Believe the Magic Read online

  “I am so not understanding this.”

  “Miss? I need you in another scene.” I shrugged at the Indian, and the Sheriff as well. He was cute.

  “Where?” I asked. My voice was entirely foreign to me. Quentin had said I wouldn’t recognize myself. I glanced down again.

  Holy—! Where did they come from? My skin was dark, tan or perhaps Indian as well. The dress I wore was pure prairie get up. Except the plunging neckline. It was way, way down there. And there was a lot of skin between my chin and the white lace. I felt like I should be quoting Laura Ingalls Wilder in this costume. Or maybe not. I glanced down again. Wow.

  “The sheriff will come and drag Ben off to prison. I need you to lean out this window and wail. You don’t want him to. Pretend he’s your secret lover.”

  “Sam?” I called through the mental walkie talkie. “Where are you? Is this what you had in mind when you said we had to hurry?”

  “Action!” It was boring to watch the scene unfold in slow motion with cameras and microphones bobbing in and out of everyone’s face. I did my big cry scene and went in search of a four-foot Indian.

  I so needed a mirror. I knew I looked like a Hooter’s girl trapped in a Bonanza rerun. The lusty eyes and drooling mouths of the testosterone bearers made that painfully obvious. Remember my thought about a boob job and touched up face? Erase it, axe it, forget I ever said such a thing. I’ll stick with plain ‘ole me. This attention wasn’t my gig.

  “Hey, miss, you got an agent?” Great, they let vermin in this place. The snakeskin coat was much more appropriate than this guy probably ever imagined.

  “Yoohoo, Sam, where are you?” I looked around for him. “Uh, actually, I do. I was just looking for him.”

  Sam was Sam. Beaming from behind a safari hat and wild Hawaiian shirt was the face I recognized. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he smiled. He recognized me? Or dear God, was he hitting on me, without knowing it was really me? I was ready to throw myself at his feet if he dared to walk past. “I’m Roger Cadlahar. I represent Suzanne here. You were perhaps interested in her for a script you represent?”

  The man seemed to shrink a bit and looked from me to Sam to Geronimo Junior who had finally caught up with us. Roger turned on his heel and left. I wanted to shout “Don’t come back now, ya’hear?” But I held my tongue. No sense drawing even more attention my way.

  “Where have you been?” Quentin demanded of Sam. “We’ve wasted half the day as actors. Why are we here?”

  “Don’t say anymore. He’s here.”

  “Why aren’t you in costume?” I had to know why Sam could be himself.

  “I don’t need to be. I want you and Quentin to stay low profile right now. Though you’re getting plenty of attention,” he said, his eyes dropping to about chin level, then flitting back to meet my gaze. God, I hated that. Understood it, but hated it just the same. Hello, I’m a person here, not breasts on legs.

  I was just about to ask when I could be me again. I needed to be me again. But the hand on my shoulder stopped me. It was the one who’d been barking orders at the extras. Oooh. A big shot.

  “Good job today, sweetheart. Call me if you’re looking for more work.”

  Humph. Well, if this magic thing didn’t pan out I had a place to go. As long as I could find cones like this again. “Thanks, sir.” I took his card and suppressed the shudder that threatened. The man’s hand lingered near my neck and the gems felt like they were pulsing and growing. Quentin and Sam stood watching. Him, not me. I half expected my dear Indian hero to pull out an arrow.

  In sarcastic flair I tucked the man’s card between my new found cleavage. The casting director’s beady eyes followed it down. I wondered if a trail of grease followed.

  So much for that. As soon as he realized I wasn’t going to say anything else, and figured out he was not going to get a peep show, he left. I pulled the front of my dress and wriggled, forcing the card to slide straight to the ground. “Eww!” An exaggerated shudder racked my body. “He was gross.”

  “What next?” Quentin looked so serious standing there with his arms folded across his chest. Any second now someone was going to walk by and mistake him for a cigar store Indian.

  “Clear your mind,” Sam hissed.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and looked off into the distance. I figured it was safe to watch the other actors milling around and redoing their takes. Why not, right?

