Tune in Tomorrow, page 21
“Yes, yes,” said the SEVVVP. “But first, please explain this development.” She fluttered the fingers of one hand, spraying droplets around the table. “This Bee-Roll was taken some weeks ago.”
The Seelie’s gesture conjured up two dozen small, soundless images in the waterfall-screen. The pictures wove and hovered like disorganized security camera footage. Jason recognized Centaur Park, then a grassy field, then—Starr, surrounded by a herd of centaurs. His eyebrows rose, as did his horns.
“Do pay close attention,” the SEVVVP continued. “This is a high-level view of the occurrence, as Project Drone has only proved partially efficacious. Bees are terribly hard workers but having some of the smaller members of our clan equip each of them with miniature cameras has proven somewhat off-piste and we may need to go back to the drawing board. The silly things never remember to turn them on, and there’s a gratuitous amount of inner flower footage. Audio is also proving tricky. Now, if your cameradryads had been on site …” She trailed off, twiddling her fingers again.
In the frames, which switched viewpoints and angles randomly, Starr was speaking with mythics, though nothing could be heard. Then she was astride a centaur and all but flying across the park. Jason stood up. “She’s riding a centaur!” he blurted, then winced. “I mean—she’s riding a centaur. Naturally.”
“Indeed,” said the SEVVVP. “Quite extraordinary.”
A new angle: Fiona and Nico being carted away ungracefully by elves and gryphons, then dragged into a grotto behind a rock outcropping and thoroughly rumpled for an extended period. Perspiration began to mat Jason’s hair. A new angle showed Starr looking out over the tableau from the top of a boulder, still astride the centaur. Jason felt funny in his gut, and also very hungry.
With a wave of the SEVVVP’s fingers—and another spray of water drops—the images vanished.
Jason sat down slowly, body thrumming, and stared hard into the frosted glass of the table. He had no idea what to say, a fact that had only happened to him three times in his life before now. What he knew for sure was this: he’d lost the show. There was no coming back from this—his mortals and those mythics mingling like it happened every day. Which it did not. Except for conventions and special protected MARBLE locations, he kept the actors out of the mythic milieu. Their reality, to mythics, was only supposed to take place on the show. It was a disaster.
“I can’t explain,” he began. “It happened… organically.”
“Of course it did!” The SEVVP slapped her hands on the table, and was so overexcited she had to be misted by a nearby assistant. To Jason’s surprise, the other Seelie were grinning. “What we have witnessed here in this footage—which, to be clear, has only been seen by all of us in this room—is a true example of TOTB!”
“TOTB?”
“Thinking Outside the Box,” whispered a feathery green Fae to his left.
“It’s a brilliant step toward the future,” the executive continued. “Immersive action with your audience. Allowing them to help choose the adventure they wish to participate in. Guiding them toward that adventure—by their favorite mortals! We appreciate your innovative experimentation and declare it a tentative success that requires more exploration. Well done—” Here, she spoke Jason’s True Name.
The room burst into applause, a sound that generated rainbows on the wall.
Jason felt drunk. The intense need to find out what had happened in the park warred with his desire to lap up the approval, but was overridden by the realization that no, they were not taking the show from him. He hadn’t lost it—at least, not to the network. I might, though, have lost it to Starr. That would have to be remedied, immediately. But what had happened? Obviously, Starr had MARBLEd to the nexus and made some friends. Had she kept the façade of the reality show alive simultaneously? He thought of the extraordinary gesture that centaur had made by allowing Starr to ride it and suspected she had. His latest human acquisition continued to surprise him, and he thought of seeing her on that stage again as a mango. Then he recalled the magical concept of what she had called yes, and.
Well, if a human could do it, so could he. “Yes,” he said. “And.”
“And? There is more?”
Jason’s mind scampered. Emma was the one who came up with the good ideas; he put them into practice. “And.” He paused again. “And this was just a—test gallop.” He searched for more. “We have more ideas like this to put into play. One doesn’t want to make them too commonplace. They might lose their… zing.”
