“I…” Sidney stared at him. “You can hear my thoughts?”
“No, but I can read them.” He waved his hand. “It’s—it’s complicated. Please. Just. Let’s start at the beginning.” He sat down in thechair across from her, giving her space, before pouring himself his own cup of tea. “First, you can call me Virtue.”
“Bullshit.” She snorted. “Your real name isn’tVirtue.”
“You’re right. It isn’t.” His smile was kind of sad. “I don’t have a real name. I picked that myself.”
Well, now she felt like an asshole. “What do you mean, you don’t have a real name?” Picking up the tea, she sniffed it.Yep, Earl Gray and vodka.It’d do. She took a sip. It was good. And hopefully it’d settle her frazzled nerves.
“Because I’m not…real,you see. Not like you. You were born, you were named, you grew up, you had experiences of your own.” He furrowed his brow and stared down into his tea. “I’m made up of all the things your kind have ever written down. The stories you tell yourselves and each other.”
Sidney stared at him for a long time. “You’re…fiction...come to life?” Oh, she was going to seriously need more vodka. And maybe weed. If she hadn’t just seen everything she’d already seen today, she’d have laughed in his goddamn pretty face.
“Part of it.”
There was a choice in front of her. She could either claim everything that was happening to her was nonsense, throw the tea in the guy’s face, and start screaming and crying in total hysterics. And probably get herself and her sister killed in the process.
Or she could strap herself onto the crazy train and go along for the ride. Worst case scenario, she got made fun of when all of this was revealed to be an elaborate setup for a TV show. Or a drug trip.
Letting out a breath, she committed to the latter. Just accepting the weirdness was safer. Panicking and freaking out about the impossible wasn’t going to solve anything. “What part are you?”
The smile that lit up his face was one of absolute pride. “I’m every hero of every story, all rolled into one.”
“Sothat’swhy you look like fucking Prince Charming?” That cracked her up, though she didn’t know why.
“I don’t see you complaining. Far from it!” He pouted. Actuallypouted.“I can’t help how I look, I’m just what you peoplewriteme to be! Do you know how many romance novels exist these days? A thousand more show up every day! Every hour! And some of them—” Virtue broke off in a heavy sigh and stared into his tea, still pouting. “Never mind.”
That made her laugh harder. God, he wasadorable.She sipped her tea as her laughter faded to a broad smile. Yeah. It was hard to panic around him.
But then a thought hit her that killed the smile on her face faster than a lead balloon’s maiden flight coming to a swift end. “Wait.”
“Hm?” He looked up from his tea. At the look on her face, he frowned. “Oh.”
“If you’re…every hero…”
Virtue took a deep breath, held it, and with the exhale, let out his words in a rush. “I should tell you about my twin.”
Tiltingher head away from the monster in front of her, Sasha brought the heavy book she was holding up between them, using the spine to smash him in the nose as hard as she could.
“Ow!”The man staggered away from her a few steps, holding his face. “No fair, using the scene break!”
“What?” He was a monsteranda psychopath. Fantastic. Just great. But her smacking him with the book had accomplished her goal, which was to get him to back off.
“Cheap shot.” He checked his fingers, as if looking for blood. He touched his nose again, checking a second time. “Couldn’t see it coming,” he muttered.
“If—if I’m inside a book, and you’re every villain—that means I’m insideeverybook?” She held the book up like she was going to smack him with it again, though she had a real suspicion it wasn’t going to work a second time.
Content that at least his nose wasn’t bleeding, he focused hisattention back on her. “Yes.” He gestured to the library around him. “Welcome to all of fiction itself. This, eh, dimension, if you will, consists purely of all the stories your kind has ever told. You can imagine how large andbizarreit grows, day by day.” He grinned wickedly.
She gripped the book harder. “I’d like to come down from whatever drugs that book was covered in.” She was tempted to squeeze her eyes shut or slap herself in the face to try to wake herself up, but she didn’t dare take her gaze off the guy in front of her. “Wakeup,Sasha. Wakeup.”
“You believe I’m a product of a bad trip?” He arched a thin black eyebrow. “I hate to disappoint you, but this is very real. And nothing is to be gained from refusing to play along now, is there? Either youarehigh, in which case, welcome to most Victorian literature, and if you aren’t—well, you’ll get nothing accomplished by sitting in the corner and weeping.”
Damn it, he was right. Playing along with her bad trip, if that’s what this was, didn’t hurt anything. “Fine. Let’s assume for a minute that this is real, because for now, it seems like I’m stuck here. Let’s also assume that you’re ‘every villain rolled into one.’ What do you want with me? Why did you drag me here?”
“That’s the spirit.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “But first, follow me.” Turning on his heel, he headed away from the dead-end aisle and disappeared around a corner, humming a tune to himself.
The guy was abrupt, to say the least. Should she stay where she was? Or follow him? If she wanted answers—and any hope of getting home—she supposed she had to follow him.
