Acting Up

by A. A. Albright

  I bagged the mask, staring at it for a second before I covered it up. ‘That’s funny,’ I said. ‘It gave me no urges whatsoever. Although I can completely understand yours.’ I gave him an apologetic smile. ‘I mean, y’know … she did try to murder me so …’ I turned to Dashell. ‘We’re going to release you from the freezing spell, but first we’re going to bind you in Wayfarer rope, and disempower you.’

  Dashell gave a pitiful nod. A few seconds later we led him, bound in golden rope, to the bench that looked down over the gap.

  ‘Getting rid of the evidence, Dashell?’ Finn shook his head slowly and wagged a finger. ‘Lucky we found you before you managed it.’

  Dashell’s jaw tensed momentarily, as though he was about to protest his innocence. But I guess he thought quickly, and came to the conclusion that that was never going to fly, because he let out a resigned sigh and said, ‘You know what? I’m not getting myself thrown into Witchfield to cover for the rest of them. What do you want to know?’

  Finn placed his hands casually into his pockets. ‘First off, did you kill Felix, Yvonne and Mandy?’

  Dashell shook his head, still wearing that same resigned expression. ‘No. But I doubt you’re going to believe me.’

  ‘Do you know who did?’ I pressed. ‘Or do you at least have an idea?’

  He gave a small shrug. ‘It could have been any of them. Bruno, Aidan or Gillian. Although I’d rule out Bruno, because he never would have killed Felix. Even by mistake.’ He let out a helpless breath of air. ‘Look, Bruno hated Mandy. And he cottoned on that the show’s stars did, too.’

  ‘Yeah, except you didn’t hate her for the same reasons the others did, did you?’ Finn said. ‘You hated her because she dumped you for Will, and left you with an almighty hex to boot. What better way to pay them back than to kill Mandy and set Will up to take the fall?’

  ‘What? I didn’t kill her!’ Dashell spluttered. ‘In fact, the second I took this mask in my hands, I knew that I didn’t even dislike her anymore. I just … didn’t feel anything like I thought I did.’ His eyes took on a faraway look. ‘When Bruno gave these masks to the three of us, he told us that they weren’t to wear on set. He’d told us all about Mandy’s mask, but he said that these were different. We weren’t going to fake it like she did. We weren’t going to make the public like us with magic. We were real actors.’

  I thought back to what Guillermo told us in the shop. These masks definitely weren’t to make people like you, that much was true. ‘So what did Bruno tell you the masks were for?’ I questioned. ‘And when were you supposed to wear them?’

  ‘He said we were to wear them when we rehearsed, and only if we were rehearsing on our own. Bruno wrote the show pretty close to filming, because he liked to be able to include relevant jokes and what have you. A lot of the time, we’d get the script the night before filming. And Bruno said that would be the best time to wear our masks. He said it’d help us get in touch with our muse. Help us put a fire in our belly and become the best actors we could be. In fact, he called them Inner Fire masks.’

  Finn snorted. ‘Did he now?’

  ‘Yeah, he did. But the first time – and the only time – that I ever wore this mask, I knew it was a whole steaming pond of pixie piddle. It didn’t ignite my inner ambitions. It ignited every bad thought I’d ever had. Made every dark desire seem reasonable. And my power …’ He looked awed at whatever memory he was experiencing. ‘My power was seriously scary. There was this photo of Mandy winning the Plummy award. It hung above Bruno’s desk. I always hated the thing. So I went in, and I smashed it to pieces.’

  So that was why there was a gap amongst the photos on Bruno’s wall. So much for him clearing space for his next award.

  Dashell looked steadily at me. ‘But here’s the thing. I was in the South of France when I had that thought. And before I knew it, I’d been to Bruno’s office and was back at the vineyard with the picture in my hands. Didn’t remember clicking my fingers. Didn’t remember how I got there and back. The next day, I sneaked a look at the security footage to see if I could see myself breaking into Bruno’s office. And all I could see was … this blur.’

  Finn began to pace, clearly frustrated with how long Dashell was taking to get to the point. ‘Listen, if you couldn’t remember how you got there, then how can you be sure you didn’t carry out the murders?’

