This wasn’t the kind of story where slumber parties made sense. Our characters were bound together by having some connection to the Die Cast. Some of us had helped summon it; others had merely witnessed it. Still, hanging out in a giant glass house together was probably not completely in character.

It didn’t matter. We needed it. Spending time alone in Carousel was grating, even with Carousel moving you forward days at a time. It was easy to get lonely even with so many unseen eyes on you.

So we had our slumber party. My character’s house was as good as any place we had stayed at. Antoine and Kimberly took the bedroom at Kimberly's request. It was all jokes when they asked for it, “Haha,” have a good time, but really, the reason they needed the bedroom was so Antoine could get his past-due dose of You were having a nightmare…

And there were smaller windows in the bedroom. Windows that could be covered.

Otherwise, Antoine would be stuck in a giant terrarium staring at trees. I wasn’t going to make him admit to anything, but I knew he was still haunted by his time in the Straggler Forest by more than just mental fatigue or panic attacks.

I didn’t know how haunted he was until that night.

Bobby let his dogs sleep everywhere. They seemed to think we all wanted their attention. Cassie didn’t seem to mind, but Ramona did. Isaac was awake with dread from his part in our plans most of the night until he took a whiskey lullaby.

“You can use Riley’s sleeping trope,” Antoine had offered.

“I’m good,” Isaac said with obvious regret as he laid out in a t-shirt and shorts on the fainting couch. I could tell he wanted to take it, but he knew Antoine needed it more. Everyone did.

It was hard to understand what Antoine was going through. The trope we used to keep his demons at bay was supposed to suppress memories down to barely remembered dreams. We thought that would quash them. The Insider apparently had, too.

It turned out that barely remembered dreams had their own toll.

When I heard them talking, everyone had gone to sleep. My couch was above an air vent that connected to their room.

Kimberly whispered something like, “No, no, we’re not there anymore.”

“I don’t want to open my eyes,” he would respond.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re in Riley’s house, remember.”

No response.

“You’re just having a nightmare,” she would repeat over and over. “You’re just having a nightmare.”

And he was.

Carousel had warned or teased him about his secret, the one that, if it got out, would cause people to lose trust in him.

As I lay on the couch, I could almost hear something in his voice. The way he whispered, the way Kimberly reassured him.

The way he said a word over and over again. I couldn’t tell what he was saying for the longest time.

I felt something in my pocket. It wasn’t really there. I wasn’t even wearing the jacket Carousel had replaced my hoodie with. I felt something appear in the sub-space we put our tropes in.

It was my Out like a light trope. Antoine had used it before but had woken up since then. Now, it had returned to me.

I listened to see if they would say something.

Whispers. I couldn’t make them out.

He was still awake. Maybe Kimberly would come up and ask for it? No dice.

I got up from the couch and took the stairs down to the bedroom door. I had to step over one of Bobby’s smaller dogs. It didn’t pay me any mind.

I knocked on the door, and Kimberly answered. Antoine was standing, looking out the covered window.

There, with the door open, I heard the word he had been saying.

“Trees. No trees. No trees,” he chanted like he was trying to convince himself. He was reaching out, caressing the blanket that had been thrown over the window. It seemed to comfort him.

I handed her the sleeping trope and walked away without even making eye contact.

No wonder Antoine had been kept “off the board” for most of the last month. He was having trouble none of us could understand.

His trope made it feel like his time in the Straggler Forest had just been a nightmare. Alas, the cure was incomplete.

What good was turning trauma into a mere nightmare when you were in the one place where nightmares were real?

As I walked up the stairs to my couch, I realized what Antoine’s secret was. I knew why his Incapacitation indicator was flaring even when we were just relaxing.

Antoine believed, on some level, that he was still stuck in that forest, and in a way, he was right.

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~-~

Early morning. Breakfast. Bobby’s sunny-side-up eggs got turned into scrambled after a mishap with a jumping dog that caused him to break a yolk.

I didn’t mind.

“Why do I have to leave?” Isaac asked. He was being a good sport, and I was making the best promises I could that we would protect him.

“We need you as bait,” I said. Carousel wasn’t a place for sugarcoating.

We needed Roderick Gray to use the flask to target one of us so that we could have the revelation that Gray was the guy behind the curtain. We knew he was, but our characters needed to know, too.

“No, I mean, why am I leaving the protection of greater numbers so that the police have the opportunity to arrest me and throw me in a cage? Why would my character do that?” he asked.

It was a good question. Carousel had prepped a subplot of Isaac getting arrested. We just needed an excuse to serve him up on a silver platter.

“Maybe he’s trying to skip town,” Antoine said with a smile. His old confidence was back. His eyes were bright. His smile was wide. You could hardly tell he was struggling. I wasn’t going to ask him about it.

“I thought of that,” I said. “The problem is that skipping town, while logical, will make the audience hate him.”

“Good point,” Antoine said.

Ramona tapped the table.

“Explain that logic,” she said. She was eating one of the grapefruit that my character must have bought while I was off the board. She had taken an interest in understanding everything about how stories worked.

I was going to explain, but Kimberly got there first. “If a character abandons everyone like a coward, it gives the audience an excuse not to care if they D I E,” she said, spelling out the word die.

“Stop that, it’s not funny,” Isaac said.

It wasn’t, but he had been the one to start it after reacting poorly to the word earlier that morning.

