Spinning Into Gold

by Emma Savant

  “I’ve heard about him,” I said. “My dad hates that guy.”

  “That’s because Martinez is going to kick some Manticore ass,” Clarence said. “‘Course, that’s assuming they don’t mess it up and let the Kappas sneak into the finals.”

  “You should definitely not talk Orbs with my dad,” I said.

  “We’re grown men,” Clarence said. “We can have a civilized conversation about our respective teams. Probably.”

  I felt August approach me before I saw him. On instinct, I smiled broadly as I turned to face him.

  “August,” I said, voice warm and distant. “You’ve met Clarence. Clarence, you remember my manager.”

  August frowned a little, trying to place him, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. A tiny line appeared between Clarence’s arched eyebrows.

  “Dior, I’ve got marvelous news,” August said. “Let’s go somewhere quiet. It’s too busy and warm in here.”

  He put a hand on my elbow. I made an apologetic face to Clarence and let myself be steered away.

  Now that I couldn’t really feel August trying to manipulate me, it became more apparent in his face and body language. His pupils had gotten slightly larger when he’d requested for me to come with him, and his hand on my arm felt hot and seemed to almost be pulsing.

  August led me outside the theater into the warm evening air. His presence aside, the fresh air did feel good, and it was a relief to not have to keep an eye out for spells going off every two feet. It was still a little crowded out here, with late arrivals stepping onto the red carpet and having their photos taken by Glim photographers with enchanted cameras. The faeries’ cameras hovered in the air and darted around like hummingbirds as the photographers waved their wands, trying to get the best shots. I watched as a camera knocked another one out of the air, and then August pulled me off to the side of the building and away from the mass of people.

  “Absolutely fantastic news, Dior,” he said. His teeth sparkled at me. “Bitsy Ace has the Jubjub flu.”

  I had to catch myself to keep my smile from fading. “How is that good news?” I said. Bitsy Ace was a loud, eccentric, utterly talented rock star; I didn’t want her or anyone else to get stuck with the Jubjub flu and the shrill, violent cough that came with it.

  August grabbed me by the shoulders. I tensed, but didn’t shake him off.

  “Bitsy Ace was scheduled to be the main attraction at the Orbs halftime show this next Sunday,” August said.

  I didn’t follow the games, but I watched the halftime show every year, just like every other Glim. It took place between the two games that made up the actual, final championship game, and it was inevitably an explosion of music and magic.

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “That’s not the point,” August said. He squeezed my arms gently. “Dior, I’ve managed to book you as her replacement.”

  I stared at him, seeing his face but not registering anything.

  The Orbs halftime show?

  Me?

  I was not halftime show material. I wasn’t half halftime show material.

  I gaped, feeling the stupid expression on my face and being unable to do anything about it.

  “Uh,” I said, which was not even a word, let alone a coherent sentence.

  “You’re perfect,” August said. “Your facility with glamours is a perfect match for the event. More than that, you’re young, you’re attractive, you’re fresh, you’re exotic—you’re everything the Glimmering world is looking for.”

  “But,” I said, and that felt like as much as I could manage.

  “It’s Thursday,” he said. I knew it was Thursday, but the realization still sent ice into my bones. “You need to get rehearsing immediately. I’ve already arranged for your flight to Florida. Starling will have your set list by morning. Your choreography has to be perfect. I’ve assigned you a glamours coach who will work with you tomorrow afternoon.”

  I continued to gape at him. His face practically glowed with excitement. I should be excited too, I knew, but it felt as though his words were bouncing off my skin.

  Surely I was not about to replace Bitsy Ace as the Orbs national championship halftime show.

  That was absurd.

  August grinned at me like a madman.

  “Go back inside,” he ordered. “Enjoy the film. We start tomorrow.”

  Chapter 17

  Seeing Clarence, however briefly, had left me with a glow that felt nothing like one of August’s golden hazes. Too soon, though, it faded against the repetitive insanity of prepping for a last-minute Orbs halftime show.

