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

he wasn’t worried about looking like a smug winner.

Chapter 5

CASTING

Marlene tossed a takeout carton into the trash, then tilted her head to one side, then the other, until her neck let out a disturbingly loud, yet satisfying, crack. Iain eyed her blearily. His glasses rested on the top of her desk beside his crossed feet. He knew it drove her crazy when he put his feet on her desk—so she was taking extra care to look as if she hadn’t even noticed.

It had been a long day, phenomenally long. Not for the magicians; they’d been allowed to leave by two-thirty. In the afternoon. It was past that now in the wee hours of the morning, and they’d finally watched and scored all the footage they’d shot.

She consulted her notes and pulled up one of the digital tapings for the fourth or fifth time—she’d lost count—and Iain sighed. “That guy? Again?”

He’d always been a lightweight when it came to pulling all-nighters.

Iain’s recorded voice came through the speaker, although the camera was trained on Ricardo Hart, whose glib smile was firmly in place. “I’ll read off a list of names,” interview-Iain said, “and you tell me the first thing that pops into your head. Don’t think about it. Just blurt it out. Like a word-association game.”

Ricardo Hart’s slick smile deepened. “Sure.”

“My ass,” exhausted-Iain muttered. “That guy’s as spontaneous as an arranged marriage.”

Interview-Iain read, “Jia Lee.”

“Exotic.”

“Chip Challenge.”

“Funny.”

“Fabian Swan.”

“Imposing.”

“Professor Topaz.”

Marlene stopped the footage, then clicked back two frames. “There,” she said.

Iain squinted at her monitor. “What?”

“Don’t you see it? Right there.” She backed up a few more frames, then played the footage back at quarter speed. “Watch his eyes, you say Professor Topaz, and he freaks out.”

“So? Maybe he’s just surprised.”

“Come on, you think anything surprises him? Besides, it’s not like he didn’t know Topaz was trying out for the show. They shared the first audition.” She cut her eyes to him to determine if he even remembered. Knowing him, he’d dozed off by that point. Such a baby. Keep him awake for two, three days and he was useless.

“Play it regular speed,” exhausted-Iain said. On the playback, interview-Iain said, “Professor Topaz,” again.

Something flickered over Ricardo’s expression, and he said, “Professor Topaz is my hero.”

Marlene paused the recording. “Maybe he means it.”

“I don’t know.” Iain yawned. “Maybe. If he’s covering up for something else, we can see what it is when it surfaces. It’s always good for some drama when you make people compete against their family and friends.”

Marlene backed up a few frames. The video hadn’t managed to capture the nuance of the Ricardo’s expression, even in slow-mo. If she’d been interviewing him, she would have asked him to expound on the whole “hero” thing. But she’d been busy listening to that ass Kevin brag about how long he could hold his breath, and hoping to God it really was a magician’s badge of honor, and not some kind of slimy come-on.

“Just eliminate someone,” Iain said, as she played though Ricardo Hart’s shift in expression again. “It doesn’t matter who.”

“No. I think we should each pick one of them to stay.”

“That’s the same as eliminating one!”

“Not really.”

“Kevin’s a cutthroat asshole and Francis is a big dork who’ll play on the viewers’ sympathy as long as he doesn’t get too whiny. We’d get great footage out of either of them.”

“Agreed,” Marlene said. “That’s why I’m going with Ricardo.”

Iain shifted sullenly. “Over some ‘look’ he gave for a quarter of a second? It could’ve been gas.”

“What’s the real reason you don’t want me to pick him? Is he too swishy for you?”

“Half the magicians we met looked totally gay—and from what I gather, they’re all nailing their female assistants.”

Marlene opened a file and read. “Ricardo Hart. When he was a teenager in Minnesota he was a competitive figure skater. Never married. No female assistant. And according to the credit check, he used to live with a personal trainer named Marcus.”

“Right. You had me at figure skater. Look, I could give a rat’s ass where he gets his jollies—if you like him, he’s in. But I’m not taking responsibility for picking between the other two. Either one of them could turn out to be a gem or a dud.”

“But you’re with me on Ricardo?”

“He’s older than the other two—what is he, thirty-five?”

“But he looks as young as either of them.”

Iain stifled a yawn. “Whatever. You want this Ricardo guy so much? Fine.”

“Fine. Email that plate-spinning clip to the focus group and we’ll call it a night.”

Chapter 6

SURPRISE ANNOUNCEMENT

“We’re here in front of Jia Lee’s home in Oakland.”

“Cut.” Marlene Perez glanced down at the script, and re-read it to herself in Monty Shaw’s Australian accent. There were an awful lot of ‘E’ sounds in that line—we’re, here, Jia, Lee—and if it were delivered in the middle of a segment, she’d let it slide. But you couldn’t open with something like that. Not in that accent, you couldn’t.

Sometimes it seemed like Monty was hamming up his pronunciation for the camera—not that she blamed him. Anything to differentiate him from the sea of other handsome blond, bronzed him-bos on the audition tapes. She tapped on her earpiece and said, “Can we get a writer over here?”

It would have made more sense to have Topaz host the damn thing, since he had a kind of magician-y Tim Gunn vibe—but that was one of the many suggestions over which she’d been steamrolled. The executive producers insisted he wasn’t a big enough name. Penn & Teller, who’d almost signed on, ended up taping a special in Japan that conflicted with the first four episodes. David Copperfield’s rates would have blown the budget for the entire show. And The Amazing Jonathan hadn’t even read the pitch. So they’d picked Monty—although he was even less of a household name than Topaz, in the States, at least. Apparently he’d played an illusionist in some artsy fartsy film down under. Though the film had won the AFI award for Best Costume Design and Best