“Take off the satchel,” shouts Ava as Cate gasps, fighting and failing to stay above the water. But she shakes her head, clinging to it, as if it’s the thing that will keep her afloat, instead of the one that’s dragging her down.
“Get rid of the book, and you can swim back to shore!”
“No,” Cate gasps, sputtering as she swallows more water. Struggles. Sinks.
“Goddammit, Cate, it’s just a book.”
But the girl shakes her head. Tries to say something, but can’t find the air. The waves churn and crash, rocking the boat, as she takes one last gasp and goes under.
Ava stares at the whitecapped water, clutching her oar.
But Cate never comes back up.
00:00:00
THE SAFE MAKES A SOUND LIKE Abody turning over in its sleep.
A grunt. A sag. Something giving way. The time is up, the clock wound down from seventy-two to zero. The screen blinks once, then goes dark, the numbers replaced by nothing. The lock clicks, and a voice that once belonged to the most famous author in the world sighs, as if in relief.
“Now,” says Fletch’s disembodied voice, “was that so hard?”
But no one’s there to hear it.
The safe door opens, just a crack, but no one rushes forward to reclaim the contents left inside. On the shelf, where they were placed three days before, are the seven writers’ prized possessions.
The devices sit there on the darkened shelf, unclaimed, their power winding slowly down, as the hours pass, and the light crosses the panels of the office window. The sun slides from Ashbolt to Creststone, to Bellamy, hanging on Fletch’s final and most famous hero, Petrarch, before dipping out of sight.
They are still there, two days later, when Eleanor Vandenberg walks through the grand front door of Arthur Fletch’s house.
She looks around and lets out a weary sigh, as if to say,What a mess.
Her heels click as she crosses the polished foyer floor. They leave small dents on the runner in the hall, then on the threadbare rug that pools before Arthur’s desk and muffles the last few steps before the safe.
She sets a weekender bag on the floor and kneels to collect the contents from the darkened shelf inside—she knows by now that no one else is coming for these things.
One by one, she takes them out.
A tablet with a pair of eyes stuck onto the back, like something from a horror novel.
A laptop covered in stickers with sayings like MY BOOK BOYFRIEND IS BETTER THAN YOUR REAL ONE.
A smartwatch softly warning that the movement target hasn’t been met.
A pair of computers with matching screensavers of a signature, the P and S cut through with cursive.
An iPhone with an AI-generated background: a dragon, devouring books whole.
One by one, they go from the safe into her bag.
And, like their owners, disappear.
Ava
Two Weeks Later
THERE’S A SPECIAL PLACE IN HELL FORtourists in New York.
Specifically, the ones who amble down the sidewalk, three abreast, like they’re forming some kind of shield wall.
