I examine the tracking bracelet. It’s still active, so it can’t have been here for long. Emma must be close by.
“Do you think she’s been kidnapped?” Charlotte whispers. “Or worse?”
“This can’t be happening,” Grayson says.
He’s staring down at the smart glasses. There are several drops of blood on the crack-frosted lenses, like someone stood over them with a nosebleed. It’s not much blood at all, but Grayson’s clearly panicking.
Anton suspects him, and who am I to argue with twenty thousand pounds and a leg up in this competition? But come on. Grayson couldn’t scheme his way out of a paper bag. No way is he involved in something as sophisticated as hacking into Anton’s game and pretending to be a ghost.
But if Anton wants to pay me to follow him and find out what he’s up to, then that’s what I’m going to do. He’s scared. This could be my chance to get closer to him. The only problem is Charlotte.
I dust off my hands and sigh loudly. “Oh well. I guess she’s gone. We’d better go our separate ways before the game restarts.”
I wait, hoping that Charlotte will take the hint and leave. She doesn’t.
“No. We’re going to work together to find Emma,” Charlotte says, sounding a lot like a schoolteacher. She looks like one too, with her serious haircut.
“We are?” Grayson finally tears his eyes away from the blood.
“I promised Anton that I would save his game from whoever it is trying to sabotage him with this Rose nonsense.” Charlotte looks meaningfully at me, as does the ridiculous drawing of Anton on her hoodie. “Emma is a journalist investigating what happened to Rose, and now she’s vanished. She has to be important.”
“You mean she's not just another contestant?” Grayson says.
Grayson is claiming he doesn’t know who Emma is, yet he was clearly following her. Perhaps there is something to Anton’s suspicions, after all.
Charlotte continues. “Emma was undercover at the party where Rose died, but Matthew threw her out.” She pauses to gasp loudly. “I wonder if she saw Matthew being naughty.”
“She found me less than an hour ago, wanting to know what I remembered from that party and if I’d seen anything odd,” I admit.
“What did you tell her?” Charlotte asks.
I shrug. “That I don’t remember anything.”
“That’s interesting,” she says. “Something else interesting is that Emma vanished moments before we got here. Where were you, exactly, when that happened?”
“Where were you?”
Grayson steps between the two of us with his hand raised. “Um, I’m seriously confused, so I’m going to…go.”
“Wait,” Charlotte and I say in unison. We glower at each other.
“I thought we were a team,” Charlotte says.
He shakes his head, swishing his mane of hair. “I’m not interested in teaming up. I’ve got Len… I mean, I’m a lone wolf. And also, I don’t trust either of you.”
He has a point. But I’m yet to meet a boy who can’t be won over with a flutter of my eyelashes. I force myself to smile at him. “If you want to go it alone, that’s fine. I guess I thought we were friends after what happened at the museum.”
To my surprise, he doesn’t bite. “Friends? Is that why you fixed it so I’d get those points?”
“Ha, so you admit you cheated?” Charlotte cries.
I ignore her and keep my attention fixed on Grayson. “It’s not all about the money for me. The thing is…I knew Rose.”
“You knew Rose?” His voice changes from steely to wistful in a split second. Got him.
“I collabed with Anton and the Accomplices a number of times. She always seemed nice.” This isn’t true. Sure, I met Rose, but she wasn’t nice. Patronizing and arrogant would be a better description. Poking her nose in where it didn’t belong. “I feel like I’m part of this. Like I owe it to Rose to play her game,” I finish.
“Liar,” Charlotte grumbles. “You never liked Rose.”
“And you did?” I snipe, silencing her.
Grayson frowns and shakes his head like it’s full of wasps. Just then I notice a Shadow City ghost rising out of the dirt behind him. Anton must have wrestled control of the game from Rose and restarted the challenge. I’ll save Grayson, and he’ll realize he needs me. Smiling to myself, I step forward and lift my arm to swipe the ghost away.
Charlotte gets there before me, leaping past both me and Grayson. With a dramatic slashing movement, she draws a cross in the air and then punches the ghost through the heart. It explodes into writhing black dust that streams into the pink-hued sky.
“You’re welcome,” she says sweetly, blowing on her fist.
Grayson gapes, wide-eyed, like he can’t believe how close he came to being caught by the ghost. “Thanks, Charlotte.” He checks for more ghosts, then takes a shaky breath. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt if we stick together for a bit.”
They walk away together, leaving me silently seething. Charlotte is sharper than she initially appears. I need to up my game if I want to come out on top. We climb through the fence and onto the road. Passing cars have their lights on now, and the reds and whites glow as brightly as the projected display on my smart glasses.
“Let’s think about this rationally,” I say. “Emma could have gone home, but she didn’t strike me as someone to give up easily. We can presume she’s still determined to write her article. That means she either ditched her bracelet and glasses to avoid being followed, or someone grabbed her and… What are you doing?”
Charlotte has dropped to the ground and is crawling on the sidewalk. “I’m searching for clues. There might be tire marks or—”
“Get up already. You’re being ridiculous!”