“Zing indeed!” the SEVVVP cheered. “Which brings us to the most critical juncture of this meeting.”
Flushed with success, Jason leaned forward. Bring it on!
“At your upcoming convention, we wish you to film just such a sequence.”
Jason held steady, gripping the table. True, they usually filmed a full episode while there; it was known as a VSE, a Very Special Episode. It was a tricky balancing act to keep the show in reality with the actors running around the hotel, having adventures and pretending not to see any mythics they came across. Any mythics who ended up on camera were carefully edited out of the final version, which then aired at the winter solstice. It was a laborious process, but paid off exponentially in eyeballs; the audience loved seeing their favorites in fresh spaces and always hoped they might have made it into one of the human escapades.
“We already have a story set up for the convention,” he said carefully. “There are some explosive revelations prepared. I am on top of this.”
“Naturally,” the Seelie nodded. “This is a win-win proposition. We are merely asking you to TOTB and include some mythics this time. Dress them up as mortals if you like but include them.”
Jason’s eyes widened. “But no mythics are supposed—”
“We know the dictum. We invented it. And we are considering that perhaps it has outlived its usefulness. But as your hotel VSE always ends up as a dream, or hallucination, or head injury and so doesn’t ‘count’ toward the show’s canonical structure, we have concluded that this is the optimum space for further experimentation.”
There was no option. Jason swallowed and nodded.
“However”—the SEVVVP leaned across the table—“be advised: your situation with Tune in Tomorrow is at a critical juncture. No, perhaps I misspoke. The show’s situation is at a critical juncture. You need a win here.”
“So you want to experiment on a show that you already say is in trouble,” he said.
“TOTB,” nodded the SEVVVP.
“TOTB,” agreed the rest of the conference room.
“To that end, this Central Park Nexus event has given us a further Grand Idea,” continued the SEVVVP.
Jason’s smile froze. No producer ever wanted to hear that an executive had been attempting to be creative. Gods save us from network heads with Grand Ideas of Their Own.
Still, how bad could it be?
Chapter 24
Guest Starr
On the surface, Phil made sense as a security guard. He was a proper, enormous dragon, theoretically full of fire in the belly and leftover meat in the teeth.
But so far as Starr had seen, Phil was a receptionist. For one thing, his belly fire was mostly a small, flickering flame. “My therapist says I got lack of confidence,” he’d muttered to Starr some weeks back in his tractor trailer-sized voice. “I got issues.”
One of which was that flame—which meant he’d be more likely to smoke things than scorch them—and the fact that he’d never consumed a human. “Yet,” he always made sure to add, third eyelid nictitating over one lightning-bolt pupil. It was meant to be a threatening gesture, but mostly it made him seem like he was winking at Starr.
His ‘issues’ left him with a smaller skillset and fewer job prospects than most dragons of his size, which meant he put extra effort into guarding the contents of his cave, a jagged rocky opening that burst from the wall behind the reception desk like an explosion and emitted damp breezes.
Starr hadn’t expected pushback when she asked if she could go through the archived scripts he held back there. Much had happened in the Central Park/Centaur Park Nexus, but the action item that had stuck with her was Nico’s advice to read Joseph’s old scripts. She knew they were kept in the cave.
For weeks, Phil had refused her entry. “It’s a mess back there,” he said. “I don’t get visitors.”
He hadn’t budged when she promised to leave any gold or jewelry alone either; the mere mention of precious valuables had made the spikes on his back rise up, piercing his grey shirt. Sparks had shot from a corner of his mouth.
Starr went back to the drawing board, refusing to give up. The scripts were the one tidbit of useful intel she’d gleaned from that bonkers afternoon in the nexus, and she held onto that thread with both hands as the weeks dragged by. There was no section in the Guide about how to deal with dragons, and back home on her side of the Veil the internet was so chock full of dragon lore as to be virtually useless. She wasn’t going to stab him with a lance, and Oleander had no tea that would knock out a creature of that size. Besides, someone would notice an unconscious security dragon if they did that.
