Chapter 26 #2
I don’t realize I’m crossing my arms so tightly I’m about to strangle myself until my chest starts constricting.
I scan his face for clues.
Is it horrible?
Is it beyond horrible?
I jump in when I can’t take it anymore. “I only just wrote it now—”
“Obviously,” he murmurs, eyes laser focused on the page.
“The idea just came, so it’s a bit rough.”
He doesn’t reply.
“And of course, this is still very new.”
He puts up a finger to shush me.
I reposition myself to stare at the wall in the distance (pointedly not the portholes).
At some point I look down at Nash.
He’s standing at the bottom of the stage, giving me space to have this moment.
I raise a questioning brow at him.
Is this going to be a good moment or a bad-talent-show wreck of one?
He tries to give me an encouraging smile, but his expression can’t lie. He doesn’t know either.
It could go either way.
My chest is tightening, my breaths coming shorter both from the anxiety and from the fact that being down here still is incredibly challenging, and Nash is just putting both hands onstage to hitch himself up when Hugh sighs.
Nash freezes.
I freeze.
We all freeze.
Hugh sits back on the stool.
Looks up.
At me.
At the audience.
At each of The Magnificent Seven at their table.
He holds out both hands toward the computer like it’s a brand-new baby and says proudly, “Well. She did it.”
The man certainly knows how to create a climactic moment.
Applause breaks out again, even louder this time.
Some even stand.
“She did it,” he repeats over the crowd as he pulls me in and begins to heartily shake my hand. “Everybody meet the future
mystery writer of America!”
“That’s a little generous, isn’t it?” I say quietly to him as he takes my hand and raises it in triumph to the crowd.
“A plot primarily about me?”
“Primarily about me,” I interject.
He shrugs. “We can agree to disagree. What we can agree on, however, is that this book will be a tremendous hit. Everyone will know it. And if they don’t at the beginning—what with you being new and all that, naturally—believe me,
Pip, we’ll make sure it happens. You’ve got the lot of us by your side.”
I grin.
It’s the first time I’ve felt the force of The Magnificent Seven. Oh, how every author longs for them by their side.
Hugh tilts his head. “What are you going to title it? The Book Cruise? The Magnificent Seven? The Greatest Murder of All Time?”
“Without a Clue,” I say without hesitation. And he laughs.
It’s a fitting title for a girl like me, who ends up on a book cruise only to find her boss and mystery giant has been murdered in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and due to the incompetence of the security on board realizes it’s up to her and her amateur sleuthing skills to solve the murder before they all hit land.
“You know, if this was all just to get me writing, it was quite the risk,” I say. “Making me believe lives were at risk, giving
me a phobia by absolutely terrorizing me with that underwater diving research—”
Hugh raises a finger. “I did not give you a phobia, Pip. I just realized last month that you had quite the disinclination to confined underwater situations and went
with it. It’s a handy room to spend the week in for the most part, don’t you think?” he says, waving a hand around the blue
room. “Endless karaoke. Lots more fun than the original plan of hiding out in a broom closet. And you’ll be happy to know
I continued on with my workshops, so we have plenty of happy cruisers.”
“I noticed that,” I say with a frown. “So what? Everybody on this ship knew . . . except me?”
“Well, you and Nash, of course. But that wasn’t by design. I had intended to tell him alongside the others, but when it was clear he was
bent on being with you, I decided we best not tamper with love. Ultimately, I didn’t trust that he would see the vision and
keep the secret.”
“He most certainly would not have,” I say. I frown at the others. “But the others did, huh? They were so willing to play along?”
“When they knew the plan, of course. But some were easier to convince than others.” His eyes slide over to Jackie’s. “Unfortunately,
I had to pull a card on a couple of them.”
“What card?”
“Well,” he says, slipping his hand behind my shoulder and guiding me offstage as the applause begins to die down.
“That’s the thing, Pip. People like to cling to little rumors about The Magnificent Seven.
Rumors of secret handshakes and secret meetings.
Most are them are terribly fun and terribly untrue, but some?
” He smiles. “Some secrets are even better than you can make up. You are, as it turns out, in quite a delightful world.”
I raise a brow. “Like what secrets?”
