Celebromancy (25 page)

Tension drained from Ree’s shoulders and back like someone had let out the air. She exhaled and relaxed.

“Because if you were dead, you couldn’t work off the losses. Three thousand each, by my estimation.” Feeling like an anime heroine, Ree face-faulted.

Grognard chuckled. “You’ve got that big-time screenwriter money now, right? So you can afford to work off your debt for me for the rest of the year.”

Drake cut in. “I would be happy to compensate you with goods or services.”

The big man then turned to Drake. “I’ll take both. There are always too many dishes on weekend nights and during tournaments. And when your hands dry out from looking like a
California Raisins
reunion cruise, you can help me design the new cart. I’ve got some ideas that will make sure dumb shit like this never happens again.”

Grognard stopped and looked at each of them in turn. “Get it?”

Drake nodded, and Ree said, “Got it.”

“Good.” Grognard opened the door back to the bar. “You can start now.”

Drake took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves, looking back at the mountain of dishes and glasses cresting out of the sink like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Ree waved to Drake and grabbed the serving apron from the locker that Grognard had allotted her, leaving her jacket behind. She had a million and one better things to do, but if she didn’t at least make an effort to mollify Grognard, she could kiss her flexible-hours-with-a-clued-in-boss job goodbye, and that
sweet screenwriter money
was a one-hit wonder unless the show got picked up to series.

So she put on her stolid server face and made the rounds, taking arcane cocktail orders from the
V:TES
players and delivering pitchers of beer and fresh pint glasses to he
40K
-ers, watching as Greg swooped down from the high ground with a fleet of Ork Bikes to cut a swath through the advancing Tyranid horde.

Ree filed the idea of Bikers vs. Aliens away in the part of her brain that knew that terrible concepts didn’t stop something from being saleable. Case in point:
Battleship
the movie.

Janet at the
V:TES
table ordered a round of mochas as part of what seemed like a bargain to get Rachel’s Bruja to protect her squishy Tremere, so Ree made her way to the espresso machine.

Ree lost herself in the familiar routine, the memory of thousands of lattes made across her food-service history. Ree let her mind wander as she steamed milk, touring through her memory of the last several Midnight Markets, trying to recall if she’d seen anyone with a mirror that might fit the ritual bill, refiltering gossip and bragging with her new priorities.

Ree had learned to store things away for future consideration whenever possible, but her memory was far from eidetic. Ree was pretty sure that most of her memory hard drive was filled up by trivia: movie quotes, monster stats, and card game text. The pie chart of her brain probably read something like:

Geek Trivia: 53%

consisting of

Comics: 18%

Movies/TV: 15%

Games: 11%

Literature: 7%

Anime: 2%

Everyday Knowledge: 18%

Taekwondo/Hapkido: 6%

Sarcastic Barbs: 12%

Job Skills: 11%

Luckily for her, that Geek Trivia converted directly to her magic, like an Obsession Skill in
Unknown Armies
.

The machine made a strange clunking sound while she prepared the mochas, which she logged to get to later.

Once the drinks were done, she returned to the cadre of card floppers with a trayful of mochas, setting them on a foldout stand by the table. She passed out the drinks, which were received reverently and slurped noisily, then placed in between clusters of sleeved cards and glass beads.

She popped in to the back room to check on Drake, who was humming something that sounded like a sea chantey, up to his elbows in suds and dishes.

“Doing all right?” she asked.

Drake turned and gave an unguarded pleasant smile that lit up his flushed-with-effort face.
Oh, if only I had any capacity to pull off polyamory
. Her one trial run had gone disastrously wrong, and Ree had identified herself as the problem, which took it off the table until she could reliably both communicate well and not be jealous as fuck when she saw people whose bones she wanted to jump getting attention from other people.

She returned the smile in brief and slipped back into the main room, laughing at her all-too-predictable responses.