  “And one and two and three and four!” Starling called, clapping his hands in time to the kicks and punches I was supposed to throw while I swirled angry glamours around my head. “Fight Me” was exactly right to start the halftime show, but it left me exhausted, and I had to manage three more songs after it as part of the medley.

  I sang. I glamoured. I spun and danced and kicked. My muscles screamed and my heart felt like it might pound right out of my chest and onto the floor, but I kept going.

  “And hold!” Starling shouted.

  I froze with my fist punched high in the air.

  “And transition.”

  The music faded down to the soft piano ripples of “Rain Like Falling Stars.” The lighting would be blue; the constellation that spun above my head was up to me and my magic. I focused on the stars through the heavy rhythm of my breathing, and together the swirling sparkles and my breath slowed and steadied.

  I started to sing. The costume designer August had hired stood at the edge of the room, watching me and sketching in an enchanted notebook. Her silver pen whipped up and down the page and her intense gaze flitted from me to the book and back again. She was one of the best designers in the business, August said, and the first step of her process was to watch me work and capture my essence.

  It had all sounded a little iffy, given the way August liked to mess with people’s essences, but Starling had assured me her work was above-board and her mind was—mostly—her own.

  We brought the energy back up with “Wild,” then circled back around to a reprise of “Fight Me.” By the time I belted out the last note, I was almost ready to cry with exhaustion.

  I waited for Starling’s nod of approval, then crumpled and stretched out on the floor.

  “I need potions,” I said. “And spells. This is insane.”

  “No,” Starling said, more firmly than I liked. “No potions. No spells. That way lies addiction and bad skin. You can do this.”

  “I’m not in good enough physical shape to do this,” I said.

  “You just did it,” he said. “Three times.”

  “And now I’m going to die.”

  I curled up on my side. I was breathing so hard it felt like the breaths belonged to a different creature. Maybe a dragon. Something big and overheated.

  Starling waved the costume designer off, then came over and sat next to me. “You know what this is going to do for your career, right?” he said.

  “Yes,” I mumbled.

  “All right, then.”

  “Maybe I don’t want it that badly,” I said. “The whole fame and fortune thing. Maybe I’m okay just being a two-bit entertainer.”

  “Bull,” Starling said. “Besides, it doesn’t matter what you want. August wants this for you, and you can either give it to him or have it taken from you.”

  I made a barfing noise.

  He shrugged one shoulder. I wasn’t communicating anything he hadn’t thought before.

  The next day was filled: Eat, rehearse, glamour practice, eat, get fitted for costumes, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, and collapse into exhausted, dreamless sleep.

  Despite the insanity, and despite the fact that I’d chosen to stay in my apartment in August’s buildings for the convenience of it, I didn’t actually see much of my manager until my final costume fitting. He’d approved the costumes after my fi
rst fitting via magic mirror, and now, he stood back and nodded slowly as I spun around to show off the white jumpsuit.

  I had been skeptical when the designer had first showed me the sketches, and even more skeptical when the seamstress had showed me the jumpsuit on the hanger, but the first time I saw it in the mirror I’d realized I never could have worn anything else. The low V-neck and the cutout lace detailing on the cuffs of the keyhole sleeves made it sexy, but in a powerful way. The outfit made me feel like I could take on the music and August and all the rest without breaking a sweat.

  I wouldn’t literally break one, either—the seamstress assured me that the charms woven into the fabric would keep me cool and comfortable throughout the performance.

  If only I’d had it during rehearsals.

  “You’re spectacular,” August said as I finished rotating. “The white will play well under the lights, and you look magnificent.”

  “I feel pretty great,” I admitted.

  He stroked his chin, thinking, then said abruptly to the seamstress, “She needs a cape.”

  “A what?” I said.

