Collaborators

Michael H. Payne

 

 

 

I

 

 

            Hasdrubal’s fanged grin split his semi-feline face like a machete slash across a honeydew, and I filed that image away for my next book.

            “Once again, Jane Armstrong,” he purred, tucking his light-brown wings into place along his tawny flanks, “it comes down to you and to me.” He tapped a claw on a stack of papers. “And my cease and desist order.”

            The glasses I wore when I was being mild-mannered novelist D. F. Teasdale started steaming up. I’d come to Random Horse Publishing for lunch with Dust Jacket, the unicorn who’d been my editor since I’d accidentally started the Jane Armstrong series. Dusty had thought the write-up I’d sent him of my first adventure in the wilder parts of the world was fiction. Correcting him would’ve been rude, so adventure had followed adventure and manuscript had followed manuscript over the last fifteen years.

            Today, though, instead of Dusty’s office, I’d been ushered into a conference room with two people I’d never seen before at a table. One was human like me, his suit dark and silken, and the other a lamia in dark red satin.

            But the third figure, leonine body stretched out across the carpet, was my sphinx archnemesis.

            Well, Jane Armstrong’s archnemesis. In pith helmet, khaki shirt, cargo pants and black boots, the Jane part of me had been spoiling Hasdrubal’s fiendish plans for almost two decades now. After each caper, I repaired to my cabin in the woods, kicked off Jane’s clothes, slipped into my denims, and wrote the whole story up. Then, wearing D. F. Teasdale’s glasses, bonnet, shawl, and gingham dress, I took the three-day train ride into civilized Port Tropolis and handed Dusty the next Jane Armstrong adventure.

            Gritting my teeth, I forced out, “What’s going on?”

            Hasdrubal waved at the lamia. “I shall allow my lawyer to explain.”

            The lamia fixed me with a pale gaze. “Chayli Selene with the firm of Scylla, Nyx, and Mortimer, Ms. Teasdale.” Her thin hand pushed a manila folder toward me. “This is a copy of all the relevant paperwork. You’ll want your legal representative to look it over, but allow me to summarize.” Her eyes flashed like daggers. “The Jane Armstrong series is now on hold until such time as my client’s suit against you has been settled.”

            Jane’s first impulse would’ve been to dash the folder back into her smug face. But we weren’t in the wilder parts of the world, and dashing was definitely not a D. F. Teasdale thing. So instead, I turned to the human. “And I take it you’re my legal representative?”

            “Hardly.” He opened his briefcase. “I’m Carl Morse, head of legal affairs here at Random Horse. We’re currently considering a suit of our own against you.”

            “What?” I leaped to my feet.

            “For breach of contract.” Morse took out a folder and opened it as calmly as if he hadn’t just figuratively stabbed me in the back. “Article three, section one of your publishing agreement states, ‘To the best of the Author’s knowledge, said Work contains no material which is libelous and infringes no right of privacy.'” Looking up, he wrinkled his brow. “Imagine my shock, Ms. Teasdale, when I received proof this morning that the Hasdrubal you write about so frequently is not a product of your imagination.”

            Hasdrubal’s snicker made me want to bunch a fist. “And imagine my shock,” he said, “when a trip to a book store during my first visit to your fair city led me to discover the horrible and libelous—”

            “Libelous? If anything, I downplayed your crimes! Otherwise, the stories never would’ve passed muster for a young adult readership!”

            “Crimes?” His smile vanished. “Show me a single court of law where I’ve been convicted! What charges have ever even been brought against me?”

            An easy question. “Not two blocks north of here last August! Your minions broke into the Port Tropolis Natural History Museum and stole the Amulet of Enceladus!”

            “Lies!” Hasdrubal roared. “The police never made any arrests in that case!”

            “The destruction of the Hippodrome—”

            “I can hardly be blamed for the collapse of a three-thousand-year-old ruin during an earthquake!”

            “You caused the earthquake!”

            “I?” He pressed his paw to his chest. “When we sphinxes have almost no magical ability?”

            It was all I could do to restrain the Jane Armstrong in me from leaping across the table and grabbing that furry neck. “You had the Amulet of Enceladus! You could’ve made every rock in that valley start dancing!”

            “Then why did I not continue using this magical artifact?”

            I just glared. He knew as well as I did that the amulet had shattered when Jane threw it into Titans’ Gorge.

