“What you’ve just described is a prototypical romance with a layer of science-fiction and fantasy on top of it. Not new in the slightest.” Vile rolled his eyes. “Your collection of adjectives and descriptors is simply newly selected at random. A lottery machine picker can do that.That isn’tstorytelling.”
“He means a new twist in a story. Something unforeseen. Something really unexpected.” Virtue smiled lopsidedly. “Maybe you can use the stories we go into, and find a new twist to something that’ll surprise us. Then you both get to go home.”
“How many people have ever managed to do that? Tell you something new?” Sasha was pretty sure she didn’t really want to know the answer, but like looking down after being told not to, there she was asking it anyway.
The look on Vile’s face was punchably smug as he clasped his hands behind his back. “Precisely?” He paused as if to count in his head.“No one.”
“What about the two guys who dropped the books off to us earlier today?” Sidney furrowed her brow. “They lived.”
“One of them. Two books. We can provide rapid transport, if you will. I wonder what’ll become of James. His brother didn’t go down easy, that’s for certain.” Vile shrugged.
“Jordan. Jordan was the one who lived. James died.” Virtue shut his eyes and looked for all the world like he wanted to scream.
“Whatever.”
Sasha turned to look at Sidney. Best of three. It wasn’t just a competition, it— “Fuck.” The black book and the white one. Wendy and Mr. Smee. She slapped a hand over her face. “Fuck!”
“Later, absolutely. Though the erotica is kept in the basement.” Vile sniffed dismissively. “It tends to get feisty with the other genres if we let it roam around.”
“That’s not—” She groaned. “Never mind!” Taking off her glasses, she cleaned them on the edge of her black turtleneck sweater before putting them back on. “This isn’t a survival game. It’s adeath match,isn’t it? You’re playing us against each other! I’m on your side, and she’s on his!”
“No! I’m not doing it—” Sidney threw up her hands and stormed away from the scene a dozen feet. “I’m not going to try to kill my own sister!”
That had Vile bursting out in hysterical laughter. He slung an arm over Sasha’s shoulder, pulling her into his side.
Sasha froze, not knowing what to do. He was so damn strong. The smell of old books and a hint of roses washed over her.
“Well! Then, I expect you’ll have plenty of stories to try to twist into something ‘new,’ won’t you? You aren’t the first pair who began by swearing never to work against the other, only to slowly devolve into madness or hatred as the novellas turned into novels turned into epics. Before long, you’ll be at each other’sthroats,mark my words.”
Pushing away from Vile, it was her turn to storm away from them all. “And we don’t get a say in any of this.”
“Do the fish get a say in the fisherman’s decision to throw a lure? I’m afraid not.” Vile clicked his tongue as if remembering something. “Ah, and don’t think we’ll be spending days going through children’sliterature or cozy romance. If I wanted to watch paint dry, I’d go meander through William Wordsworth.”
Sasha knew they were doomed to fail at coming up with something “new.”
And the smile on Vile’s face said he knew it, too.
The idea of coming up with a truly unique story seemed goddamn impossible. Humanity had been reusing the same tropes and ideas for centuries, how could she and her sister possibly pull off coming up with somethingnew?Something they wouldn’t see coming? Especially when they could read their minds?
And, meanwhile thisbest of threebullshit?
No, there had to be another way out. A third way. There had to be.
Sasha turned to Virtue. He was a hero. That was the whole point of him. He had to stop it—right? “Take us home. You have the power to do that, right?”
“I—I can’t—” He stammered, rubbing the back of his head like he was suddenly caught on stage in the limelight and didn’t know his lines. “It’s not how it works—I have to play my part.”
“What do you meanthat’s not how this works?” Sasha stormed up to him and poked him in the chest. “Take us home before this serial-killing psychopath murders us!”
“Only Sidney, not you—” Vile corrected her, but she didn’t care. “Very different.”
It wasn’t. She kept her glare fixed on Virtue. “Take us home.Please.”
His shoulders drooped. “I have to follow the rules. I’m the hero. And he sets the rules. The villain always does.”
She longed with every ounce of her being to grab Virtue, shake him like a Polaroid, and scream in his face that either she, her sister, or both of them were going to die horrible deaths if he didn’t take them home immediately.
But it wouldn’t do any good. It wouldn’t. They were just doingtheir thing. What they were designed to do. It was like being sucked intoAlice in Wonderland—she had to play along, or else.