When she was a teen, Ree thought that being an adult meant growing past the idiotic feelings of awkwardness around people she liked, learning not to put her feet in her mouth, and so on. In reality, it just seemed to be a case of accepting your habits and contextualizing. So instead of continuing to stew in the bowl of butterfly soup in her stomach, she set about cleaning the espresso machine.

She pulled out the portafilters, dissasembled the front of the machine, and found that one of the nuts connecting an internal pipe was loose (testing with hot pads so as to not give herself second-degree burns). She pulled out Grognard’s set of tools and tightened the nut, then reassembled the whole thing and steamed up some soy milk to make sure everything was fine. Since it was, she made herself a victory chai, with a bit of vanilla to give it an extra kick. She’d be up well past midnight again, so a steady stream of caffeine was essential.

The
V:TES
game wrapped up around 11 PM, and Ree took the opportunity to rescue Drake from the back room, where Grognard had put the adventurer to work in cleaning the silos and tanks for Grognard’s brewing.

“You’ll be back tomorrow,” Grognard said, not a question, just an assertion of understood reality.

Ree nodded, wondering if it’d be worth getting injured over the next day or so to call off from work and give Grognard’s anger a chance to settle a bit more.
Probably not worth the medical bills, though.
She’d already borrowed more against her credit asking about a mirror for the ritual, though Grognard had only been able to give vague possibilities. Golden Age of Hollywood was really out of his area of expertise.

She and Drake took the office exit, still avoiding the site of the cart’s demise. Grognard had mumbled about extending the wards on the store, but that would be as big a project as making a new cart, and not being at the Midnight Market would cost him thousands of dollars in lost business every month. So it would have to wait.

The pair stood under the orange-yellow light of the streetlamp, Pearson being one of the cities that had jumped on a more energy-efficient but totally ugly set of bulbs. They cast the street in a sci-fi light, everything one shade off of normal, even though Ree had lived with them for years now.

“I’ve got to get to the set in case something else comes for Jane. Rachel wasn’t forthcoming about the hows of Smokey the Terminator.”

Drake shifted his weight, clearly wanting to say something. He hesitated, then settled over his left leg and asked, “Do you need assistance?”

She wanted to say yes, but knew that inviting him would have a x3 Awkward multiplier with Jane. Danny would be there, and the security.

“I think we’ll be fine. Go rest up, since tomorrow we get to scour the city from top to bottom for the right mirror.”

Drake nodded. “I believe that a hot bath and a good night’s sleep are in order. I will be available at your earliest convenience tomorrow, and do not hesitate to call if events transpire this evening.”

Ree made a focused effort not to instantly throw out the dirty joke that came to mind. “Sure thing,” she said instead.

Drake gave an exaggeratedly deep bow, then rose with a smile. He was still of his time and place, but they’d become familiar enough to make jokes about their many differences.

Ree watched Drake walk off, wind picking up the edges of his duster and running its fingers through his close-cropped hair.

She sighed, and then checked her phone vs. her memory of the bus schedule. She fetched her earphones and cued up an episode of
Buffy
to calm herself down and prepare a power-up in case things broke bad at the set.

•   •   •

The bus trip to the set took the better part of an hour, far off the prime time. She was joined by a thin assortment during the trip: some college kids that hopped on for three stops, talking in booze-thick voices; a man sitting in the back corner with a bundle of plastic and paper bags who worried at his mostly-gray beard; and a no-nonsense woman in business black who spent the whole trip with her face lit by a seven-inch tablet.

Ree had her own twenty-first-century flashlight mood lighting, wrapping herself in the comfort of “Chosen,” feeling the burden of power along with the ever-harried heroine.
At least I don’t have to fight in heels for the ratings
, Ree thought, though she knew that she could if she had to, another gift of the genre emulation magic.

She reviewed her agenda as the bus reached the last stop before hers, making sure she was remembering everything.

Ree tugged on the call wire as they approached her stop, rising as the bus slowed to a halt on the empty street. She saluted the driver and hopped off, seeing the stand-up floodlights that One Tough Mama had set up throughout the trailer campus.

It was an odd feeling, heading into a situation not knowing if it was going to end with smooching, fighting, or both.

