Rabbits(107)

“Because I know what happens when you win. I’ve seen it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was there. I’ve seen somebody win the game.”

“Who?”

She shook her head. I wasn’t getting that information.

“I’ve seen somebody get their heart’s desire,” she said as she stood up and set a ten-dollar bill on the table. “It was real, and it was amazing, and that’s why I’m still playing.”

She smiled warmly. “I wish you luck, I really do, but I hope you understand, you’re not to attempt to contact me again.”

I nodded, and Easton Paruth walked out of the coffee shop.

As soon as Easton was out of sight, I slipped off my sneakers and found a small flat device that had been hidden beneath the insole of my left shoe. It was flat and gray. It looked like one of those Tile things people use to track their keys.

I slipped the tracking device into what was left of my coffee like a secret agent crushing a sim card, and rushed outside to follow Easton.

But by the time I stepped out of the coffee shop, she was nowhere to be seen.





32


    THE MOONRISE


Chloe was waiting outside my building when I got home.

“You called me at six in the morning?” she asked.

“I did.”

“Where the hell have you been?”

I smiled.



* * *



—

“You got to have pie with Scarpio and coffee with Murmur? What’s next, bagels with rescue-van Hazel?”

While Chloe made us breakfast, I told her everything that had happened; how I’d figured out the secret astrological code in that hidden level of Zompocalypso, and how Easton Paruth—who’d admitted she was Murmur—had followed me to that wall behind the dumpster.

After breakfast, I pulled up the photographs I’d taken of that wall, and the two of us spent a couple of hours staring at my phone, trying to make sense of the mess of numbers, letters, and symbols.

“That’s the symbol from the door at Gatewick,” Chloe said, pointing to the small circle atop the triangle sitting in the center of all the other symbols and letters.

“Easton called it The Moonrise,” I said.

“What do you think it means?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

We sat there in silence for a moment.

“The Magician would know about this,” I said, and immediately regretted it.

The Magician was still MIA, and the last thing I wanted to do was remind Chloe about that fact.

“Sorry,” I said.

Chloe shook her head. “It’s fine. There has to be somebody else we can ask about this thing.”

I thought about Russell Milligan, but there was no way he was going to speak with us again.

“I don’t know, maybe Fatman?” I said.

Chloe jumped up from the couch. “Fuck, yes. Fatman,” she said, as she ran over to the front door and tossed me my shoes.

“Wait,” she said.

“What?”

“Check for tracking devices.”

The two of us pulled our shoes apart, but we couldn’t find anything.





33


    AN INVISIBLE CITY


We found parking a block and a half away from the porn shop, hopped out of the car, and pulled up our hoods in unison against the rain. As we ran across the street, Chloe reached out and grabbed my hand—and, for just a moment, I felt like I was living in a normal world, like Chloe and I were a regular couple running across a street in the rain toward a warm table in a cozy bistro, not a couple of game-obsessed lunatics rushing toward a porn shop basement in order to ask a crossbow-wielding shut-in to help us win a deadly game that might be the only thing keeping the multiverse together.

While we made our way up the sidewalk toward the store, I imagined what it would be like to do all of this stuff alone. There was no way I would have been able to handle it. I was really happy that Chloe and I were doing this together.

We approached the store, and I could see that the tall wrought iron gate was open and hanging out over the sidewalk.

“What the hell?” Chloe said. She’d clearly noticed the same thing.

As we walked through the gate and down the steps toward the basement door, we heard a distant banging and shuffling coming from somewhere deep inside the office.

“Hello?” Chloe called out.

The banging and shuffling grew louder and then abruptly stopped.

The door that opened into Fatman’s office was ajar. I knocked and then pushed it open a bit farther. The slow creak of the door against the silence inside the office was unnerving.

“Fatman?”

“Neil?” Chloe said, right behind me.

There was no answer.

“We’re coming in,” I said. “Please don’t murder us with a crossbow.”

We stepped into the room.

The fluorescents were out, but the office was dimly illuminated by a swath of warm light coming from somewhere in the back of the room.

The entire place had been torn apart. What had once been somewhat orderly rows between shelves were now winding rivers of scattered books and papers.