            His smile was back. “Because there was no Amulet of Enceladus, no Rings of Umbrabane, no Alicorn Goblet. Nor am I the villain you name me in your potboiler novels.” He rustled his wings, his voice quiet. “I am but a citizen of foreign birth upon whom a hack writer has focused her xenophobia for some fifteen years. And I will not continue being libeled for the sake of this company’s bottom line.” His ears folded. “Rather, I will sue you for every last coin you’ve made despoiling my good name. Or…”

            And there it was. “Or what, Hasdrubal?” My scalp tingled. “What is it you really want?”

            His grin got even toothier. “I want D. F. Teasdale to disappear. Forever.”

            The Dee part of me had been expecting him to spit out a number with six or seven zeroes attached. But instead, he had that glint in his eye he’d get perched atop some ancient plinth summoning a nefarious supernatural power. “I want her every title dropped. I want all library copies burned. I want the printing plates melted to slag and dumped in the sea!” He leaped up, wings unfurling and tail lashing. “I want her name erased, her typewriter smashed, and contracts forbidding you from besmirching my reputation again!”

            While the two lawyers quivered, I gathered my wits. “So, you’ve finally realized you’ll never beat Jane Armstrong. You’re trying to beat D. F. Teasdale instead.”

            “Trying?” He flung out a paw. “Look around! Your allies have turned on you! The false veneer you’ve wrapped yourself in has shattered irreparably! The livelihood you need to support your adventuresome meddling is draining away never to return!” His chest heaved. “This is the end, Jane Armstrong.”

            The Jane in me knew pretty well what made Hasdrubal tick, and while revenge was one of his big buttons, he had plenty of others. I just needed to bring out Dee’s negotiating skills and start pressing those buttons.

            “Okay.” I sat back down and folded my hands on the table. “Here’s my counter-offer.”

 

 

II

 

            Not my best idea, offering to let him co-write the next book.

            The Dee in me had started with that absurd proposition and had expected to haggle from there. But a look had come over his ugly mug when I’d suggested he drop his suit in exchange for collaborating on the upcoming novel. His jaw had fallen open, and his eyes had lit up.

             “Yes,” he’d said, his voice rumbling. “My name and likeness beside yours on the cover.” He’d pounded the table, making everyone else jump. “We have a deal!” And the way his smile hadn’t seemed phony had rustled the fine hairs at the back of my neck.

            So we travelled north and west by slow train over the next three days, got off at Lone Pine, and walked the half hour through the shadowy forest without a word passing between us, his big paws padding quietly among the fallen leaves.

            My cabin in the woods was the only place that could really make the tightness in my stomach relax. Out here, not civilized but not really wild, I didn’t have to worry about being Jane Armstrong or D. F. Teasdale. I could just be quiet, little me.

            “That?” Hasdrubal sputtered. “That hovel is your home?”

            “It’s where the magic happens.” I kept my voice light, pushed the front door open, and gestured for him to precede me.

            Sniffing the air, he stepped in and brushed a wingtip along the top of a bookcase. “Do you ever dust?”

            “I’ve got better things to do.” A quick glance around the room showed that none of the tripwires had gotten sprung while I’d been away, so as usual the cabin’s protective magic had done its job.

            Of course, the creature who the cabin most need protection from was currently eyeing the dragon-egg-shard lamp beside my sofa. I tossed the wallet from my shawl pocket onto the desk and tapped a pattern onto the wallet’s top. It squawked, bulged, twisted, and grew into my typewriter.
             “What madness is this?” he muttered.
             “It’s handy on the road for getting down details before I forget them.”  I undid Dee’s bonnet, flipped it to its hook beside the door, and shook out my spiky brown hair. “And the way magic items you steal tend to explode in your face, maybe you’ll allow me the honor of recording your immortal words?”
               He scowled.
             With a laugh, I flung Dee’s shawl onto the coat rack, stepped out of her gingham dress, and smoothed down my denim trousers. “Of course, we’ve got a lot of work to do before we start any typing.” I set Dee’s glasses on the desk and went to the kitchen. “You want something to drink?”

            “Drink?” His shout bounced around the walls. “We stand upon the precipice of a literary masterpiece, and you prattle on about beverages?”

            Amateurs. I pulled the icebox open and grabbed the jug of iced tea. “Now, I’m guessing you have a plot in mind.”

            “Of course!” He followed me into the kitchen, a giant smile on his face. “This shall be the book in which—!”

            “Hasdrubal beats Jane Armstrong, right?” I shook my head and let the Dee part of me rise to the fore. “Random Horse’ll never go for it no matter how many lawyers you throw at them.”

            He froze, mouth open and one claw raised. Then his jaw snapped shut, and his scowl came back. “They seemed quite spineless. I’m certain Ms. Selene can frighten them into doing my bidding again.”

