Celebromancy (8 page)

Yancy sighed. Ree took that as a yes. Ree ran through the last year of tabloid headlines, trying to imagine what the star had been through, her power tainted like Saidin in
The Wheel of Time
. Except just for her.

“It becomes a feedback loop, and it leaves a mark . . .” Yancy said. “And it’s gotten worse. It used to just knock the wind out of her; she’d wake up the next day tired, a bit out of sorts, like she’d had a poor night’s sleep. Then it was nightmares in earnest and hangovers in the morning. The worse it got, the more she needed to use Celebromancy to look the way she wanted, which just made things worse.”

Yancy looked to the thankfully-sleeping Jane. “She talked about the thing in her nightmares, but this is the first time it was really here, as far as I know. I told her to take it easy, but she’s been a star since she was fifteen. It’s part of who she is, and who could walk away from that?” The director shrugged. “I know I couldn’t.”

Danny returned with two steaming mugs of coffee.

Score!

He handed a mug each to Yancy and Ree, then produced a brown bag filled with cream and sugar. Ree Tasmanian-deviled through the bag for a handful of natural sugars and tore them all at once to pour in.

She took a long breath, the caffeine hitting her system faster than The Flash imitating E. Honda’s Hundred Hand Slap. “So why haven’t you done something about MacKenzie?”

Yancy took out cream and poured it into his mug, then grabbed a stirrer. “If we could have taken her on, we would have been able to counter her curse. My power is in proxies. I’m not at the auteur level of folks like Tarantino, Whedon, or Lucas; I don’t get the power myself. I bring people’s attention to my actors, namely Jane, and work with them. Jane’s the real powerhouse here.”

Ree took a sip of her coffee, which was just barely on this side of scalding. It would have been solidly on the other side if Ree hadn’t burned off most of her taste buds in the caffeine-filled years before. Jane had indulged Ree’s request to have her old boss Bryan Blin supply the coffee for the set. She closed her eyes and savored the familiar butter and hazelnut flavors of the Sunnydale Blend.

The director took a long swig from his own cup. “It was a risky move, but she was so sure of herself, thought it was the best thing to do. MacKenzie is just in it for the money. She only takes popular films, formulaic low-hanging fruit. She got more money and power, and just put it all back into getting more money and power.”

Yancy’s face was red with frustration as he spoke.

“But Jane, she was actually helping people. She was experimenting, bringing in new talent, trying to tackle real issues. Every project we do, Jane donates 30% of her take-home to women’s charities, children’s charities, used the attention she got to shine a light on inequity, and got people revved up about finding solutions.”

Ree nodded. Up until last year, it seemed like Jane had spent a season every year somewhere in Africa, rural India, Haiti, wherever there was need that went unnoticed in the States.

“She was so eager to take that next step . . . see what good she could do with that power . . .” Yancy stopped again, his eyes locked on the young star.

“Do you know for sure that it was Rachel MacKenzie who did the whammy?” Ree asked.

“Not for certain,” Yancy said. “But she’s still got the mantle, so the rumors seem to be dead-on. Hollywood is one big rumor mill, and once you factor out the more idiotic hype machines, we’re pretty good at keeping apprised of what’s going on, magically-speaking. It’s an open secret in the biz, like the fact that a splinter sect of Scientologists are alien-worshipping sorcerers who have magical indoctrination camps out in the desert.”

“I knew it!” Ree said.

Yancy raised his free hand, palm open and out to calm her response. “Not that we could take that evidence to the feds. At least one alphabet-soup agency is clued in, but they seem to leave well enough alone, at least as far as Hollywood is concerned. They learned their lessons at the end of House Un-American Activities Committee, when Reagan and Disney pivoted to clean house of the competition.”

All fear the Mouse-stapo
, Ree thought.

“The big multimedia companies have their own stables and their own agendas, fueling their ambitions with the star power harvested by their films and shows. That’s why Jane and I went independent a few years back. But we made some enemies when we left Cosmic Studios.”

