Roderick was now officially a threat. I didn’t like that wrinkle. Most of our plans assumed that future mayor Gray would be a pushover.

I rushed in through the wall. Being able to phase through solid objects was quite handy. I was getting used to it.

On the other side of the wall, I looked to where I knew Gray was supposed to be, and… he wasn’t there. He had seemingly vanished into thin air. I looked all through the crowd and I couldn’t see him.

There must have been a trope at play. Players often develop an instinct for such things. Players who couldn’t see enemy tropes were probably better at it than I was.

Antoine and Cassie were out of the secret passage according to my Deathwatch trope. I had to go find them.

They weren’t that difficult to locate. Cassie’s character’s closet must not have held one normal-looking dress because she was dressed like a bruise. Purple, black, and a hint of sickly green. She didn’t look happy to be wearing it.

Antoine was wearing a tux, but not a good one.

“It’s time to fight,” I said using Flashback Revelation.

Antoine immediately perked up.

“The Die Cast?” he asked quickly. He looked from side to side until he found where I was when my poster appeared on the red wallpaper.

Which direction were yes and no again?

I moved. He followed me with his eyes. Cassie was watching too.

“No?” Cassie asked.

“Gray,” Antoine said knowingly.

I moved in the other direction to say yes.

“Lead us to him,” Antoine said.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that. I had lost him.

I moved again to say no.

“Why not?” Cassie asked. “Oh, right. We need to look for him?”

Yes, I said. They must have looked like fools watching me walk from side to side like that. Luckily, we were all Off-Screen.

“We’ll get Kimberly and Bobby,” Antoine said. “You find Gray so you can show us the way.”

Sounded like a plan.

I ran past Antoine and Cassie, through the hallway where the hidden entrance to the secret passage was, and into the kitchens where Isaac walked aimlessly.

What was he doing? He had a job.

And then I saw it.

Someone or something stood directly behind Isaac. It was so close that I could barely see the outline of his silhouette.

Not now. Please not now.

Isaac started laughing.

“It’s been a while,” he said. But it wasn’t just Isaac’s voice. I heard another person talking, someone with an electric, sarcastic crackle.

“Strander Blake,” I said mostly out of shock at the sudden realization. I had tried my best not to think about him ever since he fouled up the Ten Second Game at the beginning of the Tutorial.

“I was just in the neighborhood,” Strander made Isaac say. “I read ahead on that little script in my head. There will be some wonderful additions to my collection in this story.”

I was suddenly very aware of how vulnerable I was at that moment. Strander collected spirits. The last time we met, I was flesh and blood. This time, I was a ghost. From what I had seen, he could simply sew me into his menagerie without a second thought.

There was no way Carousel would let that cretin get in our way. I looked closely. There was a good sign. Isaac’s spirit was not sewn to the writhing mass that was Strander Blake. He was held there by threads, but his ghostly form had not been grafted onto the spectral Frankenstein as far as I could tell.

“Let him go,” I said. “We have things to do. I don’t have time for this.”

Even as a ghost, I could feel the fear rising up inside me. If he attacked me, I would be relying on Carousel and its all-powerful script to save myself and Isaac.

Fortunately, there was no need.

With a sickening sound like the rending of flesh, the little black threads that wound over Isaac retracted.

He fell forward, but I still didn’t get a good view of what Strander actually looked like because another ghost replaced Isaac in an instant. It was the same drowned woman that Strander had been so fond of before.

“Just having fun,” she said with Strander’s actual voice in the back. “I’m supposed to be here. My abilities are useful. It would seem the Spirit of Vengeance, as it’s called here, is a pain to Carousel. I’m only here to help out.”

“Great,” I said. “So now you’re friends with Carousel. That makes sense, you two have so much in common.”

“You’re one to talk,” Strander said, water dripping to the floor from his puppet’s face. I could feel I had hit a sensitive spot.

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There were NPCs in the room. It was a kitchen during a party after all. If they could see the dripping ghost, they didn’t show it. She was a different kind of ghost from me or Isaac. In the last story, she was visible. Her tropes had not changed. I wasn’t sure how that all worked.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Strander got closer to me. My dead heart beat faster than it had ever done before.

“Carousel sent me to control the Spirit of Vengeance a little while ago. To make it mind its manners. Apparently, it doesn’t like doing anything unless it gets to kill someone at the end of it, a sentiment I can understand. That didn’t work for Carousel, so it had me take the big bad over and take it on a walk. A walk, to watch you shave. I thought it odd.”

He started to laugh.

“Seemed like a joke between friends to me,” he said.

Carousel had deviated from the true script just to mess with me back before First Blood. Having an errand boy who could control powerful spirits must have allowed Carousel to cut through some of the magical bureaucracy.

“Personally,” he said. “I was hoping you would accidentally fall on your razor so I could say hello. I was almost disappointed when you didn’t fall for it. I see you managed to die all the same though.”

The whole time we talked, Roderick Gray never showed up on the screen on the red wallpaper. That meant he hadn’t been On-Screen.

“We have work to do,” I said. “If all you wanted to do was say hello, then, we’ll be leaving.”

