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

John tested his feet. They weren’t going anywhere, though his straitjacket had plenty of slack. “Ready.”

“Four magicians,” Monty said, “one prize. Who will free themselves from the diabolical Sands of Time and claim it? We’ll find out, in three…two…one!”

An airhorn blasted, and the hourglass rumbled as the diesel rigs behind them roared to life. Not only was the height disorienting—the top half of the hourglass stood over eight feet off the ground—but the closeness of the air with the sun beating through the safety glass and the way the sound reverberated through it were stifling. And then, John felt himself tip sideways.

He took a deep breath and told himself everything was fine, perfectly fine, even as he was turned upside down and all his blood rushed down to his head. No big deal. People hung from gravity boots all the time to stretch their backs…though they didn’t have hundreds of pounds of sand now pressing down on them from overhead. The stunt had been tested. There was no way for the sand to rush down through the narrow valves fast enough to bury him before he had a chance to slip his straitjacket and get out of the gravity boots.

Was there?

“And they’re off!” Monty called out…and John reminded himself to struggle.

His upper arm would loop over his head without a problem. Then it would be a matter of slipping his arms out of the sleeves and threading them through the jacket’s lower opening. He rocked forward and back, struggling, making a show of the restraint. Sand sifted down from above in a steady stream. The dry, rasping noise it made as it hit the padded hourglass floor was shockingly loud.

“Ricardo the Magnificent slips his arm over his head,” Monty said. “Jia Lee right behind him.”

John continued to struggle. Sand pinged off his elbows and sprayed the glass walls. “Kevin Kazan almost has an arm free.” John was willing to put forth a few extra seconds of theatrical struggling, but he didn’t want to fall into last place this early in the challenge. Hopefully the struggling he’d done was enough for Ken. He forced his arm over his head, and then disentangled it from his other arm, freed himself from the sleeves and reached for the buckle between his legs. “And Professor Topaz breaks loose from master escape artist Ken Barron’s straitjacket.”

Not quite yet, but almost. He worked open the buckle that held the strap threaded between his legs, and the whole straitjacket fell to the floor. John hung for a moment to gather himself, but only a moment—and then he heaved his body up toward the gravity boots. He grasped himself behind the knee, which would leave his other hand free to tear the hook-and-loop straps open—and a stream of sand hit him in the face, startling him. Was that a key that had pinged off his goggles? He couldn’t tell.

“Ricardo is right-side up. Jia Lee is struggling with her boots—as is Professor Topaz. Kevin Kazan is still working on getting his arms out of those sleeves but he’s wrapped up tight.”

John wasn’t struggling, actually. He was planning where to grab on to the gravity boots when he swung down. While it was a strain to jackknife himself long enough to undo the second gravity boot cuff, he hardly felt it. Everything else paled in comparison to the sheer adrenaline coursing through him. A final tug, a rip, and— “Professor Topaz rights himself. Jia Lee still upside down, Kevin Kazan still in his straitjacket!”

John’s feet hit the hourglass floor with a padded whumpf. The dense stunt foam wasn’t easy to stand on, but it was no worse than a surfboard. Plus, he was sure anyone who fell on it would be grateful for the padding. Sand hit the top of his helmet, disorienting him, and the monitor near his ear went crackly.

“bzzt—Kazan, really struggling—jshht”

How long had John been upside down? Not long, less than a few minutes. He got his bearings, found the door, then located the locks. Four. One on each side, keeping the plexi panel in place. All he needed was a key. He dropped to his knees and began searching. And as naturally as someone might flick on a light to allow themselves a better look, he very nearly reached out with his True magic…but then he stopped himself.

He was already ahead of everyone but Ricardo, and in every other challenge when he’d given in to the heat of the moment, he’d soon regretted his impulsiveness. It would be greedy to tempt fate. Greedy, and foolish.

And so, instead, he simply dug.

Sand had accumulated on the floor, several inches deep now. It pounded the back of John’s helmet like an unrelenting downpour. It sifted down the back of his shirt, and jammed itself beneath his fingernails as he dug. He ignored it all, and put all his focus into his fingertips as he swept through it, fanning his arms out in wide arcs, covering the area in which he thought a key might have landed…if it had, indeed bounced off his head as he hung upside-down. Which he couldn’t even say for sure was the case.

“crackle—Lee is down…and what’s she doing?—bzz”

Was that a key? Or that? Or that? A pebble. A twig. John combed his fingers through the rough sand, searching. It felt unnatural to restrain himself from reaching out with the Truth, like writing with his left hand. Which made John wonder, if only briefly, how often did he actually call upon it? Nearly as much as all his other senses, it seemed, now that he was forcing himself not to.

What about Ricardo? Would he even bother holding back?

John looked up and found Ricardo standing, stretched the length of his hourglass enclosure, with his fingers hooked into one of the holes where the sand sifted through. He dug at it, encouraging it to pour through faster. And if the piles at his feet were anything to go by, his method was working.