  “Bergestein. Long time no see.” Sam held out a hand and appeared to be greeting an old friend. I looked the man up and down, trying to imprint his face in my memory. Then watched the cute sheriff cut across the lot. Wow, nice butt.

  “Suzanne, I’d like you to me my friend, Mr. Bergestein.”

  “How do you do.” I bowed just slightly.

  “Just wonderful after that.” He licked his lips. Damn. I’d done it again. I pressed my hand over my chest and forced a smile. Little flames just had to be flickering from my ears.

  A big hubbub was going on at the fancy trailer on the other side of a chain link fence. I rose on my tiptoes to catch a glimpse.

  “This your new playmate?” Mr. B asked Sam. I was afraid to look at Sam. Oh, I would have been willing to play it up. If I could. I’d probably start laughing or something. “You sure do pick them young.”

  “But ripe.”

  I chewed on my bottom lip. Words I usually don’t use were threatening to jump out of my mouth.

  “You get done with that one, feel free to pass her along to me.”

  “I’ll keep you in mind. If Hugh doesn’t get his hands on her,” Sam promised.

  “What do those women see in him?”

  I was tempted to run through the reasons why women would find Mr. B down right disgusting, even compared to Hugh Hefner, but I feared he’d hear me. I winked at Sam and continued to check out the crowd gathering across the way.

  Mr. B slid his hand into his jacket pocket slid out some big stogie and lit it up. Sorry, but cigar smoke is nasty. Even out in the open. The snakeskin jacket that other guy had on really would have been better suited for this loser. Blech.

  “Sam,” I purred. Hey, I never could have pulled that off as plain Ella. “I’m going to walk over there to the fence line and see if I can catch a peek.” I waited for his nod and stepped outside their cozy little circle. Quentin still hadn’t moved a muscle. He had to be dying to say something.

  Mr. B leaned closer to Sam and whispered, “Are you sure you don’t want to head over to Switzerland with me? Diamonds and gold. Ours for the taking. Even split, I swear it.”

  “Sorry, Bergestein, I’m aiming to stay clean this time.”

  I tuned into the mental side of the conversation. “Coward,” Mr. B. lashed back. “Always to scared to take a chance. Can’t you see there is no governing body anymore? We took them out. And now the circle of gems is almost complete. Four more until I have enough power to rule all magic. You can be my right hand man.”

  The shiver that ran down my spine had nothing to do with temperature. The crowd let up a scream that drowned out my ability to hear Sam’s retort. Whatever it was sent Mr. B off in a huff, the foul smell of his cigar lingering behind him.

  Sam snuck up beside me and grabbed my elbow.

  “Stop making me jump out of my skin!”

  “Speaking of, we’ll need to get you into your own again. Poor Quen.”

  I glanced down at the sour-faced Native American. Mr. B must have felt he was a good candidate for an ashtray. The top of his head was spattered with gray ash.

  I nodded. Boy, were there some good comments brewing in my head. But I didn’t figure this was the time. I was liable to be the recipient of Quentin’s arrow.

  Sam led us through the lot. A scantily clad bimbo, a guy who looked like a safari adventurer/beach comber and an incredibly short, mute Indian. We must have looked like the Three Musketeers. Or was that the Three Stooges? I voted for the latter when Sam stopped before a dilapidated trailer. “It’s empty.”
/>   “How do you know?”

  “Just trust me, okay?”

  Sam opened the unlocked door and held it. Quentin and I stepped in and nearly ran back out. At least I did. He would have been unable to run on legs that were only two feet long. But it would have been fun to see.

  “What is that God-awful smell?” Quentin gasped.

  I was more concerned with the sounds that emerged from the shadows. “Sounds like….chickens?”

  Quentin pointed to the light switch. I grinned down at him and reached over one of the stacks of boxes that seemed to fill the room to flip it on. Chickens. And Geese. I squinted. Rabbits. A what? Ferret maybe? All in boxes of various sizes stacked on top of one another in the small space. I shuddered.

  “I guess we found your smell. Eau de animal toilet.”

  “Close the door. We’ll only take a minute in here anyway.”

  “Hurry up and tell me how to get out of this body and out of this trailer. What’s the deal?