“Well, that’s not scary at all,” Ree said, considering what it’d be like to have a megacorp in her rogue’s gallery. “But how does that explain the invisible monster-hag-thing?” Ree asked, gesturing to the room and to Jane.

“She complained about nightmares, of something invisible attacking her in her dreams.”

“Like Freddy Krueger?” Ree asked, shivering. She hadn’t slept well for a month after seeing that movie as a kid. She took another sip of coffee.

“Not quite. And it’s never come through into this world, as far as I know. This is beyond me, and it has me worried.” Yancy leaned back in the chair, then turned to Danny. “Someone stays with her through the morning, and then at all times. She won’t like it, but I’m going to insist.” Yancy glanced at Ree. “Well, almost all times.”

Ree nearly snorted coffee out her nose.

She took a second to reclaim her semblance of composure and asked, “Are we going to stop filming?”

Yancy nodded. “I can’t in good conscience ask her to work like this. I asked her not to take the pilot . . . It was too dangerous, not until she had more control, could stop the flow of magic before it overtook her.” He shook his head. “We need to fix this, and soon. I don’t think anyone can convince her to take it easy if she doesn’t want to. She’d much sooner burn out than fade away.”

What craziness have I gotten myself into?

Ree took a long swig of coffee, letting the marvelous mistress of caffeine have her way with her neurochemistry. “So we just have to find MacKenzie and get her to undo the curse, right?”

Like that will be simple
, she challenged herself.

I’m trying to sound confident here, okay?
she responded inwardly.

Yancy started pacing. “If anyone can undo it, it’ll be Rachel. But getting to her is easier said than done,” Yancy said, corroborating her doubt. “Rachel will be extra-wary with Jane in town, even if she’s just letting the curse play out without any extra effort. She might not know you by sight, though, so you’d have a better chance at snooping around. Though she’s not exactly accessible.”

Ree couldn’t say exactly how suspicious to be about Rachel, since more and more companies were filming in Pearson these days.

He stopped. “But you’re not just a writer, are you? What are you, Cinemancer? Geekomancer?”

Ree was struck. She hadn’t expected the magic world to be quite that small.

She nodded. “Geek. And I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve. But Rachel probably has enough bodyguards to run Danny and me straight out of town.”

Yancy smiled, his eyes still sad. “Probably. But if you could get to her, or get information about the curse, we might be able to go from there.”

“I know a few people. Not so much on the Celebromancy side, but they should know the field enough to point me in the right direction. Since the right direction tends to be straight into the mouth of danger.”

“Isn’t that the truth. I’ll leave you to rest, if you can. We’ve called the police, as well.”

Ree raised an eyebrow. “What are we supposed to tell them?”

“There was too much of a ruckus for us to be able to cover it up, thanks to the tabloids. They’re camped outside, and the net has already gone berserk with rumors. I’ll do damage control as best as I can. Say you didn’t get a good look at the assailant, and that he left out the window.”

Ree sighed. “This is going to be a big fucking mess.”

“Don’t I know it. I’ll do my best to bury the story, but make sure I know what you told them. The best thing for us is for the press to write this off as a crazed fan and go on a wild-goose chase to find a person who doesn’t exist.”

“Don’t they, though?” Ree asked. “Some invisible ninja attacker person? How many of those are there around?”

Yancy opened his arms up as if to indicate
how should I know?
He said, “As many as you can think of, and probably several more.” Yancy folded up the chair, stepped over the bed to kiss Jane on the crown of her head like a father kissing a child good night, then nodded to Ree as he left the trailer.

“Well, fucksticks,” Ree said to the world in general. She slid carefully out of bed to collect the rest of her clothes and get ready to spin the tale to the police as well as the not-insubstantial chance of getting annoyingly knowing looks from the detectives.

Not the kind of fame I was hoping for.

•   •   •

The gods were kind and sent Ree a female detective to take her witness statement. Jane was still out when the police arrived at 4:13 AM, a half hour after the attack.