            I got out a flower vase big enough for him to wrap his front paws around. “They can be cut-throat about profits. And Jane Armstrong getting beaten? That won’t just lose them money; that’ll lose the series some fans.” I filled the vase with iced tea.

            His indignant snort puffed against the back of my neck.

            “You can push things a little with each book, but not much.”

            He settled the vase onto the kitchen table and himself onto the floor. “As in book four, for instance?” he said, tapping a claw against the vase. “Introducing the Pegasus Compass Rose allowed you to shift perspectives slightly, giving new readers a way into the story while shaking matters up a bit for the old readers.”

            I almost dropped my glass. “You said you only found out about the books last week.”

            His ears folded again, his furry cheeks darkening with an unmistakable blush.

            “Well, now!” I gave a toothy smile. All kinds of things coming clear, I took a stool across the table from him. “You’re a fan, Hasdrubal?”

            Swigging his iced tea, Hasdrubal grimaced and reached for the sugar bowl. “One of my minions brought me the first book years ago while I was recovering from the burns I suffered during our encounter at Mt. Salamander. I found the characterizations laughable and the writing pedestrian, but my featured role made the experience not entirely unpleasant.”

            He dumped half the bowl into his drink and stirred it with a claw. “You treated me with more fairness than I’d expected, but I became even more determined to destroy you.”

            Wariness tensed my muscles, but I’ve had plenty of practice hiding my true reactions.

            “I continued going over your novels as sort of after-action reports. And I wanted to be sure you showed me the proper respect.”

            “Uh-huh.” I rested my chin on my hand. “Can’t imagine why you read the one with Compass Rose, then, since Hasdrubal isn’t in it.”

            His eyes went wide, then narrowed into a glare. “To know my enemy, Jane Armstrong.” He tossed his mane. “And your novels are not an entirely grotesque way to pass an afternoon…”

            “A pull quote if I ever heard one.”

            He slapped the floor sharply with his tail. “When you offered this collaboration, I intended to force you into plotting your own demise. Failing that, I suppose I can console myself with the cartload of money I’ll be making.”

            “And there,” I said, my scalp tingling, “is our plot.”

            His brow wrinkled. “A cartload of money?”

            “A partnership.” Pushing action-oriented Jane Armstrong and business-focused D. F. Teasdale aside, I rolled the idea around in my mind. “Jane and Hasdrubal are forced to team up against a bigger enemy that’s threatening them both. You get a win, and I don’t get a loss.”

            He arched an eyebrow. “A bit of a cliché, isn’t it?”

            “That’s how things get to be clichés: they work.”

 

 

III

 

            “It’ll never work,” I told him.

            “Ha!” Hasdrubal was hovering over one of the two-story tall pyramids he’d put together using nothing but firewood and rope from my shed. “How many death traps have you built?”

            “I’ve managed to dismantle every one I’ve come across.”

            He scowled. “I tell you, this will be the perfect scene with which to end the third of our novel’s five acts!” He began lashing more rope to one side of the thing.

            The past month and a half had been, well, fun. The most fun I’d ever had as myself. Because yes, I loved venturing forth into the wild as Jane Armstrong and living the civilized life as D. F. Teasdale, but retreating to this cabin alone with my typewriter, that was what made me me.

            And yet? Having Hasdrubal curled up in the nest of blankets he’d made for himself beside the typewriter kept my nerves humming the way they only did when I was trying to untangle some ancient cipher or evading fiendish cultists bent on Jane Armstrong’s destruction. D. F. Teasdale got to engage in hours of conversation with a bombastic yet erudite houseguest. And working on a completely fictional adventure with one of the few other people in the world who knew what a true adventure was like?

            It was scratching all my various itches in ways they’d never been scratched before.

            We’d made good progress, too: hashing out plot points; arguing over the outline; scrawling thoughts and ideas and bits of dialogue on pieces of scrap paper that we then arranged and rearranged. I did the actual typing, but I recited the lines aloud as I typed so he could shout his corrections as he paced back and forth.

            Was he annoying? Undoubtedly. The Jane Armstrong in me had come close to slinging a haymaker at him on more than one occasion. But he had a gift for language that kept me grinning, and a couple of times, I almost felt as if he were talking not to Jane but to Cricket.  That was the person I’d grown up as, the name I hadn’t heard spoken aloud since the horrible events that had sent me running off to reinvent myself as a person who wasn’t always cringing and weeping and—

            “Behold!” the trombone blare of his voice announced. He’d added what looked like octopus arms of rope to the tops of his two firewood pyramids. “This is the trap Hasdrubal will set for Jane Armstrong amidst the bones of the ancient Land Leviathan!”

