CHAPTER SEVEN
“You’re weirding people out,” Grant mutters.
The day is young, but Boston Common is bustling with early risers getting a jump on their weekend. Allegedly, I’ve given about half of them the creeps.
I huff impatiently. Have I spent the last half hour staring deeper into strangers’ eyes than is considered socially acceptable?
Sure. Is the busker in front of us backing away slowly, his beatboxing taking on a slightly nervous timbre?
Perhaps. But such is life when you’re on a high-stakes hunt and all you have to go on is one pair of blizzard-like eyes.
We continue along the path in the opposite of a victory march. We’ve combed through every square foot of the Common, checked all the adjacent street corners, looked down alleys. Nothing.
I sink onto a bench in defeat. “They’re not here.”
Grant sits beside me, habitually bouncing his leg as he frowns at the park around us. “Couldn’t be simple,” he sighs. “Couldn’t be a magical wish giver who hands out business cards with contact information.”
I can’t believe I was so sure of this plan an hour ago.
It was pure luck that I found the Gifter a second time.
If they can change how they look and grant wishes, who’s to say they can’t teleport, too?
They could be anywhere now—France or Japan or Worcester.
Maybe they’re floating around some alternate dimension while Grant and I are bound to the physical realm, watching our plan disintegrate like cotton candy in a downpour.
Worse, I’m about to lose my only ally. Without the Gifter, I’m trapped in this story until Anna Matthews writes THE END.
I can hardly expect Grant to opt into an entire novel’s worth of crime and danger.
Any minute now, he’s going to stop that anxious leg bouncing, stand up, and say, Bye. It was terrible to meet you.
I rub my temples, trying to think up a new plan. All I can come up with is a yawn.
Grant gets to his feet, stretching his long arms overhead, then checks his watch—a simple round face with a brown leather band. It gives him an erudite look, like he should be off snapping open a newspaper somewhere instead of drowning in mayhem with me.
“We need caffeine,” he says.
I look up in surprise. “Really?”
“Really, we need a full day of sleep and months of therapy at this point. But caffeine is a start.”
I hop up with more vigor than I should be capable of right now. “Caffeine it is,” I say, digging my credit card out of my pocket. “My treat.”
He stares flatly at me. “You’re goddamn right, your treat.”
· · ·
AFTER THE EVENTS of the past ten hours, it almost feels wrong setting foot in the café down the street—a cozy place where people sip from round mugs while acoustic covers of pop songs drift through the air. But since it’s also a place with food, I’m not complaining.
“Do you want to split a bagel?” I call over to Grant, surveying the offerings. He mumbles something. “They’ve got plain, poppy seed, asiago … I’m more of a cinnamon raisin girl myself. Maybe they have some in the back.”
“Roxie …”
“Fine. I can settle for plain. That good with you? Toasted? Cream cheese?”
“Roxie.”
“What?” Exasperated, I turn to see Grant rooted to the spot at the cash register, looking like he just made eyes at Medusa. I follow his gaze to the barista and feel immediately like I’ve been flash-frozen.
Round face with a hint of stubble.
Buzzed black hair.
And eyeliner-smudged, angular, unmistakable white-blue eyes.
When I can move again, I storm over. “You.”
Their face lights up in recognition as they glance between me and Grant with a wide-mouthed, playfully scandalized face.
“Oh my God,” they breathe, holding up a flat hand to block Grant while pointing to him, mouthing, Is this the guy?
“No, this is not the guy,” I say through gritted teeth. “This is the guy I accidentally kidnapped after the guy tried to put a fucking knife in my chest!”
“Maybe lower your voice a little,” coughs Grant.
I ignore him. “Our friend Anna is writing a crime novel.”
The Gifter emits a stage-worthy gasp with a splayed hand to their chest. “Oh, wow. Plot twist.” They swan around behind the counter, filling two paper cups and adding pumps of various flavor syrups I’m pretty sure Grant didn’t ask for.
“Honestly, can we take a sec to appreciate how brave she is for trying a new genre? She really said, ‘No one is gonna put me in a box.’ Empowering. Outstanding. Brava.”
“I’ll have to congratulate her later,” I snipe.
The Gifter blows out a harsh breath, shaking their head. “Rough for you, though, girl. I hate to say be careful what you wish for because it’s so cliché, but, like … do, you know?”
“Sure,” I say. “So, obviously you have to undo my wish immediately.”
They hold up a warning finger. “Okay, the first thing about me is I do what I want. Second: I can’t.
