Tune in Tomorrow, page 32
Oleander popped up. “Sam Draper has come to protest with brownies!”
Half of the room shushed them, and the other half shushed the shushers.
“Er, no,” Starr told the room. “I was… unavoidably detained upstairs.” Oleander looked so downcast her heart hurt. “I would be with you if I didn’t have this… um, soiree to attend.” She raised her fist. “Er, power to the brownies?”
“Good enough,” muttered Jan. “Now get out of here.” They waved at the fans. “Make a path, you gawpers.”
A wide lane opened across the linoleum, pushing mythics to the side whether they chose to move or not, and Starr dashed down it, the tiled floor cold beneath her toes. She reached the escalator down to the ballroom and hesitated—bare feet on escalator stairs seemed like danger incarnate—and instead threw herself onto the rubber handhold, balancing as it carried her all the way down. Once there, she found another hallway, packed with mythics. They all sat in front of a portable fountain, which shot up a fan of smooth water that streamed a simulcast of the live show.
Drawn to the screen closest to her, Starr recognized the scene: Beatrice, Valéncia and Mav were strolling around the well-appointed ballroom as if attending a party, chatting among themselves. A fireplace had been set on the far side of the room, flames crackling in its hearth. The rest of the guests at the soiree, all of whom chatted quietly in small groups so the main actors could be heard, were either guest actors or costumed mythics. Starr spotted a Cyclops in a suit and tie with an additional fake googly eye pasted on the side of its head; a mermaid in a long, flowing dress and giant red wig whizzing around in a bedazzled wheelchair; and at least one unicorn in a mask and tuxedo, a top hat disguising its horn. They looked nothing like humans, but not a single fan in the hallway rebelled against this so-called intrusion on reality.
“They’re our VIMs,” Jason had explained to the cast. “Tested and vetted by the EVVVs at SCN, they are able to handle themselves in human situations.”
“What happened to this whole ‘reality’ thing?” Mav had asked. “I know we’ve been in on the joke for years, but are you really gonna risk everybody else figuring out?”
“They want to be in on it,” said Starr. “It means they’re on TV. Or whatever you want to call a wall of water. It’s magic, and it’s reality, and they don’t necessarily care about the difference, as long as we play along.”
Jason had given her a nervous smile. “I hope you’re right, Starr Weatherby.”
A fluttering in the distance caught her attention. A centaur was picking his way through the group, waving a linen cloth that read SAM DRAPER!
Kyle, of course. He stopped in front of Starr, the audience following him to gape at the newcomer, just as the others had upstairs. The centaur gave the cloth a shake, and now it read, Using my inside voice.
He’s textiling me, Starr realized.
Another shake, and the words changed again: They said you were delayed in traffic. But there is no traffic in the hotel! Plus, I knew Sam wouldn’t let traffic stop her! Not with the DAN tests about to arrive!
He means DNA tests, Starr recalled, and reached over to hug him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
For what? his cloth read.
“For not playing by the rules,” she whispered. “You might not want to watch this next part.”
Rules change, the cloth read. The question is, are we having fun? Kyle turned the cloth to the audience. Hands, hooves, fins and other appendages raised and shook. They were politely avoiding noise that could interrupt the recording in the ballroom.
Starr gave everyone two enthusiastic thumbs-up and followed Kyle as he carved a path to the most distant ballroom doorway. Above it hovered a bright red light and a sign like the one Starr had seen on her first day at the studio:
SOIRÉE ENTRANCE
DO NOT ENTER WHEN RED LIGHT IS ON
UNDER PAIN OF BANISHMENT
The red light was on.
Starr patted Kyle’s withers. “Screw banishment,” she said, and stepped through the door.
The nondescript ballroom they’d rehearsed in the day before had been transformed by the poltergeists into a grand, opulent… well, ballroom. Mahogany walls accented with golden light sconces now framed a shining parquet floor covered in small round cocktail tables. Broad French doors lay open on one side of the room, with the illusion of a starry night outside on a patio.
Guests clustered, holding bubbly drinks and small hors d’oeuvres. Cameradryads shifted around the room, making gentle shushing noises as their roots traversed the ground. Starr decided they were too focused on the work to think twice about the fact that the floor and walls were made of hardwood.