One idea with potential came from a web-based cooking show about historical recipes, in which she learned that some dragons could be felled with huge servings of Yorkshire parkin. She made eight trays of the sticky gingerbread cake and hauled them in—and they disappeared down Phil’s expansive gullet in less than a minute. He belched and left a smoky stain on the far wall, then went back to being intractable.
Starr was getting desperate. Cessation of hostilities with Fiona had been fresh when she’d first approached Phil, and they couldn’t last forever. She was going to have to find a misdirection that had staying power. Maybe offering Phil something he found irresistible.
All of this assumed Nico hadn’t been having her on, providing Starr with her own misdirection. Ugh, Nico. He wouldn’t come within a few feet of her, except on set—and his sole communication since Central Park had been to send loud, gaudy flowers daily to her dressing room. The card always read the same: Forgive me.
Nope, Starr thought each time, handing them over to Oleander to share with other brownies, who ate them with relish, then picked their teeth with the stems. Watching Nico wear his hair shirt was satisfying, and Starr was doing just fine in the silence. She had a new project in Phil.
“Mortals steal from me.” Phil slurped sriracha from his mug. “If my possessions are under threat, I can’t help myself. It’s in the blood. Even if I let you in, I’d feel you in there rooting around. And you’d end up mangled or maimed or smoked and I’d end up fired and my therapist would have to see me four times a week, instead of three.”
Starr shivered. It was like talking to Hannibal Lecter about his favorite recipes.
Phil ran his long tongue around the inside of his cup, lapping up the final drops of the hot sauce. “Sigh. There’s never enough.”
A small explosion lit Starr up. That was it. Sriracha was going to save the day.
Over the past months, Starr had observed a few interesting facts about the effect of sriracha on Phil the dragon. For one thing, he could sip it by the gallon. For another, it sent him into a blissful, meditative state that reminded her of her brother Bill getting stoned on the couch in their basement back in Maryland. She’d brought in bottles of the stuff from time to time as a gift—but now, she was going to give him more than he could handle. The next day, she cleaned out the Costco warehouse of their supply of the condiment and began importing five-gallon jugs of Señor Sriracha through the portal, stacking them in her dressing room. Three days later, the room had filled with fourteen containers, and Oleander had questions.
“Glad you asked,” said Starr. “Because I’m going to need your help.”
Oleander clapped her hands in delight until Starr revealed how close she was going to have to come to the dragon. “All you have to do is make sure he keeps drinking,” said Starr. She had brought along a series of PVC pipes linked together in a looping, swirling shape to serve as a crazy straw that would slow the draw on Phil’s slurping ability. Based on observing the dragon, Starr guessed he’d go through five gallons every two minutes—which would give her nearly half an hour to get in, search, and get out.
“Oleander is not on board with this at all,” said the brownie. “Must Ms. Starr do this?”
“Starr must,” she said, giving the brownie a hug. “But if you don’t want to help, I’ll ask—”
“No!” Oleander stood firm. “Of course Oleander is there to help. But Starr must be quick and careful. Yes?”
“Hell, yes,” Starr nodded. “I’ll be faster than I’ve ever been before.”
With that, they wheeled out the containers in a cart and unveiled them in front of the dragon. “For you,” said Starr, waving her hand over the containers like a presenter on a game show.
Phil smoked appreciatively and dropped his magazine. “For me?”
“For… putting up with my endless questions,” said Starr. “I even got you a special straw.”
Delighted, Phil snatched up the PVC pipe construction in his recently painted talons, stared into it, and began to bounce with excitement. The entire lobby shook. Oleander peered from behind Starr. “Oleander is here to help with the containers,” said the brownie, voice weak but steady. “No eating brownies, yes?”
Phil’s eyes were wide. He could barely focus on anything other than the bounty of containers in the shopping carts. “No brownie eating. Got it,” he muttered. “Sriracha me!”