I don’t ungrant wishes; I grant them. And today I don’t even do that.
” They slap lids on the cups without breaking eye contact.
“Anyway, that’ll be nine dollars. Or ninety?
I don’t really know how this works. I just thought it’d be cute to be a barista for a day.
” They jab haphazardly at the screen in front of them, barely looking at it.
“Okay, enough.” Grant steps forward and slaps his hands down on the counter, at least until the Gifter eyes them with raised brows and pursed lips.
He backs away and clears his throat. “I don’t know what your deal is, but you can’t imagine the nightmare we’ve been through.
It’s been harrowing. So I am begging you, please, what can you do to help us? ”
“Aww.” The Gifter lifts a hand to their heart, pouting sympathetically at Grant. And just like that, they snap out of it. “Nothing. A wish is a wish. A book is a book. Either live it out to the end or, I don’t know, make Anna Matthews stop writing it.”
“That’s so unfair!” I say. “This isn’t what I wished for and you know it.”
“This is exactly what you wished for,” says the Gifter. “It’s not my fault you weren’t specific. No take-backsies.” They resume tapping randomly on the iPad. “Now, if there are no further questions—”
“So many questions!” I protest.
They throw their head back in annoyance. “God, what is with the constant pestering? I gave you a gift. Like, if a stranger walks up to you and says, Here’s four million dollars, you’re welcome, are you seriously going to interrogate them about that?”
“No,” I grumble, precisely as Grant says, “Absolutely.” We look at each other in surprise, and not a little judgment on Grant’s part.
The Gifter sighs. “Look, I’m sure you’ll be fine. This ain’t my first I wish I were in a book rodeo. Then again … most people are smart enough to pick something published, something familiar. Quite a gamble when you don’t even know the plot.” They arch one deeply critical eyebrow.
“But what about after?” asks Grant. “Does it really all just go away? Say, for instance, we …”
“Killed one of the characters,” I finish for him. Grant flinches. “It would be like that never happened, right? No consequences in our real lives?”
The Gifter’s eyes somehow manage to brighten even more.
“Ooh, you’re bad!” they say gleefully. “But yeah. Once it’s over, poof, it’s gone from your life.
You return to regularly scheduled programming, and the characters—the ones that survive, anyway—go back to wherever characters go when we’re not reading about them. No harm, no foul, no jail time.”
Grant exhales, and it’s like I can hear the tiny bit of tension leaving his body. “Great. Okay. I just want to move on and forget this ever happened.”
The Gifter snorts. “Well, you won’t be doing that. I never mess with people’s memories. How else would my wish makers learn their lessons?”
“But I’m not the wish maker!” Grant argues. “I’m just a person who got dragged along.”
“Doesn’t matter. The story works just like a black hole.
If you’re far enough away, you’ll float on by and forget all about it.
But if you get too close, you will definitely remember.
” They make a monstrous slurping noise. “That’s you getting sucked into the story.
You’re involved now, bestie. The only way out is through. It’s science.”
“It’s not science,” says Grant, raising his voice. The Gifter fixes him with a dispassionate stare. “And honestly, I’m not convinced you know anything about cosmology.”
“Don’t listen to him. Your makeup looks great,” I say, stepping in front of Grant. “We’re not trying to make trouble. We’re just hoping to get out of it. Isn’t there anything else you can offer us? Please?”
With a sunny smile, they say, “Yes. Don’t stress so much. You’re the main character. She almost probably won’t kill you on purpose.”
I think the air has gone out of the room. “Almost … probably?”
The Gifter throws me a helpless shrug. “I mean, yeah. Sorry, honeybun. I don’t do promises.”
Grant takes in a shaky breath. “But what about me? I’m not fictional. I’m not supposed to be here at all, and yet …” I can almost hear now I’m a bludgeoner on the run dying in his throat.
The Gifter assesses him with a narrowed gaze, drumming sparkly fingernails on the counter. “In that case, I can make you a promise. But you must listen very carefully.” They lean forward, their expression drawn in utmost solemnity, and whisper as if to impart some great secret, “It sucks to suck.”
We both stand there, silent and slack-jawed, as the Gifter smiles and pushes the coffee cups toward us. “Anything else?”
I’ve got nothing. Grant’s voice comes out strangled. “A cinnamon raisin bagel. Please.”
· · ·
WE FIND OURSELVES back on a park bench, consumed by existential dread. The coffees between us have gone cold, the bagel uneaten.
