at Melissa. "Now, tell us what was wrong with that scene."
The brunette shot her daggers. "Who is this person?"
"Just be quiet and listen, Rita," he said in that deep, authoritative voice that rubbed all Melissa's nerve endings until they quivered. God, she'd never been so turned on by a man in her life. There was something about him. He looked at her, touched her with his eyes. She shivered with awareness. "Go on. What was wrong with the scene?"
She swallowed the dryness in her throat. "Well... that's just not how it works. Reading a line from a book, no matter how old and dusty it might be, is not how one casts a spell. And a warlock is not a male Witch."
The actresses exchanged looks of disbelief; then they turned on the man, waiting. "Alex, just what the hell is going on here?" the blonde asked.
Alex? So he was Alexander Quinn, the creator-slash-executive producer? Why hadn't he said so?
"This is Melissa St. Cloud," he told them. "She's our new technical consultant."
"On what?" the brunette asked.
"On Witchcraft."
All eyes turned toward Melissa. She felt herself shrinking a little. The actresses were both a good six inches taller than she was and built of little more than skin, bone, and breast implants.
"You're an expert on Witchcraft!" the brunette asked. "Isn't that kind of like being an expert on, oh, I don't know, the Tooth Fairy?"
The others laughed. Alex just watched Melissa, as if waiting to see how she would handle herself.
Melissa closed her eyes, got in touch with her inner bitch, and stood a little straighter. "I've been involved in the Pagan community and the study of Witchcraft for fifteen years," she told them. "I'm a High Priestess, a licensed minister, and I hold a Ph.D. in religious studies. I teach Alternative Religions classes at UCLA one semester a year, and I've consulted on seven books on the subject. Any more questions?"
The actresses rolled their eyes, sighed, studied their nails. They did not, however, speak up again.
"Ladies," Alex said, "the network has been inundated with mail complaining that we are getting it wrong. It seems there are a lot of people out there these days who take this kind of stuff rather seriously. In today's market, the viewers are more savvy than ever before. If we want to suspend their disbelief, we have to be as accurate as possible."
"Do you hear what you're saying?" asked the blonde. "How can you be accurate about something that doesn't exist?'
Melissa sent her a swift glance. "Oh, it exists."
"Oh, please. Fine, it exists. And you're a real-live modern-day Witch. So why don't you prove it? Levitate one of us or make something disappear." She crossed her arms under her breasts, pushing them up even higher. "Well? Go on, we're all waiting."
Melissa turned to Alex. "That," she said, "is precisely the kind of misinformation that's messing up your show." Then she glanced back at the girl. "But somehow, I don't think explaining all of this to a bunch of actors is going to get us anywhere. After all, they only recite the lines the writers give them and follow the director's orders." She returned her attention to Alex, dismissing the actresses without another word. "We should probably schedule a sit-down meeting with the writing team."
He smiled very slowly, his eyes warming. "You want it, you've got it." He nodded to the others, a signal that they could leave; then he took her arm.
When his hand closed around her elbow, she shivered with an inexplicable tingle of pure sensation. My God, she had it bad. And the guy was her new boss.
Not a good situation.
He led her to a small room on the set, created by freestanding partitions with a door in them - no ceiling. Inside was a desk strewn with piles and piles of paper, a coffeemaker, and a chair. He nodded to the chair. "Sit."
She sat.
He perched on the edge of the desk, close to her. Really close. "Those credentials you were reciting in there - they all legit?"
She blinked her eyes. "You didn't already know? It was all in my resume - I sent it in with the job application."
"Oh. Right."
"You did read it, didn't you?"
He looked away. "I got a pile of resumes. Looked them over, but after a while they all blend together. I had my secretary set up a bunch of interviews, of which you are the first."
"But... you hired me."
"Yeah." Again he couldn't seem to break eye contact, though he did