Acting Up

by A. A. Albright

  ‘No, we won’t be going to Witchfield. Well, Aidan and Bruno will, but Dashell and I will be just fine.’ She smiled. ‘I would think that, by now, you’d have understood just how powerful these masks are. They give the wearer all the power they need to be able to achieve their aim. And my aim is to be the star and the head producer on Be My Witch. In my version of the show, Mandy’s character Selina has been murdered by a human hating gang. The new actor playing Baron will be suitably devastated, but he’ll eventually fall in love with me. Together we’ll set about changing the magical world, educating our viewers on why humans, weredogs and the like … well, they’re not all that bad.’ She tossed her hair. ‘I’ll be doing a public service and will gain millions of fans while I’m at it.’

  Finn grunted. ‘Not sure you will, love. It all sounds a bit preachy to me.’

  ‘Oh, no need to be bitter, Finn.’ She crossed the room and stroked his face. ‘But it’s okay. I can see why you’d feel that way about me. You probably think I’m going to kill you and Wanda so that I can set Aidan up for your murders or something.’ She placed a quick kiss on his cheek. ‘But don’t worry. Like I said, you’re handsome. Your death would be a waste to the world at large. And as for you, Wanda.’ She spun to face me, hands on her hips. ‘I’m just about your biggest fan. I’d never do anything to hurt you. But I will have to mess with your minds a little bit.’

  She rubbed her hands together and grinned with glee. ‘Because I can do that now! Once you leave this room, you’ll believe an altogether different version of the truth. A version in which Aidan and Bruno were behind it all, and I was the brave, plucky young woman who tried to stop them and almost got murdered in the process.’

  ‘So that was why you set Aidan up with the script and Bruno up with the Blue. You’re the one who sneaked the bottle under his hat. Did you write that note, too, the one that set Will up?’

  ‘I did. You’re such a clever girl, Wanda.’

  ‘Woman.’ I didn’t really care, either way. But seeing as she had effectively disempowered me and was about to mess with my mind, the least I could do was disagree with her on semantics.

  ‘Whatever.’ She let out a dramatic sigh. ‘I didn’t actually want to set Will up of course. We’ll probably get together now that Mandy’s dead. I’ve always had a thing for him, but he’s been too busy running around after her to notice I exist. I didn’t even set out to tell you guys about the Blue – I didn’t know about it at first. But I just couldn’t stop following him because, well, he’s gorgeous. I saw him lock the Blue away and decided that it might make a clever little addition to my plan. Once you get out of here, you’ll suddenly discover that the note was written in Aidan’s writing – because yes, the mask enabled me to replicate it perfectly.’

  Her face took on a beatific expression. ‘The note will really help you guys form your case against him, actually. It’s going to transpire that Aidan planted the Blue in Will’s house. A little white lie, but one you ought to thank me for. Solving this case – or seeming to solve it, anyway – will make you very popular. You’ll be the ones who caught the evil actor who murdered poor Mandy and tried to set her handsome fiancé up to take the fall. And because I almost died bringing Aidan to justice, Will shall be ever so grateful to me.’

  Finn shook his head in disgust. ‘Tut, tut, tut, Gillian. It’s beginning to sound like you did all of this just to land yourself Mandy’s man. And there was me thinking you and I were going to have a dalliance.’

  ‘Oh, aren’t you sweet!’ She gave him a flirtatious smile. ‘You and I can have a bit on the side. But did I do all of this just to get Will Berry?’ She shook her head emphatically. ‘That’s a big fat no! It’s just going to be … a little bonus. A bonus from me to me, for a job well done. And let’s face it, it was not an easy job.’

  She picked up one of Mandy’s dresses, holding it against herself in the mirror. ‘I was the one who lured Mandy here to run lines. There was an alternative script, just not the one on Aidan’s computer. In the script we were rehearsing, Gigi is the one under the influence of the potion, and she tries to strangle Selina. Mandy believed I was only strangling her as part of the show. By the time she realised what was really going on, she was too weak to fight back. And Bruno and Aidan … they deserve to take the fall. Sure, Aidan might not have actually hated Mandy, but he did want the show to go in the same direction that Bruno did – he wanted it to be the sort of human-hating propaganda that could well start a war.’ She shuddered. ‘They are not nice people.’