The detective reminded her of Kate Beckett (early season, not late—short hair). She was no-nonsense and patently ignored the wrapped-in-sheets form of Jane Konrad and asked only the most general questions about why Ree was there, what they were doing, and what they knew about the attacker and what had happened.

I won’t scandalize if you don’t
, the detective seemed to say with her look.
Thank Sappho.

Jane was still out when Detective Yao was done taking Ree’s statement, so she gave Ree a card and left.

Ree checked her phone. 4:47. She could flop back in bed and deal with several stages of awkward in the morning, or duck out and head home at ass o’ clock for a few hours of marginally-better sleep at home and deal with the awkward slightly later. But then again, Jane might freak out if she wasn’t there in the morning.

Hell, she
should
freak out. And it’s not like you’re BFFs. One night out and a hookup do not a couple make—or even friends, necessarily.

Ree fell on the side of tired and returned to bed, curling up next to Jane. It took what felt like an eternity, as the hamster on a wheel of her brain dashed along like it was on speed. It wasn’t even the coffee. That much had barely registered to her addict-level tolerance. But eventually, after much wheel-spinning, she did get back to sleep.

•   •   •

The next time she woke, it was light outside, and she smelled the barest scent of perfume. Jane was still sleeping beside her, flopped on the bed in the exact same position she’d settled into after the attack.

Ree snuck out of bed, dressed, and tiptoed out to the main section of the trailer to scavenge for breakfast. As she clattered around the kitchenette, someone knocked on the trailer door. Ree walked over and opened the door a creak.

It was Danny, holding two coffee cups.

“Bless your heart,” Ree said, channeling her mom’s Midwestern family. “Coffee?”

Danny held one cup up, then the other. “One’s a cappuccino, the other is black, for Jane,” Danny said. “Is she up?”

Ree shook her head as she took the cappuccino, then shouldered the door open to let Danny in.

“I’ll give her the coffee, but she’s still out. How was the rest of the night?”

“Tense but silent.”

Ree sipped some of the cappuccino, and took a long breath and imagined the
look, we have a CGI budget!
digital animation of the caffeine hitting her bloodstream, little tiny Rees waking up and starting to bounce around the vein.

“Much better,” she said. “How long do you think she’ll be out?” Ree asked, eager to get started doing . . . something. Anything other than sitting and waiting in the place where she’d had her first naked fistfight. Her mind cued up a graphic for the milestone.

Achievement Unlocked: 25G — THIS IS SPARTA!

Danny leaned into the hallway and peeked down toward the bedroom. “I don’t know, but if you want to leave, go ahead. I’m the one who gets paid to protect her, after all.”

Fair point.

The bodyguard took a step back, putting him out of sight from the trailer door. “Geekomancer, eh?”

“So they tell me. I’m still pretty new to the game. You?”

Danny shrugged. “Just a guy.”

“Vanilla mortal. More points for skills,” Ree responded, as if it were the thing to say.

Danny didn’t follow.

You’re out of your element here. Stick to the movie references.
“I’ll head out, then. Have Jane call me when she’s up for it. Not that I’m slinking off or anything, it’s just, you know. Stuff to do, magic, investigation.”

Danny pursed his lips while the Awkwardness Monster critted for a special Condition.

Explaining to the bodyguard of a superstar you just slept with that you weren’t trying to vanish after a hookup followed by a midnight magical fight scene:

X4 Social damage multiplier with a lingering Embarrassment effect. Save ends.

Danny waited, patiently, while Ree shook off as much of the self-consciousness as she could.

“Take care of her. And yourself. I’ll be around. Unless I’m dead. Hopefully I’ll be around.”

Ree picked up her coat from its resting place on the sofa and walked down out of the trailer into the early light of morning.

Step 1) Go home, take shower, reboot brain.

Step 2) Set mode to Detective and do some research on Rachel MacKenzie.

Step 3) Try to keep production clear of doom and personal life from spiraling into soap opera.

And . . . go!

Chapter Seven

Step One

Rachel MacKenzie’s marriage on the rocks?

