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

disappointing in person” frowns. The music was a band organ track from the early 1900’s. It kept all four magicians working at a similar pace, but it didn’t exactly complement Ricardo’s chosen theme. “No one will notice,” the vocal coach had assured him, “if you keep them engaged with your sparkling personality.”

“How’s everybody doing in Atlantic City?” Ricardo asked, smiling broadly. A few answering smiles began, reluctantly, to appear among the crowd. “You’ve all been enjoying Magic Mansion?” He smacked down a hula hoop, and it bounced high in the air. Overdoing the macho? No, stupid Kevin was macho. Ricardo was just exuberant. He caught the hoop and looped it around his neck, and the crowd fell back a few paces to make room for it—but their eyes were fixed on him.

He bounced another hula hoop high, dodged, and caught it on his neck. He’d aimed it wide on purpose. Sometimes, if you made juggling look too easy, the audience got bored. “Anyone here have a hula hoop when they were a kid? You?” he pointed to a woman who looked like she might be game. “Want to try?”

Before she could refuse, he bounced a hoop her way. “Go on,” he said, “go for it. Show everybody how it’s done.”

Timidly, but smiling, she caught the hula hoop, pulled it over her head, and gave it a few experimental twirls. “That’s right, you’ve got it.”

He tossed his third hoop in the air, caught in on his left foot, and twirled it around his ankle. The aqua socks looked spiffy. He picked out a young man. “How about you, you want to try? It’s easy.” He kicked the hoop the guy’s way, and the guy caught it, laughing, but hemmed and hawed about actually trying it out.

“Okay, fine, just hold on to it for me.” Ricardo flicked the two hoops off his neck and spread them on the ground with the third hoop he’d been holding, and began his routine that was part dance, part juggle, snapping up the rings, catching them, and allowing them to fall. He beat out a pattern, and just before it became predictable, instead of dropping the hula hoops, he tossed them in the air and began to juggle. The crowd ahh’ed and clapped.

It wasn’t that difficult, but the hoops were so big that it looked impressive. And as he juggled three hoops, he caught the eye of the man holding the fourth, and said, “Toss it.”

He’d had the choreographer lob all kinds of lame throws his way to prepare himself, and of course he didn’t trust the guy’s toss enough to actually juggle it in—it would take a trained assistant to make that move work. Instead, he slipped the three he already held onto his arm and began a lasso twirl with them while he caught it. He turned to the woman, then, who’d stopped hula-hooping so she could watch, and said, “When you’re ready, toss it!”

She did…missing him by several feet. But it didn’t matter. He was in the zone. He was enjoying himself. And the audience was enjoying him, too. He sidled over to toe the fallen hoop into the air, which provided the perfect diversion. As the audience was focused on his foot, he palmed a handful of bubblegum out of a pocket the stylist had carefully sewn into the bowling shirt, and said, “How ’bout that? Sweet!” as he pinged it into the laughing audience.

He was breathing hard by the time the airhorn sounded, but the connection with the people had made time slip away. He thanked them, playfully reminding them to “vote Ricardo, Daddy-o!” as they moved along to check out Jia’s act, and the audience who’d been watching Professor Topaz began to filter his way.

As Ricardo raised his arm over his head, his five rings slid down over his shoulder, the beads inside shushing to a stop along his thigh…he looked up and spotted John.

And suddenly, it was as if all the air went out of the world.

John was stunning in an Edwardian cutaway coat and deep burgundy ascot. In his top hat (silk, not satin) and his striped trousers, he looked like he was seven feet tall. But it wasn’t just height he possessed. It was presence. His audience approached him in awe, and when he greeted them, gravely, in his deep and profoundly serious voice, Ricardo could practically see them all break out in goosebumps.

In fact, he did, himself.

Ricardo forced himself to look away, to greet his new group and get them to shift gears from serious and dramatic to lighthearted and fun. But he experienced a niggling of doubt, that maybe he couldn’t win the spectators over. Maybe acting sassy and young simply couldn’t hold a candle to being as profoundly riveting as John.

Part of him was startled—because he’d trained so hard these past few days, put so much care and focus into his act, it hadn’t exactly occurred to him that all the other magicians would do the same. He threw a silver hula hoop high in the air, and while his audience looked up, palmed a 45 from its hiding spot at the small of his back. The crowd laughed with delight as he juggled it in with a huge flourish, then tossed it to the spectators like a Frisbee. His heart was pounding now, in overdrive, as keen as any championship match he’d ever skated in…with the knowledge that his performance here was infinitely more important than any meet.

He did a spin and caught sight of Kevin Kazan—only a glimpse—working his crowd in a zoot suit and fedora—and damn it, that creep looked absolutely perfect. He was confident and flashy in his new costume, doing his new act…even handsome. Not only that, but he had his audience wrapped around his little finger, and the way he moved, shifty and graceful as he startled them by presenting them with their own wallets and watches, it was clear he’d put his own choreographer to good use.

It