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

“Your bat-free zone is ready. And don’t think we’ve spared you any effort to move things along. There’s plenty of time before your next challenge. So let’s get chopping.”

Kevin Kazan sauntered over in John’s general direction, and Jia shot up off the retaining wall and stomped to the opposite end of the designated punishment zone. He tagged along, saying, “Yo…yo!” as if he thought he had a chance of getting her to answer to “Yo.” Fabian shook his head and veered toward the corner of the lot with his pruners, where he started whacking off huge chunks of bramble.

John took a moment to size up the patch of neglected yard. No rotten palms here, that was good. He glanced up. No bats either that he could see, though they looked a heck of a lot like leaves when they hung there sleeping. He placed a hand on the trunk of an opportunistic weed tree that had sprung up to nearly eight feet, and he felt. Whatever life touched it seemed small to him. Ants. Beetles. Nothing larger than that.

He planted his feet and began to saw.

“Good plan,” Ken Barron said, falling in beside him. “Take care of the big stuff first. Get it out of the way. While you’re fresh.”

“That’s the idea,” John said, although in actuality he’d never been much of a planner. Since he was slow to speak his mind but his eyes were shrewd, people had a tendency to assume his actions were always unfolding to the scheme of a master plan he was constantly assessing and tweaking. But nothing could be further from the truth. John had discovered life was more like surfing. You could try to plan, but in the end, there was nothing to do but keep your head above water and do your best to catch the waves so they didn’t pound you.

“You’re in pretty good shape,” Ken observed.

For his age—that was probably the unspoken part of the sentiment. Though with last night’s defeat fresh in his mind, it was more likely Ken meant, compared to Fabian.

“I suppose.”

“A century ago, a magician who was forty, fifty…he’d be in his prime. Not like today.”

“So my agent tells me.”

“Houdini was fifty-two when he died,” Ken said.

“Indeed.”

“But now? No one looks twice at a middle-aged magician unless he’s already got a following under his belt. So I heard about this show….” Ken lopped a few branches off a shrub that would have been better tamed by snipping it off near the root. “And I just thought…if I can’t crack this thing by the time I’m forty…if I can’t make my name now…well then, what’s it all for, anyway? I might as well hang up my handcuffs and go sell insurance.”

John stopped sizing up the next weed tree and turned to get a better look at Ken. Not full-on, of course, because Ken clearly had the very male approach of sliding his important personal revelations into the conversation while everyone’s attention was focused instead on the task at hand. But in his peripheral vision, John saw that Ken was lopping at the bush a bit harder than he needed to.

John moved closer and began sawing at the bush’s base. “You have a name, Ken. You’re the biggest escape artist on the circuit. And now that you’ve landed this show, a whole new audience knows who you are.”

Ken made a sound that John initially took for a laugh, until he realized it was more likely a sob. Ken began lopping the bush even harder. “An idiot. A fool. That’s what they know.”

Emotion—anger, or maybe despair—could have been the cause…or maybe it was simple physics, the lopper blades glancing off a burl in the wood. Whatever the reason, the results were the same. The garden tool skidded, down and at an angle. Directly toward the spot where John knelt.

He sensed it just before it hit, and he jerked away. The duration of the incident was a fraction of a second. It sounded no more threatening than a snip and a rustle.

“Oh, man,” Ken said. “That was close. I’m really sorry.”

John stayed right where he’d landed—on the lawn, back on his elbows, as if he’d just been relaxing on a deck chair, sipping a mojito, and levered up a few inches to check out the pool boy. His heart hammered so fiercely that the pulse pounding in his ears blotted out the rest of the sounds in the yard, as if the water tank from the first night’s challenge had been placed around his head again to narrow down his auditory landscape to the beating of his own heart.

“Holy crap. You’re bleeding.”

John made out the words, but they sounded muted. Distant. And then Ken flung down the sharp tool and knelt beside him.

John caught the sweet tang of alcohol on Ken’s breath.

“It’s okay,” Ken said, possibly speaking loudly. “Just a scratch.”

The sound of Marlene’s voice threaded into John’s awareness, and he supposed it meant his cognizance was synching back into speed with the rest of the world again. And he also supposed he’d be well and truly afraid once he remembered how to think.

Ken’s face was ashen. “I am so sorry.”

John touched the spot on his cheekbone before he even realized it stung. Cameras swarmed. Marlene pushed through them. “What happened? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” John’s voice sounded like his own—maybe. Yes, he supposed it did.

“It was an accident,” Ken said, backing away. “I mean, I can’t even say for sure it was the shears. Could have been something else—a briar, or maybe a sharp twig that snapped back at him.”

Marlene’s frown lines intensified as she scowled at John’s face. He touched his cheek again. His fingers came away sticky. Clotting already. It really wasn’t that bad.

“I’m calling in a plastic surgeon,” she said.

“Marlene,” John protested.

“You’re a performer. I don’t take a facial injury lightly on someone who makes his living with his appearance.”

Well. Since she put it that way. She slipped an arm through his elbow to march