  “It’s a bit tricky, so watch me first.” Quentin reached up with a stubby hand and untied the bone choker that hid his gems. “You need to move them together, but keep a finger between them. Once they are both touching your hand, go to visible. You should pop out of the body you’re in and be you again.”

  I stepped back as I watched Quentin appear next to a wizened old Indian. And the Indian was still alive! “Go ahead,” Quentin prodded. He stood in front of me and focused on my fingers. They were all thumbs. Once I had the gems throbbing against the sides of my finger, I clicked my heels.

  “Visible,” I said out loud. I didn’t understand how this visible thing worked when I was visible, just someone else, but I could barely breathe from the stench and didn’t want to waste valuable oxygen quizzing him on it.

  “Step to the side.”

  I did. Quentin was there with an arm around my shoulders. I wondered who ran over me with a steamroller? I gasped for breath. Quentin pointed. Standing where I had been was a beautiful girl. Exotic and built just the way Playboy liked ‘em. “She’s real? Not some cartoon you had conjured up?”

  “Well, most of her is real.”

  I totally understood. She’d found a friend in her plastic surgeon.

  “Now what, we just leave them here?”

  “Yep, we fly before they see us and realize we’ve been hitching a ride in their body.”

  “Will they remember anything?”

  “Not this time. But there may be a time you really are just along for the ride. Hiding under their skin.”

  “That is not cool, man. I don’t like it.”

  “I’m sure it’s happened to you before. Ever had a space of time you just know you did something, but for the life of you can’t remember the steps you took? I know you’ve said ‘I know I brought it in here, I just don’t remember what I did with it.’“

  “Well, yeah. But that’s just me. I’m a scatterbrain.”

  “No, you’re an easy target for body hoppers. They stop in your body for a few minutes, a few hours, whatever.”

  “Why?”

  “To get revitalized.”

  “If that’s getting revitalized I don’t want to know what getting tired feels like. My legs are Jello. Oh, and I’m hungry.” I sank against Quentin.

  “Unfortunately, that kind of hunger has to wait. Sam’s outside, these two will be waking up real soon and,” he glanced around, “there’s at least forty pair of beady eyes watching us.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, forcing my worn out body to move. “Now.”

  When we stepped out of the trailer it was dark. As dark as Hollywood could get without a major power failure. The set was pretty well emptied. How long had we been in the trailer, anyway?

  “We’re locking it up here in just a few minutes,” the guy who looked ex-football player but sported a Phoenix Suns baseball cap was telling Sam. “Those your two?” He pointed a plastic looking badge in our direction.

  Sam nodded.

  “How are you feeling?” Sam flipped his movie set visitor pass over and over in his hands.

  “Tired and hungry. I don’t think I’ve eaten a real meal in—two days!” It dawned on me that I hadn’t even thought about it in terms of time. “When we’ve tried to get something to eat you’ve tossed a snack our way and zinged us somewhere else.”

  Quentin rubbed his tummy and licked his lips. “Steak. Is there a steakhouse around here that won’t cost me an arm and a leg?”

  Cost. Money. Purse. Oh Sheez. “My purse. What’s happened to it?” We were already a good five minute walk from the animal hotel.

  Quentin stopped and looked behind him at the trek past the buildings and parking lots. It sucked to be without wheels. “Do you want me to go find it? It’s probably right there, where you reappeared.”

  “No, Quentin,” Sam’s voice warned.

  “Yes, Quentin. Or rather, no, I lost it, I’ll go back. Just let me go invisible and I’ll hurry.”

  “Ella.” Sam didn’t stop walking. He was telling me he wasn’t going to wait. Go or stay, go or stay.

  “I’m going.” I flounced past Quentin and disappeared. There was no way these men were going to push me around. It was mine and I wasn’t going to be without it.

  Yeah. It was a symbol of my independence. Proof I didn’t have to rely on them.

  The area where the filming had been done was a darkened maze of fences and trailers. Everything looked different at night. And I hadn’t bothered to watch exactly how we’d left the place. Nice one, Ella.

  I passed a stable I hadn’t remembered seeing before. Actually, I wasn’t entirely sure it was a stable, but the whinny of horses and smell of hay and manure clued me in. I was real tempted to peak into the glowing yellow window to see.

