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

“When we was kids, I worshipped the ground he walked on. And you know what his nickname for me was? ‘Little Fag.’ I ain’t, y’know. But ’cuz of him, I never held it against no one, neither. I wonder what he woulda made of you. And Ricardo over there. Not that I’m worried you two got a chance of taking the prize. But I’ll say this much, you did put up a hell of a fight.”

“You’re miked,” the assistant told John—which excused him from replying. What a relief. Because he had no idea how to respond to Kevin’s little story. If it was meant to be confusing, it was certainly fulfilling its purpose.

Once the audio assistant was done, the medic slipped a cuff over John’s arm to check his blood pressure, which would be normal, despite the anxiety and the stress. Because it had never been either high or low. “So,” the medic said. “Is it true?”

John sighed, but only to himself. “Is what true?”

“That Ricardo’s off the market?”

John took a better look at the medic—young, attractive, and oh yes, clearly gay. “That depends how angry he is over my gameplay strategy.”

The medic released the cuff’s pressure. Air hissed out. “I think he’ll get over it. He just turned down the coffee we were supposed to have.”

“Sorry.”

“What can I say?” The cute medic winked. “You got a lot more face-time with him.”

Before the medic could semi-flirt with John any more, yet another person crowded into the cloth enclosure with them.

Marlene.

“Ken Barron?” she demanded. “Honestly, Professor. What were you thinking?”

“Why does everyone assume that being tied up by Ken Barron amounts to professional suicide? Did it never occur to you that I might have some experience?” Not as part of his own act, of course. Too rough. Too undignified. Though there was a point at which Casey had considered adding restraints to the Gentleman Magician’s routine, a sort of lighthearted nod to escapology that wouldn’t muss his hair too badly. He and John had practiced with the straitjacket until their shoulders were sore. (Many other parts of their anatomy, too, though that was after the escapology experiments had grown tedious and they’d finished a bottle of chablis, and started putting the gear to more creative uses.)

In any case, John did indeed know how to slip a straitjacket, and his long limbs were a distinct advantage.

Marlene didn’t look particularly reassured. “How’s his blood pressure?”

“Ideal,” the medic said.

“Do we have a heart monitor?” she said. “Because whether this was optimism or hubris or I-don’t-know-what, I’m not letting anything fatal happen to you on my watch.”

“Marlene,” John said gravely, “it’s fine. I know the secret head-signal. And having a mass of wires taped to my chest would only put me off my game.”

She squinted at him as if she was about to force him to wear a heart monitor anyway. The line between her eyebrows looked like it had been pressed in with a chisel.

“If you’re not making anyone else wear one,” John said, “it would hardly be fair to require it of me.”

“There’s an overinflated expectation of fairness if I ever heard one. Or else….” She cocked her head and considered him. “You wouldn’t happen to have any aversion to the grand prize, would you?”

“Money?” John laughed bitterly, and the cute medic ducked out to resume his rounds. “Hardly. Casey Cornish was notorious for his indulgent spending…and when he died, he didn’t take his debts with him. Neither of us had any use for marriage, too anti-establishment, and that stubbornness would have let me off the hook…if the credit cards hadn’t been in both our names.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Is it even possible for me to win? I thought I was your token over-sixty gay minority.”

“That was then and this is now. Now that you’re in the Final Four, the executive producers can’t just knock you out like they did with Fabian. Whoever wins, wins.” Marlene patted John on the sleeve. “Just don’t be a hero—use the emergency signal if you need to. You and Ricardo won some pretty good swag by making it to this round, and the two of you have plenty to celebrate tonight. No matter who wins the final challenge.”

Once Marlene left John alone with his thoughts, he decided she really was right. Both Ricardo and John could revamp their wardrobes, and they each had a television special to look forward to—and John had his Vegas appearance as well. No matter what happened, everything would be fine. John’s fingers found the split in the curtains on Ricardo’s side again, and when he parted them to say good luck, there he was, as if he’d had the very same idea.

John leaned through the opening, and Ricardo did too. Their lips met. The fleeting kiss felt like adrenaline. “Is that true, what you told Marlene?” Ricardo asked. “You know what you’re doing?”

John allowed a nearly imperceptible smile to show. “Only in terms of the straight jacket.”

Ricardo leaned forward and kissed him once more, and whispered, “I love you, John,” and then an airhorn sounded. He treated John to a parting saucy smirk, and ducked back into his own stall.

John felt briefly thankful he wasn’t hooked up to a heart monitor as the curtains fell, and four monstrous hourglass shapes filled his field of vision. No doubt his pulse would have set the alarm bells ringing.

Jibs zoomed and handhelds swarmed, gathering the reactions of the contestants as eagerly as children claw candy from one another beneath a broken piñata. John struggled to make sense of what he was seeing—hourglasses, large enough to hold a magician in the empty upper compartment. In the second compartment, sand. And beyond them, huge machines, diesel engines rumbling low.

They meant to enclose the magicians in the hourglasses—and flip them over. With sand pouring down?

In straitjackets.

Maybe Marlene’s concern was, for once, justified.

“Greetings, Final Four,” Monty said from a decked-out platform across the yard. John only heard him through a speaker mounted in his stall. “Each of you have spent the