Page 33 of Merciless Prince
I swallowed hard. “I’m okay, I guess. But I want you to lay it on me. How screwed am I right now, career-wise?”
Kelsey was quiet for a beat. “I won’t lie. It’s not looking great.”
I sniffed back the fresh set of tears that were threatening to leak out. “Is that why you didn’t call me about any of those auditions this week?”
“What? No!” Kelsey sounded scandalized. “Shay, honey, listen to me. I tried to get you into at least seven different auditions this week. I figured I might as well because I knew you were here in the city, and I thought it might make you feel better to jump right back in the game. But the casting directors all refused to let me send you out to them.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not ditching you as a client, if that’s what you’re worried about. None of this is your fault.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Okay. Thank you,” I murmured. “I was also wondering… did you hear back from the Summer Bay people yet?”
“Yes. That’s actually one of the things I wanted to talk to you about today,” she replied in a tentative tone. “They just emailed me, and they’ve decided to go with someone else. Sorry.”
I sighed and looked down at my lap. “It’s okay. I kind of expected it after everything that happened,” I said. “I’m guessing no one wants to work with me after they saw me on SNS.”
Kelsey went quiet for another moment. “That’s the other reason I wanted to talk to you,” she finally said. “I’m not sure how to say this, because it’s going to make me sound completely paranoid, but… I’m not sure the SNS thing is why all the casting directors are refusing to book you or let you audition for them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… god, this really does make me sound paranoid,” she said. “The thing is, I’m starting to think you’ve been sabotaged.”
My heart began to pound. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been thinking about the SNS thing ever since it happened, and nothing about it is sitting right with me,” Kelsey went on, lowering her voice slightly. “Think about it this way: first, a huge show like SNS insists on booking you even though you have no experience with that sort of stuff. Then the rehearsals are at a specific time that you can’t make, but they say it’s fine and keep insisting that they want you anyway. Then someone just so happens to send you the wrong script. When you put it all together like that, it looks like someone arranged for you to get the part just so they could set you up to fail.”
I frowned. “Why would anyone do that?”
“To make it look like there’s a valid reason for everyone suddenly refusing to work with you,” she explained. “So then you’d think it was your own fault that it was happening, and you wouldn’t question it. But really, it’s just a cover for you being blacklisted.”
My brows shot up. “You think I’ve been blacklisted?”
“I can’t prove it, but I’m definitely concerned about it. I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. Apart from this SNS thing, you have an excellent reel. Good enough to get you into Bellingham. Also, you always get glowing reviews from casting directors, even when they end up going with someone else for whatever reason, and with your Summer Bay audition last week, you did so well that the director called me afterwards and said they definitely wanted you. They just had to run it by one of the higher-ups first. Then they suddenly changed their mind and decided to go with someone else.”
“But… why would I be blacklisted from the industry?” I asked, slowly shaking my head.
Kelsey paused for a beat. “Is there any chance you pissed off a Knight recently?”
I sat up, back ramrod straight. “As in one oftheKnights?” I asked, instantly recalling Killian’s presence in the SNS audience last week.
“Yes. As in the Knights who own the network that airs SNS,” she replied. “Any one of them could’ve set you up on the show, because they own it, so technically they can do whatever they want with it, even if they have to steamroll right over the producers. They have alotof influence in the media and film industries, too. So if they want someone’s acting career to be over, they can make it happen. They can blacklist just about anybody.”
As she spoke, I stared at my family photo again, concentrating on the silver bracelet around my wrist. It felt like a vacuum had opened up in the room, sucking out everything but that tiny piece of the picture.
I knewexactlywho was messing with my career now… and I also knew why.
10
Shay
“This was such a good idea.”Cori perched on a boulder overlooking Mirror Lake and put her arms up. “Can you take a pic of me for my Insta?”
“Sorry, I left my phone in the car,” I said. “The battery was almost dead.”
She reached into her pocket and grabbed her phone. “Here. Use mine. But don’t upload it yet! I need to pick the filters.”
I grinned as I snapped a photo of her on the boulder. The perfect fall day had lit the trees around us ablaze with shades of vermilion, gold, and tawny orange. The colors shimmered on the reflective surface of the huge lake below the hiking trail, making it look like the water was filled with upside-down trees.
