Celebromancy (14 page)

Chapter Ten

The Show Must Go On

There’s an unspoken code in show business. People speak it all the time, but those aren’t the ones who really mean it. Someone gets sick? The show must go on. Script sucks? Show must go on.

Each show is a living thing; it has its own momentum. Shows are like sharks: They have to keep moving forward or they die. No matter what happens, keep going. Better to go down as the most ambitious messy failure than to just quit and fade away, having never tried.

—Jane Konrad,
Actor’s Alley
, November 17, 2010

It looked like Yancy’d had a rougher night than Jane. His hair was rumpled and he had bags under his eyes, sipping coffee as he orchestrated the grand machine that was One Tough Mama.

The set crew was dressing the apartment where they were shooting scenes between Allison and her girlfriend, which would actually go before the dinner scene they’d shot two days ago. It blew Ree’s mind that actors could keep a whole story in their head and tell it part by part, out of order, while building in a character arc that made sense when viewed in the proper order. The postproduction editors and producers obviously helped, and that’s part of why they’d get several different takes of any scene, to have a range, but it was still foreign to Ree’s LARPer/gamer/writer brain, where characters tended to develop emergently (which was just the fancy way of saying that she made shit up and hoped it worked).

The PAs were clearly getting to know her, since two steps into the building, Patricia/Vanessa greeted her with a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee.

“You’re gorgeous,” Ree said, accepting the cup. The assistant stepped back and started to walk off, and Ree said, “Wait.” The woman turned around slowly, looking like she’d already mentally moved on to the next task.

“I’m very sorry, but I can’t for the life of me remember your name.”

Understanding flashed on the woman’s face, and she relaxed for a second. “Vanessa.”

“Thanks, Vanessa,” Ree said, raising the cup in salute.

Vanessa nodded and zipped off.

One mystery solved. Now if all of the other ones would be as easy to solve as getting over my pride.

Ree ran a partition in her brain to think up caper-style ways of getting access to Rachel MacKenzie while going over the day’s sides with Yancy, making little tweaks here and there. Yancy liked to get a fresh look at the script each day, to work it around in his mind like a tumbler. He was a great editor—after all, the man had been directing since Ree was a diaper-wearing, lightsaber-binky-wielding toddler.

Not that he’d appreciated it when Ree had said as much in conversation. But he’d grumped with a smile on his face, so all was well.

Ree watched from her still-totally-exciting chair as the shooting got under way.

She failed her Save vs. Charm when Jane walked into the room, as radiant as she’d been at the panel. Most of her mind was busy being entranced, while her Spider-sense was going off, reminding her of the cost.

You shouldn’t be doing that, remember?
she thought at Jane.
With the night-haunt and all?

Ree harrumphed to herself.
It’s her life. If she wants to burn out rather than fade away . . .

Then your career gets tanked before it even takes off, and everyone here loses their jobs.

There was some enlightened self-interest involved, but Ree knew she couldn’t let Jane go out like Marilyn Monroe or Kurt Cobain. Though neither of them had killed themselves through overuse of magic.
Probably. Maybe. Possibly. Damnit. Magic exists, and it is weird as hell
never ceased to make things that Ree used to be certain about totally up in the air.

Ree started to get up to do something about it, but Yancy beat her to it, launching out of his chair. The rest of the room seemed to be under the same level of entrancement, but Yancy was having none of it.

Deciding that not dog-piling on your maybe-girlfriend was the better part of dating (if not valor), Ree returned to her phone, where she saw she had a handful of direct messages from Charlie.

She’d almost forgotten about putting him on Rachel MacKenzie’s trail.

All right, King of the Internet, give me the lowdown.

Charlie being Charlie, he sent the whole report in Twitter DMs instead of an email.

Ree scrolled through the tidbits and links, assembling the picture of a woman who was indulgent in public and aggressively reclusive in private. She made plenty of public appearances and was working as actively as ever, but her personal security had stepped up in the last year, as evidenced by the fact that four paparazzi had been arrested for trespassing on her property since last summer.

