“I wanted, more than anything, to write something like the Nancy Drew books, a mystery series for girls. I’d loved Nancy so much as a kid. She was so brave, so spunky, so smart. I would’ve given my right arm for a spin in her little blue roadster.”
“You could’ve given me a little blue roadster, you know. But no, I had to have a Sun Buggy, which is as lethal as it is cute.”
“You have a VW 1974 Sun Bug because that was my dream carwhen I was in my twenties, and I couldn’t afford it. And you live in a giant Victorian house in Astoria, Oregon, because I wanted to live there and couldn’t. And you—”
“I live in Fort Meriwether.”
“Doesn’t exist,” she said, waving her hand as if magically making my entire hometown disappear. “I based it on Astoria, Oregon, but I wanted to fictionalize it so I could take liberties with the geography and that sort of thing.”
“Great, thanks. I don’t exist. My town doesn’t exist. My cat doesn’t exist. Does anything exist?”
“Yes,” she said. “All of these exist…”
Chapter Twenty-Five
A cardboard box appeared on the table, slightly bigger than a breadbox. Maxine took a book from the box—a slim hardcover with a picture on the front of a young woman holding a black umbrella over her head in the rain, a dark Victorian house behind her in the distance, and the unmistakable shadow of a vampire falling onto her path. She handed it to me.
“The Children of the Night,” I read aloud in astonishment. “By Maxine Blake.”
“The first of the Book Witch stories,” she said. “Dracula escapes the prison of his pages, and only Book Witch Rainy March, with the help of Dr. Van Helsing, can catch him and return him to his story. First edition, first printing.”
“The cover is insane,” I said. “Could it be any more Gothic?”
She leaned forward and snatched the book from my hands. “Everyone’s a critic. It was the seventies.” Maxine held the book up. “This edition is worth a small fortune, I’ll have you know. No series title, no number. By the second printing, my publisher knew it was going to be a hit and added the series title—The Book Case Files of Rainy March, Book Witch—and put a number one on the spine.”
“Is that supposed to be a pun? Book Case Files…like a bookcase?”
“It wasn’t my idea,” she said. “I didn’t like it either. So I’ve been mocking puns in your books ever since as payback.”
She began to pull other books from the box.
A Pleasure to Burn.That was about my mission intoFahrenheit 451when the Burners attacked the most important novel ever published on book burning.
“Book fifteen,” she said. “We had to get permission from Mr. Bradbury to use his book, but he was more than happy to sign off on it. His editor’s daughter was a fan of your series. And this is book twenty-nine.”
This Deplorable Folly.My mission into Poe’s “The House of Usher.” It still gave me the chills to remember that vile house, the scent of death and rot in the walls.
She pulled another from the box. “This one was fun. I didn’t usually send you into children’s novels since my series was technically for adults, but Jack Masterson’s editor arranged for a crossover event.”
Do Clocks Wish for the End of Time?My assignment on Clock Island, where I helped the famous Mastermind grant a child’s wish to meet her hero, Lucy Maud Montgomery.
“And my personal favorite,” Maxine said. “But don’t tell anyone writers play favorites. Book thirty-five.”
The Dragon Gate.My mission with the Count of Monte Cristo, the title coming from the famous quote, was technically for adults.I don’t think man was meant to attain happiness so easily. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.
“My goal was to write thirty-six,” she said. “And I did before I had to retire.”
“Had to? Why?”
“We’ll get to that,” she said.
She put the books back into the box, and the second she shut the lid, it disappeared.
“Wow. Magic.”
“Fiction,” she said. “I think it, it happens. At least in here.”
“Really? Can you bring Duke here?”