Meanwhile, in the short time since Starr had arrived from the lobby and this exact moment, the guests had all pulled back, giving Valéncia a space by the fireplace for her lines, while Mav and Beatrice stood off to one side. Jason constantly lingered just out of camera, gesturing and shaking his head, but Nico—who had no lines for another couple of scenes—was nowhere in sight.
Celtis sidled up to Starr and began filming her.
“Sam is forever missing out,” Valéncia was saying. “I had warned her about her car being useless. I have been informed she has a flat tire, a broken headlight and the tailpipe fell off. Does anyone have the mail?”
“Maybe we should be attending to the guests,” said Mav, but he handed her the prop letters as rehearsed. One of the other cameradryads zoomed in on the envelopes. They were part of Emma’s big twist, the one that would re-order the Marlborough family. Everyone was about to learn that Sam—not Mav—was Valéncia’s offspring. “Or we could wait until Sam gets here.”
Valéncia snicked the envelope from his fingers as some of the VIM guests closed in, curious. “There is no point in waiting. Sam may learn the truth after she arrives.” She paused. “If she arrives.” She slit the envelope open with a nail and withdrew the paper inside. “Goddess.” Valéncia sank into a chair next to the fireplace. Her cane clattered to the floor. “Maverick! You have some explaining to do!”
The prop paper had some words on it, to keep things realistic. But Fiona was going off-script. Starr took several steps forward, winding through the crowd, aware of being disheveled and without her shoes. Mav glanced off camera at Jason, who waved at him to stick with it.
Yes, and-ing during the live show? Starr wasn’t sure where any of this was going. All she knew was she had to get to someone—Jason, Mav, anyone—and find a way to turn everything around. Things were finally going to get real.
“It says—” Mav picked up the prop letter. “Well, this is something.”
“It certainly is!” said Valéncia. “It says here that Sam is your daughter, Mav.”
Beatrice billowed in, long loose dress nearly flowing into the fireplace. “That can’t be right.”
Mango time! thought Starr, and strode forward. “Phew!” she breathed hard. “Goddess love Kyle’s Tow Truck Agency!”
Beyond the door she heard a soft whinny, then a thud. Kyle had probably fainted.
Valéncia nearly fell out of her chair.
Mav dropped a poker he’d been carrying to adjust the fire.
Beatrice… moaned.
Jason wrung his horns.
Celtis kept her focus directly on Starr.
“That letter is a fraud,” Starr said, whipping it from Mav’s hand and tossing it into the lit hearth. As it crisped nicely, she turned to her co-stars. “That lab was completely compromised. The results were falsified!” She pulled out her cell phone and held it aloft. “I have received a special”—oh, yeah, right, no cell phones here. Well, go big or go home—“textile message that confirms the truth. Mav… will you read this special note?”
She handed him her phone, poking it awake and pulling up a text message from several weeks ago from one of her roommates.
Mav met her gaze. She gave him a nod. This wasn’t so much a yes and as it was a way to put the train back on the rails. “With pleasure,” he said, turning the phone around a few times. “Well, this can’t be true either. It says I’m not Valéncia’s son, and you, Sam Draper, are her daughter!”
A collective gasp swept through the VIMs and resonated with the audience outdoors.
“Noooo!” Valéncia swooned.
“Yes!” Starr drove her elbow down and made a fist. The train was back on track, but it was her track now. She folded her arms and strode over to Valéncia—while speaking to Fiona. “Guess who falsified the original results? The one woman who’ll do anything to make the world turn her way. Anything. Am I right… Mother?”
Valéncia sprang to her feet, and Starr saw no division between her and Fiona. They were one, united, furious lady. “Watch your mouth, young lady. Say not another word, or you will regret it.”
“Aw, Mom,” said Starr. “I know you think you can run things like—what did you say to us the other day, like Lord of the Rings?”
“Flies.” Mav coughed into his fist. “Lord of the Flies.”
“Right, different story entirely.” Starr paced the dance floor, waiting to be cut off, but no one ran onto the set. No one broke the fourth wall. This was her show, and she was running with it now.
