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

“You don’t know how the challenge will play out,” John said.

Fabian looked down at his ample stomach, and said, “Yeah. I do.”

Kevin’s expression, as he rejoined his team, was blank. But the tendons in his neck flicked as if his whole body was spasmodically clenching. John looked away. All the strategizing, all the planning, had been for naught. They had been so sure that they’d need to switch cabinets that all their energy had gone into concealing the latches that would lock the center section into place and prevent anyone who didn’t know about them from successfully using the device—a brilliant idea, everyone had agreed.

Brilliant…but ultimately, useless.

To make matters worse, while the team valued John’s contribution, the home audience (the voting audience) wouldn’t even get to see the modification in action. Even if Red Team lost the challenge because their stockiest member was forced into the Zig-Zag cabinet, who was to say it wouldn’t be John who would get voted off once they lost the challenge?

“Listen up,” Iain called out. “We’ll give you three minutes to decide who’s doing the stunt for the opposing team. Bev is off-limits. Everyone else is fair game. Time starts…now.”

Across the room, the Gold Team immediately formed a huddle, arms around each others’ shoulders and heads bent together.

The members of the Red Team all crossed their arms and glared at each other.

“Well?” Jia said, once half a minute had ticked by. “Who’re we gonna pick?”

“Like I give a fuck,” Kevin said.

“Don’t you dare snap at me,” Jia warned. “If you hadn’t gone and nominated yourself as MVP, we could’ve had that immunity on a team member who actually needed it.”

Kevin didn’t reply. He simply puffed himself up larger and glared twice as hard.

“C’mon, now,” Fabian said. “We got two minutes left to decide who we’re picking. How about Sue? Maybe she’s still sore?”

“Maybe Sue,” Jia said. “Not Ricardo, for sure. You saw how he could move in Metamorphosis.”

John’s mouth went a bit dry, but he managed to say, “Not Faye. She’s the thinnest one on the team.”

“Not Sue,” Kevin said grudgingly, watching the Gold Team huddle through narrowed eyes. “Girl’s fine.”

“Okay,” Iain announced. “Time.”

Iain lined the teams up on their color-coded carpets, and the cameras swept the teams’ faces. Monty cleared his throat experimentally a few times, then said, “Red Team, have you made your decision?”

Only then did Kevin look over at the Gold Team, as if he was still mulling over his choices. His flair for timing, John noted, was uncanny. After a perfectly timed pause, he said, “Red Team picks Muriel Broom.”

Gold Team responded by more of their enthusiastic back-clapping and high-fives.

“And Gold Team? Who are you sending into the Zig-Zag Cabinet?”

Sue squared her shoulders. She was wringing her hands—John wondered if she was conscious of the fact, or if she was just perpetuating the goody-two-shoes image of her team. And then he wondered how his brief tenure on the Red Team had encouraged him to become so cynical.

“Monty, we’d like the Red Team to be represented by Fabian Swan.”

While Red Team had been expecting it, the decision felt like a blow, all the same.

Adding insult to injury, Sue gave a little, self-conscious shrug, and mouthed the word, “Sorry.”

“Magicians,” Monty said, “step up to your cabinets.”

John approached the box. The secret catches he’d had installed seemed to glow through the plywood, accusing him of stooping to Kevin Kazan’s level for the sake of winning.

Which begged the question: if John wasn’t expected to win, then why did Jia’s assertion that he hadn’t even been trying bother him so much…enough to make him begin plotting and scheming with the rest of the Red Team.

Fabian stepped into the box. John murmured the locations of the secret catches, though of course Fabian knew. He’d overseen the cabinet’s construction himself. While Kevin looked on, arms crossed, expression blank, Jia slipped the blades in…or tried to. The side of the upper blade caught on something. John focused on it harder. Fabian’s stomach. “Just breathe,” John said gently. “Relax. In. Out. And now, pull your stomach in.”

A grunt, a slide, and the dull blade slid home. It was nothing dangerous, though it probably felt like he was getting stabbed by a cookie sheet.

“Slide it,” Jia said, and John gave the center of the cabinet a push. It slid sideways—but not all the way.

“Keep going,” Fabian whispered. “Push hard. I can take it.”

John glanced over at the Gold Team’s cabinet, where the carpenters were already taking their tape measures to the device. Muriel Broom’s face smiled placidly out of the head cutout, eyebrows raised high, while her fingers and toes wiggled in their respective holes. The cabinet was spread open so wide that even accounting for the optical illusion, she did indeed look like her middle had been severed and completely displaced.

Fabian’s box would need to slide over another half a foot to even approach it. And a man could only squash himself so flat.

Still, since he could see that trying meant something to Fabian, at least, John gave the cabinet one final shove. In the uppermost cutout, Fabian’s face grimaced. “We’re ready,” John said, and the carpenters came and recorded their measurements. When Fabian was allowed to step out of the cabinet, his forehead was gleaming with sweat. John looked at him harder, deeper, seized with the worry that maybe the pressure had ruptured something inside him: a weak gall bladder. An inflamed appendix. A hernia. But thankfully, no, Fabian was still whole and sound. Only profoundly disappointed in himself.

As the scoreboard was readied and the cabinets, now open and empty, were arranged behind the two teams, John decided that if he did end up voted off at the end of this loss, at least he knew that he actually had tried. And that once the competition was over, he would see Ricardo soon enough.

Hopefully.

Unless Ricardo was too busy making appearances. Because whether or not Ricardo ultimately won, there was no way he