“And we’re all on thin ice anyway, seeing as our characters summoned the killer,” I added.

I had a map of Carousel in the Carousel Atlas opened up on the table. “Which is why I think you should go directly to Roderick himself. Get some talking in. Really make him nervous. The meeting is in a public place, so he can’t hurt you. If we’re right about Carousel’s plans (or we’re wrong, and Carousel likes our idea), then the cops will scoop you up right there in front of him. He sees you go to jail and thinks you’ll rat on him. Recipe for a midpoint.”

“I get put in a cage and accidentally strangled with dental floss,” Isaac added.

“That part’s optional,” I said. Gallows humor was more than just one of Isaac’s tropes. It was a necessity when planning a friend’s dance with destiny.

“And then you guys save me,” Isaac said.

Antoine and I looked at each other,, and he said, “I guess we could do that if we have time.”

“Don’t joke about that part,” Isaac said.

He had been asking us to promise him his survival. We would not make that promise. We couldn’t. We would try our best, but we could not promise. At some point in time, we would have no tricks left up our sleeves.

“I can help keep you alive,” Cassie said. “With Anguish.”

“Not if it starts to kill you, though,” Isaac said.

Cassie didn’t respond.

Cassie’s Anguish trope could kill her and it might not be enough to save Isaac. She could share his pain and injury. In a story as supernatural as this one, her Psychic tropes would be at their strongest. She needed to be careful.

Ramona sat back and took in the tension. She kept looking at me for some reason. I couldn’t say why. I had been here long enough that I was used to these hard conversations. In a weird way, Ramona might have been the most normal person there.

~-~

“Clear out,” I said. It was time for Isaac to set up his meeting with Roderick. Unnecessary personnel had to wait outside.

Antoine and I were at the table. Our scenario was that we would get together to see if Roderick knew anything about the attack at the movie studio. Of course, it wasn’t a conversation for the phone. Isaac would need to meet in person.

“Action,” I said.

Nothing happened. I didn’t have that ability; I just thought maybe Carousel would take things On-Screen for the phone call.

It never did. It was just as well. We didn’t necessarily want the audience to see us there.

“What number do I dial?” Isaac asked. We didn’t have Roderick’s number memorized. I theorized it wouldn’t matter, given that our characters should know it, and it wasn’t a clue in a mystery that had to be earned.

“Just dial something with intention,” I said.

He did.

“Eight six seven—five three oh nine,” Isaac said as he dialed. I was surprised he didn’t choose a 555 number.

“It’s ringing,” he said.

“It’s on speaker; we know,” Antoine said.

“Riley?” Roderick Gray asked quickly when he picked up.

Was Caller ID a thing in 1984?

Isaac’s eyes bulged. He looked at me like I might answer. I didn’t.

“No,” he said. “It’s Isaac. Riley’s… in the shower.”

“Oh.”

“I’m just calling because you see,” he said, looking down at the notes he had made for him. “Have you seen the papers?”

There was a pause.

“I guess I haven’t lately,” Roderick said nervously.

“Oh. I gotcha. I was thinking we might meet for lunch. To catch up.”

Another pause.

“I don’t see why we would need to do that,” Roderick said. He was paranoid as ever.

“There’s something you need to know. Maybe we meet at the Italian bistro on South Kareem Avenue? ASAP. Trust me.”

A final pause as we waited to see if Carousel would go along with things.

If he were wise and cautious, he would never agree. I didn’t read that from him. I thought he would be paranoid and reckless. I was counting on it.

“I’ll have to see if I can make time,” Roderick said.

“Okay. Just know it’s important,” Isaac said. That might have been too much.

“Will our friend, the director, be joining us?”

He was talking about me.

And there was the kicker.

“No,” Isaac said. “It’s better he not come.”

“I see. I’ll head there now,” Roderick said.

Bingo.

I figured that Roderick might not want to go if he thought we were going to rat on him. I figured that maybe if Isaac implied I was untrustworthy, he would be curious enough to hear what Isaac had to say. Isaac’s decent Moxie was enough to sell it, even if Carousel might not have wanted it.

Now, we needed to see how Carousel would respond.

Isaac hung up.

“Sorry, I don’t know why I said you were in the shower.”

“Me neither,” I said.

The conversation wasn't On-Screen, so that meant Isaac and Roderick would probably summarize it when they met.

“Let’s get moving,” Antoine said.

~-~

The Italian place on S. Kareem Avenue had no name, but that wasn’t an oversight. It had several different menus and could serve as any kind of restaurant. We read about it in the Atlas.

When we got there, we sent Isaac ahead. He had memorized his talking points. He only needed to stick around long enough to look suspicious and then get arrested. I thought he could handle it.

Of course, that was assuming that Carousel went along with our idea.

It did. In a way, it did.

But it had its own flavor to add.

As Isaac was walking toward the café, I noticed that Future Mayor Roderick Gray was already there.

He wasn’t alone.

He was talking to a smiling, well-dressed black man wearing a period-appropriate mustache and a hairstyle that could not have been accomplished without pomade. I had never seen him before, but I knew he was at least part of the story.

His name was Elliot “Moonlight” Morrow.

Mayor Elliot “Moonlight” Morrow.

His Plot Armor was 27, just like mine.

His poster showed a silvery version of himself standing over his own axe-impaled body.

It read simply:

Moonlight Morrow is The Departed.