1 - SELENKA

Content note: Occasional strong language, playful sexual innuendo, non-graphic blood, brief supernatural peril, and false public accusations. Romantic intimacy includes kissing and sensual touch, with no explicit scenes.

Our dragon arrived after we had lost the giant prop bottle and frightened the extras.

The campaign jingle had erupted from every speaker before anyone warned them.

Several were still recovering beside the refreshments, clutching drinks they had nearly thrown at one another.

The bottle remained missing, which was impressive considering it stood taller than a doorway and required six people to move safely.

“I am going to find it,” Clef assured me.

He was our newest production runner, twenty-two, relentlessly willing, and holding his clipboard upside down. I turned it around before he recorded another disaster.

Only a few days into the job, he already apologized to furniture whenever he bumped into it.

Above us, violet silk hung around a silver staircase. I had spent three evenings choosing that violet and named it Purple Reverie after the client rejected Lavender Dreams for sounding like a sleep aid.

Stormbreath Cola was an ordinary bottled drink. My job was to make opening one feel like accepting an invitation to the best party in Sangclaw. Maxie Rouge would be the host, the reason everybody accepted, and probably the reason we finished late.

“There is my merciless little commander!”

He arrived in a long crimson costume coat and three hoop earrings, chewing violently pink gum and wearing the expression of somebody delighted to discover an audience.

Dark red hair swept across his forehead.

His open collar made my cheeks flush.

“You’re twelve minutes behind schedule.”

“I wanted you to miss me properly!”

He grinned, smoke-colored eyes fixed on mine, then caught the pencil that fell from my hair.

“Oh dear, your pencil has betrayed you.”

He set the pencil within reach, his fingers brushing mine. I thanked him, suddenly fascinated by the graphite tip.

Then he patted the top of my head on his way past, a brief, maddeningly affectionate touch.

I followed him with my eyes, then touched the place where his palm had been.

Eight months earlier, I had helped create his first Stormbreath advertisement from behind other people's shoulders. Now I was producing this one.

Maxie spread his arms toward the empty platform.

“Oh, my beautiful bottle has abandoned me! I have never felt so inadequately equipped.”

I could organize forty people without raising my voice, but Maxie’s thirst for drama distracted me on a daily basis.

“We can rehearse without the giant accessory.”

“You say the loveliest things professionally.”

He swept up the prop stairs while I adjusted the monitor. Scales along his collarbone caught the light beneath his shirt. Most advertisements gave him darker makeup and sharper shadows to accentuate his dragon heritage.

I preferred the real Maxie Rouge.

The one that whined when we ran out of cookies in the lobby and the one that cried when the launch party ended and everyone began taking the decorations down.

His shameless flirting attempts on set. The moments he’d ask me my opinion on outfits that had nothing to do with our campaigns.

“Come down slowly and stop beside the ribbon,” I instructed.

He obeyed until the final step, then turned toward me instead of the camera.

“Is this close enough for temptation?”

“Three inches farther from the monitor.”

He moved three inches toward me.

“You can admire me after the take.”

His expression became so delighted that I nearly dropped my pencil again.

Clef rescued me by returning with a crew and the enormous glass bottle. The adjoining stage had borrowed it for a lighting test.

Six people settled it into its padded wooden cradle.

Beside it stood a separate, narrower set of wooden display steps, with a landing level with the bottle’s neck.

Its matching glass stopper rested separately on a blanket. It was hollow and lighter than it appeared, although props had designed it for two people to lift from the display steps. The final shot required bubbles pouring through the bottle’s open neck.

“We are missing a stool now, though.”

“The steel one beside the dressing mirror?”

Clef nodded and displayed four rubber feet. Maxie retrieved the seat from behind the screen.

“Perhaps someone broke it?” Maxie said.

There were no legs anywhere nearby. Red dust marked the pale floor beneath them.

I called Arcaida Felen before anybody swept it away. Our supernatural safety consultant had come to approve Maxie's water effects, and she approached with a case that made Clef stand straighter.

