Celebromancy by Michael R. Underwood Page A

done it a hundred times.
    “Kelly Dominguez, Pearson Patriot . I have an appointment,” Ree said, a bit surprised to hear someone else’s voice coming out.
    The woman seemed unimpressed. “What appointment?”
    Ree let the magic guide her words, augmenting her memory of Kelly to keep the ruse going.
    “Oh, great. So now the biggest paper in Pearson isn’t important enough for Hollywood to keep our appointments anymore?” Ree turned up the drama. “My boss said this would happen. He told the mayor that if we let the production companies in, we gave them an inch, they’d take ten square miles, set up shop, and stop answering calls from the local press.”
    Ree locked the woman in her gaze to hit the point home. “This isn’t Hollywood north, you know that, right? You’re here as a part of our good graces. You blow us off, and my editor raises hell in City Hall. Then poof go your permits, your tax breaks, and who do you think they will blame?”
    The probably-intern wilted under Ree’s Scathing Reporter act and took a step back before saying, “Stay here, I’ll go make sure they know you’re coming.” The woman vanished into the hubbub, leaving Ree unguarded.
    Ree relaxed, feeling a bit bad for biting the woman’s head off for doing her job. So, do I wait for her to come back and escort me in, or barge in for more juicy info and try to push a reaction? If she did the latter, it’d come back to bite Kelly even more than what she was already doing. And the real Kelly would be around sometime today; Ree had gotten the whole idea off of Dominguez’s Twitter feed when she had asked her followers for questions to ask MacKenzie during her set visit that afternoon.
    Ree took several long breaths, maintaining her mental grip on the magic keeping her in Mystiqued mode.
    The probably-intern came back, looking a bit less annoyed as Ree tried to greet her with a smile.
    “Straight back, then the third trailer on the left. Her assistant says you’re early.”
    “Better than being late,” Ree said with a smile, trying to flip from Bad Reporter to Good Reporter as she walked by. Slightly less effective than Bad Cop/Good Cop. The right photo could do more damage than a gun, but people didn’t tend to die because of scandals.
    Well, maybe.
    Which brought her thoughts back to Jane. Ree promised herself she’d check on the star after her recon, fit that in somewhere between changing, checking in with her dad, eating something resembling food, then heading into work at Grognard’s for the Midnight Market shift.
    Ree kept her eyes open as she walked down the pathway heading to the shooting set and the trailers. The production campus for Blog Wars was like the one for Awakenings , but three times as big and fancy. A brigade of PAs buzzed around like underpaid bees, and she had to resist the urge to stop into the craft services tent, where she swore she could smell potatoes au gratin and roasted lamb.
    She was still new to the reality of show biz, but there was no mistaking Rachel MacKenzie’s trailer. It was 50% bigger than Jane’s and had two burly bodyguards standing out front, each so top-heavy with muscle they looked like inverted Weebles.
    Ree held up Kelly’s press pass again. “Kelly Dominguez. I’m expected.”
    One bodyguard, a big Eastern European–looking guy with stubble-shaved head and a less-shaved beard, stepped forward and said, “Let me see your bag.”
    “Paranoid much?” she responded, trying to cover a wave of panic with snark. She had no idea if the magic would cover up the weird props in her bag. That wasn’t discussed in the movies, and Mystique’s clothes are part of my shapeshifting had always been a gray area, the kind of thing the films and comics asked people not to think about too much.
    Maybe the Doubt would help her, but she wasn’t counting on it. She reached into her bag and pulled out her phone and a microphone. “This is all you need to see, okay? I’m press, not some shady