  “An attached cape,” he said, gesturing to his own shoulders. “It will make you appear larger and give you an added sense of movement.”

  “Don’t add that,” I said to the seamstress, then, to August, “It’ll interfere with my dancing and I don’t have time to get used to it.”

  His gaze sharpened, and his pupils widened slightly.

  “I think a cape is a good idea,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  “August,” I said. My voice was calm, but held a warning. “We’ve discussed the issue of influence.” I glanced at the seamstress, not sure how much to say.

  August’s jaw tensed, but otherwise, he didn’t react.

  “This is important to me,” I said. “I don’t have time to re-learn my choreography, which I’ll need to do if something as in-the-way as a cape gets added to this outfit. The costume looks amazing. I’m going to be able to perform well in it, and you’re going to get everything you need out of this performance.” I put enough emphasis on the words that he couldn’t mistake my meaning, and then I looked steadily at him, waiting for his response.

  He looked back, lips tight but face unreadable, then nodded.

  “Understood,” he said. He turned to the seamstress. “No cape. No changes.”

  “Excellent,” she said. “You can go ahead and change out of that, Dior. I’ll have it packed and sent to Calista so she can add accessories and pack it.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I slipped behind the screen to change. From the other side, I heard August say, “Do you have time to discuss Gabriella’s gown for the Amethyst Awards?”

  My heart fluttered in my chest. My costume was being made by the same woman who made Gabriella Dobashi’s event gowns. August weirdness aside, I would never get over how goddamn cool that was.

  And I’d done pretty good at dealing with the day’s dose of August weirdness. I’d held my ground—calmly, rationally, like an adult—and he’d backed down.

  Maybe it was possible for us to work together. I just needed to make it clear that I could draw lines he couldn’t cross.

  Chapter 18

  The lights illuminating the stadium in shades of white and palest purple switched off, plunging us all into darkness. I closed my eyes and waited for them to adjust as set pieces whizzed by in front of me in the darkness. On every side, I could feel the energy of the faeries working to build my stage. Around us, the anticipation of the tens of thousands of people filling the stands crackled at the edges of my awareness like faint static.

  I heard the subtle pop as the final piece of the stage settled into place. Three faerie stagehands took their places behind me where we stood hidden. They raised their wands, and I felt myself begin to float. My toes were the last to leave the ground, and then I was aloft, a spot of ascending white in the darkness.

  Someone out in the audience screamed. A few responding cheers met the first one, and then I felt my feet touch a solid surface. I sent a pulse of energy back to the faeries, letting them know I’d reached my target, and I felt the lightness of their enchantment leave me.

  I stood, silent and shadowed, at the top of a white pillar that stood like a monument in the center of the stadium. Around me, the audience held its breath, and then the lights kicked on with a boom of drums and guitar.

  “Hello, Orlando!” I shouted.

  My voice was magnified to fill every corner of the stadium and rattle the nerves of everyone who could hear me. The cheering that came back at me was a senseless roar, and I felt their energy prickle down my skin.

  My music started, and then I began to give them the show of their lives.

  The pillar began to slowly rotate, giving me a chance to look out at every side of the audience. They surrounded me in an oval, thousands upon thousands of Glims, all focused totally on me and letting me focus totally on them. Music raced down my arms and tingled up my spine, and I knew it was happening to them, too, because what else was music but the chance to fly through someone’s ear and to their heart and back out into the universe again?

  My heart pounded in my chest and my voice pulsed out of me like it had a life of its own.

  “You wanna fight me?” I demanded, punching my hand in the air. “Come on, then, bite me. Hey, I can take you. Let’s go outside!”

  This song had been a message to the insecure parts of myself that had doubted whether I was good enough to make it as a singer. No one else knew where it had come from, and it didn’t matter. This song was for them now. Everyone had something they were fighting. Everyone had something they had to beat. My voice gave sound to their feelings, and their feelings fueled my voice.