The Big Dish
has exclusive pictures showing America’s Sweetheart leaving her Malibu estate with luggage in tow, well in advance of the start of principal photography for
Blog Wars
.

—
The Big Dish
, May 13, 2012

Ur pic’s broken, idiots. U call that journalism?

—@MSTCHIEF96, Twitter, May 13, 2012

Both parties in the MacKenzie-Patterson divorce have filed for a closed-room hearing. Rachel MacKenzie is suing for full custody of their daughter, Amelia, but Patterson’s counsel is “confident” that they will win custody, citing a “history of instability,” which they will prove in court.

Court date is scheduled for June 7, immediately following MacKenzie’s wrap on
Blog Wars
.

—SpiceOfLife.com, May 22, 2012

Unlike the rest of Ree’s night, Step One was simple. She made her way home, showered, and made herself a pot of Bryan’s Dark Dungeons roast. Her mind drifted back to simpler times at her old life working at Café Xombi as she sipped, a life where arguments about how X and Y magic systems would interact was all for fun, not to keep yourself from ending up dead in real life.

She resolved to spend several afternoons reconnecting with Bryan, Charlie, Aidan, and the gang when the pilot was done shooting, then she put her focus back on the previous night.

She noshed on a plastic bag of carrots that were headed from carrot orange to no-longer-food white. They still smelled like food, and they didn’t have that sliminess carrots got when they had become mulch.

Researching Rachel MacKenzie’s production was simple. She was shooting a romantic comedy called
Blog Wars
, starring as a plucky food blogger trying to stand out in the L.A. food scene (All cities stand in for L.A., just as L.A. stands in for all cities. Most people don’t notice. Except the tons who do.), when her path crosses with a brusque bar blogger (played by Ryan Gosling, who had become the new Actor Who Must Be in All the Movies).

In the film, Gosling’s Gonzo-style video blog, Mulholland Drunk, completely eclipses the popularity of MacKenzie’s blog, threatening her livelihood. Personalities clash, chemistry sparks, yada yada, smooching, misunderstandings, and then romantic reconciliation with swelling music by The Lumineers or the like.

As with most things, it would come down to execution, but Ree was getting a big scent of gold-plated crap off of the project. The bar seemed to be low for romantic comedies these days, even with home runs like
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
and
Going the Distance
or the standout dramedies like
Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Cosmic was shooting the film a few miles south of the sets for
Awakenings
. Google and insider production stills showed scenes being shot all across downtown: the Wedge, Pearson Plaza, and the Orange Building. One Tough Mama was the plucky independent, and Cosmic was in the Big Leagues.

Well, it’ll be easy to find them. Maybe not so easy to get in. But luckily, magic.

Ree looked over to her media wall. She used to be fairly laid-back about organizing her collection. It was where it was, and she knew more or less where everything lived.

Now that her media collection was part of her magical arsenal, she’d arranged the films by what she could get out of them.

General action movies went together—the ones that could give her movie physics dodging, leaping, and toughness.

Overt fantasies were another row—films that could let her fling fireballs or fight off a dozen orcs wearing nothing but skimpy leather armor.

Superhero movies went at the top, arranged in ascending order of power while she finished figuring out how to use them effectively—she’d tried to fly after a Superman marathon and had only gotten across one rooftop.

Watching a movie or show built up a certain amount of magical energy, depending on how much she loved the show in question, how popular it was overall, her relative experience as a Geekomancer, and how much of the show she watched before using the power.

And to make the math even more complicated, the charge faded slowly over time, even if she didn’t use it. She had tried to create a formula to make things more precise, and decided to drink instead. It was all variables and no solid numbers. How do you put number rankings on your fandoms? Did she like Star Wars 3.75 times as much as Star Trek, or just 3 times as much?

Math aside, she was getting more efficient the more she practiced, that was certain.

But the big stuff, like flying, laser eyes, and the more reality-breaking stuff, was beyond her for the moment. It took more juice than she could hold at once. She’d learned to target the middle-level powers, tricks that were contextually instead of universally badass.