  I had to give her that. ‘But what about Felix and Yvonne?’ I asked. ‘Were they just accidents?’

  She sighed. ‘Yvonne was. No one ever drinks out of Mandy’s stupid pink champagne flute. I can’t believe she did that. And I can’t believe Mandy actually survived the amount of Blue she drank, either. Talk about the witch with nine lives.’ She threw the dress aside and sat down again. ‘But Felix wasn’t an accident. He came in here and caught me while I was poisoning Mandy’s orange juice. So I used the super-speed that the mask had given me and forced some doughnut and orange juice down his throat.’ Her eyes began to water. ‘You might not believe me, but I am sorry about Felix. And about Yvonne. But I got Mandy in the end. That’s the main thing, isn’t it? She really was an awful person.’

  Her face brightened slightly. ‘I mean, when you look at it, I’ve done a really good thing here. I’m going to get Bruno and Aidan – two elitist and frankly dangerous snobs – chucked in Witchfield for working together to murder Mandy. I’m going to make the show better than ever. And I killed Mandy. No one loses, really.’ Her hands went to her face, and an ecstatic look entered her eyes. ‘I’m well aware that Bruno gave us these masks in the hope that one of us would kill Mandy and do his dirty work for him. That’s just the sort of snivelling slimeball he is. I knew everything about him the second I put this mask on. And I learned all about me too. What I was capable of, with the help of the mask. The greatness I could achieve.’ She shrugged. ‘So I suppose, in a way, I owe Bruno some thanks.’

  The mask was becoming more and more obvious to me the longer I stared at her. I wasn’t sure whether it was just a mental thing – now I knew it was there, I could see it all the better – or whether it really was losing its invisibility. What I did know was that it was a truly awesome object. Not the yay, that’s so awesome variety. More the trembling with awe kind.

  It had given Gillian all of the power she needed to see her plan through. She became a computer geek good enough to trick the Super Social network. She became fast enough to escape the notice of cameras. Without Greg’s help we wouldn’t have been able to see anything at all.

  She was able to add poison to drinks without anyone noticing, plus she had the strength to strangle Mandy. And now … now she was super-powered enough to put mine and Finn’s magic out of action, and to manipulate our minds when she was done with her monologue.

  If I ever got out of here, I was going to find Guillermo Moriarty and make him very sorry.

  The last time Finn and I had been trapped in a dire situation, Paul had come to our rescue. He and the rest of the Wayfarers worked hard to get us away from the remaining members of the Dark Team. But that was because they knew we’d been kidnapped.

  Right now no one knew we were being held against our will, and they definitely didn’t know what sort of power Gillian had in her hands. Well, on her face. The Dark Team were supposed to be the deadliest assassins out there, and yet they had nothing on these masks.

  At the thought of the masks, a terrifying plan popped into my mind.

  24. Goody Two-Shoes

  Gillian was back at the mirror again, trying on Mandy’s jewellery while she continued to tell us why her actions had been for the good of all. She seemed to be looking hard at her own reflection while she talked. But just how enraptured with her image was she? Would I have enough time to snatch Aidan’s mask?

  Bugger it. I crossed the room in a couple of strides and grabbed it.


  As I went to put it on, Finn shook his head, his eyes filled with fear.

  I don’t know whether Crazy Clogs sensed or saw the movement – either way, she spun fast on her heels and made a run towards me.

  But the thing about this mask was that it didn’t just make her fast. It made me fast, too, before I ever put it on. No sooner had I considered wearing it, than my hands were flying to my face, fixing it in place. And there wasn’t much fixing involved on my part. There were no clips or bands. It just pasted itself on, like a second skin.

  ‘Oh my stars, Wanda.’ Finn’s voice was hollow. ‘Take it off before it changes you into a maniac like Gillian.’

  ‘I am not a maniac,’ she argued. ‘But he’s right. You can’t handle it, Wanda. You should take it off.’

