The Wishing Game(10)

“Gotta run,” he said.

“Already? What’s going on?” Piper looked worried.

“No clue.” He kissed her cheek and bolted for the street, leaving behind his thirteen-dollar diamond-studded cup of coffee. He waved a hand at a passing taxi. It pulled over, and he got inside.

“Penn Station, quickly, please.” Hugo grabbed his phone from his back pocket. He’d put it on airplane mode while he’d been touring flats. Now he flicked it on, and suddenly a torrent of emails, text messages, and missed calls hit his phone in a cacophony of beeps, bells, and buzzes.

Eighty-seven missed calls and approximately two hundred new emails, all from media outlets and friends he suspiciously hadn’t heard from in years.

“Oh God,” Hugo groaned.

He called the house. Jack answered.

Hugo didn’t let him get a word out.

“What the hell are you up to?” Hugo demanded. “The Today show left me five voice-mail messages.”

“It’s a foot,” Jack said, “but it’s not part of the body.”

“I hate your stupid riddles. Could you tell me in short, simple sentences exactly why a girl at a coffee shop just asked me why a raven is like a writing desk?”

“It’s a foot,” Jack said again, more slowly this time, as if he were talking to a child. “But it’s not part of the body.”

Then he hung up.

Hugo growled at the phone and considered tossing it out the window. But he probably shouldn’t do that as CBS News was apparently calling him. He sent the call to voice mail.

“You okay, man?” the cabdriver asked.

“What’s a foot but isn’t part of your body?” Hugo asked. “Any ideas? It’s a riddle, so the answer will be stupidly, annoyingly, and infuriatingly obvious once you figure it out.”

The driver chuckled. “You don’t know Sherlock? You should. You kinda talk like him.”

“What do you mean by—” And then Hugo got it.

What’s a foot but not part of the body?

Afoot, not a foot.

As Sherlock Holmes once said, “The game is afoot.”

Jack Masterson was playing a game. Now. Out of nowhere. Had he lost his mind? Jack had barely left the house in years and now he was playing a game? With the world? With the entire bloody world?

Hugo swore so violently it was a good thing the cabdriver didn’t know who he was, or he’d never get another job in children’s publishing again.

He called Jack back.

“When I told you,” Hugo said, biting off the end of each word, “to start plotting again, I meant in your books.”

And there came that laugh again, the-devil’s-at-the-back-door-and-nobody-remembered-to-lock-it laugh.

“You know what they say, my boy…be careful what you wish for.”





Chapter Three





Lucy stood in front of her bathroom mirror, trying to make herself look responsible, adult, and mature. The pigtails had to go, that was for sure. She loved wearing her hair in pigtails because it made the kids at school laugh, especially when she tied big bows around them. But she’d taken a half day off from work for a meeting, and it was too important to show up looking like an overgrown Powerpuff Girl.

She straightened her hair and changed into clean and pressed khakis and a classy white blouse she’d found at Goodwill for a few dollars. Instead of a reject from an anime convention, now she wouldn’t look out of place at church or a business meeting.

Reluctantly, Lucy went into the living room. Chloe’s girlfriend called their living room The Pit of Despair, and it was a pretty accurate name for it. The ancient mismatched furniture was fine. She was no snob. But there were pizza boxes and vodka bottles everywhere. There were dirty socks on the floor and the gray Berber carpet was starting to take on a distinctly pale brown hue from her roommates’ refusal to take their shoes off in the house. There were only three spotlessly clean rooms in the entire three-story house—Lucy’s bedroom, Lucy’s bathroom, and the kitchen, which she cleaned because no one else would.

She hated the place and wanted to move, desperately, and not just for Christopher’s sake. But it was cheap, and it let her save money, so she stuck it out. It hadn’t been bad two years ago when all her roommates were college seniors and fairly tidy. But they’d graduated and freedom-drunk freshmen took their places.

Right now, Beckett, her youngest roommate, was lying on the beer-stained plaid sofa in the living room watching something on his phone. Knowing him, it was either porn or funny cat videos. The boy had range.

“Beck, buddy, you awake? You said you’d let me borrow your car.”

He slowly blinked himself back to awareness. “What?”

“Beckett. Wake up and focus,” she said and snapped her fingers.

He blinked. “Uh, L. What are you wearing? Are you, like, a nun now? You look way hotter with the pigtails.”

Lucy took a deep breath. Her roommates would test the patience of a Zen master.

“I’m not going to take fashion criticism from a man in a pot leaf shirt who hasn’t showered in six days.”

“Five. And overshowering is bad for your skin. It’s called self-care.”

“It’s also called hygiene,” Lucy said. “I suggest you try it sometime. Also, keys, please?”