She stands up and holds out a finger to me. The tip is red with blood. “In the time it took you to insult me, I found a trail. She must be bleeding, but at least she hasn’t been driven off by a kidnapper. This way.”
I growl under my breath as Charlotte sets off, her short hair bouncing smugly. We don’t find anymore blood, but it doesn’t matter. Emma was on foot, walking in the direction of the river—and the end point of Anton’s latest challenge. All the contestants are heading that way, not to mention Anton’s helpers. Most likely Emma’s going there too, hoping to find the next installment for her story.
We fall into an uneasy silence, broken by the occasional appearance of Anton’s Shadow City ghosts. They’re easy enough to exorcise at the moment, but they’re becoming more frequent and faster moving. I usually find Shadow City pretty tame, but the ghosts are scarier now that darkness is falling.
“We should get to know each other a bit better,” Charlotte says, breaking the quiet. “What’s your favorite Anton video ever?”
“Um, I haven’t watched that many,” Grayson says.
Charlotte gasps and covers Anton’s ears on her hoodie. “Well, you should. They’re hilarious! One of my top moments was in 'Lost in the Maze.' Anton had this huge hedge maze in his old garden, and it was in the shape of his face. Anton and the Accomplices recorded themselves with drones running around the maze, shooting at each other with paintball guns. Matthew got hit in the boy parts. I laughed and laughed.”
“You and Matthew aren’t close, then?” Grayson asks, wincing.
“Not in the slightest. I literally hate him. I don’t know why Anton and Beatrix put up with that big cheat-face.”
“Do you have any evidence of his affairs though?” I say, just to be contrary.
“I don’t need proof.” Charlotte sniffs. “You can smell the lies on him; it’s a horrid, sweaty musk. Like Rose’s ghost said, people don’t change. Hmm, she seemed very angry, don’t you think? Maybe she was having an affair with him.”
Grayson stops walking at this, and his jaw goes painfully tight. Interesting.
“Did you know Rose?” I say mildly.
He hesitates. “No.”
Liar.
“Why would I know her?” His voice goes a bit high-pitched. “I’m here for Anton. Love him.”
“And yet you haven’t seen any of his videos?” Charlotte crosses her arms.
“Um, I have, I… The zorbing one was good. When they went zorbing in Greenwich Park and Anton got arrested.”
Again, interesting. He picked one of the few videos where Anton suffered the consequences of his rule-breaking behavior. Rumor has it the fine was massive.
“I always liked the ones with just him and Rose,” I say, making my voice and face as innocent as possible. “They were such a cute couple.”
“Most of that was faked for the cameras,” Grayson says in a soft growl.
He speeds up so he doesn’t have to walk with us. Also interesting.
As we get closer to the river, the Shadow City ghosts become more and more frequent, although there’s no sign of Anton. We’re forced to keep turning on the spot to make sure nothing creeps up on us. I exorcise three ghosts and Charlotte gets four, but I console myself with the knowledge that she’s a long way behind me on the overall scoreboard. I’m winning, and winning easily.
We pass by an unlit park, surrounded by a low metal fence. I spot something. Crossing the busy road, I lift a torn hat off one of the fence’s vicious spikes. It’s a gray fedora with a purple ribbon.
“That’s Emma98’s hat,” Grayson says. “What a waste.”
Charlotte gasps. “She has been kidnapped. Or eaten by a bear.”
“Or she’s hiding from us in the park,” I say. “Come on.” I check that there’s no police around, then pull myself up and over the fence.
Grayson clumsily follows but Charlotte looks horrified. “That’s so dangerous. One slip and it’s death by impalement.”
“We both made it fine,” I say, following a path lit by old-fashioned streetlights. Away from the city traffic, it suddenly feels much more like nighttime. “You stay out there if you want.”
A heavy thud announces that she’s more or less made it over without serious injury. She runs to catch up. “I went through a phase of watching a lot of old public information videos,” she says. “Spike fences are right up there with playing on railroad tracks and falling into quicksand.”
“Quicksand?” Grayson says. “Really?”
“It’s a misnomer, actually. Quicksand is liquid mud. It’s a non-Newtonian solid with a varying viscosity depending on the application of force.”
“I’m so glad you’re here to educate me.” Grayson laughs, but it’s a friendly laugh, not the mocking one Charlotte deserves. “You’re a bit of a brainiac, or what?”
“I’m a writer, actually. I do a lot of research for my, um, stories.” She goes a bit red and stops talking like she’s said something she shouldn’t have.
I bite my tongue. I’m aware of what a non-Newtonian solid is too. Back before my mother decided to homeschool me so we could concentrate on her channel, I was acing all of my subjects, especially science and math. It never crosses anyone’s mind to wonder if I’m smart though. They’re usually too busy staring at my chest.
“Did you hear that?” Charlotte says, stopping abruptly.
I squint past the yellow light of the streetlights into the shadowy trees beyond. A second later, someone rushes straight for me and knocks me to the ground.