  Dashell met his eyes. ‘Because I never wore the mask again, that’s how. The urge to smash Mandy’s award photo wasn’t the only urge I had. Once I’d done that, I felt empty. I realised: I didn’t care whether Mandy won a million awards. I didn’t give a crap about her. I never had. I’d wanted her because she was the woman to have in the coven. And I’d been upset to lose her not because I’d lost her, but simply because I’d lost. It was about impressing my dad all along. Proving to him that just because I was an actor, it didn’t mean I had to take a back seat in the coven. I could be just as big a man as my dad was.’

  He tried to put his head to his hands, then realised that his bonds made that impossible. He gave a little frustrated twitch instead and said, ‘That was when the mask really scared me. Because it was like it was bringing every bad thought I’d ever had to the forefront. Thoughts I didn’t even know I’d had, because I’d pushed them so far down. I wanted …’

  He paused and lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘… I wanted to kill my dad. To take over the wineries and take his place in the coven. I wanted to take revenge on him for every snide comment he’d ever sent my way.’ He shivered. ‘It took all I had in me to wrench that mask off my face. I’ve never worn it since. I told Bruno I didn’t want it, but he refused to take it back. He said that if I didn’t keep it, he’d tell you guys about me stealing his picture of Mandy and smashing it – because somehow, even though the cameras didn’t pick that up, Bruno knew. I started to feel like he had another agenda – like he wanted me to kill Mandy. But I didn’t kill her, or the others.’

  We might not be allowed to use truth spells, but my instinct told me he wasn’t lying. I wasn’t about to let him know I felt that way, not when he might have more to tell. ‘Dashell, if you’re innocent, then why didn’t you tell us all of this the other day?’

  Once again, he twitched in frustration. ‘I might have decided Mandy wasn’t worth the bother of hurting, but Bruno, Aidan and Gillian all have good reason to hate her. I assumed one of them – or maybe all of them – were behind the murders. And if they were … can you honestly say she didn’t deserve to be murdered?’

  I stood up. ‘It’s not up to me to say what Mandy Parker deserved. But I do know one thing – Yvonne and Felix did not deserve to get caught in the crossfire.’

  Finn stepped forward. ‘Dashell Berry, you are under arrest for withholding vital information from the Wayfarers. You do not–’

  ‘But I didn’t do anything!’ squeaked Dashell.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said, taking him by the arm. ‘If you’d come forward when Felix was killed, Yvonne might still be alive.’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ said Dashell. ‘But so might Mandy. So … you can see my dilemma. Can’t you?’

  As I prepared to click my fingers, Finn whispered. ‘Y’know what? I kind of can.’

  21. The We Hate Mandy Monday Club

  When we arrived back at headquarters, Bonbon was furious to hear that Dashell wasn’t the murderer. While I could have stayed there and argued with him, there were far more interesting things afoot. We had an interview with Bruno to look forward to, for two reasons. The first was that a quick search of his property had turned up some evidence. The second was that, while we were out of the office, Greg had popped over with some news that would make the interview even more fun.

  ≈

  ‘Why am I still here?’ Bruno demanded, looking at his lawyer, a Wyrd Court appointee called Miles Master. The lawyer was a new arrival at the Wyrd Court, having come from the Master coven in London just a few days earlier. By all accounts he was excellent at his job, and his watch and his
clothing told me he was rolling in money, all of which made me wonder: why was he working as a public defender?

  ‘We’ve gone over this, Bruno,’ said Miles. ‘The Wayfarers have every right to hold you longer if they’ve found evidence.’

  ‘What evidence?’ Bruno spat. ‘How can there be evidence if I haven’t done anything?’

  Finn held up the silver sack, which now had two masks inside. ‘The first of these came courtesy of Dashell Berry. The second one was found during a search of your house. In the freezer, as it happens.’

  Bruno folded his arms. ‘So? I have every right to own a mask. That’s just your average comedy and tragedy mask.’

  ‘My client is right,’ said Miles. ‘There’s nothing suspicious about a director and writer owning one of these masks. I mean, sure, it’s a bit odd to have it in the freezer – but we all have our kinks. So unless you have more than this, I’m afraid we’re going to have to bid you goodbye.’

