“Mmm. We used to judge it that way. But that always left so much room for obnoxious scholarlydebate.” Vile adjusted one of his cufflinks. They were little silhouetted skulls. “So now, I tend to go for something a bit more literal than that.”
“Like what?” Oh, she was dreading the answer.
“Lives.” He grinned a wicked flash of white teeth. He held up three fingers on one hand. With each word, he lowered a finger. “Best. Of. Three.”
Sasha swallowed the lump in her throat and glanced over at Sidney. “We…die in the story, it counts as a life?”
He nodded.
Video game rules. Great. Just great. “And once someone loses the third time?”
“Dead forever. You lose.” He adjusted the other cufflink as if this were the most boring and normal discussion to have in the world.
“And what about the survivor?”
“Mm? Oh, free to go.” Vile shrugged dismissively. “If they’re still sane and don’t want to simply be put out of their misery, that is. Sometimes it can take a few dozen stories to get to the final match. Stories often end in a draw or can drag out for a while, especially if the contestants don’t want to play at first.” His grin turned vicious, and if Sasha wasn’t mistaken, his teeth might’ve been all points for just a split second.
“I’m really sorry about him,” Virtue muttered to them. “He gets like this, but it’s really not his fault.”
Sasha was tempted to laugh at how ridiculously different Virtue was from his twin. But she supposed that was exactly the point of the two of them. With a breath, she knew it was pointless to ask, but she had to try. “Let us go, Vile. Please.”
“Do you think that’ll work?” He arched a thin black eyebrow.
“No. But it was worth an attempt.” She paused. “What incentive do we have to not just sit on the floor and ignore what’s happening around us?”
“Then you will leave it up to me to craft the story. And trust me, my dear, that is a very quick way to ensure this gets spectacularly messy. I am always guaranteed to make my own fun if left to my own devices.” Upon seeing her horrified expression, he frowned. “If you didn’t want to know the answer, don’t ask, dear. And don’t give me that look. This game doesn’t have to be miserable!Think of it this way—you will get to experience all your favorite stories. Whoever you want to meet. Wherever you want to go. Whoever you want to fu?—”
“Brother!” Virtue cut him off. “Tell them the other half of the rules. The part that gets them both out alive.”
Vile sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know why you insist on telling them this part. It just gets their hopes up every time. It’s cruel.”
“Hope is never cruel.”
Oh, bless his heart, Virtue actually sounded like he believed that. Sasha watched the exchange, still in shock at what was going on.
“You’d think he’d grow out of it with time, and yet, here he remains, but—I suppose we are both our natures, if nothing else.” Vile rubbed a hand over his face as he once more answered her unspoken thoughts. “Very well, brother. Here is their carrot on the end of the stick for you. There is a way for you both to be set free alive, returned to Earth—and that’s to tell us something entirely new.”
“New?” Sidney blinked. “Okay. Easy. Like—okay, a giant purple chicken. That shoots lasers. And has crocodiles for arms. And is an alien. And—and has rocket blasters for eyes. Who marries a squirrel. Done! New.”
“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.”