I have a weird life
, she thought.

No shit
came her brain’s response.

A bored-looking guard stopped her at the edge of the campus, standing underneath a pop-up tent. He waved a flashlight over her face and then waved her through.

Her night-vision completely shot, Ree blinked the light out of her eyes and continued on to Jane’s trailer. There was another guard posted at the door, the same guy who hadn’t recognized her earlier in the day. This time, he nodded and knocked on the door in the shave-and-a-hair-cut pattern. The door opened from within, revealing Danny in a leather jacket, baseball bat in his arms. Ree saluted casually and stepped up as he moved out of the doorway.

“How are you holding up?” Ree asked.

Danny took a long breath. Up close she could see the bags under his eyes, the tension in his shoulders. “I got a nap earlier today when we had a full house. But it looks like it’s going to be another long night.”

Ree spoke in a lower voice. “How’s she doing?”

Danny pursed his lips, a restrained wince.

“That bad?”

“She’ll be very glad to see you,” he said. “We’ve got the trailer covered from all angles, and a pair of squad cars around the corner. We’re as ready as we can be without putting up barbed wire and putting machine guns in people’s hands.”

“All of this over a popularity contest.”

Danny shook his head. “I never thought it’d get this bad. Jane says you have a plan, though.”

“Ish. We need a lot of stuff still, and once that’s done, we still have to track down the jackass who got the whole thing rolling.”

Danny cracked his knuckles, shaking his head. “Walters. I never liked him, but I thought it was just because he was a smug prick.”

“That’s a perfectly good reason not to like him. But now we have a reason to kick his ass if he shows up.”

Danny chuckled. “You have great anger.”

“Was that a Yoda condemnation or a compliment?” Ree asked.

The bodyguard shrugged.

Ree scanned the room, reminding herself how she would take cover, gain ground, or flank someone in this room, then headed toward the back room.

“Jane?” she called, announcing her presence.

The door to the bedroom opened, revealing Jane in her silk robe over a pair of tights and a loose shirt. If Danny had bags under his eyes, Jane had suitcases. Ree closed the door behind her as she scanned the room.

Someone had ridden a whirlwind through the bedroom, turning out closets, spewing books and magazines all over the bed and the floor. Nothing was in the same place it had been, including the bed, which had been pushed up against the corner of the room farthest from the window.

Jane wrapped Ree up in a full body hug, leaning into the erstwhile heroine.

“I can feel it coming, Ree. You were right, and I knew it, but I didn’t care, and now it’s coming.”

“What, Smokey?” Ree asked.

Jane sobbed into Ree’s shoulder. “I don’t know. But it’s never been this bad. I can feel the magic trying to empty me out from the inside. I close my eyes and all I can see is that thing straddling me, its hands around my neck.”

Guilt hit her like a sledgehammer to the gut.
Well, shit. And here I’ve been kicking around noshing on pizza, treating this like a scavenger hunt.

Ree squeezed the star. “It’s going to be fine. We’ve got this place locked up tighter than Amazon’s sales numbers.”

She ran a hand through Jane’s hair while the actress trembled in her arms. The
Buffy
energy continued to buzz in her mind, enforcing her desire to protect this woman, Danny, and the cast. But she didn’t have anything to fight, just a big emotional mess and a sense of a monster-sized other shoe about to drop. She stayed like that for a long moment, holding Jane tight, trying her best to fight off the demons just through her presence.

You know we’re screwed when I became the emotional rock in the situation.
Her ex Jay would laugh his ass off at this.
Well, fuck him anyway
, she thought.
It wasn’t my fault he’s a heartless sod.

When she heard shouting from outside, it was almost a relief. The noise came from the far side of the alley, near the office building set.

Ree hugged Jane tighter, then untangled herself. “I’m on it. Stay here, okay? I won’t let anything happen to you. Nothing.”

Jane pulled herself together and stood to her full height, putting on a noble bearing only a bit marred by the puffy eyes and tears. “Kick its ass.”