“So,” I finally say. “Do you believe me now?”
Grant is quiet for a moment. “I don’t know what I believe,” he says. “Maybe that I’ve had a stroke and this is some kind of last-hurrah coma dream before I fade into oblivion. That seems like the best-case scenario.”
I pinch his arm and he jerks away, swearing. “You can’t feel pain in dreams,” I point out.
“Again, not true. Seriously, where are you getting your dream facts from?”
“Whatever. The point is, this is really happening. You heard the Gifter: we’re stuck here until it ends.”
“This is ridiculous,” sighs Grant. “I can’t just abandon all my responsibilities to play fugitive. I have a life to get back to.” He rubs a hand over his weary face. I can’t help but notice he seems less than thrilled by the prospect.
“Well, you took a vacation from it the moment I jumped into your Uber,” I say. “Which, I’ve got to say, was a pretty cool moment.”
“Yeah, I didn’t feel so cool at the time,” Grant says, his head in his hands.
“I meant me,” I clarify. “Pulling a guy out of his car, Grand Theft Auto style? By far the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”
Grant lifts his head slowly and looks at me, his mouth pressed into a flat line. The way the sun catches his russet-brown eyes, it’s like I can see the fires of bewilderment in them.
I cringe apologetically. “Are we not ready to acknowledge that?”
“You’re insane,” he says. “Absolutely insane.”
I wave a hand, disregarding him. “Fine. Let’s focus on the big questions. Like what happens next.”
I look at him, waiting patiently for any useful tidbit of his vast knowledge, and he looks back. It’s like staring at a mirror until his eyebrows fly up in realization.
“Oh, me? How should I know?”
“You’re the genre expert! Come on. I’m not asking for an exact prediction. But what should we be anticipating right now?”
He scoffs, and it irks me a little. It’s not like I want to be here, pestering him with questions about plot conventions. It may be my fault he’s involved, but I didn’t ask for this either.
Eventually he sighs. “I guess … things have been relatively quiet since last night. So next there would probably be some kind of rising action. Something to up the stakes.”
Higher stakes. Fantastic. “So we’re not exactly safe.”
“No,” he says. The dark smudges under his eyes are even more pronounced in the harsh morning light. “We’re not exactly safe.” He huffs out a rough, humorless laugh. “Although according to the barista from hell, you’ll probably be fine.”
“Almost probably,” I correct. “And we don’t know that. Anna Matthews is clearly reveling in chaos with this one. Who knows what she’s planning?”
I used to admire Anna’s ability to surprise her readers, even within the trusty I love you, you love me, let’s live happily ever after rules of romance. It was one of my favorite things about her writing. Of course, that was before she went off the rails, dragging me and Grant helplessly along.
Unless we stop the train.
Make Anna Matthews stop writing it, the Gifter said.
Riding a wave of determination, I pull out my phone.
I race to Instagram and find it distressingly notification-free. Anna probably hasn’t even seen my comments from last night, let alone responded. So I make a mad dash to my inbox. The time has come for sliding into DMs. One way or another, we are going to reach Anna. She will not finish this story.
Hi Anna—my name is Roxie Mitchell. This is going to sound insane, but I’m trapped in your current novel. Could you please contact me at your earliest convenience? Thanks.
I read it back and add:
(It’s urgent.)
I stare at the screen for a few seconds. Somehow, sending that message off into the void didn’t feel as productive as I’d hoped. Less of a blazing SOS fire from a deserted beach and more like a tiny match fizzling out in the darkness.
Then I go to Anna’s profile and find a new addition.
It’s not a photo but a solid background with text—two dates, two times, two bookstore names—and a caption beneath.
Hello, my darlings! Thanks for all the love.
After a rough few years, I’m having the time of my life writing this one—nothing like a grisly murder story and the support of thousands of you to lift one’s spirits.
About to go off the grid in drafting exile but will be creeping out of my cave on two occasions this month to visit The Lost Plot and Bramble Books, where I’ll talk writing and sign some of my previous books—and maybe give a sneak peek of KISS OF DEATH. Hope to see you there! x
I’m enthusiastically smacking Grant’s arm before I even finish reading.
“Ow. Ow. OW,” he says pointedly.
“New plan,” I announce. “If Anna won’t respond to my messages, then we’ll go to her. Look.”
I hand him the phone and he squints at it, then frowns at me. “These are in London,” he says. “And the first one is over a week away.”
I grin at him. “You did say you never get to travel.”