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I walked up, took a seat on the edge of the settee next to her, and smoothed her hair.
“Hi, pretty girl,” I said.
She looked at me, her big brown eyes full of wonder. “Hi.”
“I like your doll.”
“Thank you,” she said and smoothed the doll’s hair as I had done with hers.
“Who were you playing with?” I asked.
“Huh?” She frowned and continued making her doll dance.
“When I walked in, you were talking to someone. Were you playing with someone? Do you have a friend?”
“Oh. Yeah, she’s my friend.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “What’s your dolly’s name?” I asked.
“It’s, um . . . Her name’s KoKo.”
“KoKo. That’s cute. Want to know something interesting?”
She turned to me, her eyes big and wide as if I were about to tell her the secrets of the universe. “Yeah.” She drew out the word.
“There’s someone here who has a name kind of like that, too,” I said, thinking of our JumpBox session last night and the voice that’d claimed their name ended with akosound.
Elliott frowned, and I wondered what I’d said wrong.
“Oh, I already know that.” She twisted her lips. “I thought you were gonna tell me something else.”
Now, it was my turn to frown. “Honey, how do you know that?”
“Because Seiko’s my friend, silly. I was just talking to her and her boyfriend. I told you that,” she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world and shehadtold me that. And then she jumped up and ran off as if nothing had happened at all, leaving me sitting there slack-jawed.
What the hell?
That had to be a coincidence, right?
* * *
I hadn’t gottenany rest as I’d hoped. I’d spent most of the day digging into the name Seiko and the Mandarinapplereference, but the only thing I could uncover was that they both had Chinese origins. I’d left my mom and dad a voicemail message to see if maybe they knew anything about it, but I hadn’t heard anything from them yet. It was a weekday. Dad was probably in court, and Mom likely had a full docket of flower arrangements to get out. Her shop, Earth to Sky, had been doing really well lately, and I hoped it kept up for Mom. She loved her job, adored playing with plants and flowers, and I figured she’d do it until her hands no longer let her.
As backup, I also sent Harper a text to see if she could add it to her list of research and let me know what she found—if anything.
I checked my watch. I had a few hours before I had to be back at the mansion for day two shooting. I was so drained, all I wanted was a couple of hours of sleep. Just as I stepped off the curb outside the library to head to my car, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my back pocket. It was Paxton.
“Hey, what’s up?” I heard commotion in the background.
“Thank God you answered,” he said. “It’s a madhouse here at the kitchen, and I can’t leave. I was wondering if you might be able to run by my place and grab me a change of clothes. I have like a quarter of a pot of stew on me right now thanks to one of our regular’s kids, and I’m not going to be able to get home before I have to head back to the mansion.”
There went my afternoon nap, but I would totally do this for him. “Sure. But . . . how am I going to get in?” I asked.
“There’s a hidden key. If you take three steps from the porch, one of the bricks in the walk is a slightly different shade. It’s loose. Just pry it up. The key’s underneath.”
“Nice,” I said and smiled. Mine was in a flowerpot near the door. Not exactly rocket science if someone wanted to find it and get in. “I’m just leaving the library now so I’m close. Any requests for an outfit?”
“Well, since we’re supposed to keep the same sorts of outfits for filming in case they need to do scene splices, I think I’m going to have to go with another white tee and will probably just have to forgo the button-down. I don’t think I have another that’s close enough. I should really just start buying things in doubles for instances like this.”
