Celebromancy (28 page)

Ree heard Drake doing math under his breath. “Not at all likely. Current estimates put the chance under one tenth of one percent. As long as I don’t use the highest setting.”

She flashed back to Drake’s hand-scrawled note on the gun’s gauge. “Good enough for me. Come loaded for bear, but I don’t actually know that there will be fighting. It just seems pretty likely given Alex’s previous record of spamming monsters whenever he can.”

“How does one spam monsters? Also, what is spam?” Drake asked, confused.

“I’ll explain later,” Ree said. “You coming?”

“Understood. Where and when?”

“The movie set, noon? If you get there early, you can hang around on guard duty if you like, but the things we need aren’t scheduled to arrive until midafternoon.”

“Certainly.”

“And Drake?” Ree added.

“Yes?”

“Thanks. You’ve always been there for me, even when I didn’t know I needed it. I just hope I’m not getting you in over your head.”

“That, my dear, is why I have telescoping boots.”

“Really?” she asked.

This time, it was Drake who laughed. “And on this day, we shall mark the calendars. That was a joke, Ms. Ree.”

Ree matched Drake’s laughter. “Awesome. But still, thanks.”

“I live to serve,” Drake said.

“Don’t. The wages suck. Live for awesome. The pay isn’t any better, but the sightseeing rocks.”

“Well put. Until noon, then.”

“Seeya.”

Ree disconnected, then dropped the phone on her bed as she finished packing up. She sheathed the
jian
and brought it with her to the living room.

And now, choose the form of the power-up
. She had between three and five hours before the mirror was scheduled to arrive, if she stayed and kept powering up until she got the call from Jane or Yancy that they were ready to get started. The question then was, what to marathon for Real Ultimate Power?

There was the basic stuff:
Buffy
,
Angel
,
Supernatural
, for general monster-fighting awesomeness. Then there were the shows for Action-Hero physics:
Cowboy Bebop
,
Human Target
,
The Last Action Hero
. She could go more flashy with something like
Slayers
, or later episodes of
Buffy
to dial in on the Wiccan-fu.

Hmmm. Human Target
has good bodyguard resonance, but it would be really cool to throw fireballs and crap without having to burn cards.

She scanned her shelves again, while running through her mental tally of films on her hard drives. A moment later, she had a tickle of excitement.
What could possibly go wrong?

Ree plucked
Spider-Man
and
Spider-Man 2
from the shelves and popped the first one into her DVD player. She’d heard a few Cinemancers swear that their magical buck went way further with Blu-Ray, but Ree wasn’t in a position to upgrade her collection more than one or two films a month, especially when she valued breadth over depth, still being at the start of her career.

As she watched, Ree brought up memories of her favorite Spider-Man comics, the video games she’d played, the wild joy of swinging through the city and punching bad guys up and down Manhattan. She keyed in to Ben Parker’s motto,
With great power comes great responsibility
, the saying that had become synonymous with his nephew’s career as a hero.

She was halfway into
Spider-Man 2
when her phone rang, showing Jane’s number. She paused the film, but the Danny Elfman score in her brain kept going.

“Ree Reyes’s House of Heroes,” she answered.

“What?” Jane asked.

“Sorry, I’ve been watching
Spider-Man
, so the Quip is strong with me right now.”

Jane chuckled. “Awesome. We’ve got the mirror, so we’re setting up now. Your dashing friend is here trying to help clean up, but I distracted him with some proper tea I picked up at the last London premiere. He said it’s something about the bergamot that makes it good. Also, he brought a scary handgun. Do you know anything about that?”

“Oh, yeah! It’ll be fine. As long as he doesn’t get mopey and start talking about his Mistress, we’ll be fine.”

“Mistress?”

“It’s a long story. I can be over in about fifteen minutes, traffic permitting. I could web-sling my way there, but that would be a waste of energy despite being outrageously cool.”

“I’ve got a car headed over for you. That way you don’t have to haul your arsenal through a crowd.” Jane stopped for a moment. “You can web-sling?”

Ree made the iconic web-shooter hand sign, saying “Go web go!” and saw a blob of webs shoot out and form a thick net in the top corner of the room, above the TV.

She’d been circumspect about organic web shooters at first, unhappy that Peter’s inventiveness was undercut by incorporating the webbing into the mutation. But damned if she wasn’t grateful now.