  It wasn’t as though I hadn’t thought this through. Sure it was just for three seconds or so – but you’d be surprised just how many thoughts a busy little brain like mine can have in three seconds. I knew what I was doing was reckless, but I also knew it was the only chance.

  And the very second the mask attached itself to my face, I knew something better than any of that: I had my power back.

  I extended a finger and said, ‘Conáil.’

  Gillian laughed as she blocked my spell, hitting me with a freezing spell of her own – one which I easily avoided. ‘Ah, so we’re battling to the death now, are we? Well, I hate to tell you this, Wanda, but you’re not going to win. You might be wearing the mask. But a goody two-shoes like you doesn’t have any inner fire for the mask to stoke. I will beat you, because I want it more.’

  Whilst I’d love to be able to pretend to be a sweet and innocent young miss, I think you know by now that I’m far from perfect. I didn’t want to be a Wayfarer because I was a goody two-shoes. I wanted to be a Wayfarer because catching the bad guy gave me a buzz, the like of which I’d never experienced before. And right now, I was jonesing for that buzz to come at me full force. She might be a girl, but she was the current bad guy, and I was all stoked up to send her where she belonged.

  ‘It’s not an Inner Fire mask, you moron!’ I shouted as I hit her with yet another freezing spell. ‘It’s an Inner Demon mask. Can’t you feel it? All your darkest desires, rushing to the fore?’

  Her face paled a little, but she kept countering my spells as quickly as I sent them her way. I gave Finn his power back, she took it away again … I made our disempowerment devices work, but she broke them the second I did … I unlocked the room, she locked it again … you get the picture. It was exhausting.

  ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘A fire in my belly or a demon in my mind … as long as it gets the job done then it’s all the same to me. But I must say, I’m surprised at you, Wanda. What is it you want from the mask anyway? To beat me? Because seeing as I want to beat you, then it seems like we might be at a bit of an impasse.’

  I kept shooting magic her way, ignoring her. And ignoring the mask just a little bit, too. It wasn’t as though there was a foreign voice hissing evil suggestions in my ear or anything. There was no little devil jumping up and down on my shoulder, either. All of the desires that the mask ignited in me, well … they felt uncannily like my own.

  Part of me loved Gillian right now. She’d killed Mandy, a woman who’d made my life a misery from the moment we met. I remembered all of those tears I shed, thinking about Mandy with Will. Thinking about his body, close to hers.

  And part of me hated Gillian, too. She had a thing for Will. Maybe I should get rid of her the way she got rid of Mandy? Send a little old death spell her way. I was more than capable. It was just one little word – Marbh – and she’d be out of the running.

  But even though it was technically me thinking those things, I knew that it wasn’t. Not really. Gillian wasn’t my competition for Will. She was just another criminal that I was facing off against. She’d fall, like they all did. But not because I killed her.

  To my surprise, the problem wasn’t what I wanted. Sure, I was feeling a little more Machiavellian than usual, but I could deal with it. I could fight those thoughts off. The biggest problem right now was what Gillian wanted. We were both wearing a mask, after all. We both had the power to do pretty much anything to achieve our aims. I wanted to take her down, and she wanted the world to believe she was a hero.

  That was something I was never going to let happen. I’d fought off Kilian Berry. The Dark Team. I was not going down to a dumb actress who wanted to make a preachy show. Because Finn was right. It was preachy. She’d make the whole thing so schmaltzy and annoying that she’d inspire even more hatred against humans. Mandy might have been as irritating as her dog, and she might have been a pretty horrible person, but her silly, giggly character had been popular. It had convinced on-the-fence witches that humans were, actually, kind of all right. That was more than any stupid preachy show of Gillian’s could ever do.

  ‘This is getting boring,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to kill you now.’ She said it with a look of smug satisfaction. She thought she knew all about me. Most people did. They saw me as a do-gooder (and they’d called me that like it was supposed to be a bad thing, too – go figure). Gillian really believed she could hit me with a death spell, and that there’d be nothing someone like me could do about it.

  But what if I could? I didn’t want to kill her – that would take away the satisfaction I’d get from seeing her in Witchfield. But what if I hit her with a death spell at the precise same time as she sent one my way?

