say, your brother keeps an interesting company. Ezekiel Jones..."

"Wait, Ezekiel Jones?" Parker shot up from her seat. "You mean this is Ezekiel Jones?"

"Okay," said Eliot slowly. "Who's Ezekiel Jones and why are we all saying his name?"

"He beat me to the Jade Elephant in Singapore! And again, with the Jewel of Valencia, in Valencia! He is a plague! A cocky, annoying, mocking-note-leaving plague!"

Eliot hadn't often seen Parker so riled up, but it made sense. Parker hated losing and losing twice, plus being taunted? She would probably strangle the guy on sight.

"Wait for it, the next one is even more interesting."

Hardison changed the picture again and Eliot knew this one.

"Okay, Hardison, it was a good prank and I don't know how you knew that we'd fall for that giant bird crap, but I draw the line here. Why would my brother hang out with a counter-terrorism specialist?"

"That's who she is? She looks more like a supermodel," Parker observed.

"That's Eve Baird, the youngest head of the NATO Counter-Terrorism unit in history," said Eliot and after he saw the questioning looks of his friends, he added: "In my line of work, you tend to keep track of people like her. Look, Hardison, next time you put together one of your little pranks, make it more believable. People like Eve Baird don't hang out with people like my brother."

"Believe me, my man, if I was trying to prank you, I would pick something much more realistic. It definitely wouldn't involve giant birds and invisibility spells. The last person is Cassandra Cillian," he pulled up a picture of a pretty redhead. "No bells?" Hardison asked expectantly.

Eliot shook his head and Parker looked bored.

"There's not much on her. The girl never stepped out of line in her life. She was a star pupil at school, a math prodigy, but she was diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of fifteen."

Parker grimaced sympathetically. "That sucks."

"She dropped out of school, did a bunch of jobs like a hospital janitor and so on and she disappeared about two years ago. They all did."

"What?"

Hardison nodded. "Two years ago, every one of them left their lives behind and disappeared. Your brother left Oklahoma. Eve Baird ended her work at NATO. Cassandra Cillian left her job as a hospital janitor. There's not much on Ezekiel Jones..."

"Him too," said Parker. "He didn't do anything gossip-worthy in the last two years, and believe me, he used to do only gossip-worthy jobs."

"This doesn't make sense. Why these people? Why these four people?" Eliot wondered.

"They are a crew, like ours." Parker looked at him like it was obvious. "Show me all of them," she gestured to Hardison. "This one," she pointed at Colonel Baird, "is their hitter. You said this one is a math genius? She's probably the mastermind, planning the jobs. Jones is obviously a thief, plus he's a decent hacker," she sighed like it physically hurt her to admit it. "The only one who doesn't fit is your brother."

"Oh he does. What you don't know is that Jake has an IQ 190, spoke two different languages fluently and had a decent understanding of three others by the age of eighteen, plus he is an encyclopedia of art history," Eliot told them with eyes on his brother's face. How many languages does Jake speak now? Probably about fifteen, he smiled. He knew he could just ask Hardison, but it felt wrong. He would meet Jake tomorrow and ask him in person.

"So they are what? Art thieves? People, we would know if there was another crew in Portland!" Hardison protested.

"We'll find out tomorrow," said Eliot.

"I don't think we should go," Parker shook her head. "This whole thing is weird. A NATO colonel? And there was some talk about Ezekiel Jones and MI6. They could be using your brother as a bait."

Eliot considered it for a moment. "Jake wouldn't sell me out."

"With all due respect, Eliot, how long since you last saw him? How do you know what he would or wouldn't do?" Hardison touched a sore spot with his question.

Eliot suppressed a growl. "It's a twin thing. You wouldn't know." But he was lying through his teeth. After twenty years, who knew what happened, what grudges could Jake hold. Parker was right, it was insane to go to that coffee shop tomorrow.

Only if he didn't go, he would lose maybe the only opportunity to make things right.

"Have an escape plan ready," he sighed heavily.