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

“Whoa, girl. Chill.”

“Ricardo? Of everyone you could have picked…Ricardo? That guy can bend like a pretzel.”

“Y’all might not have noticed, but Ricardo’s the one to beat.” Kevin gave the group a smug look as if to say he just might be crazy…like a fox. “But right now? He’s hurt. And he’ll probably hurt hisself worse doing the stunt. Might even get hisself eliminated.”

“What makes you think he’s hurt?” Jia demanded.

Kevin made a V with his fingers and pointed dramatically to his own eyes. Jia whirled around and strode over to Iain, who looked startled to be confronted directly by one of the players, and said, “Can we drink during this challenge?”

“Well I, uh…I’ll need to check.”

“Because I want a drink. With plenty of tequila.”

“Checking.”

“Or a gun. If you can arrange that.”

Iain mumbled into his phone, then said, “No drinking until after Metamorphosis.”

She huffed at him in disgust, then came back to the group, standing as far away from Kevin as possible with her arms crossed.

Her loathing only seemed to spur him on.

Indeed, he seemed to revel in it.

Chapter 15

INTO THE BOX

The teams themselves were able to choose who would be first in the box and who would be second, probably since both roles involved the same skills—namely, slipping into (or out of) a big wooden box with a trick closure, getting into (or out of) a bag with a trick bottom, and losing a tearaway costume at some point in between.

Only a rack of costumes divided Ricardo from Fabian and Ken—and their strategizing was making him antsy. “We got this,” Ken was telling Fabian. “I’ll be in and out in no time flat, then you can bring home the win.”

Ricardo cut his eyes to Faye, and whispered, “You want first or second?”

She considered the question, held up her arms for the costumer to slip a sparkly black spandex sheath—stretchy enough to slide right out of—over the top of a punchy gold mini dress. “Let me ask you something.”

“Sure.”

“You’re gay, right?”

What did that have to do with anything? “Well…yeah.”

“Then let’s go traditional, me first. Normally I’d say we should change things up and have you play the role of the assistant. But I don’t want the act to devolve into something campy—that just cheapens everything, makes a big joke out of it. That’s not going to help either of us once this gig is through.”

“Oh.” She seemed so matter-of-fact that Ricardo wasn’t sure exactly how he should feel. And he wasn’t sure he’d even thought that far ahead. “Okay.”

“Like that first challenge.”

“What do you mean?”

“Head in a fish tank,” she said, “what was that all about? That stunt’s something I’d expect from The Big Gross-Out, not this show. This is about talent. Not playing a kazoo with my nose, or piling raw meat on my head, or getting dunked in tanks of slime and making myself look like a huge idiot.”

Ricardo slid a black shirt with gold vest combo, held together by velcro, over a reverse gold shirt with black vest. His gold tuxedo-styled pants hid a black pair underneath. “Is it really? About talent, I mean.”

“What else could it be?”

Iain appeared in the doorway. “Are we ready, kids? Let’s go.”

Ricardo motioned for Faye to precede him, then murmured, “It’s spectacle,” and watched her shoulders rise and fall as she sighed, possibly in agreement.

While Ricardo and Faye were in wardrobe, the ballroom had been rearranged. The cabinets were now in the center of the room, about ten feet apart, with the scoreboard looming behind them. The remaining three members of each team sat on a long sofa off to the side of their respective cabinet. Except for Kevin Kazan, who was too cool to sit, and instead perched on the red sofa’s arm.

The Red Team watched stonily as the challenge players entered. Sue, Bev and Muriel gave their teammates a coordinated thumbs-up.

Iain went over the rules with the four players—they were allowed to communicate as they did the stunt, with no part of the illusion hidden from the cameras, since the mechanics of the trick had already been exposed on national TV some years before. The timer would stop once the bag was untied, revealing the second magician in his costume change—and that timer was the only thing that mattered. Not style. Not showmanship. Only speed.

Although, as Ricardo took his place beside the cabinet and waited, heart pounding, for the timer to begin, the conversation he’d had with Faye did cause him to consider: in the big picture, form always mattered. He was a performer. And appearance, charisma, style…those things mattered. And so he took a deep, calming breath. And he smiled for the camera.

Monty did his spiel, explaining a simplified version of the rules to the audience, but Ricardo was so focused on mentally rehearsing his moves that he could hardly hear them. One word permeated his concentration—“Go!” And then they were off.

He dashed up to the cabinet, shoved open the top and hoisted Faye into it, careful to set her precisely in the bag without her heels catching. “You come down on this side,” she said, pointing stage right.

“Got it.” Ricardo yanked the bag up over her head and looped the top shut with a slipknot. Traditional? No. Usually the bag was knotted well, to give the assistant plenty of time to undress. But they were racing against the clock. “Slipknot,” he said, as Faye crouched down in the cabinet, bag wriggling. She’d be out of the stretch dress by the time he closed the cabinet’s top, and out of the trick bag-bottom before he tied the cabinet’s lid shut—which he considered doing with another slipknot, then decided against it. The trick lid slid forward, thanks to rope slack inside the bottom of the cabinet. If it pulled too hard against a slipknot, the rope could come undone and disqualify them. Better to play it safe.

A quick granny-knot, and Ricardo leapt up on top of the cabinet, feet planted