Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 95609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95609 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
It’s maddening.
When I’d felt my cell buzz in my bra, I’d snuck away.
“And is that the same guy from the bar?”
Ivy hadn’t talked much to Luca beyond threatening his life if he murdered me. When we’d gotten to the café, she and Heath had been in a deep discussion of how to fix their AI’s sarcastic bent. I thought maybe not be around her so much. It was obvious to me the AI was learning from its source material.
I’m huddled in the corner of the luxurious mansion that is being used to house the potential queens. I can hear the ladies partying in the other room. I’m holed up in what passes for the kitchen. I say passes because there’s no food here. Just bottles of wine and booze and diet soda. I know there’s some canapés being walked around, but when my cell phone had buzzed, I’d realized I hadn’t locked the sucker up the way I should have. At least I’d turned off the ringer.
I’m going to get in trouble, but what’s the worst that can happen? They fire me and then I don’t have to watch the man I’ve been crushing on date a whole bunch of gorgeous women? Go into fantasy suites with them? I’m an assistant here, so I could be the one he calls to get him a box of condoms.
“Yes, and I didn’t know,” I say into the phone, keeping my voice down because they’re filming. This part isn’t live, so it feels more normal to me.
Not that anything feels normal.
“But didn’t you spend the night with him?” Ivy’s voice has gone low, too. “Wait. Hold on. Harper’s calling in. I knew she was going to watch it. She acts so pretentious. Like she only watches PBS or something. Hah. She slums with the rest of us.”
There’s a pause and then Harper’s voice comes over the line. “Holy shit. Ivy, are you watching this? Why is Anika falling out of a Central Park carriage dressed like a slutty Academy Award?”
I wince, but the description is accurate. “I’m not used to these heels.”
“Ani? I thought you would be…well, I don’t know,” Harper admits. “What the hell is going on? Was that Luca? That looked like Luca. He did not mention he rules over a small European country. That feels like something he should have talked about.”
If I’m panicking, at least I have my girlies freaking out with me. “I know, right?”
“Or he could have wanted one normal night before he had to start this show.” Ivy plays a part she doesn’t normally play. The voice of reason. She’s usually better at being the voice of rage. “I know I’m not like a king or anything, but as the only one of us who has been on the cover of a magazine, it can be nice to meet someone who doesn’t know who you are. Who doesn’t have any expectations of you.”
Who doesn’t know how brutal your fall from grace had been. Ivy is well on the way to climbing back up the hill, but she took the hard way down once.
I can see what she’s saying. “I told him I’m a production assistant. He should have told me he was about to be involved in a production.”
“Sure. He was supposed to think that in a city of eight point five million with hundreds of production studios, that you would be working on his.”
Ivy is starting to annoy me. “He could have asked. But no. He was too busy playing that stupid game Heath gave us.” I’d thought it made us go deep, but we should have spent some time in the shallows, too. This whole thing could have been avoided if we’d made normal small talk.
Me: Yeah, I work as a production assistant.
Luca: Oh, hey. I’m about to start a production. It’s a reality show.
Me: Same. Wait. Is it the same?
And then we would have known, and I could have told the director to find another assistant to take corpse girl’s place, and I would likely still have to grab his condoms from Duane Reade.
“Hey, he was only trying to help. Honestly, it was kind of my idea,” Ivy says. “Also, uhm, burn those cards. They’re annoying. He keeps asking me questions. He says he has to know everything about me before he formally proposes. He’s a nosy bastard.”
Oh, I’m going to buy him part two of that game and hope it has some blank cards so I can fill out a couple of questions of my own.
“I still have not heard why you were on my computer screen.” Harper tries to bring us back to the problem at hand. “And why were you talking about covens? That was weird, you know. The Internet now thinks you’re some kind of Wiccan.”
“They do?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ivy replies. “There are already fun threads on your vid. Some of them think you’re going to try to enchant the king. Most of them think you’re a cute weirdo. And there’s talk that you faked that pratfall.”