Starr had plotted this out as best she could. Secrecy was optimal: she didn’t want to provoke questions or have someone in charge tell her she couldn’t do this. Cris was directing that afternoon, which meant they were bound to start late. Jason was out at a network meeting all morning. She’d convinced the hairies and makeup Fae to do her up early, getting her hair pinned back and held in place, and slid into costume before bringing Phil the goodies. She patted the pockets of her bomber jacket and nodded.
“Don’t go.” Oleander grabbed onto Sam’s jacket. “Too much danger.”
“Not if you help.” Starr hugged the brownie and took a deep breath, imagining Sam—fearless, game for anything. She shot a quick glance at Phil, who was settling against the outer wall of the cave, eyes fluttering closed as he slid into sriracha bliss.
Her heart was pounding. Time to do this thing. She flattened herself against the cave entrance and tiptoed in like a ninja. Her phone’s flashlight app illuminated the dim cave interior, a cool breeze caressing her cheeks. A thigh-high brown shag rug swallowed up her legs and she felt like she was wading through very tall grasses. Though she tried to move quickly, the shag dragged on her. As she passed through Phil’s living quarters, she noted a stereo system with speakers the size of refrigerators, a lava lamp with what looked like real molten rock inside, and giant posters pasted on the rough walls for films like Firestarter, The Towering Inferno and Lair of the White Worm.
Abruptly, the sea of shag ended, and the room broke open into a space even more vast and imposing than the lobby she’d left behind. A deep pile of gold coins obscured the floor, illuminating the room with a warm glow. Fairy gold, she thought. Guess they have to store it somewhere. Starr leaned down to pick up a coin, but jerked back. No point in prematurely waking the beast from his bliss.
On entering the cave, she ran out of plan. She had no idea what it would look like inside, and so had no idea how to start looking for scripts. But that turned out to be the easy part: amid the piles of gold and shining gems stood a series of battered and rusting file cabinets. Some were as tall as Starr; others loomed over two stories high. Drawers hung open here and there, coughing up loose pages and stapled-together script-sized sheaves. It was as daunting as a look from Fiona and Starr sighed, grasping the task at hand. There wasn’t enough sriracha in New York City to give her the time she’d need to properly investigate in here. Phil would die of an overdose before she could even make a dent.
A light film of sweat broke out on her forehead. Well, if it wasn’t for dumb luck I’d have no luck at all, she thought, and began clambering over the coins. Reaching her first file cabinet, she dug through an open drawer randomly. She tossed aside scripts written on parchment paper as too ancient; ditto to those mimeographed in purple ink. Every so often she pushed her injury a bit too far and had to pause, sipping long, shallow breaths. Oleander’s pain-relieving tea was a godsend, but not a cure-all. All along, her heart pounded, and every small sound made her jump.
“Five!” the brownie called down the throat of the cave, alerting her to the dragon’s progress. It was the one alert they thought they could get away with while Phil disappeared in his hot sauce fugue. But if he was already on five of fourteen, Starr knew time was running short.
Gritting her teeth, Starr came across plain black typewritten scripts, assuming they were more modern and potentially Joseph’s. Each script was its own treasure trove of words and characters long forgotten by writers just as unremembered. She would have loved to read them, but there was no time. She was just looking for one byline.
Nothing, nothing and nothing.
Backing away from the cabinets, Starr tried to assess. Random search was useless. She could have used an extra pair of hands—like, say, Nico’s. But they weren’t talking. Mav would have been an excellent choice; since the wardrobe incident, he’d been a bright light for her. They spent hours rehearsing in her dressing room, and on set they were plugged into one another’s wavelength. If she missed a line, he guided her back; when he picked up the wrong prop once, she’d cued him to the correct one. Mav had become a real friend.
Sometimes, she wished he’d be a little less hands-off. Once or twice she’d nearly suggested they MARBLE somewhere interesting for dinner one night. Talk about anything except the show, like regular mortals. If Mav were here right now, he’d have something sensible to suggest.