Unlike the one-shot tricks she used by tearing up CCG cards or comics, genre emulation was an infinitely renewable resource. She could go back and rewatch something to top off her magical charge. Trial and error were her friends, just as long as the errors in her trials didn’t get her killed.

She had also grouped the horror movies together, but she’d been afraid to try most of them out, since she wasn’t sure she qualified for Last Girl status, even with her just-now-broken stint of chastity-due-to-an-extreme-lack-of-dating. Plus, she’d just seen
Cabin in the Woods
and was now feeling uncertain guilt about consuming horror thanks to the fact that the film seemed way more plausible in a magic-is-real world.

What’s going to work here?
she asked herself. Something that grants invisibility would work, as would something that could give her an air of authority. (
I’m an associate producer, I’m supposed to be here!
) She could watch
The Usual Suspects
and try to bullshit her way in, or maybe
The Adventures of Lois and Clark
to get her Lois Lane on.

The prop One Ring that her dad had sent in one of the goody boxes from home would do the trick as well, though she didn’t like using that in case it proved to be a little too realistic. Sure, Eastwood’s rings worked, but he never mentioned where they came from, and she’d rather not take risks with repeated exposure. Ree knew women who could pull off bald, but no one could pull off the Gollum comb-over.

Ideally, she’d get something that wouldn’t lead to instant fail when the mojo ran out. She’d gotten much better at timing out how much power and time she could get out of various lengths of viewing. Geekomancy was actually not unlike D&D magic for some things. Now, if only she could see the dice rolls so she could know exactly how long a power would last. Duration: 6d10 rounds was quite a range in a three-second-round universe.

Ree stopped at her copy of
X-Men: First Class
, settling on the Mystique approach. She could impersonate a local reporter, and Ree knew just the one.

She took a lap around the Internet while the movie loaded up through five minutes of hard-coded trailers and advertisements, remembering something she’d seen in her Twitter feed on the way home.

There was a message from her dad, an email about some film blogger who wanted to interview her, and a Google Alert for her name.

Achievement Unlocked: 10 G First Tabloid Appearance.

Someone at Infinity had put two and two together with a short piece of technically-journalism captioned by a picture of her and Jane dancing.

Jane Konrad’s Wild Night

Dancing and Drinking, then Screaming and Police: Has She Lost It Again?

Child actress turned hot mess Jane Konrad was spotted at Infinity Club, downing vodka and dancing up a storm with her apparent new playgirl, screenwriter Ree Reyes. The pair arrived together, split a bottle of vodka, and were seen leaving together making significant glances, and WTF has exclusive photographs of two female silhouettes in the star’s trailer.

But did the night go bad? Police were called onto the set of Konrad’s new pilot for
Awakenings
, written by Reyes. A lover’s quarrel, perhaps, or another meltdown from the former child star? Is another trip to rehab far off for Konrad?

Ree read the article three times, wavering between anger and worry.
Just what I don’t need: attention.
It’d be hard to snoop around the city with paparazzi following her hoping to get exclusive dirt or access to Jane.

She closed the message, scanned the rest of her email, and very deliberately didn’t make the rounds through the TV-focused sites she followed.

One thing at a time
, she thought. She looked up and noticed that the DVD menu had looped around again, so she put the laptop down and pressed play.

•   •   •

As the credits started rolling, Ree’s mind was bursting with the magical energy of the film, the power of change, the metaphors made real. Ree controlled her breathing and focused on Raven’s story for the film: her sense of alienation, her totally obvious crush on the equally oblivious Xavier, and her desire to truly belong.

She’d discovered that for emulating a character and their power, the more she empathized with the character, the better off she was. So watching the whole film was way more effective than just watching a Raven Darkholme badass reel.

Ree closed her eyes and held an image in her head that she’d had up on her laptop the whole time during the movie, that of
Pearson Patriot
reporter Kelly Dominguez.