“I sure can!”

Another chuckle. If nothing else, she was keeping Jane’s spirits up. “Well, tiger, get your web-slinging ass down here and let’s end this thing.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Ree hung up the phone, gathered her arsenal in the living room, and kept watching until she heard a trio of honks from a car horn.

If only there were Whispersync between my DVD player and my phone . . .
she thought as she headed out the door.
Dear technology gods . . .
The thought trailed off as she threw on the coat and took her battle-ready self down to the car, Elfman’s score booming in her mind.

Let’s do this thing.

Chapter Twenty-one

Showdown at Sunset Boulevard

After the Carmine Wharf incident, and per the request of special consultant Mr. Eastwood, I am allocating additional funds to the Special Weapons and Tactics division for personnel, equipment, and training. The division will take responsibility for squad-level responses to threats to the city.

This aspect of SWAT will remain undisclosed to the public, and all efforts must be taken to avoid exposure, lest a public health and panic crisis threaten to bring down our great city. Mr. Eastwood will be on retainer to assist in educating the officers on more esoteric matters.

God go with you.

—commissioner of police D’walla Richards, in a private memo to SWAT commander Hank Kanagawa, November 23, 2002.

There were three squad cars parked around the perimeter of the filming campus when Ree pulled up in the black town car that Jane had sent.

“Couldn’t have shown up yesterday, could they?” Ree asked. Not that the shotgun shells had done much more than annoy the dragon yesterday. And none of them needed more dead bodies on their conscience. Really, the only people who ever did need dead bodies on their conscience were killers, not the hapless fool heroes who were trying to protect people. The really bad people didn’t tend to do the whole guilt thing, so it mostly affected the poor schmucks trying to make a difference in a grayscale world.

Less internal monologue, Ms. Parker
, she thought, shutting the door. She approached the police cordon, wondering if she was going to have to explain her sword.

Except that the woman who greeted her at the cordon recognized her. “Hello, Ms. Reyes. Looks like you’re ready for a fight.” It was Officer Washington, this time decked out in SWAT gear and holding a shotgun over her shoulder to match Ree’s sword. Washington raised an eyebrow when her gaze settled on the sword.

“What, this?” Ree said without thinking. She gestured to her sword and said, “Walking stick. It’s like the katana umbrellas at ThinkGeek. Purely decorative.”
Good old Peter Parker, always putting his wit in front of his brain.
She concentrated, trying to keep the magical energy in hand. It was hard, since she was practically bursting with excitement derived from decades of loving and identifying with Spider-Man.

Washington smiled, then waved her past. “Leftenant Anachronism is already in there.”

Nice one. I’ll have to keep it on file
, Ree thought.

“Let’s hope that you have a really boring day,” Ree said.

“Most days are,” Washington said. “Not that I mind. Active imagination, don’t you know.”

“You didn’t tell me you were on SWAT,” Ree said.

“Before today I wasn’t. Turns out there are more clued-in people in the department than I knew. Get settled, then let me introduce you to the captain.”

There were a dozen SWAT troopers by the building, sitting in wait under one of the mostly-intact tents, riot shields stacked up against the wall like Roman scutum.

That display alone put the stake through the idea that the Pearson PD was anything but clued in as to the weird. The officers nodded to Ree as she walked by, also choosing to ignore the hundreds-of-years-out-of-date sword she carried.

She pondered stopping to talk with the officers, maybe try to get some answers out of them. Were they a full-blown Black Cat/Special Investigations/Initiative kind of squad, or just a SWAT team where the
S
in SWAT was even more special than expected?

Danny stood guard with the rest of One Tough Mama’s security at the door to the warehouse set, loaded to the teeth.

It’s like
Attack the Block
meets
The Artist
. . .
Ree thought, her mind’s Hollywood-Pitch-O-Tron kicking on.

Inside, Jane and company had changed the set dressing to make a small theatre viewing area against an interior, the mirror set against a wall and two projectors fifteen feet back into the main room. One was an old-style multireel projector, the other was a portable joint connected to a laptop computer.

The mirror was easily eight feet tall, in a shining silver frame with metallic roses and thorns encircling the mirror’s surface. A dozen photos ringed the inside of the frame, head shots of Hollywood sweethearts from Rachel MacKenzie through Audrey Hepburn, all the way back to Shirley Temple.

