Celebromancy

by Michael R. Underwood

Yancy and Jane shared a look, and let the words sit heavy in the air. Every millisecond that passed let more hope out of Ree’s lungs. She’d pulled open the box, collapsed the waveform. Fucking dragons. When I find Alex Walters, I’m going to shove my collector’s edition of Skyrim down his throat and Fus Ro Dah him off of Mount Rainier.

  Another moment later, Yancy sighed. “We can’t finish. There just isn’t the money. We might be able to get insurance to recoup some of the costs, but by the time that comes through, we’d have to set up a whole new production for the remainder of the shoot, do ADR, and even with that, we’d be behind a season for pitches. Shooting this on spec was the only way we could do it, and without an order, we’re dead on arrival.”

  “How much do we have? Could we splice together a half episode, maybe run some of it as a webseries to drum up support?” Ree said, knowing that she was reaching but not giving a fuck. She’d put months of her life into this; it was supposed to be her big break. “Even a sizzle reel to go to companies? You’ve got more than most companies have when they pitch, right?”

  Yancy nodded. “Sure. But with the curse, Jane’s reputation was a liability rather than a blessing.”

  Jane’s already somber look dropped even more at Yancy’s words.

  “What if we take my name off of it?” Jane asked. Ree did a double take.

  Jane continued, “It’s a good concept and a damn fine script. You cobble together what we have, and we go in with the concept and a proof of concept on the scenes we’ve got. We don’t have to go to square one, and you get a fair chance at launching the show.” Jane was looking directly at Ree, tearing up.

  “That’s crap!” Ree said. “You’re awesome in this. And we’re going to kick the curse’s ass anyway. After today, it’s just you. No magic bullshit, no Smokey, just Jane Konrad and the Comeback Express.”

  Jane shook her head. “The curse isn’t the problem. It’s me. No network is going to take a risk on me until I’ve done something and seen it through. Even spinning this,” Jane said, indicating the destroyed set, “as an accident doesn’t change the fact that I’m baggage right now. And it doesn’t make any sense to just toss the whole thing out.”

  Jane looked to Yancy. “We knew this was a Hail Mary. It was the only way I could manage my own comeback without my agent sorting through hundreds of scripts to find the one we could spin right to be my way back in. I’m more than an actress, and One Tough Mama is more than just my vehicle. Cut what you can, and we’ll start reaching out for pitch chances.”

  Ree’s stomach roiled, and not at the coffee. She stood up and kicked her chair over. “Motherfucker. I’m going to kick Walters’s ass so hard he ends up in a parallel timeline where smear journalists are drawn and quartered on sight.”

  Jane reached out to touch Ree’s arm. “We’ll get him later. And I can help you do it once we’ve broken this curse.”

  Ree stopped, considered Jane’s words, but decided to keep fuming instead. “Yes, but I’d like the record to show that step two of that plan should happen as soon as fucking possible.”

  Yancy said, “So noted. For right now, we get ready for the ritual and hope that nothing else explodes before tonight. But before that,” Yancy held up a hand to say wait, then pulled something out from underneath a table. It was a director’s chair. Scratch that, it was her chair. Yancy unfolded it enough to show her the REE REYES, WRITER printing on the back.

  “A souvenir of your first show. I’m sorry that this might be all you get to take away from it.”

  Ree took the chair and laughed, something inside her cracking. And somehow, something got in her eye. That was it, definitely not tears. “Thanks.” Ree looked at the chair, then surveyed the wrecked set campus. This is really it. The dream’s over, now it’s all cleanup.

  But she wasn’t at all convinced that the monster attacks were actually done. She saw no reason to be anything but paranoid, especially while the curse was still active and her career anxieties had exploded beyond her wildest nightmares. She set the chair down and looked for something to do. (Ideally, someone to punch, but no reasonable targets presented themselves.)

  She checked her phone and weighed whether it was too early to call Drake. Or if maybe she could get more sleep. Not that the latter was likely, considering the zebra mocha of caffeine and adrenaline coursing through her system.

  Ree started to head off-set to make with the preparations. Jane caught her on the edge of the campus.

  “Before you go, before the magic goes down, I just wanted to say . . .” Jane caught herself blushing, then tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I wanted to thank you. For believing in me.”

  Ree cocked her head, a bit blindsided.

  “Yancy has always believed in me, and the crew here. But you saw me as who I should be, not who I was letting myself be under the curse. It would have been easy for you to give up or walk away, but you didn’t. So thanks.”

