Page 88 of Witch You Would
Miami weather was its usual wet self, turning the street into a mess of puddles under the gunmetal-gray sky. No party busto transport us this time, just regular vans with cast and crew piled in. I probably should have gone with the other celebrities,but Penelope was a fridge and I was a magnet. And honestly, I felt way more comfortable with her group than mine.
Sam would probably say that meant I should spend even more time with the stars, so I could get used to it and network. I couldn’tbring myself to care right now. I’d have plenty of time to be in their space on the ship.
Traffic to the port hadn’t hit rush-hour nightmare yet, but it still took us a while to make it down Biscayne, partly becausethe rain turned driver brains into mush. As if it wasn’t like this every other day. Then we had to sit through a securitycheckpoint, where dudes with radios and guns checked whatever paperwork Rachel pulled out of her messenger bag. Finally theywaved us in and we drove past a line of empty docks and parked ships to the one waiting for us.
I’d never been on a cruise ship before—my parents preferred resorts. TheArgent Sirentowered above the parking lot, white and gray and shiny, easily twenty times as big as our hotel. It had to have thousandsof rooms, and I counted ten decks above the silvery bottom part. So many balconies.
We were hustled through an area similar to an airport terminal, across a tunnel and into what felt like a combination hoteland shopping mall. It was two stories high, with a marble tile floor and thick wooden columns leading up to a fake-skylightceiling. A massive sculpture of a hibiscus flower lit one end of the room, its stamens sending out a slow stream of glowingmagic bubbles that drifted across the space, bursting into silvery glitter.
“Ours was cooler,” Penelope whispered.
“No, it wasn’t,” I replied.
“It super was not. Can you imagine having the time to make something like that, though?”
“And the materials. It must have cost a bazillion dollars.”
We silently did the math and shook our heads together. In our dreams. Though, if we won, maybe Penelope would have the chance.
Rachel and Little Manny hustled to get all of us in and out of hair and makeup. Since we were all in fancy dress clothes,we got similarly fancied up compared to our usual show looks. I wondered if they’d do a classy version of the anime eyeshadowand double buns they kept giving Penelope. When she got out, though, she looked... wow. Sort of a half-up, half-down hairstylecurled down her back with strands on the sides of her face. They’d done sparkles around her eyes in gold, and a bit aroundher lips, too, which were dark red to match her dress.
I could almost pretend we were on a date, heading to some event together as a couple instead of temporary partners. Then again, mypretend date would involve me wearing a nice suit or tux instead of this yellow nightmare.
“Do I look less waifu?” Penelope asked.
“Totally,” I said. In her ear, I whispered, “I’d still use you for a body pillow, though.”
She blushed and smacked me, and I grinned.
We were led into a huge dining room, three stories high and full of tables with everything laid out like we were going toeat. Since they’d just done our makeup, I found that hard to believe. The camera crews had positioned themselves in a fewplaces, but we hadn’t been miked yet. After we found our assigned seats, Tori clapped to get our attention.
“Meals are going to be brought out,” Tori said. “They’re not real. Don’t touch them. Look excited and hungry.” She lookedstraight at me. “Seriously, do not touch them.”
I raised my hands, palms out.
It went like she said. Servers put extremely delicious-looking things in front of us, but they smelled like... yuck. Vaselineand hair spray? I didn’t pretend to eat anything, but I did do a couple of spinning tricks with my butter knife that Natecaught on camera.
After that, we were scooted into the casino, all dim mood lights and bright, blinking machines chiming and jangling like atoddler band. It smelled like bergamot and tobacco, though I was pretty sure smoking wasn’t allowed except in the clearlydesignated cigar room.
Syd played slots, their face painted in flashes of greens and purples and yellows. Hugh, Dylan, and Zeke sat at a blackjacktable for a round. Fabienne and Doris were handed bingo cards with a bunch of spots already marked, and Doris had to pretendshe’d won.
Charlotte and Felicia stood at the roulette wheel with piles ofchips in front of them. Tori made Felicia lean forward to put chips down several times, and judging by the camera location and the deep cut of her dress, anyone watching later would get an eyeful. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it looked from my angle, but I wasn’t optimistic.
Penelope and I were sent to a poker table, and they handed me a deck of cards.
“Do a trick,” Tori said, crossing her arms and staring at me.
I tried not to feel like a trained dog as I warmed up with some one-hand single cuts, then multiple cuts, then two-hand shuffles.By the time I’d worked up to table flourishes, she was about to stop me, but I held up my hand.
“One more,” I said. Then I boomeranged a card toward the camera and caught it when it came back, winking at the lens.
“Perfect,” Tori said. “All right, moving along.”
We clapped for acrobats whose enchanted costumes changed colors and moved in counterpoint to their twists and leaps. We satat a bar and pretended to drink magical cocktails that sent up spirals of smoky images to match their flavors. We banged eachother around in bumper cars. Dylan and I took off our jackets and had a rock-wall-climbing race. It was like a speedrun throughall the stuff on the ship, though it took at least four hours. Through it all, Penelope and I laughed our asses off, evenwhen it was totally fake—sometimes especially when it was fake, because now we could enjoy how ridiculous that was together.
Finally they led us to one of the smaller restaurants, where actual food awaited us, along with the eliminated contestants, a string quartet, and a bunch of strangers. They were all dressed up, too, in fancy tailored suits and dresses from stores I didn’t even glance at when I passed them. Their haircuts looked expensive, and unlikeus, they seemed to be using a combination of makeup and glamour for that extra chicness level.
“Who are they?” Penelope asked.