            “Flick a match at it, and the whole thing’ll go up like a torch.”

            He gave a snort. “Exercise your paltry imagination, Jane Armstrong! The complex would be four times this size and solid granite!” He gestured to the ropes. “The trap would be fashioned from steel cables as thick as your leg and twice as supple! Once they have wrapped themselves around our hapless heroine, there will be no escape for her!”

            I pursed my lips. “So, this would all be desert, right?” I waved a hand at the patchy grass behind the cabin, the forest pressing in along one side. “The Land Leviathan’s fossilized bones lie scattered for an acre in every direction, and from what Jane Armstrong understands of the prophecy, all she needs to do is find the one part of the monster that hasn’t turned to stone.” I folded my arms. “Why would she bother with something so obviously suspicious?”

            Landing on top of one pyramid, he tucked his wings to his sides. “She would know that nothing of the Leviathan’s physical being could have survived all these millennia without undergoing the process of fossilization!”

            “Then what— wait. In the legends Jane hears back in chapter two, you made sure I put in that line about the Leviathan leaving its name and thoughts written in the landscape.” That tingle started as if I really were standing in a field of ancient bones. “These pyramids are built right over the Leviathan’s front paws. Where the monster would’ve written its last words before the curse killed it.”

            Hasdrubal’s teeth gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. “The one part of the monster that hasn’t turned to stone.” He tapped the side of his head. “Its final thoughts scrawled on the spot where it breathed its last!”

            Almost tasting the dry desert wind, I half-closed my eyes. “The sun would be setting behind her, and Jane would be standing on the thing’s spine, these mounds of stone jutting up from the silent sands. She would turn slowly, squinting into the sunset, and look up along the spine to where the skull lies.” I clapped my hands. “We’ll have the pyramid complex sitting right there at the end of its nose! She’ll have no choice but to investigate!”

            “Excellent!” he shouted. “And then she will fall into the trap Hasdrubal has set for her!”

            “Ha!” I started forward, my senses sharpened. “The triggers are obvious!” I pointed to what had to be pressure points on the surface of the pyramids and the wooden plaza he’d laid out between them. “The doors are suspicious, too, so she’ll head for the—”

            Something clicked under my shoe; I leaped to the side, but not fast enough. Ropes sprang from among the lashed-together logs and coiled themselves around my arms and legs. They tripped me, spun me sideways, and sent me skidding across the splintery flooring to bump my nose against the base of the pyramid on the right. “Ow,” I said.

            “Eloquent as always.”

            He glided down beside me. My throat wanted to tighten, but I wouldn’t let it. “Huh.” I blew out a breath like I wasn’t lying bound and helpless in my own backyard before Jane Armstrong’s archnemesis. “I guess maybe that would work.”

            “Yes,” he said, and that one quiet little word was louder than just about anything I’d ever heard. “But now, you see, we come to the crux of our act three, the mid-point of the story, if you will, the climax toward which all the action so far has been rising.”

            He reached down and stroked a single claw gently along the side of my head. “For Hasdrubal has had Jane Armstrong caught in his death traps before, but he has never done the one thing he really should’ve done the very first time.” His claw moved to rest under my chin. “He has never simply torn out her throat or strangled her or grabbed her firmly below the ears and snapped her skull from her spine.” The pressure of his claw forced my head up till I was looking into his narrowed, feline eyes. “This has always seemed odd to me.”

            I made myself give as much of a shrug as I could while surreptitiously stretching and relaxing my arms and legs to loosen the ropes. “Art imitates life, I guess. I mean, I can’t very well write that Hasdrubal kills Jane Armstrong when, like you say, he never has.”

            “Of course. But why shouldn’t he do it now? Yes, I know that in our plot outline, we have him and Jane Armstrong reach an agreement to cooperate lest the Land Leviathan return to life and in its madness destroy everything they both deem worthwhile. And yes, the resurrectionists have thwarted Hasdrubal quite thoroughly throughout the early chapters of the book. But that doesn’t mean he’s incapable of stopping them on his own.” A second claw joined the first crooked under my chin. “Luck is going his way at the moment, after all. Should he not take advantage of the situation in which he suddenly finds himself?”

            Breathing in and breathing out, I kept focused on stretching, relaxing, stretching, relaxing and wouldn’t let even the idea of breaking eye contact cross my mind. “Well, for one thing, Hasdrubal’s not an idiot. He knows he’s gonna need magic to see this through, and magic doesn’t work for him. Besides, there’s too much at stake here to trust in luck. Neither of them can do this alone, and while the rewards if he and Jane Armstrong pull it off will be more than substantial, well, so will the penalties if they fail.”

