Meet Judy Newhouse

"I sell a piece of Facebook, and the money barely has time to reach me before I offer it to someone else," Ethan said.

Avril looked over at him. "So you bought Warner?"

"No. Parsons and I have the outline of a deal. The lawyers still have to turn it into one, the board has to approve it, and the government may have questions."

"You sound as if it could all be done in a couple of months. Don't these things usually take years?"

"Sometimes they do. We can move fast if both sides want to sell and the filings are clean. I can have cash ready at closing. None of that guarantees a regulator will hurry for me."

"How much cash?"

"Fifty-one billion, if New Line and the rights package stay in the agreement."

Avril stared at him. "That isn't a number. That's the budget of a small country."

"It has to come from more than a headline about my net worth," he said. "Selling shares, financing, and the final structure all matter."

"I'd better stop punching your shoulder. I can't afford to break you."

"I'd settle for having you around."

"You already do," she said, and leaned into him.

In the weeks since he'd returned from Beijing, they had stopped pretending the attraction was only a joke. Avril still guarded her independence. Ethan had learned to ask rather than presume. When the lights went down, she laced her fingers through his and kept hold of them until the film began.

In the dark, he kissed her and slipped a hand between her thighs. Avril drew him closer, then caught his wrist when it became too much. He stopped. "Someone's going to see us," she whispered.

"No one can see a thing from back here."

"You sound awfully sure of that."

"I'm sure about wanting to be here with you." She rolled her eyes at the answer, but kissed him once more before turning back to the screen.

It was early June. MGM's self-imposed quiet period had ended, and theaters were hungry for its next releases. Ethan had kept the largest pictures in reserve while he watched Disney's calendar. The Hangover 2, Transformers 2, Twilight, and a racing picture were ready or close enough to schedule. Disney's revised family slate included Mulan II, Pooh's Heffalump Movie, and Tarzan II. He could wait for firm dates before deciding where to counterprogram.

For now, MGM had opened with two smaller bets: Neill Blomkamp's Chronicle and James Wan's The Conjuring 2.

Ethan had suggested the horror sequel. Avril refused to sit through it and chose Chronicle instead. He had given Blomkamp a fifteen-million-dollar budget and left the preview screening to his staff. This would be his first look at the finished film.

The image on the screen had the rough, handheld feel of a home video.

"Is this supposed to look like The Blair Witch Project?" Avril whispered.

"Found footage. Andrew's filming it. Give it a few minutes."

Andrew Detmer lived in a house where his father drank, hit him, and blamed him for everything. His mother was ill. At school he was the boy people noticed only when they wanted someone to mock. His cousin Matt tried to pull him into the world; Steve Montgomery, whom they met through Matt, treated him like a person from the start.

Then the three boys found something underground and came back changed.

At first the film let them enjoy it. They moved objects without touching them, startled strangers, and saved a pedestrian from an oncoming car. Ethan had asked the writers to let some of the early experiments help people as well as make trouble. Power ought to give Andrew a glimpse of what he could become before it gave him a reason to hate himself.

On a road trip, a driver crowded their car, hurled abuse, and threw a bottle. Andrew's temper broke. The other vehicle flipped. Matt and Steve rushed in to help its passengers, but no one could pretend that a near-fatal crash was a harmless prank.

In the argument afterward, Matt laid down rules. No using their powers against living people. Not when angry. Not in public.

"Then what was the point of getting them?" Andrew demanded. "I still have to let everyone walk over me."

Steve found a way to give him an audience without giving him a target. They performed what looked like magic tricks at school. For the first time, Andrew heard applause instead of laughter at his expense.

"Do you think any of those stage magicians can really do something like that?" Avril whispered.

"No. They know how to make us think they can."

"David Copperfield makes airplanes disappear."

"Then he has very good stagehands."

"He's in Vegas. We should go."

Ethan kept his eyes on the screen. Las Vegas was exactly the sort of place where a photograph of the two of them could return home before they did.

"I can't leave the Warner negotiations right now."

"I didn't say tonight."

"What if you went with someone else? Judy Newhouse. You met her at the party."

"The pretty one who can talk a banker into apologizing for his own interest rate?"

"That one. She knows Vegas. You might like her."

Avril turned to him. "Just a friend, Ethan?"

"Of course. Do you think I'd send you two to Vegas together if she weren't? I'm not that stupid."

Avril gave him a skeptical look, then smiled. "All right. Give me her number."

Ethan kept his satisfaction to himself. He had created the opportunity; now Judy had to make something of it.

Onscreen, the applause Andrew had won did not last. A party ended in public humiliation, and years of fear came back at once. He began to describe ordinary people as though they were insects beneath him. Matt heard the danger in it; Steve tried to reach him and died amid the chaos Andrew set loose.

Andrew's mother grew worse. When the medicine she needed was out of reach, he crossed from intimidation into robbery. A gas station exploded. He woke in a hospital to a father who told him his mother was dead and made the loss another charge against him.

Andrew lifted his father into the air. Matt arrived in time to stop him from dropping the man, but not in time to stop what followed. Glass burst from the surrounding buildings, killing Andrew's father, several officers, and bystanders below. Andrew stared at what he had done, and for a moment the fury drained out of him.

Then the helicopters came. Matt and Andrew tore through the city in a fight the film's small budget had somehow made vast. Blomkamp had saved his effects money for this. It showed in every collapsing wall and every person running for cover.

No one in the theater cheered. Andrew was frightening, but the film had spent too long showing how he got there to let the destruction feel clean.

Matt drove a spear through his cousin. Andrew went still. The last shot held on his face, stunned and exhausted, before the screen cut to black.

Avril did not move when the credits began. "That was rough."

"It was meant to be," Ethan said. "The spectacle only works if you remember who's inside it."