The Thriller Writers #2
“Who else do you think he’s invited?” asks Malcolm.
“My money’s on that Pulitzer woman.” Sienna stares at him blankly.
“You know . . . the one with the hair? Probably a National Book Award winner or two . . . maybe he’s thrown in a poet just for kicks.
” He shakes his head. “Bloody poets . . . always thinking they’re better. Simply for using fewer words.”
“Hmm . . . And when was the last time you met a poet?” chides Sienna as the boat docks. For a moment he assumes she’s trying to taunt him, before remembering he never actually told her about the laureate’s involvement in the Edinburgh Incident.
The captain doesn’t kill the engine, only idles long enough for Malcolm to hoist their luggage onto the dock, which he insists on doing himself—Sienna’s always found him unfailingly chivalrous.
His back twinges with the effort, but he doesn’t let on.
Nothing a hot bath and a wee dram won’t fix, he thinks as the boat pulls away, having deposited the two of them on Skelbrae.
“All those fancy famous writers,” murmurs Sienna. “None of them are going to have the first clue who we are.”
“Hey now, we deserve to be here,” says Malcolm. “Penn Stonely has won awards!”
“No, we haven’t.”
“Of course we did. The Black Road Home won Stack Attack’s Thriller of the Year.”
Fine, it wasn’t the Edgars, or the Daggers, but it was something to be chosen.
And by readers, no less. Sienna wouldn’t shut up about the fact it was only a blog, with 327 subscribers, especially when they asked for a video acceptance speech.
He’d stepped up to the plate while she sat seething at his side like a feral cat, not even attempting to muster a smile for the fans.
Last time he checked—which he doesn’t do often—the video had twenty-nine views. And four comments. Only three of which were positive.
Sienna nods. “Right,” she says dryly. “How could I forget?”
Malcolm hoists up their bags and sets off down the jetty, shouldering the burden the way he did that day, the way he so often does, as Penn Stonely, when Sienna refuses to do her bit.
There’s one other boat moored at the jetty. Though it’s about as fitting to call the vessel in question a boat as the castle overhead a house.
“Ha!” says Malcolm. “Classic Fletch.”
The yacht’s name is inscribed on the side in a font he recognizes as American Typewriter: The Royalty Check.
Sienna rolls her eyes. “Wow, classy,” she says, and Malcolm catches the sarcasm—he always does—but he refuses to take the bait.
Then they reach the edge of the dock, and the real work starts.
He can’t tell if the path ahead used to be a set of stone stairs and has since decayed into a rocky slope, or a rocky hill from which someone has chiseled out steps.
Either way, it’s treacherous. As they make their way up the slope, bits of rock and shale crumble under their feet, skittering back down the hill.
“Not exactly safe, is it?” says Sienna, but Malcolm doesn’t answer.
It’s taking all his focus to keep his balance, and not let on that he’s already feeling winded.
In fact, his chest is getting tight, and his left arm is tingling, and oh god, he cannot have a heart attack.
Not here, not now, on the cusp of everything he’s worked so hard for, the doors to the inner sanctum of publishing in sight if not in reach.
“Are you okay?” asks Sienna, looking genuinely worried, and he musters a brave smile, as sweat runs down his neck.
“Peachy!” he says, as they trek upward toward the waiting house.
At last the hellish ascent is over, giving way to a flat pebbled drive.
He stops, mostly to catch his breath, and looks up, basking in the view.
Some great hand has swept the fog away, exposing a blue expanse of sea, the Scottish mainland in the distance.
From here he can see not only the castle but a quaint little cottage across the drive, and a path—not a proper road but a swath of dirt wide enough for a cart, or two bodies walking side by side—unspooling like a ribbon down the gentler slope before curving out of sight.
The surrounding grass is overgrown, throwing runners across the path, and he catches a flash of movement, a small animal darting through the tangled green—a rabbit, or maybe a stoat?—there and then gone, swallowed again by the grass.
Before Malcolm thinks to mention it—Sienna has a fondness for small creatures, hence the bloody Chihuahua, which as far as he’s concerned doesn’t deserve to be called a dog—his eye is drawn up to the castle.
My god, the castle.
It looked so impressive at a distance, Malcolm honestly feared it might lose some of its grandeur up close and be revealed as a modest if oversize house, locked in a battle with age and elements, sinking and, like a body, slowly losing.