            For a moment, he stayed as still as a stone idol half-covered with undergrowth. “All valid points,” he rumbled. “But you do see his dilemma, do you not? He has her right here.” The pressure increased under my chin. “Right here.“

            The smile I gave him then was one of Jane’s best: slow and sardonic and quite thoroughly practiced. “And he’ll have her there again. They both know it. It’s just that right now, they’ve got a bigger problem to deal with. And they can only deal with it together.”

            Another moment quivered in the air between us, then: “Yes.” He pulled away just as the ropes around me loosened enough to let me spring onto my knees, but by then, he was already halfway across the yard. “Perhaps we could take the rest of the day off!” he called without looking back, his voice tight and growling. “I’m feeling somewhat uninspired at the moment!” Wings flexing, he leaped into the forest and vanished.

            A few shimmies got the rest of the ropes to slide down my legs. “Bright and early tomorrow morning, though! I’ll do a rough draft of the scene with the pyramid tonight now that we know how it goes!”

            Only the chirping of the birds and the wind in the branches answered me.

            Stepping onto the porch, I pushed into the kitchen, closed the door behind me, and collapsed into a twitching pile on the floor. For two seconds—two seconds!—I’d dropped my guard, had stopped being both Jane Armstrong and D. F. Teasdale, had truly revealed myself to someone I’d imagined might be a kindred spirit. And I’d come that close to literally getting my head torn off! The fear and the anger that had fueled the creation of my two alter egos all those years ago flooded through my mind—

            And just like then, I clung to the emotions, breathed them in, breathed them out, and breathed them in again. I could draw strength from them, not just to keep myself safe from the world, but also in the book. In the scene where the resurrectionists finally realize that the Land Leviathan is going to make them its first victims, for instance…

            Climbing to my feet, I wrenched open the ice box and grabbed the pitcher of tea steeping there. I needed to get writing while it was all still fresh in my mind.

 

 

IV

 

            The next morning, Hasdrubal came creeping in the back door just as day was breaking. I was right there at the kitchen table: every time I’d closed my eyes all night, the remembered stroke of his claw along my jaw had set them flying open again. So I’d spent the hours before dawn sucking down bad coffee and refining my notes on the pyramid scene.

            He blinked just as blearily at me. I nodded to the pot on the stove. He poured half of it into his vase followed by half the sugar bowl.

            I’d been steeling myself, but I still couldn’t help jumping a little in my seat when he spoke. Fortunately, he was looking out the window and didn’t seem to notice.

            “This so-called fiction of yours,” he said, his voice quiet and tentative in a way I hadn’t heard before, “for all the reading I’ve done since I was small and all the work we’ve done these past seven weeks, I haven’t until now understood the power it holds. Yes, we fashion a universe and force its inhabitants to bend to our wills, but more, our words influence those here in the real world, changing their minds and hearts.” He stuck a claw into the vase and gave the sugary coffee a stir. “And its power is so much more reliable than magic.”

            Completely at a loss on how to respond, I defaulted to Jane’s sardonicism. “Yeah, all us writers are little megalomaniacs, aren’t we?”

            He smiled, swigged down his coffee, and we got right back to work.

            The weeks slipped by. We kept making good progress, and when I typed the last word of the last scene one mid-morning about a month and a half after our little scene behind the house, he slapped the carpet and shouted, “We must celebrate!”

            I shook my head. “We’ve got a lot of revising to do yet.”

            “Ha! Today, I shall not be bothered by such paltry details, and neither, my dear Jane, shall you! We have performed a nearly miraculous feat, after all! We have survived three months in each other’s company!”

            I gave him one of Jane’s big laughs, not allowing any of the tightness in my stomach to infect it.

            He tapped the manuscript. “Tomorrow, we shall attempt to tame this beast, but today, you will make your way into town and procure these items!” Snagging a blank sheet and a pencil in his claws, he did some quick scrawling and slammed the paper onto the desk. “I trust you will not find the task too daunting?”

            Narrowing my eyes, I looked from his smirking face to the piece of paper. He’d written two words there: Rice and Beans. “Garbanzo beans, of course,” he continued, “while the rice may be whatever sort they have available. Of the most vital importance is that you obtain this much of each!” He cupped his paws to indicate a vaguely pint-sized amount. “And when you return, I shall treat you to a dish the likes of which you have never tasted!”

            “Uh-huh.” I folded my arms across my chest. “You come across a patch of nightshade out in the forest you want to introduce me to?”

            His smirk wavered, and he looked…insulted? Hurt? Disappointed? Had I gotten so used to that weird face of his that I was picking up his emotions?