“I mean, Valéncia—you’re the sort of person who would sabotage a DNA letter because you wanted a different answer,” she began. “You’re also the sort of person who might, oh, I don’t know, bug everyone’s rooms so you could hear everything being said, then use it against people. And you’re also the sort of woman who would, let’s say, bribe the press to give you the best and most important prizes. That’s the sort of person Valéncia is. Or is that even the name I should use? Maybe I should say… Fiona? ’Cause while you’re a lot like the mother I grew up with, I’m never going to call you Mama. But I will call you a liar, a cheat and a fraud.”
The only sound in the room was a small, strangled noise from Jason off-camera, and the fireplace crackling. Throughout Starr’s speech, Fiona had kept her shoulders squared, with the imperious look of someone about to deliver a devastating rebuttal. She had not blinked once. But now, one of her eyes twitched disconcertingly.
“I have no idea who this Fiona is you speak of,” she said, gripping the lion’s head of her cane. “There is no Fiona here.” With a swift jerk she wrenched the head of the cane off and dropped the blunt end to the floor, revealing a six-inch dagger—a blade that rang a high and metallic note through the ballroom.
“That’s the sound!” one hatted unicorn neighed, clopping around a cocktail table. “I heard that before!”
“Yeah!” cried the Cyclops with the googly eye. “Right before the furniture went falling!”
“When Sam just about got crushed!” a further mythic Starr couldn’t see gasped.
Thanks for the confirmation—Starr started to think, but just then Fiona lunged with a snake’s precision strike, driving the blade directly at Starr’s throat. Dodging, Starr slammed into the fireplace and grappled for something to fight back with, but Fiona twisted with the agility of a much younger woman, pinning Starr’s arm behind her. Starr tried kicking free, but the cold point of the blade pressed against her throat, and she froze. Her chest, still not fully healed from the wardrobe, throbbed.
“That escalated quickly,” noted a masked Gorgon off-camera.
“Make no moves,” Fiona hissed at the cast and the audience. “Sam and I are going to have a little… mother-daughter chat.” The knife began to cut into Starr’s jaw and Mav took a step forward.
“Do not lay hands on me, boy,” said Fiona. “Or this ends quickly and in a way that will make you most unhappy.”
Behind them, Beatrice staggered against a chair and let out a ragged yowl. Starr wanted to roll her eyes; there was no moment of drama that woman wouldn’t try to upstage.
“Help,” Beatrice gasped. Only, not Beatrice: this was Nora. “My water… it’s broken.”
Of course it has, Starr thought, fighting panic.
“Beatrice, your timing is impeccable.” With a quick jerk on Starr’s bent arm, Fiona lowered the knife and pulled a small object out of her pocket, closing her fist around it. “Adieu!” she cried.
Celtis, doing an excellent job of keeping her eyes on the ball, reached out, perhaps to get a better shot. Starr couldn’t say. But in the instant Fiona’s fingers closed around the object from her pocket, the cameradyrad’s branch brushed Starr’s arm and the three of them winked off stage—
—and into the Tune in Tomorrow lobby with a soft popping sound.
Dizzy from the unexpected teleportation, Starr flailed at Celtis’ branches. The cameradrydad jerked away. Starr wrenched from Fiona’s knife grip and raced around the reception desk, pounding on the boulder closing off Phil’s cave.
“Phil!” she shouted. “Emergency! Emergen—”
The knife had returned, this time at her back. Fiona growled ferally. “Once more and you’ll see blood.” She whirled on Celtis. “And if you make a move, shrub, I start pruning.”
Celtis shivered, dropping a few leaves, but kept filming.
Fiona wrenched Starr’s arm again, the point of the dagger piercing cruelly between her shoulder blades. She thought about planting her feet, refusing to walk, or even faking a faint—but who knew how far Fiona would go? She already thought she’d killed one interloper, so why not go for the deuce?
“In.” Fiona poked Starr through the stage doors, and they entered total darkness. “Wills!” the diva shouted. Three tiny lights swirled out from the ceiling, spinning around the trio.
“Help me,” begged Starr. She was freezing and sweating at the same time, and her whole body ached: chest, neck, back, bare feet.