  And August was feeding on it all. He was out there, somewhere in this stadium, drinking in the cheers of the crowd.

  Let him. If his talents could land me more gigs like this one—performances so big I could barely comprehend the number of people filling the stands—then he could have whatever he wanted.

  The song ended on a crash of drums and I hit my final pose. The lights shifted to blue. The music dropped to delicate piano notes rippling up and down. I took a deep breath, silently thanked my costume designer for this cool jumpsuit, and focused my energy up at the swirling constellation above my head.

  Another white pillar began to rise up beside the first one. A gleaming white piano with white and silver keys slowly rotated up into the gleam of the spotlights. A distance of thirty feet opened between my pillar and the piano’s. I glanced down behind me, saw the faeries holding their wands aloft, and stepped off the pillar and into nothing.

  I dropped, ten feet or more, and the audience gasped and cried out. The faeries’ enchantment caught me, and I floated back up into air that was now filled with hundreds of twinkling glamoured stars.

  I landed lightly on the second platform as the first one rotated back down out of the lights, and then my fingers took over the song and I began creating the soft arpeggios that led into “Rain Like Falling Stars.”

  Behind and above me, a dozen dancers in shimmering silver gowns appeared suspended in the glamoured sky. I saw their elegant movements out of the corner of my eye as I began to sing, and the breathless silence of the audience cradled me. I sang, and I knew that out there, past the lights, the hair on tens of thousands of people’s arms was standing on end.

  I brought the song to a peak, to the spot right before I would normally fall into the chorus, and then threw my hands down on the piano. The drums of “Wild” pounded through the stadium and the dancers in the sky ripped off their silver gowns to reveal sleeveless catsuits in metallic jewel tones. Their movements went from ballet to hip-hop in an instant.

  I stood and shoved my bench back. It tumbled off the edge of the pillar, earning another gasp from the crowd, who couldn’t tell whether I’d done it on purpose. To leave no doubt, I snapped my head to simulate eye contact with the audience as much as I could, then propped one
leg against the keyboard of the piano and kicked. The giant instrument rolled backward, tipped over the edge, and dropped out of the light. The sound of dissonant, clashing keys filled the stadium, and then my voice replaced what should have been the crash of the piano against the stadium pitch and the chorus of “Wild” was filling everyone’s blood with fire.

  The piano was fine, of course. We’d rehearsed that moment endlessly yesterday, and the faeries were on the ground making sure it landed like a feather. But no one in the audience needed to know that. All they needed to know was that I was so crazy I’d just smashed a goddamn piano into the ground, and they could be that crazy too if they’d only let themselves.

  “You wanna fight me?” I demanded, as the song seamlessly melded into the reprise. One of the dancers landed on my pillar. I swung around and knocked her off. She dramatically flailed for a moment as she dropped out of sight, then rose back up behind me and began punching and kicking to the choreography of my opening routine. “Come on, then, bite me.” Another dancer landed. I punched this one on the underside of the jaw; she stumbled back dramatically and then launched herself into the air next to the first dancer.

  We went on like this, dancers falling, getting defeated like we were in some kind of Saturday morning ninja cartoon, and then flying up to take their place in an inverted V behind me. Finally, I’d knocked all of them into the air and had reached the final beats of the song. Together with the metallic rainbow of dancers behind me, I spun and kicked. The audience was screaming, on its feet, losing its mind at the power of the music.

  We froze, our fists punched high in the air. I held the pose, and then the dancers behind me dropped with breathtaking speed down into the darkness.

  “Thank you, Orlando!” I shouted, and the lights slammed off as fireworks exploded all around me. Glittering smoke filled the stadium, interspersed with fiery pinwheels and starbursts, and the audience erupted into a sound that made my bones shake.

  I’d done it. The ridiculous deadline, the rehearsals so intense I’d thought they might kill me—I’d done it all, and I’d done tonight perfectly. They audience’s cheers and whistles shook me to my core.