            My own face went hot at the sight, and I found myself murmuring, “Sorry…”

            His smirk returned almost immediately but with some actual humor in it. “Those of us who value taste and refinement call the species of nightshade I shall use ‘the eggplant.'”

            I stood from the desk and made a show of stretching. “Y’know, after three months of sandwiches, coffee, and iced tea, I’ll be happy to let you cook something.” I raised a finger. “As long as we’re both eating from the same pot.”

            He snorted. “You should feel fortunate that I am allowing you a share of my baba ghanoush.” He started into the kitchen, his wings shooing me away. “Now be off with you!”

            I couldn’t help smiling, and I was out the front door and down the steps for the half-hour walk into Lone Pine before I realized that I was still in my denims rather than Dee’s bonnet, shawl, and glasses.

            The thought froze me in place, then I scrambled back into the house. I almost even ran upstairs to slip Jane’s safari shirt on underneath the shawl and bonnet—I’d had both ensembles specially made to fit together—but I stopped at the desk, my hands reaching for the glasses.

            What was it Hasdrubal had said a minute ago? That we’d just survived three months together?

            But it hadn’t been Jane Armstrong who’d done that, and it hadn’t been D. F. Teasdale, either. Yes, I’d called upon the skills I’d learned as both of them, but for the most part—

            For the most part, it had just been me. Just quiet little Cricket.

            So did I need to go all D. F. Teasdale to head into town and visit the grocery store?

            Well, I was going out! Of course I needed my disguise! Look what had happened when I’d been myself with Hasdrubal! He’d nearly killed me!

            Except it had been Jane Armstrong he’d wanted to kill, hadn’t it? Me, Cricket, I’d talked him out of it and gotten him to spend a whole quarter of a year writing a book with me. And if I could do that, couldn’t I do this?

            The back of my neck was cold and wet. I rubbed it and caught sight of my reflection in the glass frame holding the map of the lost city of Umbrabane there on the wall above the desk. Light-brown hair, light-brown eyes, light-brown skin, nothing at all to make me stand out. Who I was, after all, depended on what clothes I was wearing.

            And that was just the way I wanted it! Right?

            Scowling and shaking, I put on the glasses, grabbed the shawl and bonnet, and headed for Lone Pine.

            The trip there and back passed uneventfully, the paper packages of rice and garbanzos balancing nicely in my shawl pockets. Any other time, I would’ve welcomed the calm, but with nothing else to focus on, my mind kept going places I didn’t want it to go: that little house on the outskirts of Amadelphia, so tidy outside but festering inside; big, brooding Dad and cutting-as-a-whip Mom, their fights escalating slowly over a decade; quiet little Cricket avoiding the traps they set for each other by becoming her imaginary friends Dee, who could talk and smile and bargain, and Jane, who could fight and plot and survive.

            Then came that final night with its screaming, smashing furniture, shattering glass, fire roaring through the house from an end table hurled into the mantelpiece to scatter kindling across the living room floor. All Cricket had carried away from the place was herself. Or rather she’d carried away Jane Armstrong for the running that filled her life afterwards and D. F. Teasdale for dealing with the adults both well-meaning and possibly not so well-meaning that she ran into. With those two as my shields—

            I mean, as her shields. I mean—

            I forced my attention to skim the forest around in the hopes of finding a stray wyvern or crocodahlia to fight. The stupid things never show up when you need them, though, and I arrived home just about an hour after I’d left, my head feeling like a bee hive. I pushed my way through the front door, opened my senses to detect any trap Hasdrubal might’ve set up while I was gone—

            And stepped into a cloud of absolute ambrosia, the scents of garlic and spices wrapping around me as warm and perfect as blankets on a cold winter night. I more drifted than walked back into the kitchen, the aromas beckoning me onward like the glint of gold at the end of some torchlit corridor. Floating through the doorway, I had to gawk at the buckets and pans of eggplant, tomatoes, garlic cloves, peppers, leaves and twigs and tubers I didn’t recognize spread across every inch of the counter, Hasdrubal snagging them and slashing them, his claws flashing sharper and surer than any knife or grater ever could.

            I breathed in, breathed out, and breathed in again. “Incredible,” I said, my eyes curling closed to focus more of my brain on my sense of smell.

            “Of course,” came the rich smoke of his voice. I refocused to see him gesture with his wings to two of my saucepans, bubbling away on top of the stove. “Now, rice in the pot on the left, beans in the pot on the right. This is of the utmost importance!”

            Smiling, I set my bonnet and glasses onto the kitchen table and moved to the stove. “I never knew cooking was so dramatic.”