“Light our way,” Fiona ordered. “And stay back.”
“Boy, Fiona, you missed your calling as a director,” said Starr. “Look, can we have another truce?”
“My name is Valéncia. Yours, for now, is worm. Now, march.”
Starr marched, desperately searching for a way to escape being skewered, but her mind wasn’t working well. Terror paralyzed her beyond basic movements, making her compliant. She hoped that by doing whatever Fiona demanded, she’d make this all stop faster. But part of her inside was screaming to take action.
She’s an old lady! I can take her! Starr thought. Well, she’s an old lady with a knife who moves better than I do. And she’s nuts.
A few minutes later they rounded a corner, a blue glowing light illuminating Fiona’s intended destination: the wide, round pit with water spilling into it. The bottomless pit. The pit that had swallowed Amelia—who had been given a MARBLE ahead of time. Starr had no such out. Somehow, arriving here was both unexpected and inevitable.
Fiona pressed harder and the tip of her blade pierced Starr’s back. “Walk.”
Starr inched toward the lip, the hole’s enormous drawing power urging her forward. Icy cold water ran over her bare toes, making her feet feel like numb bricks. But she kept going: the hole was calling to her softly, urgently. It needed her. It was hungry.
“I’ll leave.” Her voice trembled. “I’ll leave and they’ll make me forget and I’ll never remember you existed—”
“Too late,” Fiona snapped. “You spilled all the beans. They know everything. You’ve left me with nothing, worm.”
“That’s not true.” Nico slipped out from behind a nearby set. He was breathing hard and had a few buttons open on his shirt, as if he’d raced here mid-costume change. “I’m sorry it took me so long,” he gasped at Starr, then turned to Fiona. “I also keep a spare MARBLE, Fee. And I can’t let you do this.”
Fiona snatched up Starr’s arm again, wrenching it back, keeping the knife at the ready. “Why not? She has no place here. She’s ruined everything.”
“You brought this on yourself,” he said. “Lower the knife, Cookie. Let’s talk.”
“I am not Fiona! I am not your Cookie!” Fiona screamed. “The next time someone calls me anything other than Valéncia, I will slit her throat!”
Nico, who had been advancing with one hand raised, halted.
“I am taking out the trash,” Fiona growled. “This is an enormous trash bin. We can put all the stupid brainless newcomers in it we like, and they float away like bad memories.”
“What do you want from me?” Starr quavered. “If you think I’m going to wave goodbye and jump in, think again, lady.”
“Certainly not,” said Fiona, spinning Starr around and lifting the blade into the air. “I’m here to help.”
She drove the dagger down in a swiping motion and in that half-breath Starr grabbed for her wrist, gripping the blade instead. It sliced into the meat of her palm, sending a searing, blinding pain up Starr’s arm. But she held on, shrieking—and leaned toward the pit.
We all go down together, Starr thought.
They fell.
Rather, they fell a short distance.
Starr released the knife as gravity took over, flailing for anything she could latch onto—for a moment, Fiona’s sleeve, which slithered from her bloodied fingers. Then she was descending again until—
Her other hand hooked on the metal lip of the hole and—
She jerked to a stop, shoulder wrenching painfully as she dangled over the rushing water and held on by four fingers. Straining mightily, she reached up with her injured hand to grab the lip of the pool and ended up with a fractionally more stable grip. She panted from effort and fear. Her hand cramped as cool pit water ran over her fingers, seeping into the sleeve of her dress. She gasped with relief and surprise.
“Roooooland!” came a wail next to her.
Starr turned and groaned, frustrated that Fiona had also secured a handhold on the pit’s rim a foot or so away, where she dangled, kicked, flailed and screamed. The dagger was nowhere in sight—Starr imagined it was the one victim of the pit today. Thus far.
Starr’s fingers slipped; the edge of the lip was cutting into her good hand, while the bad one had begun to ache in a deep, awful way. She imagined tearing the cut open wider and wider until the skin unraveled like a glove from the hand. She shivered.
Nico’s head and shoulders appeared over the edge as he flattened himself on the ground above them. “Ay-ya!” he cried. “That water is cold!”