Off to one side, Drake stood at the ready, decked out in full adventurer mode, goggles and all. His rifle was slung over one shoulder, and he held the
Hellboy
-sized pistol in his hands, the weapon approximately the size of his head. He’d prepared, though, and wore an equally heavy-duty wrist brace, complete with gears and pistons.

Ree scanned the room, seeing the nervous techs and PAs dressing a set, decking the wall out to resemble one of the grand old theatres in L.A., a three-hundred-square-foot version of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Sure, some of the wallpaper was scorched, and the candelabrum they’d hung up was missing three of its arms, but Ree guessed the effort and the base trappings were all that was needed, and the best they could do in a rush.

Yancy emerged from behind one of the false walls, wearing a freshly pressed suit that was old enough that it jumped clear past retro to pure vintage. He wore wide-rimmed glasses and had his hair slicked back and parted to the side. The net effect turned him from a late-twentieth-century director to a midcentury would-be contemporary of Cecil B. DeMille.

But his transformation paled to the marvel that was Jane Konrad.

The star came out of nowhere, and as she walked, a phantom spotlight followed her even before the lighting team picked her up. She wore a revelation of a dress, an all-black throwback to the Golden Age with matching gloves that reached past the elbow, making her the spitting image of Rita Hayworth.

It didn’t look like anything she’d seen in the star’s closet, and given the rays-of-the-sun-level of magical energy rolling off of Jane, it seemed as likely as not that the dress itself was spun from pure magic, the star wreathing herself in the adoration of her fans made manifest. Her hair was curled and pinned in a walking waterfall of curls, shimmering like rubies.

Ree discovered that her mouth was open and consciously closed it with a soft click of her teeth.

Be still, my machine-gun heart.

The room was silent as Jane crossed to Ree. The woman’s beauty glowed even brighter as she approached, and Ree raised a hand like she was blocking out the sun.

“Holy crap, Jane. You could put someone’s eye out with that.”

“That’s the idea. Let’s see Alex try something today. I’m pretty sure that right now I could upstage Justin Bieber in a stadium full of ten thousand preteen girls.” Jane turned to Yancy. “Are we all set?”

Yancy looked up, not meeting Jane’s eyes, either. “Very nearly. The police are handling first response, and we get anything after that. I want to send the rest of the crew home now, keep anyone else from getting hurt.”

“That includes you,” Jane said.

Yancy shook his head. “Not going to happen. I’m seeing this through. And you need at least one assistant during the ritual. Ree’s good, but if Alex sends another attack, she’ll be busy.”

“What’s with the second projector?” Ree asked.

Jane smiled. “The tools on the table are old, the traditional trappings of the working actress. But celebrity has gotten a lot more complicated since Norma’s time, and so has the magic.

“I put the word out on Twitter, Facebook, and my blog that all my fans should watch and live-tweet their favorite movie of mine, and I’ll donate a dollar for every tweet with the #JaneDay hashtag for the next two hours to my charity, Open Arms.”

“And aside from getting you to spend money you don’t have, how does that help?” Ree asked, trying to process what Jane’s reference to
Norma
meant.

“When we start the movie, we’ll also project the #JaneDay feed. Every tweet of attention will be a bit more fuel, pooling the collective positivity and attention to power the ritual.”

Ree whistled, thinking back to the Twitter feud that had gotten Jane into this mess, but also remembering similar campaigns by other stars. A single call for retweets from Neil Gaiman, Justin Bieber, or Lady Gaga could snowball into dropping the entire Internet on an issue. That’d be a lot of attention, even in 140-character chunks. “Wow. But didn’t the last thing you did with Twitter backfire?”

“This is a bit different. Plus, the Twitter part wasn’t the problem. I know it will work, I just need you to buy me the time to finish the ritual without Alex or Rachel screwing things up.”

So there it was. Ree imagined the
here’s the plan
scene in her mind from a Spider’s-eye view. The SWAT team was spaced out around the building, covering the entrances, backed up by Danny and the company security. Inside, it’d be her and Drake. Not much, but it would have to be enough. Plus, she’d gone toe-to-toe with a Dork Lord of Hell, and how much could Alex have left after sending a fucking dragon their way?

Famous last words, girl
, said her worried voice.