            “Life is drama,” he said, “or it is nothing.” The snik, snik, snik of his claws didn’t even slow down, and his chuckle stroked my ears. “I have a feeling you might disagree with that statement, however.”

            I tore the bean bag open and dumped them into the boiling water. “Drama’s got its place: leaping free from the jaws of death at the last minute and things like that.” I couldn’t help giving him a sideways glance. “I imagine your minions must be getting bored after three months without you injecting your particular brand of drama into their lives.”

            “Minions?” He dabbed his forepaws in a pan of water, then set my largest iron frying pan onto the third of the stove’s four burners and poured olive oil into it. “I haven’t a permanent staff, if that’s what you’re implying. When I need minions, I simply call them in.”

            “Huh.” I made a hole in the rice bag and emptied it into the other pot. “And here I thought you ran a vast criminal enterprise that stretched across the shattered remnants of the Atlantean Empire.”

            He grunted, his attention focused on slowly tipping the cutting board full of slashed vegetables into the frying pan. “I feel it would be safe to say that we each had any number of mistaken ideas about the other before this collaboration began.”

            Sizzling burst from the pan, and the scent in the kitchen ratcheted up from ‘delicious’ to ‘mouth-watering.’

            “I, for instance, constantly imagined Jane Armstrong boasting of her prowess before her fellow adventurers in some capacious club. Or I would conjure up an image of D. F. Teasdale surrounded by sycophantic, upper-crust pseudo-intellectuals toasting her literary success at an unending string of well-attended salons and black-tie-only functions.”

            I had turned to breathe in the full effect of the veggies cooking, so when he glanced up, I found my eyes meeting his not a hand’s breadth away.

             “But never,” he went on, his words suddenly quiet, “in my wildest dreams would I have imagined the truth about you, whoever you are. And never have I been so pleased to be proven incorrect.”

            The glint in those eyes made my heart hammer harder than when I’d been wrapped in his ropes, and it took all Jane Armstrong’s strength and D. F. Teasdale’s resolve not to leap away. “Glad to be of service,” I said, the words somehow not cracking. I crooked a thumb over my shoulder at the refrigerator. “I’m getting some tea. You want any?”

            “I do.”

            Turning away from him was as hard a thing as I’d done in years. Not because I thought he might leap at me while my back was to him. But because my every instinct was telling me to run. I mean, the way he’d suddenly become a person I could live and talk and work with?

            No way could I deal with that.

            Still, I was good at pretending, so I got us our iced teas and sat chatting with him while he mixed everything up. And while I can’t remember a single thing either of us said for the rest of the evening, no way will I ever forget that first taste of his baba ghanoush over rice: the sweetness, the saltiness, the heat, the whole rich combination of flavors.

            And the next day, we got to work revising the book.

 

 

V

 

            “So without any further ado,” Dust Jacket said with a smile I recognized: instead of seeing the varieties of people crowding into the Narns & Kobold bookstore, the sparkly silver unicorn was seeing the coins in their pockets, “let me introduce the best-selling authors you’ve all come here to see this evening, D. F. Teasdale and Rube al-Hazred!”

            We’d been putting the final touches on Jane Armstrong and Hasdrubal’s Quest when I’d first suggested the pseudonym to him. He’d stormed around the front room in outrage until I’d pointed out that if he laid claim to the identity of the character in the books, he would also lay claim to the crimes the character had committed. He’d settled down pretty quickly after that.

            I glanced over at him now as the crowd began whistling and clapping. With that tweed scarf around his neck and those horn-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, he certainly looked more like the average sphinx-on-the-street than like the megalomaniac who’d nearly killed Jane Armstrong a dozen times in the past decade. Padding out onto the stage beside me, in fact, he almost seemed embarrassed, ducking his head so his mane nearly covered his face and smiling shyly. The glinting eyes behind those glasses, though, told me exactly how much that bloated ego of his was eating this all up.

            The whole party went off without a hitch. We unveiled the over-sized lithograph of the book cover that Random Horse was auctioning off for charity—my regular artist had done a terrific job on the Land Leviathan looming above the figures of Jane Armstrong and Hasdrubal—and when the bookstore staff wheeled out the carts filled with special editions, the crowd practically stampeded to get hold of them.

            After the auction, the signing went on for hours, but Hasdrubal didn’t threaten to disembowel anyone at all. In fact, the big jerk was obviously basking in the admiration of the fans who lined up to get our signatures. He repeated the story that we’d come up with—Rube was an accountant who’d been friends with Dee since their university days, but he’d never considered collaborating with her on a project until she’d asked him his thoughts on the Hasdrubal character during one of their frequent get-togethers over lunch. It flowed out of him with such sincerity that I once again found myself wondering just how much of what he said I could ever really trust.

