Bowden climbed out to join me. I got on better with him than I did with the character who played my father, but that wasn’t saying much. It was like saying sparrows got on better with cats than robins. Bowden had a thing going on with the previous written Thursday, and when he tried to hit on me at the Christmas party, I’d tipped an entire quiche in his lap. Our relationship on and off book had been strained ever since.

“That was just plain embarrassing,” said Bowden. “You were barely even trying.”

I’d taken over from Carmine the second I got home, so I couldn’t blame her. I should have let her just carry on—she was doing fine, after all, but . . . well, I needed the distraction.

“So we had a bit of wastage,” I said. “It happens.”

Reader “wastage” was something one had to get used to but never did. Most of the time it was simply that our book wasn’t the reader’s thing, which was borne with a philosophical shrug. We’d lost six readers at one hit once when my brother Joffy went AWOL and missed an entire chapter. It had never been more tempting to hit the Snooze Button. Mind you, in the annals of reader wastage, our six readers were peanuts. Stig of the Dump once lost seven hundred readers in the early seventies when Stig was kidnapped by Homo erectus fundamentalists, eager to push a promegalith agenda. Unusually, terms were agreed on with the kidnappers and a new megalith section was inserted into the book. It messed slightly with the whole dream/reality issue but never dented the popularity of the novel. On that occasion the Snooze Button was pressed, which accounts for the lack of a sequel. Kitten death—even written kitten death—carries a lot of stigma. Barney eventually handed over the reins to a replacement and works these days at Text Grand Central; Stig is now much in demand as an after-dinner nonspeaker.

“So what’s up?” asked Bowden. “I’ve seen more dynamic performances in Mystery on the Island.”

I shrugged. “Things aren’t going that well for me at the moment.”

“Man trouble?”

“Of a sort.”

“Do you want some advice?”

“Thank you, Bowden, I would.”

“Get your ass into gear and act like a mature character. You’re making us the laughingstock of Speculative Fantasy. Our readership is in free fall. Want to go the way of Raphael’s Walrus?”

It wasn’t the sort of advice I was expecting.

“So you’d prefer the old Thursday, would you?” I replied indignantly. “The gratuitous sex and violence?”

“At least it got us read.”

“Yes,” I replied, “but by whom? We want the quality readers, not the prurient ones who—”

“You’re a terrible snob, you know that?”

“I am not.”

“You should value all readers. If you want to mix in the rarefied heights of ‘quality readership,’ then why don’t you sod off to HumDram and do a Plot 9?”

“Because,” I said, “I’m trying to do what the real Thursday wants.”

“And where is she?” he asked with a sneer. “Not been down this way for ages. You keep on banging on about the greater glory of your illustrious namesake, but if she really cared for us, she’d drop in from time to time.”

I fell silent. There was some truth in this. It had been six months since she’d visited, and then only because she wanted to borrow Mrs. Malaprop to put up some shelves.

“Listen,” said Bowden, “you’re nice enough in a scatty kind of way, but if you try to add any new scenarios, you’ll just make trouble for us. If you’re going to change anything, revert to the previous Thursday. It’s within the purview of ‘character interpretation.’ And since she was once that way, there’s a precedent. More readers and no risk. Who the hell is the Toast Marketing Board anyway?”

“It’s a secret plan,” I remarked defensively, “to improve readership. You’re going to have to trust me. And while I’m in charge, we’ll do it my way, thank you very much. I may even decide,” I added daringly, “to add some more about the BookWorld in the stories. It would make it more realistic, and readers might find it amusing.”

It was a bold statement. The CofG went to great expense to ensure that readers didn’t find out about the inner workings of the BookWorld. I left Bowden looking shocked and opened a door in the Yorkshire Dales setting, then took a shortcut through the SpecOps Building to find myself back home. Carmine and Sprockett were waiting in the kitchen and sensed that something was wrong.

“I met Mr. and Mrs. Goblin,” said Carmine, “and they seem very—”

“I’m really not that bothered, Carmine. You’re taking over. I’ve added something about the Toast Marketing Board. It’ll require line changes on these pages here and an extra scene.”

I handed her the additional pages, and she looked at me with a quizzical expression. Making up scenes was utterly forbidden, and we both knew it.

“I’ll take responsibility. Now, get on with it or I’ll have Mrs. Malaprop stand in for me—she’d kill for some first-person time in her logbook.”

Carmine said no more and hurried from the kitchen.

“I’m hungry,” said Pickwick, waddling in from the living room.