But, Spider-powers!
responded a bouncy voice, her inner twelve-year-old who thought being Spider-Man was the coolest thing ever.

Ree helped finish up the preparations and watched as the last of the crew packed it in. And because the universe couldn’t resist a little atmospheric foreboding, a rare Pacific Northwest thunderstorm rumbled its way in.

Jane stood in front of a table, a strange assortment of foci in front of her. But if dice, old modules, and action figures worked for a Geekomantic ritual, it only made sense that a Celebromancer working big mojo would use lipstick, a marked-up script, one of her awards-show dresses, a 35mm film reel, and a makeup set laid open around a compact. Jane’s glow had narrowed, focused into the ritual tools, which beamed with energy like glow sticks.

“Start the film,” Jane said, standing between the projector and the screen. Drake flicked the lights off, and Yancy started the reel. The lights beamed out, casting a Jane-sized shadow on the mirror, the film showing around her. At the same time, the modern projector showed a slow scroll of Twitter posts.

It was hard to read the credits with Jane blocking the screen, but Ree recognized the film as soon as she saw the black-and-white figure facedown in a pool beside a neglected mansion:
Sunset Boulevard
.

Whelp
, Ree thought.
Not the most encouraging film.

The story arc fit, mostly, but in a totally creepy way. It also explained Yancy’s retro getup.
He channels Cecil B. DeMille, and Jane taps into Norma Desmond’s white-hot desire for a return (never comeback) to the big screen.

A cluster of memories hit Ree all at once. The famous lines, the exaggerated costuming, and the tragic ending.

The symbolism worked for Yancy and Jane, but for Ree, it was more than a little problematic. Norma Desmond never gets back into film, and the manipulation of the screenwriter she hires leads her further into dementia until she shoots him dead after he tries to shatter her illusions and escape his gilded cage.

Ree knew that with Geekomancy, you could focus on one aspect of a film or show without getting all of the side effects of another part, but that didn’t stop a shiver from rippling down her spine, draining all the warmth out of her skin.

Ree looked to Yancy, but he avoided meeting her eyes, keeping his gaze locked on Jane.

Oh, that’s not good.

Her Spider-sense went off like a string of firecrackers behind her neck. She listened, trying to figure out if something was happening outside or if she was just freaking out about the movie choice. This was Swanson’s most famous film, and if hers was the only mirror they could find that fit, wouldn’t they have to make do? Jane’d had several chances to screw Ree over, why change her mind now? Right?

While she tried to calm her frayed nerves, she heard gunfire outside. She turned to Drake, who was already heading for the door closest to the noise.

Ree let him go, continuing to scan the room, looking for other intruders. Ree heard a whistle, then a crash that she felt as much as heard. She bounded to the door and swung herself up and out of the door, sticking to the outside wall with Spider powers.

Outside, the SWAT team was clashing with several dozen orcs from the Ralph Bakshi
Lord of the Rings
, which Cosmic had bought out from Warner Brothers. They might not be as fearsome-looking as the Uruk-hai of the Jackson production, but there were at least forty of them, and they were close to surrounding the police.

The squad had dropped into a proper Roman phalanx, forming an impenetrable square of transparent plastic and black Kevlar
®
. The shields turned back the arrows and spears, but the soldiers were pinned down, none of them fighting back.

Let’s see if I can’t do something about that.
Ree sheathed the sword and let loose a double dose of webbing, covering a half-dozen orcs and plastering them to the concrete.

“Forward!” called a voice from the team, and they pushed against the weakened flank, knocking orcs aside and breaking the line open. The orcs moved to adjust, but their lines were thinner now, less constant assault raining down on any point.

Ree jumped into the fray wearing an ear-to-ear grin as she hopped and bounded, cutting swaths across the orc line, moving just too fast for the orcs’ counterstrikes.

This is fucking awesome!
she thought, instinctively dodging a thrown spear by flipping backward. She nailed a three-point landing straight out of a McFarland panel, save for the sword she held out, ready for another run. The SWAT went on the offensive, pushing the orcs back onto one flank, driving the mob into the walls.

Ree hit the opposite flank with another burst of webbing, and the team polished the orcs off in short order, leaving behind a running river of ichor and Ree’s webbing.

After checking for more nasty yet to come, she hopped down from the wall and approached the team.