  ‘Oh, we have more.’ I sat forward. ‘More, like evidence of those masks being used by someone following Will Berry in the hope of framing him for murder. And evidence of one of those masks being used in a murder.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ said Bruno in a strange voice. ‘They can’t … I didn’t …’

  Miles put a hand on Bruno’s arm. ‘What my client is trying to say is that such evidence is purely circumstantial. Masks like that are seven a sickle.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘They’re not. Sure, there might be a bunch of black and white masks out there. But they’re not these masks. Masks that can make the wearers incredibly fast. So fast that they couldn’t be picked up by the naked eye or even by your average security cameras.’

  ‘Exactly!’ said Bruno. ‘You couldn’t have seen any of us. You can’t if we’re wearing those masks!’

  Miles groaned. ‘Miss Wayfair, Mr Plimpton, may I have a word in private with my client?’

  I smiled sweetly at him. ‘Why of course, Mr Master.’

  ≈

  A few minutes later, Miles called us back in. ‘My client has decided to tell you everything,’ he said. ‘If he can cut a deal.’

  Finn laughed harshly. ‘And for your next joke? Miles, I dunno how they do it in London, but we don’t make deals with murder suspects over here. He’ll tell us everything, either way.’

  As Finn pushed past Miles and out of the room, Bruno cried, ‘No, I won’t. Not without a deal. It’s like you said, Wanda. Security cameras can’t pick up anyone wearing those masks. You’ve nothing on me. Nothing to tie me to the murder scenes.’

  I smiled. ‘Oh, I think you misheard me, Bruno. I said the average security camera can’t. I don’t suppose you remember who the studio hired to install the security system, do you?’

  Bruno shrugged. ‘Some wizard doing a side gig for some extra money. Did it for next to nothing, so I sincerely doubt he did the best job.’

  ‘It was a wizard called Greg,’ Finn said. ‘A wizard who is so good at everything he does – no matter how little he’s being paid for it – that the Wayfarers have been trying to hire him and his tech for months. It was difficult for him, I’ll grant you. At first, he wasn’t able to find more than a blur. But he worked on it and worked on it, and now … now he’s managed to get some stills of the mask. And now that he’s done that, his other super-secret technology is currently syncing with the security footage. It’s a bit of a retrofit, but he should soon be able to establish the aura of the mask wearer who entered Mandy’s dressing room on the morning of Felix’s murder. You remember Felix. The man you loved. The man Mandy Parker wouldn’t let you be happy with.’

  Bruno sat back, a sad look on his face. ‘Of course I remember Felix. And yeah, I think we could have been good together. I’d never mistake him for Mandy, glamour spell or not. I’d never hurt a hair on his head.’ He brought his gaze to Finn’s. ‘But I think I know who did.’

  Miles cleared his throat, but Bruno went on. ‘You’re right. I don’t deserve a deal. I might not have killed Felix, but I have an idea of who it might have been. I think it was one of the We Hate Mandy Monday Club.’

  ≈

  ‘Dashell, Aidan, Gillian and me used to meet every Monday night. It was when Mandy went for her isolation therapy, so we knew that she wouldn’t ring any of us for at least two hours. We’d have cocktails and snacks and talk about how the show was supposed to be. Before she came along. It was a vision we all shared. Well, maybe not Gillian – she’s a bit of a killjoy, to be honest. But she hated Mandy as much as we did, so even if she didn’t share our vision for the show, at least she saw eye to eye with us on the wicked witch of the set.’

  He leant forward. ‘You don’t know what it was like on that set. Sometimes we all loved Mandy – usually while she was doing a scene. After she was finished she’d go off to her dressing room – to unwind, she said – and when she came out, it was like she was a different person. And a much worse one, too.

  ‘We thought she must be the best actress in the world to have us fooled – to have the whole of the magical world fooled – while she was on camera. Because when she wasn’t acting, she made all of our lives a misery.

  ‘For a long time all we did was drink together and make fun of her. But then Dashell heard Mandy on the phone to Will one day, saying she couldn’t meet him because she had an appointment on Samhain Street. We were all curious, but as to who was going to follow her …’ Bruno sighed. ‘Well, I drew the short wand. It seemed easy enough, because you can’t just click your fingers and arrive in most of the businesses on Samhain Street. You have to go there and walk in like you’re some sort of a …’ His nose wrinkled. ‘… a human or something horrible like that. So I was able to keep up with her every move. She went into a necromancy supply shop, but it wasn’t an Infernal Candle or some Bye Bye Decay Spray that she was after. There was another place, a mask shop I’d never heard of, out the back. Of course, I couldn’t get back there myself. Even a bribe wouldn’t convince Nedina to let me past.’

