Outside on the dirt road that pretended to be a street, Ash surveyed his party, hoping he and Ivy could put the earlier awkward conversation behind them and have some fun. “Well, that went pretty well, right? Anybody have any useful tidbits?”

Ivy said, “Winthrop’s ass is in a sling for this. He let the family hang onto the diamond when it should have been in the bank vault. The bank records go back to at least 1700.”

Ellie said, “He has terrible taste in art, although he had some sort of strange symbol, like a talisman or something, fixed above the door and the window.”

Ash hadn’t noticed those. Some detective. “What did they look like?”

“They were nine-pointed stars inside a circle, made of what looked like silver, with a character or rune in the center that isn’t from any language I’ve encountered.”

James’s face brightened. “You mean, like, magical wards or something?” He’d looked mostly annoyed and bored during the entire meeting.

Ellie—or rather, Elwood?—nodded.

“What do you think the significance is?” Ivy asked. “The GM said that our characters know lots of things we don’t.”

Ellie cocked her head as if listening to something, then nodded. “The number nine is considered a powerful number, the largest of the single digits. Symbolically it represents the culmination of wisdom and experience, new endings, new beginnings. The nine-pointed star is the holy symbol of the Bahá’í religion, which was founded in Persia in the 1840s.”

“Where’s Persia?” James asked in the background.

Ellie continued, “But I don’t think these are related. This is 1896, right? Those talismans are much older than fifty years. I could tell by the tarnish. Plus, there’s the question of the rune in the middle. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, thanks, Sean,” James said as an aside.

Ivy turned to her brother. “Who are you talking to?”

“Oh, the GM,” James said with a grin. “I named him Sean, like Sean Connery.”

“Your GM sounds like Sean Connery?” Ash asked, intrigued.

“Yup. He sounds like James Bond.”

Ash chuckled despite his initial dislike for James. “That’s pretty cool. Mine’s female. Can’t place the voice.”

From the air around him, Ash’s GM said, “My voice is patterned on Sigourney Weaver.”

Ash’s skin tingled, and he suppressed a giddy giggle. This was so cool.

“Galadriel,” Ellie said.

“Hugh Jackman,” Ivy said.

“Oooo,” Ellie said with a grin, “can you make him sing Les Mis?”

Ivy chuckled. “Maybe later.”

Ash rubbed his hands. “Well, shall we visit the Château de Delacroix?” His gaze remained on Ivy, and she was even more beautiful in her guise as a nineteenth century gambler, a kind of hyper-realism in the way she looked and moved, like watching videos with a super-high frame rate.

“You mean we have to walk there?” James asked. “Isn’t it, like, far?”

Ivy said, “Winthrop said about a mile from town, so…”

“We have to walk a whole mile? In this weather?” James said.

“How else do you expect to get there?” Ivy said to James with a sharp, verbal jab. “I don’t see any cars, do you?”

“We’re inside a building,” James retorted. “And it’s not a mile across.”

Clouds hung in the sky like sodden dishrags, and the air had gotten colder. Even as they all experienced these physical sensations, part of Ash’s mind chewed on the question of how Karnath’s Crimson Castle managed to pull it off. They were inside a structure with finite dimensions and real-world engineering systems and architecture, and yet it looked, for all intents and purposes, as if the four of them were standing on a rocky promontory overlooking tumultuous, iron-gray seas.

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The street stretched off out of town along the windswept coastline into the hazy distance, where a rocky island rose from the frothy surf, upon which rested what looked like a fairy-tale castle, spired turrets rising from the mist like clawed fingers or daggers.

The GM said, “That is Château de Delacroix. Would you like to Fast Travel?”

“Hell, yeah!” James said.

Suddenly they were engulfed in a swirling, sparkling vortex, and Ash felt wind and sea-mist rushing past him. The vortex dissipated like smoke, and they found themselves at the head of a rocky pathway to the island at edge of the mainland. From the shore, the road—although calling it a “road” was a bit generous—stretched about a hundred yards across tide pools, slippery wet rocks, and pulverized coral that rose just high enough above the tide to allow passage in single file. Seawater sloshed close on either side.

Ash offered Ivy his arm. She hesitated for a second, then slipped her cybernetic arm through his. He patted her hand in what he thought was a gentlemanly way and helped her along the treacherous-looking path. She kept glancing at him uncomfortably, until she pulled her arm away and said, “I’m fine.”