So what are you so twitchy about, then?
Ree wondered. Judging from the epic bitch-slap she gave Jane, her Celebromantic mana pool was at an all-time high.

Curiouser. So how am I supposed to get close enough to get her to break the curse or find out how to do it myself?
The Midnight Market was coming up that night, so she could pound the subterranean pavement herself, but traipsing around at the Market asking about breaking Celebromantic curses would be about as subtle as sneaking behind the counter to squeeze the HeroClix boxes looking for oversized figures. Not that she ever did that. No siree. Her record of pulling ultra-rares like it was her job was just a nascent manifestation of her Geekomancy
. Yeah, that’s it.

Charlie’s deluge of DMs had come to an end, so Ree checked her other messages (sure enough, more trashy Google Alerts) and perked up when Yancy called quiet on the set.

•   •   •

Yancy cut her loose around noon, though Ree knew there was a better-than-nothing chance he’d call again later in the day if something wasn’t working.

She went home for a quick shower and a change to get ready for the long night in Geekville.

The afternoon at Grognard’s was mundane enough that Ree could almost forget how crazy the place really was. A few clean-cut older folks came in at around four, browsed through hermetically-sealed merchandise, dithered about what to buy, then walked out with a couple hundred dollars’ worth of vintage lunch boxes and action figures.

It wasn’t until she stopped and thought about what magic ritual someone might do with a 1987
Transformers
lunch box and three different Starscream figures that the weird came back in.

Grognard was in a particularly surly mood, as Ree had had to jump in and cut him off when the gruff geek started to berate a young Japanese woman in a Magical Girl outfit after she’d wandered behind the bar and picked up a glass case containing a heart-sized device that looked like H. R. Geiger on a Hello Kitty trip. Grognard had been reaching for his shotgun when Ree jumped in between the girl and the gun to say, “Please put that down, for the love of all that is decent and not exploded.”

Watching Ree (and probably the shotgun behind her), the woman put the device down and stepped away.

“Why?” she asked.

Grognard’s voice came out as a growl. “Because if you think the wrong thing while holding that, you’ll go from Sailor Perky to Sailor Shoggoth.”

The woman face-faulted. But not in the normal way that humans do, even on sitcoms. Her mouth and eyes grew to three times its normal size, scrunching up in terror.

She just chibi-ed out!
Ree thought.
Holy crap.
Ree marked one more on a tally in her brain that said
Drinks I will drink tonight because my life is crazy
.

She was embarrassed to think about how many marks were already there, since it would probably be enough to blind a mule.

The Magical Girl excused herself shortly afterward, leaving Ree to check in with Grognard.

“Everything okay?”

Grognard shook his head, rueful. “I’ve seen what that thing can do.”

“Then why keep it?” she asked. “Wouldn’t everyone be better off if crazy-ass things like that just got tossed into Mount Doom? Or someplace worse, like an endless tire fire in Gary?”

Grognard shrugged, replacing the shotgun in its home under the bar. “That thing will make me a helluva lot of money when I find the right person to sell it to.”

“Who would that be?”

“Someone stubborn and righteous enough to put up with it. Things like that have a tendency to get themselves free, like The One Ring or possessed items. Lock and key isn’t always enough. I keep it until someone comes along I can trust with it.”

“So you’re waiting for Tom Bombadil to come a-browsing?” Ree asked.

That got a satisfied grunt out of Grognard, who disappeared into the back room.

Ree watched the store from the bar, scanning the room to check drink levels and try to spot anyone whose demeanor said
I need help
or
I wish to exchange currency for goods and services
.

A minute later, with Grognard still in the back, the self-styled “Lieutenant” Wickham walked into the store like she owned the place. Lt. Abigail Wickham (Strength 13, Dexterity 14, Stamina 12, Will 8, IQ 14, Charisma 16—Old Money 4 / Mean Girl 3 / Model 2 / Blogger 2 / Steampunk 1) was a tall woman, standing nearly five-ten in her boots. Her outfit probably cost as much as four months’ rent on The Shithole. She wore a velvet-lined suede jacket over a low-cut linen shirt with hand-embroidered blackwork, and layered skirts pulled high for mobility (and for her to show off toned legs and her custom-fitted boots with compact hydraulic pistons running down from the knee).