  He paused for a drink of water and wiped his forehead. ‘I asked around,’ he went on. ‘I heard of other actors who’d gone to the same mask shop, looking for something called Inner Light. Apparently it makes a person’s best qualities shine through.’ He leant towards me, his face inches from mine. ‘But Mandy doesn’t have any good qualities. So how could a mask like that have done anything for her? How?’

  When no one answered his question, he spoke again. ‘I went again and again, and eventually Nedina allowed me back to talk to the mask shop owner. I wanted to know what mask Mandy really had, and how she was using it to trick the audience into liking her. He wouldn’t tell me a thing, but Dashell had given me some money, so I placed a few gold rounds on the desk, and what do you know? The weirdo who owned the shop pulled a mask out from under the counter and started to work on it, right in front of me. It looked just like Mandy’s face. He swore it wasn’t hers, but he winked as he said it. Then he went on to tell me all about how a Deepest Desire mask works. And I knew he was really telling me about Mandy, because he put the gold rounds into his pocket and said, “You know what you know. It’s not my responsibility what you do with it.”’

  ‘We know about Mandy’s mask, too,’ said Finn before he could go on. ‘But that still doesn’t explain how you got the Inner Demon masks.’

  Bruno shook his head. ‘No. No, they were Inner Fire masks. The masks spoke to me. They told me they’d put a fire in my belly and make me able to perform any task. No matter how hard. No matter how deadly.’

  ‘You got the deadly part right,’ I deadpanned. I leant over to Finn. ‘Any news on Aidan and Gillian? We need to talk to them, and soon.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ he whispered back, moving to the door, opening it and mumbling some instructions to the Wayfarer outside. When he returned, Bruno was in full flow once again.

  ‘As for how I got them, well, I don’t really know. I wanted one of those masks, more than anything. They seemed to call to me. When I looked at them
I just knew: if I wore one of them, my troubles would be over. My show would be the way I wanted it to be. True to my grandfather’s original vision. And then they spoke to me. They told me they could help me do it all. The old man refused to sell me one, but when I got home …’ He paused and lowered his voice. ‘When I got home, the masks were there – four of them in all. At first I didn’t understand – why four? But then it occurred to me … four masks. Four members of the We Hate Mandy Monday Club.’

  He stopped talking, his hands shaking. I could see Miles eyeing him and whispering to him, urging him to quit while he was ahead.

  ‘So the four of you decided to turn your We Hate Mandy Monday Club into a We Murder Mandy Monday Club?’ I asked.

  ‘No!’ Bruno began to rub his bald spot furiously. ‘It wasn’t like that. You have to believe me. No one suggested murder.’

  I thought back to what Dashell had said. ‘I believe you, Bruno, as a matter of fact. I believe you didn’t discuss murder. In fact, I don’t think you even told the others what the masks were capable of.’

  If that spot wasn’t already bald, it would have been by now. ‘Not true,’ he said weakly. ‘I told them they were Inner Fire masks, just like the sign said.’

  ‘Uh huh. And I suppose that was somewhere in between dropping hints that the show would be better off without Mandy and telling them to go home and rehearse their lines with the masks on.’

  He swallowed.

  ‘You sly old bugger.’ Finn shook his head. ‘Wanda’s right, isn’t she? By then you’d already put your mask on. So you knew what your plan was. The mask had already given you some idea about just how you could make a Mandy-free show. So you dropped some suggestions in the hope that the others would put the masks on and be inspired to do your dirty work for you.’

  ‘All right!’ Bruno cried. ‘I did hope that. I even suggested that we could use the argument I’d heard between Will and Mandy, where he said he felt fit to strangle her. I suggested Will might be the perfect fall guy if someone else happened to kill Mandy. But I had to. It wasn’t my fault. The mask told me to do it. It told me exactly what to do and what to say.’ He began to prod at his ear. ‘Even now I can hear it whispering, and I haven’t worn the thing for days. It’s evil! I never should have gone into that weird little shop. If I hadn’t …’ He began to cry. ‘If I hadn’t then Felix would still be alive. And I didn’t kill him. I swear to it. I told you already, I would never have mistaken him for Mandy.’