“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.
“We’ll get there later.” Vile chuckled. “We haven’t finished Pan. And Iloveplaying Hook.”
Threading her hands into her hair, she gripped the strands and tugged, using the sting in her scalp to try to calm herself down. “Tell a unique story, using existing stories and tropes. While you both try to kill us.”
“I won’t be trying to kill you,” Virtue assured her. “I give you my word. And if you try to stop him from killing Sidney, we can work together to try to find a way out of this. Maybe there’s a loophole.” He smiled in that piteous kind of way you smile at someone at a family member’s funeral. “There’s always a loophole in stories like this, right?”
Yeah.Yeah.
Now that was a plan she could get behind. And he was right—there wasalwayssome kind of backdoor in stories like this. Some sort of trick way out of a contract or a seemingly hopeless situation. Right?
There had to be.
Otherwise, there’d be no happy ending in any book, ever.
And the villain always lost. Even in stories where the endings were tragic, downers, or bittersweet, the villain neverreallywon. Which meant that there was a way to beat Vile. There was a way around the game.
They just had to find it.
“We’ll see about that, dear.” He held out his hand to her again. “Who knows. Maybe thisisthe start of a new kind of story. Now, come along, Mr. Smee. We have an island of teenagers to brutally murder.”