  Either it was an awesome plan in the good way, and the masks would go on the fritz in confusion. Or it was an awesome plan in the bad way, and we’d both end up dead.

  I didn’t have a choice though. I couldn’t stop her in any other way. This mask was driving her doolally. And it had too much power. More power than anything I’d seen before. She could do so much damage once she got out of this room.

  As she extended her hand, I saw her mouth begin to form the word. Oh well, this was it – my time to shine, or my time to die. And if it was the latter, then at least she’d die along with me. I extended my finger, and at the exact same time, we both shouted, ‘Marbh!’

  25. You’ve Got Some Ugly on You

  I sat up, blinking my eyes. But I wasn’t in Mandy’s dressing room. I was in my childhood bed at Wayfarers’ Rest, my mother looking down on me as she rubbed something sweet-smelling onto my face.

  ‘Welcome back, love,’ she said. ‘And you were only unconscious for a couple of days this time around. That’s much better than the last time you knocked yourself out whilst fighting off a maniac. Well done, love. Now just hang on there a minute while I go and get you some apple tart.’

  ≈

  She returned five minutes later, but she didn’t just have apple tart. She also had Finn.

  ‘Everyone else is pacing downstairs,’ he said, as my mam handed me a plate of apple tart and left the room. ‘But I wanted to fill you in first. Also to give out to you. You could have killed yourself, you idiot.’

  He picked up my cuddly-toy cat, squeezing poor old Minx a little bit too tight.

  ‘Well, I guess … I didn’t? What about Gillian? Oh, and the familiars?’

  Finn sat at the foot of my bed, throwing the toy to the floor. ‘Kitty gave an incredibly long and dramatic monologue before he passed away. He might have called you a wench one or two times – but in a nice way. And Cyril’s last words were “I’m feeling a bit peckish.” It was very poignant. Brought a tear to my eyes. As for Gillian, she’s on remand in Witchfield, awaiting trial. Along with Aidan, Bruno and Dashell. The other three might not have murdered anyone, but they sure as Hecate knew it was going on. They’ll do twenty years each, if I have my way. Gillian’ll do life.’ His fists clenched and unclenched. I was beginning to think he regretted throwing my toy cat to the floor. ‘And if I could find Guillermo Moriarty, he’d be doing a hundred lives over. I’ve spoken to Nedina again, but she still swears she knows nothing.’

  ‘She probably doesn’t.’ I shrugged my s
houlders and began to eat. Oh my stars, it was a good apple tart! So good that I might have to follow it up with a second slice – or better yet, the entire tart. ‘So anyway, my foolproof plan to confuse the masks by sending a death spell at the same time as Gillian worked, then.’

  Finn scowled. ‘The masks got fried, if that’s what you mean. But so did both your faces before they fell off.’ He grabbed a hand mirror from my dressing table and held it up in front of my face. I could see tiny bumps all over my skin. ‘You should have seen yourself two days ago. Lucky that you and Ronnie have so much fun making ointments together. That’s one of your own burn creams your mam’s been rubbing on you. You’ll be back to normal by this evening, in plenty of time for Max’s birthday party.’

  ‘Max’s party!’ I said gleefully. ‘I didn’t miss it?’

  Finn’s scowl increased. ‘No, but you deserve to miss it, you idiot. Doing something that stupid, Wanda …’ He shook his head and put the mirror back. ‘What if her death spell had hit you a fraction of a second earlier?’

  I put my empty plate on my bedside table. ‘Then it wouldn’t have worked. I didn’t want to die, so my mask wasn’t going to let that happen. Me and Gillian both sent death spells at each other for completely conflicting reasons. Since it was impossible for both our masks to win, I knew that it would fry the masks.’

  ‘Oh, you knew.’

  ‘Well … I guessed. And let’s face it – there were no other options. She was going to get out of there, Finn. That mask gave her so much power. As much as she wanted. She could have ruled the frickin’ world if she’d wanted. And made you her bit on the side, which I really didn’t think Lassie was going to be okay with.’ I gave him a sweet smile. ‘No need to thank me.’

  He looked like he was about to explode, but he sat down again instead. ‘She was kind of right, y’know.’