“Oh, we’ve got a whole booklet on it. I’ll get Jackie to show you sometime. I had to use one, though. The Rule of Yes. When
you join The Seven, you have the gift of one automatic yes, no hesitation, no questions asked. You only have one card like
this in your lifetime, so you have to use it wisely. As for me, I used it here. You see, that first day everybody believed
I really was murdered. I needed it to be so for authenticity’s sake. You saw how awful they reacted when they thought they
were in on the plan of me missing. They’re good writers and terrible liars, which is humorous, really, as my writing helps
me lie considerably. But there you have it. You saw how everyone reacted. At first, I was afraid Neena was going to lose her
mind.”
“She did, Hugh,” I say. “That first day she was a complete wreck.”
Hugh smiles and touches his heart. “It was nice to see I’m so loved, wasn’t it? I found Neena and told her first. Then the
others. There were, as you can imagine, several intense reactions. Nobody likes to be woken up in the middle of the night by a ghost over their bed. But”—he shrugs—“Jackie was the
only one with whom I was reduced to using Rule #4 on.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
Hugh begins walking us toward the circular table of authors.
“The Rule of Yes. One Ask with a capital A. Whatever the asker needs in that moment, wherever we are, and for whatever purpose, you drop everything and help out. Neena
used it on Christmas Eve of 1989. Remember that, Neena? When we all had to fly out to Morocco?”
She grumbles, “I thought he was a prince.”
“Gordon used it two years ago. Jackie, of course, will cling to her one wish until she dies.”
“Did Crystal use hers up?”
“Quite literally forty-three minutes after she pledged to our group. Used it to rent out the Eiffel Tower—”
“You can’t rent out the Eiffel Tower.”
“They say you can’t rent out the Eiffel Tower,” he corrects.
He waves a hand at the six before him. “And I used it here to make sure everybody played the right cards in my little game.
Jackie, as you saw, had the clearest, most negative reaction to this ask.”
My brows shoot up. It’s all clicking together. “You told her she had to play along in that room that day,” I say. “The room
where I ran into her and she had that knife. I knew she was livid about something.”
“That something was me, behind the curtains, who had just given her the fright of her life.”
We’re standing now next to the table of authors. Everyone is here now.
“So you told her she had to act like her motivation for murdering you would be that she employed a ghostwriter and you found
out?”
“She was incensed, as you could tell.”
“It was the worst moment of my life,” Jackie interrupts, fanning herself. “To even think I would stoop so low—”
“I liked my character,” Crystal interjects cheerily.
She swings on the seat of her barstool beside the table, legs crisscrossed. “I liked playing the angry, hidden daughter. Sorry, Pips, for getting all ‘I’m going to murder you too’ on you. No offense meant.”
“None taken,” I say. Although, in reality, she was a little too convincing. “And you two,” I say, pointing at Neena and Gordon. “This is . . . real.”
“What can I say? I love a man in a good hat.” She looks fondly at Gordon.
“And you?” I say, turning back to Hugh. “You decided, in all these years of having this big, grand genie wish, to use it on
me. You could’ve asked for anything. Why ask for something for me?”
And at this, he grins.
Pats me on the shoulder.
“Because if you haven’t realized by now, Pip, we all love you. You have indeed been one of us for a long time. And a friend
is born to love in times of adversity. We saw your adversity, and I decided it was time we gave you the push you needed. Plus,
there’s the small fact I have chosen you and you weren’t jumping along quite as quickly as I wanted.”
I raise my brow. “What?”
Hugh puts his hand out. “I’ve put a lot of thought into it over the past five years. And after careful consideration, given
all the candidates, I could think of no better successor to my place . . . than you.”
My eyes swivel to the rest of the group. “Wait. What—?”
Hugh claps me on the back. “I’m retiring, Pip. I’m ready to go on some new adventures. And I want you to take my place. My
whole goal here was to help you realize you already have everything it takes to be a writer.”
“And you gave me a story.”
“The first story,” Hugh clarifies. “I gave you a first. But I know it’ll be no time before you have this first book written and come up with the next.”
My breath is coming short now.
It’s quite possible I’m going to pass out. “But . . . but what about all your friends?”
“I choose you.”
“All those other authors. There are so many.”
“I choose you.”
“I haven’t even finished a book yet, let alone two chapters.”
Hugh’s smile broadens as his hand grips my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. “Pip, I still choose you. And don’t worry. I’m
not, after all, dead. I will mentor you, and everyone here will mentor you, and together, my dear, you will soar.”
I’m so stunned I can’t speak.
“Welcome to The Magnificent Seven, Pip. It’s going to be one heck of a ride.”