Rose stares into the darkness and calls out in her mind Laura, Laura.

  “Rose what are you doing? I was trying to sleep or is this a dream?”

  “No, Laura, it's not a dream. I couldn’t sleep; I really enjoyed writing that story, and I couldn’t sleep.”

  “So you decided it was alright to wake me in the middle of the night?”

  “I don’t know why you are so cranky, Laura. You solved a big case. You have a great intern who cares about your store more than you do sometimes. Your relationship with the police is improving. Your store isn’t in the red any more.”

  “It’s four o’clock in the morning, don’t Bibliomancers require any sleep?”

  “Yes of course we do, but if I wake up in the middle of the night and I have to pee by the time I get back to bed I’m wide awake and thinking about whatever I’m writing. But now your second book is done. So I’m looking for my next book and I have ideas for a road trip. But I want to know if you are happy in Lake Placid or if you’d rather return to your old life as a rare book dealer?”

  “No Rose, I never want to go back there, ever.”

  “Okay, that’s good, because I hated writing that storyline. It was depressing. “You’re not an alcoholic, are you?”

  “Why are you asking me that, Rose?”

  “Because in both of your books, you went to a bar almost every night to gather clues, don’t you think that maybe you should lay off the drinking for a little while?”

  “Rose, you are the author; you are the one sending me to the bars.”

  “Wow Laura, you know denial is supposed to be the first sign that you have a problem. I’m just trying to look out for you. You are not as young as you used to be and I used to hear you talk about walking, but now it’s always gotta go to a bar to collect clues. Why don’t you go on a hike to collect clues? You’ll get your steps in and find parts of the puzzle.”

  “You’re insane; how can I solve a mystery about escorts by going on a hike? Will I find any escorts out on the trails, will I find any clues at all out in the wilderness?”

  “You are a rationalist, right, Laura, a materialist. Correct?”

  “Yes, one hundred percent.”

  “You like to be logical, just as an aside I loved your argument with Kai, but back to the matter at hand. Please use logic to tell me where you can find clues?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Clues can only be found where?”

  “Clues can only be found where they are left.”

  “Close, but no. Clues can only be found where you look. I applaud you for the way you solved the mystery but you have that poor slave of an intern doing everything for you. She even gathered more than half the clues. You are going to have to step up your game Laura. If you don’t watch it, this is going to evolve into the Lucy Hernandez Mysteries.”

  “This is ridiculous; a clue can only be where someone left it; where you look doesn’t come into it.”

  “You were an editor; isn’t there a difference between the words ‘be’ and ‘found’? Where can a clue be? It could ‘be’ anywhere. But it can only be ‘found’ where you look for it, right? If you leave your keys in your pants pocket, but you never look for them in your pocket, then they are lost forever. Strictly speaking they no longer exist.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “No, it’s not Schr?dinger's cat; they still exist; you just don’t know where they are.”

  “Can you prove that they still exist?”

  “Yes, if I can find them, I can prove that they still exist.”

  “But they can only be found where?”

  “In my pants.”

  “And if you never look there you never find them, which means whatever they open or start will no longer open or start. I’m just saying that you need to look for clues in places other than bars just for the good of your liver.”

  “How can you create worlds, manipulate reality and be this insane?”

  “Come on, Laura, I’ve peeked inside your mind too. You can be pretty obsessive about stuff too. I’m just saying that you have the skills to observe. Like those church ladies protesting your store. You noticed that only one of them was wearing sensible shoes to a protest. So you have the skills, but you aren’t applying yourself. I’m working hard here trying to create a nice world for you. You don’t see ICE raiding the house next door or the national guard on every street corner. Do you know how hard it is to write a cozy mystery in toxic America? I mean your president wants a peace prize while his secretary of war is telling the navy to kill everyone. Now he wants a big frozen island, because they didn’t give him a peace prize. I’m afraid his next move will be to declare war on Denmark and they don’t even give out the prize. Your president doesn’t know that Norway and Denmark are two separate countries. And you call me insane. Your secretary of Health is a lawyer, no offense but lawyers aren’t healthy for anyone.”

  “Alright, I’m sorry I called you insane, Rose. You have unlimited power over fictional worlds, I don’t understand why you don’t do something about him?”

  “I told you, Laura, I didn’t author Earth, so I can’t in good conscience make wholesale changes to the world. Of course, if that little tyrant ever attacks Emain Ablach, he’s done. He wants to be a Christian innkeeper so bad, I’ll make him apprentice to the innkeeper that sent Mary and Joseph to the stable. He can muck out the outhouses. But as long as he just bothers the people of Earth my hands are tied.”

  “You could send him back in time?”

  “Yes, it’s easy to manipulate time in a novel; you don’t even need to be a bibliomancer, just a novelist who doesn’t care for a linear storyline. But now that I think about it, that might have very negative consequences. Two thousand years of Trump breeding with Trumps you might have an even worse version if that is even possible. I’ll send him into the future instead, let Kirk deal with him out of his ninety eight fictional appearances not counting novels and comic books he has successfully dealt with seventeen mad men, without a single loss. Maybe Kirk would send him to the Klingons or the Vulcans; they are used to dealing with unhinged humans.”

  “Rose, if you wanted to go karmic on his ass, just strip him of his wealth, take away his ability to speak English, replace that with French, and send him to Haiti or Somalia, or go all Jim Carrey on him and curse him so that whenever he speaks, what comes out is the truth as he sees it. Do it just as he takes the stage at one of his rallies, so he has to tell his supporters what he really thinks of them.”

  “There you go, Laura, now you are getting in the spirit of it. Feels good getting that all out. Plus you didn’t do it on twitter, making a bad situation even worse.”

  “I have an even better idea, take Trump and Musk, take away all of their money, make them each two hundred thousand dollars in debt and deport them to South Africia and give them negative credit scores. Then have the NYC mayor declare a state of emergency and turn Trump Tower into a homeless shelter and turn Mar-a-Lago into a mosquito sanctuary. Oh, that felt so good, Rose.”

  “Now you’re glad I woke you up, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. I really am.”

  “Good, I’ll even give you a little something, for interrupting your sleep, what’s your next reread going to be?”

  “Well, I’m almost done with Good Omens, so I was thinking of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.”

  “Great book and author, I love him. Here I had Doug give me an entire set of Douglas Adams first editions signed by the author. It doesn’t change the text, but somehow it just enhances the reading experience knowing that Adams handled the book himself.”

  “Rose, thank you, I’ll treasure it. But it says to Laura from Douglas Adams, how is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know, Doug is really ‘Zenodotus of Ephesus,’ the first librarian of Alexandria, so Doug may be one of the last magical beings from Earth. Before all of Earth's magic drained away, he was also in charge of scripts and sound effects for our amateur theater group. But I’m starting to get sleepy, Laura. Do you want to do another mystery?”

  “Yes, as long as no one gets killed.”

  “Agreed, I’ll never knowingly kill another character. I mean I didn’t even kill Lachlan on the page, but it still haunts me. I’m thinking of doing a comedy horror story just so I can bring him back as an homage to Topper. He was a real playboy, I didn’t know that at the time, but I discovered it as the story progressed. But what do you think about a playboy ghost, who keeps trying to get with living women? But every time he touches them, they get a chill, not the good kind, a cold-to-the-bones chill. But I have to get back to bed. Your next mystery starts tomorrow Laura, you better get some rest.”

  “Why, you little minx, you are the one who woke me up.”