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

pan out. His team is not feeling the love for him tonight—and they’ll be even more disappointed come morning when they see the state of the grounds.

“What they don’t know is that while they’re out back trimming hedges, our home audience will be trimming down their team. The Red Team lost the challenge, and the price must be paid. One of them…is going home.

“Will it be escape artist, Ken Barron? Or will it be master illusionist, Fabian Swan? We leave it up to you, the audience.

“I’m your host, Monty Shaw. Don’t forget to tune in next time and see…who will stay, and who will leave…Magic Mansion.”

Chapter 16

MANUAL LABOR

“Last time, on Magic Mansion….

“Our winning magicians were treated to a day at the spa, but some of the treatments were anything but relaxing.”

(Sue) No, seriously, let up—it really hurts. -CRYING-

“Meanwhile, the losers spent the day cleaning up after their teammates.”

(Faye) I don’t care if you’ve got a puppet on your hand or not. I am not scrubbing out the toilets myself.

“Once the teams were reunited, they discovered that two of them…had been eliminated. One of them will be dearly missed…”

(Ken) Chip Challenge has been awesome…like the kid brother I never had….

(Chip) Thank you. Thank you very much.

(Oscar) Are you -BLEEP- kidding me?

“…and one of them…will not.”

(Oscar) This mansion is a joke!

(Muriel) I felt that damn dummy looking at me all night!

(Oscar) It’s bullsh-BLEEP-!

“Now ten magicians remain, but one of them…is going home. Which member of the Red Team has been voted out of the mansion? Is it aging illusionist Fabian Swan?”

(Fabian) -GROAN-

“Or is it double-jointed Ken Barron?”

(Ken) Maybe things can work out for me after all.

“The Gold Team was victorious in the Metamorphosis Challenge, and now the Red Team is stuck clearing an overgrown spot on the Mansion’s grounds, and one of them is about to be rewarded—with elimination. I’m your host, Monty Shaw. Stay tuned and see who was voted off…Magic Mansion.”

____

“Sunscreen?” Marlene said, looking up from her checklist. John nodded, though he’d never worn sunblock a day in his life and wasn’t about to start now. “Insect repellent?” Likewise. “Fabian, you’ve got your back brace? Good. Professor, you’re sure you won’t reconsider?”

“No, thank you.”

“It won’t show. We’ll make sure.”

“Really. It’s not necessary.”

“If you start feeling any twinges,” Marlene told him, “go talk to the medics and strap one on. I don’t want any more replays of the deep tissue massage incident. Dirty? Fine. Tired? Fine. Uncomfortable? Fine. But hurt? Not fine.”

“I will. At the first sign of a twinge.”

Marlene planted her hands on her hips and looked John square in the eye—with a surprising amount of authority, considering she needed to crane her neck back to do it—and said, “All right. You’d better.”

“Cross my heart.”

Marlene was about to look away, but then she did a double-take, met John’s eye again, and gave a vulnerably silly half-smile. Inside her, the spark of life—of Truth—flickered as she allowed her sense of humor to feed it. Casey had been fond of reminding him, You’re as dry as a martini in the Mojave. And so John could spot a kindred spirit by seeing if they noticed his passing attempts at frivolity.

Too bad the spark was too small to qualify as full-blown True magic. No doubt it would make for an interesting phone call, once the Magic Mansion show had wrapped, if John offered to be her mentor.

Then again, there was someone else in the mansion who had Truth, in spades. Would it be strange to cast himself in the role of Ricardo’s teacher? Probably. John’s interest in Ricardo was anything but academic.

“Okay, magicians,” Marlene called out, “here’s the drill. The greensman didn’t cut back the weeds on the west side of the lot, and now it’s a jungle back there. Your punishment for losing last night’s challenge is to cut down the growth between the two lines of orange tape. A pair of production assistants took a whack at another overgrown section, and we timed them. Judging by that, it should take you a good four to six hours to trim back the weeds and pile them in the designated area, so you’ll need to pace yourselves.”

She signaled to an assistant, and he whisked the tarp off a cartload of tools while a handheld camera filmed the reveal. “You’ll have shears, axes, rakes…but no power tools. This is a punishment, after all. Step up to the cart and pick your poison.”

Ken Barron fell into step beside John. He said, “Shouldn’t Monty be explaining the challenge?”

“I suppose they can overdub it later.” After all, Monty probably hadn’t signed a contract that stipulated he’d be working 24-hour days, not like the magicians had.

“Unless they’re not even gonna show it,” Ken said.

“What do you mean?”

“They can’t show everything, right? They’ve only got an hour…well, forty-two minutes with ads, minus a ninety-second intro and a thirty-second recap every time they come back from a commercial. So really, they only use half an hour of material for each show. And most of that’s gonna be the next challenge…and the next elimination.”

“Precisely which half hour they use, though,” John said. “That’s what you need to watch out for.”

Kevin Kazan was first at the tools. He took up a small, curved scythe and gave it an experimental twirl.

“Don’t even think about juggling that,” Marlene said.

He grinned at her.

“If that thing leaves your hand,” she said, “you finish clearing the lot yourself while your teammates sip lemonade. And I don’t care if it takes all night.”

“Got your message, Miz Perez. Loud an’ clear.”

Jia grabbed a small axe out of the cart—and twirled it as neatly as Kevin had the scythe. She was looking directly at his throat while she did it, too. And the cameras seemed to have noticed.

Fabian chose a set of long-handled pruners. He made no attempt to twirl them.

John glanced at the overgrowth—grass, brambles and weed trees—and opted for a saw. It seemed to him that one cut to the trunk of a woody shrub was more efficient