But he needn’t have worried.
Up close it is even grander, all turrets and peaked roofs, two wings and a dozen windows and a stained-glass transom over the doorway, one of those ornate thresholds where the door parts in the middle, swinging open like a pair of gates.
Malcolm shakes his head in wonder. “So this is what fifty million copies sold will buy you.”
“Not how I’d spend the money,” says Sienna as they cross the drive.
“Speak for yourself,” says Malcolm, lifting the bags and trailing in her wake.
“I was,” she mutters, climbing the steps.
Fletch’s initials are carved into the wooden door, along with the same words that appear at the front of every book.
He who holds the pen tells the truth.
Magnificent, thinks Malcolm as he rings the bell, the sound echoing through the cavernous house. He shifts the luggage to one hand and clasps Sienna’s with the other, a silent reminder that they’re in this together.
“This is going to change everything,” he says.
Sienna’s hand tenses in his. She glances over, clearly about to speak, but to Malcolm’s relief, the door swings open first.
* * *
“WELCOME TO SKELbrAE!”
Sienna takes an involuntary step back, stunned by the pure force of the enthusiasm coming off the young woman who opens the door.
American, obviously, like her, tan skin marked by a smattering of freckles and a mane of blond curls piled on her head.
She’s pretty in that Girl Scout sort of way.
And she really does seem closer to a girl, with that thousand-watt smile and boundless energy.
Sienna realizes she’s frowning, like the young woman is a plot hole, something to be solved. She quickly rearranges her face.
“Hello!” she says brightly. “You must be . . .”
“I’m Millie!” says the young woman, as if that explains everything. She’s bouncing lightly on her toes, as if she can’t contain her energy, and as she turns that high-beam smile on Malcolm, Sienna waits to see which way he’ll go: flirty or fatherly?
“Well hello, Miss Millie!” he says. Fatherly, then. “I believe you’re expecting us. We’re Penn Stonely.”
Sienna grits her teeth. Malcolm knows full well that she doesn’t like to be introduced like that—as if she’s one half of a person.
“I’m Sienna,” she amends, freeing herself from his grip. “This is Malcolm.”
He winks. Maybe not so fatherly, then. “Sorry we’re late. We missed our connecting flight . . . terrible fog. You couldn’t see a bloody thing. Not. A. Thing! Anyway, we’re here now! Better late than never and all that. You must be Arty’s assistant.”
Arty, as if they’re old friends, when the truth is, Malcolm’s met Arthur Fletch exactly twice in his life, the first time when Malcolm went to a book signing and the second time with her, five years ago, in a hotel bar where Fletch was holding court mid-conference.
The third Petrarch novel had spent a month on the NYT list by then, the first was being filmed.
He was surrounded by a dozen sycophantic writers, all hoping some measure of his talent or success would rub off on them.
Fame by osmosis.
Success through sheer proximity.
Malcolm had dragged a stool across the bar, and the sound of those metal feet on the tiles made Sienna want to disappear.
Fletch had patted Malcolm’s arm in an indulgent way, but his eyes had lingered on Sienna as he spoke.
No, Arthur Fletch probably wouldn’t know Malcolm Buchanan from a sack of sand.
And yet, he did invite them here. So maybe, she thinks with a little thrill, maybe he remembered her.
“Assistant?!” The girl blinks slowly, then suddenly laughs. “Ha! No! I’m Millie Mitchell!”
Malcolm’s brow furrows. “Right . . .”
“The Queendom of Solace trilogy? It’s YA?”
Malcolm nods, but Sienna can tell he’s not following.
Millie stops bouncing. Her smile flickers, just a little.
“Young adult?” she adds helpfully, pulling the tie from her hair, shaking it loose, and then immediately putting it up again, leaving it exactly as it was before—a gesture Sienna instantly decides to pocket for a future character.
“Oh, you write for children?” she says. “How delightful!”
Millie’s head bobbles on her shoulders. “Well, teens . . . but a lot of my readers are actually in their twenties and thirties, so it’s really more of a marketing category than a qualifier . . .” She smiles conspiratorially at Sienna. “Young is totally just a mindset, right?”
“Totally,” Sienna says coolly.