She’d met Kelly once before the press panel, at a launch party for a webseries a friend of a friend had been involved with. Between that one meeting, the press panel, and Kelly’s video reviews, she hoped she’d be able to do a passable enough job of impersonating the reporter to get onto the set and try to dig up some information, maybe even talk to Rachel MacKenzie in person. Any other magic on-set would be bug-frak-crazy, so it’d have to be strictly recon, in and out. Plus, the charge wouldn’t last long enough for anything else. Ree bet that a full-body change like this would drain the battery way faster than the kinds of powers where she just tapped the energy for bursts, like she did with Buffy, the Matrix, and the like.

Energy rippled across her body. Her hair grew longer, her face shifted, nose and mouth and jaw settling into new positions. Her torso shortened and grew more curvy, going from twig-like to rubenesque. She walked to the bathroom and checked herself in the mirror.

Yep, it worked. Kelly Dominguez looked back at her from the mirror, complete in the media professional outfit she wore in one of the
Pearson Patriot
team profile pictures and a press badge dangling hilariously above her ample cleavage. Ree stretched out, feeling the differences and marveling at the weird awesomeness of being in someone else’s body.

Note to self: Don’t do this too much. It could get creepy.

Plus, if she wanted to, with this and some other tricks, she could be one hell of a criminal. Not that impersonating a member of the press wasn’t already on the gray side, but it’s not like she was going to take up a career as a cat burglar.

Though there are also the kinky possibilities
, her libido offered.

Down, girl. Work now, play later
, she told herself, trying to stay present in the moment.

The clock was ticking on her X-Mojo, so she gathered up a purse (with a lightsaber, a sonic screwdriver, and
Magic: The Gathering
cards for escapes, counterspells, and assorted one-off fixes) and headed out.

•   •   •

After a twenty-minute subway trip, Ree turned onto the corner of Pearson Plaza and zoned in on the signs of the shoot. She power-walked her way over, annoyed that Kelly was the kind of woman who wore three-inch heels as a matter of course.

Ree kept her eyes open as she closed in on the production, futzing with the press badge around her neck.

A young Middle Eastern woman in a black T-shirt, sunglasses, and cutoff jeans stopped her at the edge of the shooting area.

Ree presented her press badge, trying to look like she’d done it a hundred times.

“Kelly Dominguez,
Pearson Patriot
. I have an appointment,” Ree said, a bit surprised to hear someone else’s voice coming out.

The woman seemed unimpressed. “What appointment?”

Ree let the magic guide her words, augmenting her memory of Kelly to keep the ruse going.

“Oh, great. So now the biggest paper in Pearson isn’t important enough for Hollywood to keep our appointments anymore?” Ree turned up the drama. “My boss said this would happen. He told the mayor that if we let the production companies in, we gave them an inch, they’d take ten square miles, set up shop, and stop answering calls from the local press.”

Ree locked the woman in her gaze to hit the point home. “This isn’t Hollywood north, you know that, right? You’re here as a part of our good graces. You blow us off, and my editor raises hell in City Hall. Then
poof
go your permits, your tax breaks, and who do you think they will blame?”

The probably-intern wilted under Ree’s Scathing Reporter act and took a step back before saying, “Stay here, I’ll go make sure they know you’re coming.” The woman vanished into the hubbub, leaving Ree unguarded.

Ree relaxed, feeling a bit bad for biting the woman’s head off for doing her job.
So, do I wait for her to come back and escort me in, or barge in for more juicy info and try to push a reaction?
If she did the latter, it’d come back to bite Kelly even more than what she was already doing. And the real Kelly would be around sometime today; Ree had gotten the whole idea off of Dominguez’s Twitter feed when she had asked her followers for questions to ask MacKenzie during her set visit that afternoon.

Ree took several long breaths, maintaining her mental grip on the magic keeping her in Mystiqued mode.

The probably-intern came back, looking a bit less annoyed as Ree tried to greet her with a smile.

“Straight back, then the third trailer on the left. Her assistant says you’re early.”