He nodded, disappointed, but tried to keep his hopes up, trying to decide whether she was too independent of a person for Ye Olde Holding Of The Arm, whether she wasn’t yet comfortable touching him, or that he’d already blown it. He second-guessed himself with every step. He shouldn’t have invited her as a date for something like this. He should have started with a low-pressure coffee date or something. He should have kept his mouth shut about his admiration for Alastair Marquand. Then on down into the spiral of fear that she was simply out of his league. By the time they reached the foot of the path that wound up onto the island, such thoughts dragged his feet to a crawl.

Behind him, James and Ellie—or, Elwood—walked a few steps apart. He heard James say, “This is like walking through one of those cheesy old movies.”

“Except it really does look real,” Ellie said. “The castle design is French Revivalist architecture. The detail is extraordinary. Do you see the little crabs in the tide pools?”

“That is pretty cool,” James conceded.

“And my character knows things, so many things. The amount of information flooding through my goggles is incredible.” Ellie said. “I hope if I reach this age for real, I know half this much.”

The path switchbacked up the side of the rocky escarpment about fifty feet to a plateau upon which the mansion rested. They couldn’t see the mansion from the foot of the island, only a few naked black branches clawing at the sky from trees lining the escarpment. Everywhere he looked, lichen and moss of a hundred different greens painted the ancient stone, clinging to it with incredible tenacity.

Ash started up the switchback path, Ivy close behind, then James a few steps back.

* * *

As the other three started up the switchback trail, movement in the rocks of the cliffside caught Ellie’s eye. She’d been making all sorts of skill rolls since they’d arrived in Silver Cove, soaking up information about the town, about the history of the area. She hadn’t paid much attention in high school history class and had taken a college history class somewhat grudgingly, but walking literally through the Victorian era had set her imagination on fire. Her augmented reality HUD had been alive with observational tidbits, feeding her things her character knew. If she had had something like this in school, it would have changed her life.

The squirming, seething movement among the rocks drew her gaze and held it.

Worms.

Big, fat purplish-blue worms, glistening, slimy, like nightcrawlers thicker than her thumb, writhing in knots in the cracks of the rocks. And not just a single clump of them, but all up and down the cliffside. Everywhere she looked.

A chill shot up the back of her neck into her hair. Inside her gamesuit, hairs on her arms tingled with the urge to stand straight up.

She leaned closer, and the chill expanded like a dash of ice water.

The worms had eyes placed randomly up and down and around their lengths, black glistening beads.

She shuddered and stepped back. Her HUD had no highlights or icons to identify them. “Hey, GM, what are these worms?”

“Worms?” the GM said.

“Yes, all these worms.”

“What worms are you referring to?”

“The rocks are full of them. Thousands.”

A pause. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean. There aren’t any sort of worms in your vicinity.”

“You’re kidding me, right? Then what are they?”

“Can you show me an example?” Galadriel asked.

Ellie poked the tip of her sword cane between two rocks where a juicy wad of them resided, trying to pull or prize some of them out into better view. But she felt resistance from only the rocks, not the creatures that squirmed between them. Their supple lengths just moved aside, flowing around the cane’s brass tip. She tried to stab and squish a few, drag them out onto the path, but they seemed to slurp out of harm’s way, clinging to the shadows and crevices. She was not going to touch them with her fingers, even wearing gauntlets. A shudder went through her.

“Ellie! What are you doing?” Ivy called down from thirty feet above.

“One sec,” Ellie called back, then lowered her voice. “GM, are you telling me you don’t know what I’m talking about?”

“Regrettably I do not,” the GM said. “Your heart rate is growing unexpectedly elevated. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Ellie said, her blood rushing in her ears, chest tightening. “How often do you have programming glitches?”

“I’m not authorized to share that information. I am sorry. Suffice to say, strange things do sometimes happen.”

“Well, you should flag your development team on this one, because the worms are freaking everywhere,” Ellie said, tearing her attention from them. Either the GM was lying or there was some weird and possibly serious glitch in the game engine. A tiny voice in her head also said, Or you’re hallucinating.

She hurried up the path after the others, trying to forget that the things were all around her, inches from her feet as she climbed.