Kenzo breezes on, like an unnervingly sedate Poirot.
“Millie’s young adult. Which she’s already told each of us by accident.” Millie blushes, and buries her face in her hands. “And Cate...”
He looks around, noticing the youngest writer’s absence for the first time. It’s terrible, but Priscilla nearly forgot about her, too.
“Well, Cate’s not here, but she writes crime, like Fletch,” he says, before putting his hand to his own chest. “And I’m Kenzo.” He gives a small bow, like a magician’s flourish. “Horror. In case it wasn’t obvious.”
“You cheated!” declares Millie, even as she applauds. “You’ve been googling us.”
Kenzo drags the phone from his back pocket with an apologetic smile. “No signal,” he says. “And I don’t have the Wi-Fi yet.”
“There’s no way you just guessed,” says Jaxon.
Kenzo shrugs. “I’ve got a good eye. Horror, like thriller, comes down to the details. A killer, tucked into the cast, a weapon, planted and forgotten. Danger hidden in plain sight.”
Jaxon snorts. “Maybe that’s why I always guess the bad guy in the first chapter.”
Kenzo cocks his head. “Maybe you need to read better books.”
“Nah, man.” Jaxon stretches, lacing his hands behind his head in a way designed to strain the too-small shirt. “You can keep your masked slashers and jump scares. You want a real puzzle? Try planning a war between societies in space.”
Priscilla watches the two bicker as if it were a tennis match, the conversational ball being swatted back and forth.
“You know that the vast majority of science fiction is actually sciencefantasy,” says Kenzo, and Jaxon recoils as if slapped.
Millie’s brow scrunches up. “Hey! What’s wrong with fantasy?” she asks.
“Nothing,” says Kenzo with a one-shouldered shrug. “I’ve never understood the hostility between genres. They have more in common than people think. Fantasy. Horror. Thriller. Crime. They’re all just different versions of the same game, varying backdrops for the characters and the conflict, constructs for the fear and the need and the suspense.”
Millie nods brightly. “Totally,” she says. “Young adult is all about the suspense.”
Jaxon rolls his eyes. “I’m not sure will-they, won’t-they qualifies.”
Millie crinkles her nose. “Excuseyou. More like, the stakes are super high.”
“Oh,arethey now?” he teases, twisting his voice to mimic hers in a way that makes Priscilla’s hackles rise, but Millie only sticks out her tongue. They arrived together, shortly after she did, their voices crashing through the quiet house, her high squeal and his belly laugh, their arms already linked, even though they just met on the boat. Oh to be young and have low standards.
“Yeah, they are,” Millie says with faux outrage. “And the urgency reflects the way everything feels life-or-death when you’re sixteen. And okay, so what if there’s romance in there, too. Romance is all about tension! Right, Priscilla?”
She blinks, and for a horrible second, her mind goes blank. Her fingers twitch toward the flower-pin, desperate to hold on to something. But then the moment passes, and she bobs her head.
“Absolutely,” she says. “Kenzo’s right. Every genre uses the same deck of metaphorical cards, even if they use those cards to play a different game.”
“Ha!” barks Malcolm. “I like that.”
“Careful,” says Sienna. “He’ll steal it.”
“Art is theft,” says Jaxon, clearly expecting a “Hear, hear” and getting only looks. In the short but heady silence, he adds, “You know, in the truest sense. We’re always walking in someone else’s footsteps.”
Priscilla clears her throat, eyes drifting to the shallow stack of paper on the coffee table. She and the others have already filled theirs out, but now she offers the last blank form to Sienna and Malcolm.
“You’ll need to sign one of these.”
Sienna takes the sheet, frowning when she sees the words printed across the top.
NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT
“An NDA? Seriously?” She looks around. “Isn’t that a little much?”