            A written contract, of course, was a different matter, and the sales figures from the book so far made the Dee part of my brain allow that another collaboration might not be entirely out of the question under the right circumstances…

            It wasn’t until it was all over, the books sold and signed and the two of us strolling down the moonlit sidewalks of Port Tropolis toward the hotel, that he let his persona slip. The curve of his spine straightened him to his full height and length, and that familiar aura of cold menace shimmered up around him. “Dust Jacket inquired if I might be interested in writing a spin-off series focusing on Hasdrubal’s early attempts to take over the world. Something for the pre-adult market, he said, and he used the nonsensical phrase, ‘Dark but light.'” He puffed a breath through his nostrils. “Nonetheless, I find it to be quite the tempting offer.”

            I nodded. “You’ll need to hire someone to work the typewriter for you. Another of your minions, I guess.”

            He glared at me, but I wasn’t worried. He’d come close to breaching my walls, but I knew better now. He’d have to get through both Jane and Dee to get to me. I gave him a grin and went on: “Deadlines are tricky, though. Might be you’ll find you won’t have time for much else but working on stories.”

            His ears folded, his eyebrows bristling. “I will remind you, Jane Armstrong, that I still mean to destroy you and everything you stand for.”

            The Jane part of me wanted to say something snappy like ‘The feeling’s more than mutual, pal.‘ But the words dissolved before they could get even halfway up my throat, and I found myself murmuring instead, “Not one of your better lies, Rube.”

            Everything about his face went blank. Then something that was either a laugh or a cough rattled from his mouth. “You know me so well. Although I imagine you’re quite the expert in psychology, juggling your three identities and all.”

            It took some effort not to leap away, but I kept my voice breezy and dismissive. “Two identities are plenty for me, thank you very much.”

            Hasdrubal stopped, his gaze peering through those glasses and transfixing me to the spot as thoroughly as a spear through the chest. “We’re exchanging lies, then?” he asked.

            Four quiet little words, but they blew my shields away like the blast of a monsoon; I just stood there gaping at him for what felt like five minutes before I barely squeaked, “I don’t know what you mean.”

            He looked steadily at me, and the sweat springing up along my spine made me think that a piece of the ancient Atlantean rain forest had suddenly sprung up in the middle of this Port Tropolis sidewalk. “I am quite familiar with the eyes of Jane Armstrong glaring from that face,” he said softly. “And over our contract negotiations and our discussions during meals at your kitchen table, I’ve come to know the different shadings of D. F. Teasdale’s eyes.” A wing folded out to stroke a feather against the end of my nose. “But these eyes that look out at me now, these eyes whose owner has changed my life over these last months in ways I have yet to fully understand, these are the eyes of a very different person.”

            My insides were shivering so violently, I almost thought it might show on my outsides. Still, I forced the same words out again: “I don’t know what you mean.”

            “Ah.” He shrugged. “Then I will say that I find you much more interesting than that busybody Jane Armstrong or that status-seeking D. F. Teasdale, and having said it, I will let the matter drop.” Spinning away, he waved a front paw at the buildings all around us. “For the night is young, and I feel certain that with some concerted effort on our parts, we can find an establishment in this city that can serve a proper baklava!” He looked back at me. “Are you up for an adventure, Jane Armstrong?”

            I couldn’t move, afraid that the cyclone whirling through me would knock me sideways onto the sidewalk. There was no way he could know about the real me: no way, no way, no way!

            As always, a part of me wanted to run. But if I did, I knew as surely as I knew my own name that he’d catch me and kill me. Another part wanted to stay, but if I did that, he’d look at me and kill me just as dead. And the vast majority of me screamed that he’d figured me out, that he would expose me to the world, that he was just toying with me now like he did with those damn death traps!

            But…

            The best way to defeat one of his traps was to fall in and then let Jane find a way out. Except I was Jane, and I was Dee. And I was the storyteller who’d apparently made Hasdrubal see the world in a whole different way. So was this person standing in front of me the real person inside Hasdrubal the same way that this person standing in front of him was the real person inside Jane Armstrong and D. F. Teasdale?

            “Cricket,” I pushed out before the rest of my brain could stop me. “My name is Cricket.”

            Everything froze, the quiet sounds of the late-night city settling over me heavier than Dee’s bonnet or Jane’s pith helmet ever could.

            He blinked. Then he smiled and bowed his head slightly. “A pleasure to meet you.”

 

 

 

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