  Nope, I was in search of a runaway purse. No time for horseplay. What if the actress had snatched it when she came around? Quentin had said something about waking up in a daze. She probably had grabbed it. Or maybe that Indian. My feet pounded on the asphalt in the general direction I expected to find the ratty trailer. The trailers up ahead looked like the ones I had watched the “sheriff” disappear into. Hmm…I wondered if he was there now.

  I rubbed my hands up and down my arms. Even with long sleeves, I felt cold. Sure, part of it was the lost feeling. But geez, here I was no ID, no money wandering through a set in Hollywood, surely someplace I had no right to be. It doesn’t get much more alone than that. And it seemed like my short term memory had vanished. Over my shoulder were the lights of the city, the lines of the lights that guided the drive to the front gate. Somewhere out there were Sam and Quentin. I could just see Sam powering forward, cursing himself for taking me on and Quentin glancing back over his own shoulder from time to time. At least, I hoped he was. Thinking of me, at least.

  Face it, Ella. You’re lost.

  Something snapped behind me. Surely it was a stick, a squirrel dropping acorn shells or something, right? I took a few more speed walk steps and stole a look over my shoulder. I could see nothing. If I were an animal, say a dog, I could twitch my ears back and listen. Maybe even smell if it was something… I didn’t even want to think it was another person. Alas, my barely trained sideshow variety repertoire of magic didn’t allow me the ability to pop eyes into the back of my head. And I wasn’t going to try. I’d end up stuck that way.

  So I treaded as lightly as I could and listened for all I was worth. In the distance I could hear the occasional car horn. The cricket symphony seemed to be playing theme music. It didn’t sound like Jaws, but it wasn’t exactly soothing to me. Perhaps if there had been a script I might have been forewarned and known to forget about finding my purse. But then again, it was probably all in my head—the fear of the dark, the noises and the fact I was still weirded out from today’s travel and body hopping. I shuddered.

  Too late now, I chided myself. I’m going in. Wait. I slowed. Was that a footstep? Did I just imagine the rasping sound of someone drawing in a breath?

  I shivered and reali
zed it had been this morning when I’d last visited the ladies room. Great timing, bladder o’mine. Not a bathroom in sight. No way was I going to strip and squat, even out here in the middle of nowhere. There were invisible magic people everywhere.

  Peeping Toms. That’s what we were. Well, I hadn’t used that particular skill yet. And why did I leave Sam and Quentin again? For a purse?

  Something was behind me. Those hairs on the back of my neck were a beacon to danger, necklace or not. I ignored the pressure in my lower stomach and started jogging. Where, I didn’t know, but anywhere was better than here.

  Wait! I’m invisible right? Then if someone’s following me...Duh. How could anyone follow an invisible person? I needed to quit overthinking it. Still, a bit spooked by the noises I kept hearing, I continued to run toward what I hoped was that stinky trailer.

  Bam! I stopped abruptly, the wind knocked out of me. Whatever I’d hit, I realized, was big and wide and solid. But not like a brick wall solid. It was also transparent. What was the chance of there being a clear elephant in my path? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

  There were stars above me, but I wasn’t sure if they were really there or just caused by this collision. What the heck had I hit? Could it…he see me? Was I still invisible?

  Sam’s words had me very gun shy. I had yet to hear him talk about other “good guys” and men walking around invisible in the darkness were likely not good. I knocked my heels together hoping they hadn’t seen me.

  I laid face up on the cool grass obsessing and I hadn’t even tuned in on the fact there was another conversation zipping past my ears. I wasn’t going to survive my first week on this magic mission.

  “Can you just shut up? Your constant prattle is making me want to rip out your tongue.”

  “Tongue has nothing to do with it, you idiot. It’s her brain. Yak yak yak yak. All the way here, you go on and on. Now you want to review it all again.”

  I winced. There were at least two, and from the low timbre of their voices, they both sounded big, mean. Human bulldogs. I tried not to think about my movements as I forced my body to roll away from the voices. No comment. They didn’t see me. “Well, what did you want me to do, sing to myself?” I had to get involved in the conversation to keep them from realizing what I was doing.