Magic Mansion by Jordan Price (best fiction books to read .txt) 📕

“Or, Francis countered, “is there too much diet in my sugar?”

While a better comeback didn’t spring to mind for Ricardo, he still cringed. Not visibly, of course. Years of training allowed him to bury his emotions under a polished facade.

Francis seemed unaware of how bad his retort was, at least as unaware as he was of the likelihood of anyone actually calling him “Foxy.” Through the blinds, they could see the producers heading up the hall toward the conference room—and one of them was carrying a plate. Francis leaned forward eagerly. Kevin scowled intently. And Ricardo allowed a faint smile of interest to touch his face, then deepened it just a bit while he held himself uncannily still.

Marlene Perez was first through the door—her, and her plate. A stack of plates, actually. Empty plates. Which she set on the table. The second producer, Iain Kelliher, hustled in behind her, dropped a large Home Depot bag onto one of the empty chairs, and pushed his oversized tortoise-shell frames up his nose. Ricardo hadn’t yet decided whether he needed a trip to the optician to have their fit adjusted, or he was just calling attention to them because he thought they were so profoundly nerdy they were hip.

Francis stared at the stack of empty plates in utter dismay. Kevin watched the producers with a cool and calculated self-possession. Ricardo groped for something genuine to smile about. They couldn’t possibly want to keep them there much longer. That was somewhat encouraging.

Marlene nodded at the Home Depot bag. “Time for a little challenge. Each of you, take a dowel.”

Dowels. Plates. It seemed too obvious. Plate spinning? It was one of the first circus tricks Ricardo had ever learned. There had to be another angle.

“Once you’ve got your dowel,” Marlene said in a bored voice, “grab a plate and spin it.”

Or maybe Ricardo was overthinking things.

Francis tore open the Home Depot bag as if he was hoping to find a few cheeseburgers on the bottom. “But these aren’t the right weight. They’re too thick.” He pulled the four-foot dowels out and let the bag fall back to the seat. “Well, this one’s too thick, anyway. They’re all different diameters.”

Iain shrugged and said, “They were in the same slot at the hardware store.”

Maybe, Ricardo supposed, he hadn’t been overthinking things at all. Maybe it was a test. But what test? A test to see if they would notice that one of the dowels was too thick?

Or a test to see if it even mattered?

Kevin’s gaze went to the three dowels in Francis’ hands, then flicked up to meet Ricardo’s eyes. He grabbed one of the two slender dowels, then took a plate off the top of the stack and threw it into the air with a flourish. He caught it, and centered it with a flick of his wrist. It spun without so much as a wobble.

Which left Ricardo to either wrest the other slender dowel from Francis, or to take the clumsier piece of makeshift equipment himself. It was a gamble—but he decided to chance it. When Francis held out the thicker dowel, Ricardo accepted it with a gracious smile that conveyed it was the stick he’d been hoping for all along.

Francis looked relieved. Marlene noticed. Kevin did, too—and Ricardo suspected he was kicking himself for taking the easy way out. That made it effortless enough to maintain the showman’s smile—though he did need to work to keep the smugness out of it. No one likes a smug winner.

“These aren’t even the right type of plates,” Francis said with growing alarm. “You don’t just spin any old plates. You spin steel plates. With a dimple in the middle.”

Ricardo took the top plate and wondered if it would be too flashy for him to toss it up behind his back. Possibly. Besides, the producers were mostly watching Francis begin to teeter toward a hypoglycemic meltdown—and it might come off as needy if Ricardo did an overly-showy move while no one was paying attention to him. He flicked the plate into the air plainly and caught it on the clumsy, thick dowel. Marlene glanced at him. He smiled.

“There’s no dimple,” Francis said, though there wasn’t much steam behind the words, since both Ricardo and Kevin were currently standing around with their plates whirling in the air over their heads, each of them looking as matter-of-fact as possible, as if the stunt was so simple it was hardly worth noticing. With a heavy sigh, he picked up a plate, hooked the rim on the tip of his dowel, and gave it a spin. It wobbled at first since it was much heavier than a plate that had been designed for the task (and, indeed, there was no dimple), but centrifugal force saved the day, and soon even Francis’ plate was aloft.

The clunky lunchroom plates slowed quickly. Ricardo sped his with a wrist flick. Kevin did the same. Francis made an attempt, but his dowel slipped off-center, and the plate began to wobble wildly. Ricardo felt the balance shift as clearly as he saw the sweat beading Francis’ brow. Balance was everything, and its presence or absence had always been a palpable thing for him. With a flick of his clumsy dowel he sent his own plate whirling high, and caught it on his fingertip, still spinning. At the same time he stretched out the now-empty dowel to snag the lip of Francis’ wobbling plate before it fell on his head. “Pass it here, Foxy.”

It should have worked.

But Ricardo tripped on something, and ended up knocking Francis’ plate onto the middle of the conference room table, where it circled loudly for a full five seconds before it clattered to rest.

Ricardo looked at the floor. There was nothing there. He’d tripped on nothing? Not very likely. Ricardo Hart simply did not trip. Especially on nothing. He glanced back at Kevin. For the first time that afternoon, Kevin was smiling.

Apparently