Malcolm’s still frowning, and she can practically see the gears turning in his head as he tries to work out how Millie Mitchell has scored an invite to this salon.
Not that Sienna isn’t wondering the same thing, but she has the tact to keep it off her face.
For all they know, Millie Mitchell has sold ten times the number of books as Penn Stonely.
The thought sparks a tiny, bitter flicker in her chest, but she douses it.
“Come on in,” Millie’s saying, swinging the door wide, gesturing to the hall beyond as if it’s hers. Sienna gets a single, fleeting glance of the massive staircase at her back before Millie snags her hand and pulls her through, linking their arms like old friends.
Malcolm puts the bags down, adding to a pile of mismatched luggage against the wall.
A black duffle slumps between a designer weekend bag and a fuchsia hard-case she’s already decided belongs to Millie, until she spots the sky-blue roller bag covered in stickers with things like He’s a 10 but he’s fictional! and #BookBoss.
“I’d give you a tour,” declares Millie, “but I haven’t had one yet. Apparently Fletch’s office is this way, and there’s a library with a super creepy dollhouse through that door—”
Sienna glimpses the room in question, the shelves full of books and the dollhouse, which actually looks like a small model of the castle, perched on a stand in the center of the room.
Sienna tries to veer toward it, but Millie doesn’t let go.
“Oh,” she continues, not even stopping to draw breath, “and I listened to a podcast about famous authors with haunted houses and Skelbrae was on there, but I think places like this just look haunted, you know?”
She stops long enough to take a breath before plunging on.
“You’re not that late. I was just about to suggest a little icebreaker, guessing what genres everyone writes . . . Oh! But I’ve already told you mine! Oops . . . You won’t tell the others, will you?”
Sienna says, “No, of course not,” but she isn’t really listening. She’s still taking in the large foyer, the ceiling vaulted like a church, the walls to either side covered in trophies and studded with doors leading to various corners of the house.
Straight in front of them sits a polished table with a centerpiece made entirely of interlocking antlers. A giant bone bouquet.
“Gross, isn’t it?” chirps Millie, reaching out to tap a sharpened point with a painted nail.
Sienna looks past it to the grand stone staircase sweeping upward, the steps worn smooth by centuries of feet.
Halfway to the top it branches like a tree into two smaller staircases that twist out of sight.
On the landing before the split sits an antique bronze gong, as tall as Malcolm.
Sienna represses the childish urge to dash up the steps and strike it.
But then her attention goes past it, to the window over the landing.
A massive roundel of stained glass, like a cathedral rose.
There’s an image in it, slivers of yellow and green and blue light coalescing not into a saint or a biblical scene but a portrait of Julia Petrarch herself, with her famous red bob and her black jacket, hands cupping a golden book and head cocked the way it always is in the books, right before she solves a murder.
The House that Petrarch Built indeed.
Millie leads them toward an open door in the far corner of the foyer, next to a display of medieval-looking weapons.
“We’re all through here . . . the drawing room, I guess? Priscilla said we should wait in there.”
“And who, may I ask, is Priscilla?” says Malcolm, hurrying to catch up to Millie. “Don’t tell me Fletch has finally settled down after all these years? Good for him!” He squeezes Sienna’s shoulder. “There’s nothing like the love of a good woman.”
Sienna’s smile is weaker than the Scottish sun.
“No, no,” says Millie with a laugh. “Priscilla Renée Fox. With a name like that, she’s got to be a romance writer!”
Malcolm cocks a brow. “Romance, eh? How . . . interesting.”
They trail Millie down a short hall, the walls of which are lined with framed reference maps of various cities—Venice, Rio, Madrid—all settings from Fletch’s backlist, small handwritten notes tacked to rivers and roads, his penmanship almost as illegible as hers.
When they reach the door to the drawing room, Sienna recoils.
Even from here she can see the trophies mounted on the walls, though she’s fairly sure there’s nothing to hunt on the little island, which means these were all brought in for show: Arthur Fletch playing dress-up as a Scottish lord, when he’s as American as she is.
Sienna meets the glassy stare of a mounted stag’s head before Millie pushes the door wide, revealing three writers (all very much alive) scattered across the furniture, and flings out her hands in a grand gesture that’s meant to either introduce them to the room or introduce the room to them.
“Guys,” she says, “This is Penn Stonely!”