that I love him like a brother. But I started loving him when he proved he could stare my mother down even though I know he’s afraid of her.
Who isn’t afraid of her?
But that’s exactly why I don’t want to be alone with her and exactly why he stays, God love him.
But Sally? Why put Sally through this?
“Have you signed an NDA?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sally squeaks. She wouldn’t be on-set if she hadn’t.
Moira huffs, dismissing Sally as not worth the effort, and she turns her scowl back to me. “What are you doing? Are you trying to get yourself labeled as white trash in the tabloids? Do you know how hard it was to wash that Oklahoma accent from your mouth.”
Speech lessons. Voice lessons. Acting lessons. Hell, yes, I know how hard I’ve worked. My accent is as cosmopolitan as club soda. “I didn’t hear myself drawl, Moira.”
She scoffs. “I heard you making tasteless jokes in front of the crew, and that’s even worse. You’re an actor. At least pretend to have some dignity.”
We’re crowded in the little trailer, and Moira stands between me and my friends, her back to them. But I hear their reactions. Sally’s soft gasp is like a whisper of silk. Ramon clears his throat. I can’t look at them. I can only imagine what I’ll find on their faces.
Ramon clears his throat again. “She’s due on-set in five minutes. What did you need to discuss about those scene changes?”
For a moment, Moira’s jaw tenses, and I’m afraid she’s going to turn and lash out at him, but then she presses her lips together and nods before stepping back and including Ramon and Sally in the conversation.
“They’ve changed the fais-do-do scene.”
“Fais-do-do?” Sally asks.
“It’s a Cajun dance party,” Ramon explains. “It’s the scene where Raven Blackwell catches up with the two demon shapeshifters who are after the sorcerer’s infant twins. She chases and attacks them in the middle of a dance hall.”
Moira rolls her eyes. “Well, now the studio wants Raven Blackwell to get swept up in a major dance number in the middle of her fight scene.”
My stomach hits the dirt.
“Nooo.” I draw out the word in hushed disbelief.
“That’s not—that wasn’t in the contract,” Ramon says, doing his level best to stay calm so I’ll stay calm.
“No-no-no-no.” I shake my head in time with each no.
Moira shakes her head at my shaking head. “Iris, you’re just going to have to do it. It’s—”
“Not in the contract,” I fire back. “There’s no mention at all of dancing in the contract.”
She shrugs. “There’s no mention of prohibition against dancing in the contract either, so I think they’ve—”
“You didn’t say yes, did you?”
“Well, of course, I did—”
“Moira, oh my God!” I’m going to choke to death on my own outrage. Right here. In this trailer. In Nowhere, Louisiana.
I can act. I can sing. I can play the guitar. I can hike in the woods for two weeks without a flushing toilet.
I cannot dance.
“Iris, it’s the first day. We can’t lead with your deficiencies on the first day.”
My deficiencies.
I ignore the tiny stab because why attend to this wound when there are so many others.
“Raven Blackwell cursed monsters and serpents for three years on network television, never once breaking into a tap routine,” I argue. “Why, why now would the studio want to add in a dance number? In the middle of a fight scene?”
Moira looks both smug and defensive, so I can’t really tell if she’s on my side or theirs. “They want to tip their hat at the Buffy musical episode.”
Critics and fans have drawn comparisons for years between Hexed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Honestly, that show was iconic. People are still falling in love with Buffy, Angel, and Spike on Netflix and Hulu twenty-something years later.
Yeah, I’m proud of my work on Hexed, but nobody’s going to be watching it twenty years from now.
Especially if I dance in this movie. Rotten Tomatoes will crucify me.
I shake my head. “That episode was in Buffy’s sixth season, when the show itself was slaying it. Every character had a number. It was bigger than big. They can’t think—”
Moira holds up a hand. “Stop saying they. Jonathan Reynolds, your director, wants this, so we need to make it happen.” Moira rolls her eyes. “Apparently, he’s a huge Joss Whedon fan, and he’s been dreaming of this new scene since the studio hired him. We have to give the man what he wants.”