“Just as well,” he said. “I was going to tell you where that wretched man was, but I suppose you don’t need my help.”

I paused. “Roderick Gray? You know where he is?”

It was a big mansion. I needed all the help I could get.

“You should know too,” he said. He laughed maniacally. “After all, you know he is supposed to survive.”

That was actually a useful hint.

Roderick Gray lived past the manor blaze. Now that we knew he was in the building, then we could conclude that he was somewhere in the house that wasn’t destroyed, a place where he would be safe from the fire.

“Thanks,” I said out of instinct. I turned to Isaac. “Come on.”

In Carousel, you take help where you get it.

----------------------------------------

“Where are we going?” Isaac asked frantically. Strander’s treatment had rattled him something fierce.

“The main hall is in ruins after the fire. We saw pictures of the manor after the fire, remember?” I asked. Even without access to the library, there was plenty of information about the blaze. It was one of the most famous events in Carousel history. Pictures of the caved-in floor near the entrance were very popular. “One of the wings gets smoked out. A bunch of Geists die in another. The upstairs is a death trap. And the last wing is practically untouched.”

“Oh,” Isaac said. “Which wing?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m guessing whichever one people aren’t in.”

We searched each one until we found a wing that was closed off to the public. Giant doors blocked anyone from entering. They didn’t stop Isaac and I, of course.

We searched the large, empty rooms of the wing until we found him. Roderick Gray with an evil smile on his face.

I looked at his tropes.

Roderick Gray

Plot Armor: 27

__________

Tropes

Intoxicated by Power

This villain is possessed, literally or figuratively, by the power they wield. Beware. This exorcism will be dangerous. Buffs physical saving rolls. Debuffs Moxie and Savvy saving rolls.

Hidden In

Plain Sight

This villain cannot be attacked On-Screen until it attacks the player or is otherwise identified as hostile. Attacking it will not be effective, nor will it change the story. It will cause the player to go Off-Screen for a time.

Weasel

This villain cannot be killed while escaping.

Mirror Match

This villain’s stats will match up with their opponent’s corresponding stat. Grit/Mettle, Savvy/Savvy, Moxie/Moxie, Hustle/Hustle.

Face in a Crowd

This villain can slip away unnoticed when entering a group of people.

The Descent

Every evil act drives this villain further from redemption but makes them more powerful narratively.

Just as I did, he dropped a match into the flask.

Smoke rose out of it quickly, just as it had before when we did the original ritual. The difference was that this time, I was a ghost, and I could see that the smoke was not really just smoke.

As it emerged, I hoped it was some kind of smoke monster. That, at least, would be easier to look at.

What came out was a man, or at least something vaguely shaped like a man. It looked like burnt meat. It was burnt so badly that the flesh was unrecognizable, but the place where the flesh would have been underneath was not unrecognizable. It was red and blistered. Blood oozed from the cracks in its ashen skin.

Luckily, it was gone in a flash. It was on its way to wherever the remains of Gale Zaragoza had ended up after the jail flood—most likely, some hole in the woods.

Before long, I could see the POV of the Die Cast. It wasn’t far away. We didn’t have much time.

“Find the others,” I said. “Lead them here.”

“I can’t talk to them,” Isaac said.

“Then just jump in front of them until they notice you!” I yelled.

We ran back through the abandoned wing of the mansion. Isaac went one way, I went another.

When we were separated, I heard a familiar voice.

“Riley?” it said. “My god, Riley, is that you?”

Carlyle.

I turned to where I heard him from.

There he was. He didn’t look dead. He looked scared and sad. Not dead. Ghosts in this story didn’t look dead. They just looked strangely lit by an unseen light.

“Carlyle,” I said.

“It got you too?” he asked.

Carousel was not playing fair. I had known in the back of my mind that I would see him one day. Carousel was a small world for the dead. We were going to cross paths. I had only hoped it would not be so soon.

The party raged around us. Geists and celebrities danced and celebrated, all in honor of the ghost that stood among them without a single spark of joy.

“I couldn’t find them,” Carlyle said. He started to cry. “I couldn’t find my wife or my children. I searched all over, but they aren’t anywhere.”

Carlyle was predeceased by several members of his family. Whatever peace had met me when I became a ghost had not graced Carlyle.

“I don’t know where they would be,” he said. “I looked for so long.”

Even in death, Carousel wasn’t done with punishing the Geists.

I tried my best to soothe him. “They must have moved on to a better place,” I said. “I need to move that thing is coming again.”

Carlyle’s face turned from misery to fear. “We have to warn them,” he said. “My entire family is here. If that monster of a man is coming, we need to warn them.”

Except I couldn’t.

His family was going to die. They had to. That was how we got to the true ending. I wished it wasn’t true.

“Carlyle,” I said. I thought about telling him the truth. Or even just the in-story truth. I couldn’t bear it. “I’m going to try to stop it.”

I turned and ran as fast as I could into the crowd. Even as ghosts, my Hustle would help me lose him for a while. I couldn’t think about Carlyle or my massive guilt right then.