CHAPTER NINETEEN

Our last match of the day was—and forgive me if you could see this coming—also canceled. Statistically, this was really unlikely—we were the only pairing who didn’t play a single match following the murder. Everyone else—even with the quasi collapse of the tournament—played at least two or three rounds more than us.

I knew this because the redhead who was manning the tournament table appeared ready to explode.

“I cannot believe your opponents are not here,” he said.

“We’re just lucky, I guess,” said Daniel, still oozing happiness out of his pores. “Everyone’s lucky sometimes.”

“They were here earlier,” said the redhead, who was not oozing happiness so much as shooting daggers.

“I’m happy to wait for them,” I told him.

Daniel, apparently insane from the thin air he’s getting up there in his Clouds of Love, was perfectly delighted to advance to day two. I was frankly ready to bail. Day two of this thing would have an audience. There would be crowds. Our games would be projected on a giant screen. I could barely play this game at all, and if it weren’t for the excellent tutorial in Skullgirls, I would have had my ass handed to me by a kindergartner.

“If they’re not here,” said Daniel, “it’s not our problem.”

Mike3000 and Imogen—aka LadyBlazer—crept up behind us. “Don’t tell me that you’re advancing again without playing a match,” said Mike.

“How’d you hear that?” I asked.

“Everyone’s talking about it,” said Imogen. “People are calling you the Cinderella Couple.”

“They’re saying what?” I asked.

“The Cinderella Couple. You know, like you’re enchanted. How are you doing it?” asked Imogen. “You bribing them or something?”

This idea that I have enough money to bribe people to take a dive in a tournament is so innately laughable that I actually pig-snorted at Imogen. Although I maybe should have been concerned, in retrospect, that this was the prevailing wisdom.

“I’m not bribing anybody.”

“And they will have opponents,” said the redhead. “They were here earlier. And I’m sure they’ll show up any second.”

“Hey, Imogen,” I said. “You know a guy on Twitch called Doctor XXX?”

“Nope,” said Imogen, without even thinking about the question. Which I thought was odd, because if you posed a question like that to me, I’d at least take a moment to think about it. But Imogen didn’t even pause.

“He follows you on Twitch,” I explained.

“Yeah? So do about twenty thousand other people.”

“That’s a lot of people,” I said.

Imogen shrugged.

“He’s never messaged you and asked you to go meet him in a storeroom?”

Imogen answered this question with a look. She said nothing at all, but her glance answered the question more effectively than paragraphs of denial ever could.

“No weird messages at all? Nothing?”

More looking. Daniel was also unconcerned about the indirect accusation of bribery because he unhelpfully mused aloud:

“I hope our opponents weren’t murdered.”

“Yes,” I said. “That would be a sticky wicket.”

Anyway, most of this conversation I was just looking at Imogen trying to work out a reasonable way that I could smell her and see if she, by any chance, smelled like the fougère that stunk up Swan’s room. I was never going to come up with a great opening, so I just embraced a lousy one.

“What’s that smell?” I said, invading Imogen’s personal space in a terrible and almost Charician way. “You smell wonderful! What is that?”

Imogen was not prepared for this—either the invasion, or the compliment.

“Uh, what? The hotel shampoo, I guess? I forgot to bring anything.”

Imogen smelled like nothing. By which I mean, actually, nothing. Not perfume, not shampoo, not sweat. Maybe she was a cyborg. Even so, I pushed.

“It’s this wonderful fougère—what is that scent? It’s familiar to me, but I can’t place it. I’m such a perfume nerd.” This was bullshit, but you can’t blame a gal for trying.

Imogen looked a bit stunned. “Oh!” she said. “Could it be the Lion’s Cupboard?”

“That might be it,” I said. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

“It was my boyfriend’s cologne—my ex—but I would wear it now and then back when we dated because—well, never mind why because. I wonder if some of it got in these clothes?”

But she looked very uncertain.

“It’s a great scent,” I told her, hoping that this compliment would redirect her from wondering how the scent could have stayed with her all this time. It must have, because she got out her phone and started fiddling with it. Hopefully she wasn’t googling “cologne half-life.”

Meanwhile, Mike, who had zero interest in this perfume discussion, politely interjected:

“Who were you supposed to play?”

“Jason ‘Trenchet’ Saltz and Jonathan ‘SoggyToast’ North,” answered the redhead.

“Yeah,” said Mike. “They were here.”

“Bribed, probably,” said Imogen, apparently off the topic of the Lion’s Cupboard. I didn’t really appreciate the jab, although I could see she was just playing with me now. Imogen wasn’t creepy really, not at all, but she did have the catlike quality of being someone who played with her food before she ate it. And as far as she was concerned in this tournament, Daniel and me were food.

Then Imogen pulled me aside. I had kind of imagined she was going to give me more perfume intel, but she had something else on her mind, and she spoke in a hushed tone.

“Hey, I just checked my Twitch account to see if that Doctor XXX of yours ever tried sending me a private message—and uh, yeah, he has.”

“Did he ask to meet you in a hotel storeroom?” I asked her, maybe a little too quickly.

“No,” she said. “That’s crazy. No, these are just death threats.”

I had never heard anyone toss off the phrase “just death threats” with such natural nonchalance. Death threats seem like the sort of thing that ought to concern you.

“He sent you death threats? How did you not know about this earlier?”

“Well,” said Imogen, “I have a filter that blocks most of that stuff, and I don’t read messages on Twitch, because why? If anyone worthwhile wants to talk to me, they’ll use email.” She stopped to consider. “And they’re not death threats exactly. It’s more ‘you should have been a blow job and not a baby.’ That sort of thing.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. I looked at Imogen, who remained completely composed through this conversation, maybe even a little bored. “How are you so calm about this?”

“It just comes with the territory. If you want to make it in this scene, you have to be thick-skinned. And you never read the comments.”

It was weird making small talk after that, but we managed it. Imogen actually did have more to say about perfume and cologne, and I instantly regretted my little white lie about being a perfume nerd, because she certainly had the knowledge to call me out, going on about top notes of bergamot and gourmands and other words that I didn’t even know.

By the time the redhead came up to us, I was immensely grateful.

“Well,” he said. “I guess I have no choice but to let you move on to day two.”

“This really is my lucky day,” said Daniel.

Daniel and I headed back to our apartment, Daniel driving through a surprising amount of traffic for that hour in St. Louis, which usually tends to clear out pretty well at night. I suppose I couldn’t say at that point that I was completely uncomfortable around Daniel, because I could ride with him in silence without the need to make dumb small talk. Which is the mark of friendship for me. I guess I did like the guy, even if I had at least somewhat contemplated him being a killer.

But the silence was good.

There was plenty to think about, and not being at the Endicott Hotel gave me breathing time to actually think about and consider it. I watched the city pass—there’s also something deeply disorienting about riding in a car when you’re used to walking and public transit—and tried to categorize my thinking on the day.

We arrived at my apartment to yet another mystery, which was that Charice was not there. As mysteries go, this wasn’t the Piltdown Man, but it was curious. If it had been someone else, we probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but when Charice is up to something, it’s generally wise to be on the lookout.

“Wasn’t Charice supposed to be here?” I asked Daniel, who was familiar enough with her to be wary.

“Yes,” he said. “She promised me penne.”

Maybe we were friends, Daniel and I, because we shared a look. It was the look right before someone opens a door in a horror movie. Charice was into tomfoolery, and we were the self-aware ingenues that were destined to face down her Jason in the woods.

Daniel, self-starting fellow that he is, took to making his own pasta. And I logged on to Twitch again, because I am a glutton for punishment.