  Ree hrmed internally for a moment, guilt bubbling up as she remembered the times she’d doubted the star. “That sounds a lot like we’re about to go down with the ship talk.”

  A shadow of thought passed over Jane’s face. “Maybe, maybe not. But I wanted you to know how much I appreciate all you’ve done.”

  “It hasn’t been all work,” Ree said, running the back of her hand along Jane’s chin. Jane leaned into Ree’s hand, wrapping Ree up in her arms.

  The calm before the storm feeling came back, and Ree held it at arm’s length with the warmth from Jane’s embrace. One way or another, it’d be done after today. Unless the mirror didn’t show up. But how funny would it be for them to make all of the final preparations and then get delayed because of a screwup by UPS? She chuckled, then the chuckle grew into a full-belly laugh. The women disentangled as the laughter spread up and down her body, nervous energy fueling the Alanis-Morissette-ironic thought.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Just thinking,” Ree said, trying to get the words out between laughs, “about how screwed we are if the mail doesn’t show today. If we win, the UPS guy or girl will be partial hero of the day.”

  Jane joined her for a moment, then said, “Honey, the mirror and reel are on a chartered flight with armed guards. I’m not taking any chances.”

  “Except for the giant half-understood ritual we got from the woman who tanked your career.”

  Jane snort-choked on her drink. “Other than that, yes.”

  “Just trying to stay grounded.”

  Jane shifted her weight, cocking out one hip. “Says the woman who gets superpowers from wish fulfillment.”

  “Et tu, fame-girl?” Ree responded with a grin.

  Jane nodded. “Fair enough. Where are you headed?”

  “To get the cavalry.”

  The cavalry, as it turned out, was pretty much just Drake. She could have called Eastwood and guilted him into coming, and maybe sweet-talked a few folks from the Market, but Ree knew she was already headed for a dangerously unpredictable evening, and she didn’t want to have to herd cats while . . . doing whatever it was that she’d have to do.

  She got home around nine and made her rounds to prep for the day. She ignored the growing stack of mail (largely bills) on the front table, labeling them mentally as Tomorrow Ree’s problems. Or more accurately, Ree When She Is Human Again After Sleeping Off This Adventure’s problems.

  Shower achieved, Ree pulled open her closet and set about assembling her Battle Gear (™). First, she cued up Two Steps From Hell to have suitably epic music for her Hero Armors Up scene.

  Then she put on her base outfit: well-worn jeans (the one pair left not covered in ichor or blood or ripped to hell) and T-shirt over undershirt over bra. She bound her hair back with a hair tie, then added her Wonder Woman clip. She searched her box of contacts, but as she’d suspected, the only ones left were two years out of date and had already been worn several
times. The daily ones itched the hell out of her eyes, and anything better was usually too expensive. If she hit it big with a script (which seemed unlikely at this point), she’d promised to get herself LASIK.

  Her base outfit in place, Ree pulled out the buff jacket she had on seemingly permanent loan from Drake, which had the tremendously handy property of adjusting to fit her perfectly and the even cooler self-repair property that kept the jacket from quickly becoming an accessory only fit for Steampunk Frankenstein’s monster (since normal Frankenstein’s monster is Electropunk, natch).

  Then she assembled her weapons: her Force FX lightsaber, her blaster rifle, the phaser, a pair of arnis canes, the jian on loan from Drake, her batarangs, a knife, some Nerf guns, a Ridiculous Fantasy Sword (™), and a boffer sword.

  They wouldn’t be in public, so she could pretty well go all out. She set the jian, the lightsaber, and the phaser in the probably pile, slid the batarangs in one of the buff jacket’s pockets, and set the knife next to her big, stompy boots.

  Weapons decided, she pulled out her card boxes and skimmed for a few minutes to fill up her sideboard, focusing on direct damage spells and a bit of crowd control, in case Walters had another wave of nasty in store. It seemed like his flavor of Cinemancer resembled nothing so much as a Summoner from Pathfinder or Final Fantasy Tactics.

  Ree’s phone chirped with the theme to Steam Boy, her ringtone for Drake. She plucked the phone from its rumbling path off of her bed and answered, “Hey, thanks for calling back. How’s tricks?”

  A beat. “Rather the same as always?”

  Ree chuckled, hearing another whif sound in her mind. “You still in for the big shindig today?”

  “Of course. Shall I bring weapons, more weapons, or all of the weapons? I have a new hand-cannon I’d rather like to field-test.”

  “How likely is it to blow up and kill us all?” Ree asked.

  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.”