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

“He stayed eleven minutes, thirty-two seconds,” Bev said. “And I’ll bet it gets edited to make it seem like we were together all afternoon.”

“I wish he could have stayed longer,” Sue said. “He had great hands. But at least he showed us that card flourish. Now we can all say we’ve had a personal lesson from David Blaine.”

Ricardo smiled to himself. That would really stick in Kevin Kazan’s craw.

Bev said, “So have we given any thought to how we want to play tomorrow’s big challenge?”

Gold Team had earned the advantage of knowing what the challenge would be, a head-to-head competition in handling four specific props: hats, cards, silks and rings. They would be allowed to choose which team member played in each round. Red Team was going in blind and being deployed at random (or, more likely, at a producer’s whim.)

Although, did that really matter? Each member of Red Team was a skilled magician. Every one of them was probably good with all four props. Ricardo supposed he should be glad Gold Team won the advantage. At least he wouldn’t need to watch one of his teammates handling the rings while he fumbled through a deck of cards.

___

Between the dust masks and the leather gloves and the steel-toed boots, John felt as if he should be riveting a skyscraper together instead of swabbing off the wainscoting with a tack rag. But Marlene had insisted there’d be hell to pay if anyone shed so much as a single drop of blood. Plus, the extreme wardrobe probably made Red Team’s “punishment” look significantly more difficult than it actually was.

Another advantage to the dust masks was the fact that they didn’t exactly encourage communication between the team members. John had gone into high avoidance-mode with Kevin, though he had the sneaking suspicion that it was too little, too late. Never perform True magic when the rabble is close enough to see it’s no trick…including fellow magicians with plenty of technique and no Truth. Especially those. Because they could sense the inner circle to which they would never belong, and their envy was particularly toxic.

Perhaps, John thought, it would have been best to play the assertiveness card earlier, back when they were planning the cabinet, and Kevin had started butting heads with Fabian. Not now that Fabian was gone, and the biggest threat to Kevin’s machismo from his own team—really, the whole game—was John.

Chapter 23

CARDS AND HATS

Shooting began early on the day of the Four Props Challenge. Ricardo barely had time to finish his crunches before a PA came to the dorms and told him to meet his team in the ballroom. He chose his stretchiest outfit—no binding waistbands or even flowing sleeves today. The sparkly black stretch top and lycra slacks fit like a skating costume. He didn’t want anything to get between him and those rings.

It occurred to him, as he soared down the stairs two at a time, that this was the first challenge he’d actually been excited about participating in. And maybe, if he was really lucky, he’d even be up against Kevin Kazan. Because if that jerk wanted to butt heads again, Ricardo was totally up for it. Big time.

He paused in the doorway and scanned the ballroom. Something tall and tarp-covered dominated the far end of the room. The scoreboard, currently unlit, lurked to the side. Still more crates and boxes waited among the lighting and camera gear—stacks of them.

It looked like it was going to be a long shoot.

He joined his teammates on a sofa covered with a gold throw. Sue had on an adorable pink hotpants outfit, Muriel was in her traditional fortune teller getup, and Bev had chosen a tweed pants suit. Ricardo supposed it looked better on her than the swimdress. Across the room, the Red Team assembled on a couch covered in a red throw. They all wore black—Kevin annoying in a glitzy track suit, sideways baseball cap and too much jewelry, John sleek and elegant in a formal suit, Jia particularly stunning in a tuxedo-styled bodysuit with a halter closure that bared her arms and shoulders, and Faye looking like Faye, intense and slightly too thin, in a very short mini dress. He didn’t suppose he missed Faye, exactly, because she’d never really bonded with the team, not in the way everyone else had. But even though her defection hadn’t been her own idea, the way she’d gone about it left a bad taste in his mouth that went far beyond his wounded tongue.

Which still throbbed…though he wasn’t going to let that discomfort get in the way of showing whoever would oppose him that if there was one thing he knew how to handle…it was linking rings.

Crew milled around and fussed with small details, while stylists made the rounds and primped everyone’s hair and the script supervisor went through some lines with Monty, and finally, about an hour and a half later, a hush fell over the bustling people on the sidelines (who the home audience never got to see) and cameras rolled.

“Today,” Monty said, “the Gold Team will pit their skills against the Red Team in a multi-part challenge that includes four classic stage magic props: playing cards, colored silks, top hats, and linking rings. Since Gold Team won the Wand Pond competition, they’ve been able to select which player they think will handle each particular prop the best.”

Damn straight, Ricardo thought. I can hardly wait.

“The member of the Red Team who will play in each leg of the challenge will be chosen at random.”

And if I end up pitted against Kevin Kazan, I’ll show him a thing or— Ricardo’s thoughts cut off abruptly as his eyes fell on John’s.

Oh my God. What if they pit me against John?

As though he’d thought the very same thing, John cocked his head and gave a very slight nod, as if to reassure Ricardo that it would be okay. Which wasn’t actually all that