“You know where the cupboard is.”

“What did you say?”

“I said you know where the cupboard is.”

Pickwick opened her eyes wide in shock. She wasn’t used to being talked to that way. “Don’t use that tone of voice with me, Miss Next!”

“Or else what?”

Pickwick waddled up and pecked me as hard as she could on the knee. It wasn’t remotely painful, as a dodo’s beak is quite blunt. If she’d been a woodpecker, I might have had more reason to complain. I held her beak shut with my finger and thumb and then leaned down so close that she went cross-eyed trying to look up at me.

“Listen here,” I said, “try to peck me again and I’ll lock you in the toolshed overnight. Understand?”

Pickwick nodded her beak, and I let go, and she very quietly sidled from the room. There was a mechanical cough from behind me. It was Sprockett, and his eyebrow pointer was indicating “Puzzled.”

“How did the trip to the RealWorld go?” he asked.

“Not great.”

“So I observe, ma’am.”

I sat down at the kitchen table and ran my fingers through my hair.

“Perhaps if ma’am would like to change out of her work costume? I could run a bath—perhaps a long soak might help.”

I looked down at the clothes I was wearing. It was classic Thursday: Levi’s, boots and a shirt, faded leather jacket and a pistol in a shoulder holster. I felt more at home in these now than I felt in my Gypsy skirts and tie-dye top. In fact, I would be happy never to see a sandal again, much less wear one.

“You know,” I said as Sprockett brought me a cup of tea, “I thought it was odd in the BookWorld. Out in the RealWorld it’s positively insane.”

“How was Landen?”

“Dangerously perfect.”

I told him all that had happened. Of Jack Schitt being Adrian Dorset, of Goliath, the Toast Marketing Board and the contention from Jenny that Thursday couldn’t be dead. I also told him my suspicions that I might actually be her, despite what Bradshaw had said and much evidence to the contrary.

“And then I lost a reader and got pissed off with Bowden, Carmine and Pickwick,” I added.

“Any clues as to Miss Next’s whereabouts?” asked Sprockett as he attempted to keep me on the task at hand.

“Only that Lyell is boring. How many Lyells are there in the BookWorld?”

Sprockett buzzed for a moment. “Seven thousand, give or take. None of them particularly boring—that’s a trait generally attached to Geralds, Brians and Keiths—or at least, here in the BookWorld it is.”

“Interviewing every Lyell would take too long. Friday and the peace talks are not getting any further away.”

“Did you speak to the Jack Schitt here in the series?”

“First thing when I got back.”

“And . . . ?”

“He knew nothing about Adrian Dorset or Murders. Didn’t even know that Jack wasn’t his real name.”

“But it’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it?” said Sprockett, his eyebrow pointer clicking down to “Thinking.” “I mean, it can’t be a coincidence. Jack Schitt’s book being the accident book?”

“In the Outland there are coincidences. It’s only in the BookWorld they’re considered relevant. What about you? Come up with anything?”

“I went and spoke to TransGenre Taxis. To see if they were missing anyone.”

“And?”

“They wouldn’t give me any information. I think it was a mixture of corporate policy, laziness and overt coggism.”

“Really?” I replied. “We’ll see about that.”

I went into the study, fetched a chair and pulled Thursday’s shield from where it was still embedded in the ceiling. I turned the shiny badge over in my hand. It was encased in a soft leather wallet and was well worn with use. It could get me almost anywhere in the BookWorld, no questions asked.

“Why would the red-haired gentleman have given this to me?”

“Maybe he was asked to,” said Sprockett. “Thursday has many friends, but there is only one person she knows she can truly trust.”

“And who’s that?”

“Herself.”

“That’s what the red-haired man told me,” I said, suddenly realizing that recent events might have had some greater purpose behind them. “Something happened. Thursday must have left instructions for him to get out of his story, find me and ask me to help.”

“Why didn’t he say so directly?” asked Sprockett, not unreasonably.

“This is Fiction,” I explained. “The exigency of drama requires events to be clouded in ambiguity.” I placed Thursday’s badge in my pocket.

“Is using the shield wise?” asked Sprockett. “The last time you used it, the Men in Plaid were onto us within the hour.”

“It opens doors. And what’s more, I don’t care if the Men in Plaid arrive. We’ll do as Thursday would do.”

“And what would that be, ma’am?”

I opened the bureau drawer, retrieved my second-best pistol and emptied all the ammunition I had into my jacket pocket.

“We kick some butt, Sprockett.”

“Very good, ma’am.”