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

would need to go back to working bachelorette parties now that America had seen him in all his handsome, perfectly-poised glory.

John almost looked up and sought Ricardo’s eye—almost—but at the last moment he changed his mind, unable to bear an apologetic look like the one the Red Team had elicited from Sue. He found his teammate Jia’s eyes on him instead. She looked angry enough to scream. He could only imagine how badly she wanted a cigarette. Or ten.

When Monty announced the Red Team’s final score, 38-1/4 inches, John presumed (solely by the fact that their score had been announced first) that they’d been completely trounced.

“And now, Gold Team, you’ll need to come in at thirty-eight and a half inches or more…”

Bev was nodding and whispering to her team, who were all hanging on her every word.

“…and your final score is…wow, a whopping forty-three and a half inches. Gold Team won with room to spare.”

The Gold Team clasped hands all around and jumped up and down, whooping and hugging, with Bev at the center. John couldn’t exactly begrudge them their win. They’d come by it fair and square. But even more than this single battle’s victory, John envied the spirit of the Gold Team, the closeness they’d spoken of at dinner earlier that week.

And then he realized that one of his team members was probably feeling even worse than he was.

He slipped his arm around Fabian, gave him a very un-magicianly squeeze, and said, “You did your best. We all did. And that’s something nobody can take away from us.”

Iain called a five-minute break while he whispered heatedly into his cell phone, and Monty strolled over and peered into the Red Team’s cabinet, saying, “Tough break, yeah? She’s a beaut.”

The Red Team members were spared from coming up with any sort of a reply when Iain signaled Monty over and began whispering to him with great enthusiasm. “I don’t like it,” Jia said. “He’s looking way too intense.”

“Nothing we can do about it now,” Fabian said.

A script supervisor handed Monty a sheet of lines, which he glanced over, and Iain called for the cameras, crew and magicians to take their places again. John stood at the back of his group, fixed his eyes on Monty and waited.

Iain said, “Take it from the last line.”

Monty nodded, composed himself with a few breaths, then lit with sudden excitement and said, “Gold Team won with room to spare! Unfortunately for you, Red Team, that means that one of you…will be eliminated.”

Fabian made a very quiet noise in his throat that plainly conveyed, “See? What’d I tell you?”

“And that player is the one who cost the Red Team their victory tonight: Fabian Swan.”

No vote? 

John felt as if his heart had stopped. As if he’d surely not heard what he thought he’d just heard. But then Fabian’s head sagged down as he absorbed the words himself, and he shook it slowly side to side, and he made not a sound.

“I’m sorry, Fabian,” Monty said sadly. “It’s time for you to bid your team goodbye.”

Fabian gathered himself, bent and gave Jia a polite kiss on the cheek, then turned and shook John’s hand without meeting his eyes. John couldn’t say whether or not the departing magician wanted to even shake Kevin’s hand, but what happened next must have surprised Fabian as much as it did John.

It started with a handshake…but then Kevin hauled on Fabian’s arm and dragged him into a solid embrace. And he held him there, patting his back, and rocking side to side. And then, after long seconds, he spoke. “I didn’t know, swear to God. If I knew, man, I never would’ve…I just didn’t know.” When he let Fabian go, tears were coursing down Kevin’s cheeks. He swiped at them angrily, defiantly, and said, “It was an honor to be on your team, Fabian Swan.”

___

Marlene rewound the dailies from cameras three and seven. One caught the light reflecting off Kevin Kazan’s tears just right. In the other, it was obvious how red his eyes were, how his eyelashes had glommed together into shiny wet points.

Great footage.

She sorted through a few more angles even as the trailer door opened, and Iain collapsed into the chair beside her. It must have been past midnight. He’d thrown himself down with such force he nearly split the chair in half.

“It’s a damn good weeper shot,” he finally said, “I’ll admit that. But I still think you owe me an explanation.”

“Oh, really?” Marlene reversed in slow-mo and a tear crept up Kevin’s cheek and disappeared into the corner of his eye.

“If you played it my way and switched the boxes, you would’ve had that big payoff when the Red Team’s cabinet trapped one of the girls inside and wouldn’t budge. It would’ve been great.”

It would have—and it would have made Professor Topaz out to be the big hero. But he’d come as far as he had by flying under the radar and avoiding making enemies, and to draw attention to him like that would be as effective as painting a big target on his forehead. Marlene had no intention of telling Iain that she was secretly hoping to get Topaz into the Final Four, despite what the executive producers wanted. She couldn’t have explained precisely why she’d developed a fondness for the old man herself.

“Here’s the thing, Iain. If we really did use that cabinet-switching idea as our twist, the audience wouldn’t have thought we were watching their footage and then decided it actually was a pretty cool idea. They would have assumed we leaked our plan to the Red Team somehow—and if there’s one thing that pisses off a viewer, it’s cheating.”

Iain shrugged sullenly. Once he’d heard that the Red Team had rigged their own cabinet, he’d been dying to see the sabotage in action.

“Even better,” Marlene told him, “audiences love a good comeuppance. The way we worked it tonight—instant karma. Kevin Kazan acts like an idiot and ends up getting his own idol thrown off