She studied the debris, then studied him.

“Did you move anything besides those feet?”

“No! Not at all.”

Her mouth curved into an unexpected smile.

Clef immediately checked whether his clipboard was upside down again.

Arcaida photographed the remains and closed the dressing alcove. Until she knew whether somebody had dismantled it or something had damaged the metal, nobody would use that corridor. She also reminded Maxie that the display bottle was not a climbing frame.

“You have devastated an entire artistic vision!”

She departed with the red dust carefully contained.

Quieve Speyl arrived onstage as we reset the lights.

He had spent the early morning inspecting folders in the storeroom and seemed personally offended by the disorder.

He wore a charcoal suit and a ruby tooth pinned in a gold-colored setting. He adjusted the giant bottle's label by half an inch before greeting anybody.

Quieve was a vampire, a senior representative of Dracotooth Beverage Group, and the final authority over this campaign's spending. He could make carrying a lunch case seem like a board appointment.

“Mr. Rouge, your enthusiasm has become inconvenient again.”

He offered Maxie a tablet showing an unpaid appearance at a music fundraiser. Pink bubbles filled the street around him. A retailer had reposted the recording beside a cola discount.

“I am irresistible, so sue me,” Maxie joked.

“The company believes this conflicts with your endorsement.”

“What? I gave them bubbles, not an advertisement! Didn’t even get paid!”

“Your representative can elucidate that distinction for the company. I also have an extension offer for you.”

Quieve placed a folder beside the monitor. Seven months of proposed appearances filled its first page. The fee had enough digits to make my stomach tighten.

“The extension is optional, Mr. Rouge.”

“Selenka, the scheduled work remains approved,” Quieve told me.

I nodded, relieved that one decision remained straightforward.

A camera assistant shifted Quieve’s insulated lunch case.

Quieve caught the handle before she set it down.

“That will not be necessary. I prefer managing my own refreshments.”

His tone made her retreat, although I had heard him use the same tone about crooked document labels.

He placed the case on a nearby shelf, its steel clasp catching the light.

Maxie turned the extension folder facedown.

“Apparently I am a carbonated criminal, Selenka! How will you bear the scandal?”

I handed him my unopened water.

“We have five minutes before lighting finishes.”

“Five minutes with you, or five minutes suffering?”

“You may choose whichever you feel improves your performance.”

“Oh, the things I could accomplish in five minutes with you. Wonders, I tell you!”

He accepted the bottle with a wink.

“You say weird shit sometimes, Maxie.”

He sat on the lowest step and patted the place beside him. I sat because my legs hurt from standing.

After a moment, his shoe nudged mine.

“You stayed, my very stern leader!”

He laughed, then let the folder slide beneath his thigh.

From this close, I could see how much effort it took him to keep smiling.

I understood enough about selling work to recognize the moment somebody began treating every part of you as part of the purchase.

My own phone vibrated with a reminder: finish door scene tonight. I flipped it facedown, hiding the screen from him.

At home, a blue wooden door waited on my dining table, barely taller than my hand. It belonged to a fifteen-minute film I had been making for eleven months, in evenings paid for by advertisements like this one. My protagonist kept accepting other people's furnishings until her own room became impossible to live inside.

I had built the door, finished the script, and filmed two scenes.

What I lacked was the time to finish the remaining shots and the nerve to show anybody the unfinished work.

Maxie followed my glance toward the phone.

“Is somebody requesting your creative services elsewhere? How terribly jealous I suddenly feel.”

He delivered it with one hand over his heart. I smiled, although I knew he flirted as easily as other people breathed.

Then he noticed the pale crease the headset had left behind my ear. He reached for it, stopped, and offered to take the equipment while I rested.

I gave it to him willingly.

Across the stage, Quieve began another call. Beyond the closed corridor door, Arcaida crouched over the remains of our stool.

For those five minutes, Maxie held something of mine without trying to make it his.