Wickham had unmockably natural golden-blonde hair, which she kept in a complicated braid and tucked under a military cap. Her goggles were polished gold with red lenses. She wore what seemed to Ree to be a permanent sneer as she crossed the room, walking straight to a stool and setting her rifle against the bar with casual distaste.

“Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel, neat,” Wickham said, not meeting Ree’s eyes.

I hate that bitch
, Ree repeated to herself in a Lily Aldrin voice.

Ree stepped onto a baseboard shelf to reach the bottle, then poured the drink with as much expedience and as little fanfare as she could, sliding the glass to Wickham. “Twenty-five.”

The woman snickered, setting down a platinum card.

Ree took the card and started a tab, wishing Grognard would come back so she could relocate to the game section. It wasn’t just that the “Lieutenant” was self-important and cruel, it was that she was self-important, didn’t make a single bit of her gear herself, looked down on poorer Steampunks, and had posted a two-thousand-word rant on her blog a few months back that had enumerated the many perceived faults of Priya’s totally awesome laptop casemods.

But there was no joy in Geekville that night, since Grognard seemed to have properly disappeared. Ree made herself scarce at the bar, taking laps around the seating area to check in on the other patrons.

Ree went to check on Joe, even though she knew he’d be fine, then, as she returned to the counter, Lt. Wickham coughed deliberately, waving her empty glass.

Urge to kill rising . . .

But homicide would complicate her already-ridiculous week, so instead she poured more whiskey, adding a mark to her To Drink tally.

The door chime rang again, and Ree looked up to see Drake walk in. She dual-booted her response, happy to see a friendly face with one partition, worried about the imminent throwdown with the other.

Lt. Wickham turned on the barstool and narrowed her eyes as Drake walked in.

“Well, look what the Cait Sidhe dragged in,” she said, a cruel smile on her face. “Where’s your kindergarten-crafting lady friend, Drake? Got a paper cut on construction paper?”

Drake stopped in place and sighed.

“Good day, Lieutenant Wickham. It brings me the greatest pleasure to see that your life is still meaningless and unfulfilling enough that you feel the need to tear down other’s accomplishments to make your own seem to stand tall by comparison.”

Boom!
Ree thought, cracking a smile.

“Today I acquired a collection of ray guns, posed for a cover spread, and wrote four thousand words of essay, including a reminder for my readers to avoid that terrible gallery show. What have you done?”

“Science,” Drake said, annoyance shadowing his face as he crossed to the bar. The fact that Wickham could make Drake, one of the happiest, most blindingly optimistic people she knew, go to the angry place, should be proof of her vileness by itself.

Grognard’s gone . . . Could I get away with a smackdown? How much would we really miss her business?
Ree pondered an assortment of verbal and physical recourses while Drake and Wickham continued to spar.

Drake took a position at the opposite end of the bar from Wickham, throwing back his duster as he sat. Ree met him at the seat, presenting him with an ice water. He nodded to Ree and held up the glass. “To your health.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Ree saw Wickham glare. The rest of the customers were still locked in their individual worlds, with no seeming interest in the Steampunk Showdown.

When Ree had asked Drake why Wickham was always after him, all the displaced magitechnician had said was that their priorities were catastrophically incompatible. Which, as far as Ree could tell was his way of saying
I hate her
. But Drake was too classy to come right out and say something like that.

Ree, however, was not too classy, but she liked keeping her job. So she locked onto Lt. Wickham in her peripheral vision while talking to Drake.

“How was the art show?”

Drake’s smile was even wider than his usual grin. This was a grin sufficiently rakish that it sent shudders of implication down Ree’s back. That was an
I got action
kind of smile.

“Quite fabulous. Due to having work in the show, we were able to attend the private showing, which included hors d’oeuvres, music, and a performance of one of the artist’s short plays. It is quite a community, Ree, and no small amount of comfort to be once again among people dressed in the manner of my home.” Drake considered for a second. “More or less.”