Chapter 33

After yet another difficult night with Specter-Reggie, Lucky needed a power nap. Two more weeks had passed, and while the days sometimes blurred together, the nights absolutely didn’t. She was sound asleep when her alarm blasted her back into consciousness.

“Shut up,” she muttered, silencing it. She’d set it to go off every morning at twenty minutes before sunrise—the average range of time Hennessee House consistently flatlined.

Her eyelids felt like sandpaper scraping against her eyeballs. The rest of her body wasn’t faring any better. Skin too tight, mouth dry, and if she stretched too hard, she knew a charley horse would take her down screaming.

Emotionally drained and feeling like she’d been visited in the night by a desiccation demon, the only solution was to take a bath. Maverick called right as she entered the water, sliding down until the bubbles reached her shoulders.

“Good morning.” Early-morning Maverick had a deeper voice that felt as rich as chocolate mousse.

“I’m alive.”

“Good to know.”

Lucky began opening the previous day’s flower. Every day at noon, a slender white box arrived in the mail from Maverick. Keeping her mind blank, she brought them up to her room for safekeeping, not thinking about or opening them until their sunrise call.

“Gardenia, oh, it smells wonderful. But I don’t think it quite makes it to my potential favorites list.”

“I think you’ll like today’s flower. I have a good feeling about it.”

She bit her lip at the familiar sound of the smile in his voice, briefly imagining what he looked like. “Can I have a hint?”

“Nope. How did you sleep?”

“Not the best. I’m trying to relax by taking a bath.”

“You’re in the bathtub?” He paused. “Right now?”

“They usually make me feel better.”

Maverick sighed. “Why did you have to say that? You’re trying to ruin me, aren’t you?”

“Never intentionally, but if it happens…” She trailed off with a shrug. “Is it the bath itself or because I’m naked?”

“Both.”

She faux-gasped. “I knew it.”

“It’s yet another first-day memory that’s been haunting me. You painted such a vivid picture of your bath ritual I instantly imagined it—bubbles, lavender, music, steam, you.” He chuckled, low and dreamy. “I just know you set the temperature to molten lava.”

“It’s the only way to get a decent amount of steam. I could send you pictures. Of me. Right now.” She grinned her way through feeling bashful. “If you want. I trust you with them.”

Maverick groaned, voice straining as he asked, “How much longer?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sinking lower into the water. “I’m making progress, but no definitive answers yet.”

Rarely did they talk about Hennessee and Lucky’s mission during their only hour together. The fact that he brought it up meant he’d been thinking about it, and now they were losing precious seconds to dead air. She usually tried to be bright and bubbly, hiding how terribly she missed him. This was her choice. She caused their separation. She had to live with that burden.

And then he said, “When I dreamed about you last night, you said, ‘I see the threads in the fabric of you. They’re stronger when you thread them through my needle eye. We burn the dull ones like trash.’?”

“Are you asking for a translation? Because I have no idea what I meant by that.”

After Maverick explained his lucid dreaming process, Lucky began to suspect there might be more to it. But he’d already told her he was happy with what he’d learned about himself so far. His control over it made him feel safe. She had no right to disrupt that.

“You kissed me while you said it then yelled at me to wake up.” He sighed. “Not even Hennessee can hide from you. I’ll be here when you get out.”

“It’s not jail.” She laughed. Although, she had begun tracking her days with tick marks in her journal to keep herself grounded and those did kind of resemble scratches on a cell wall. “So about the pictures.”

“Lucky—”

“I’m just saying we could swap.”

“You want me to send you nudes? Why?”

She couldn’t stop herself from giggling at how skeptical he sounded. When she explained how seeing little-Maverick-until-proven-otherwise wouldn’t do anything for her, he took the news as well as could be expected.

“Maybe not nudes, but you, shirtless, in a tight-fitting apron, baking or cooking something fancy. Or you, wearing that one blue sweater I like and holding a book. Ooh, with glasses—do you have glasses? You could pretend to be a librarian.” She sighed so hard she nearly swooned. “Librarian romances are in my top five.”

“Stop, I can’t take it.” He started laughing more than she’d heard in weeks. She’d missed that sound so much. “It’s too early.”

“Don’t laugh.” She pretended to whine.

“I thought you weren’t wholesome. That’s like the definition of wholesome.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault you’re so handsome and I want to see you dressed up in clothes for different professions. That’s what I want,” she said firmly. “I’ll make my pictures artistic, the suggestion of nudity, so it seems fair.”

“I’ll send you pictures of me. You don’t have to send me anything.”

“You don’t want my tasteful nudes?”

“I want a whole lot more than that,” he said, and started laughing again. “Have you ever tried roleplaying? I think you might like it.”

“Don’t think so,” she said. “I’ll have to look it up.”

“Nudes aside—”

“But—”

“No, we’re moving on,” he said. “I have a question for you.”

“Okay?”

“If I sent you something I’ve been working on, would you be interested in reading it?”

She gasped. “Is it your book?”

“Not the whole book, but yes. I finished the opening. I needed a distraction and ended up writing nonstop again. It’s really rough, really, really rough, but I feel ready to share it with you.”

He sounded so adorably nervous again, if she weren’t in the bathtub she would’ve started gleefully kicking her feet. She needed to be calm. Professional. Encouraging sans the syrupy sweetness. She decided to go with “I’d be honored to read it. Send it to me immediately.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I usually wait until I’m done and it feels perfect before sending it out for feedback. You’re honestly the only person I feel like I can trust at this stage. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Yes, you could have,” she insisted.

“I told you—you’re my muse. You inspired me to face the blank page and just…start.”

Lucky resisted the urge to grumble at him. “And how did I do that while locked away in my tower?”

“It was exactly that,” he said. “Your drive. Your dedication. I think I’d forgotten what it was like to be so absorbed by a goal, you’ll do anything for it. You being there gave me the motivation to write my novel. And now I have something to share with you, the way you shared your Hennessee House nights with me.”

“I’m…honestly not sure how I feel about that. Being alone here isn’t—” She stopped herself.

“Isn’t what?”

Isn’t what she wanted after all. She missed him. She missed the NQP team. She missed working with them and having a second. She didn’t want to make these discoveries alone. She wanted to share her progress, triumphs, and failures with him too.

But more than that, she wanted her own team. She wanted to mentor and work with other ESPers like herself, who had the same interests and goals.

“Never mind. Forget I said that.”

Post–neighborhood walk, there wasn’t much for Lucky to do once she made her self-tapes and organized her notes. Even though it would be helpful to gauge her process in real time, she couldn’t bring herself to play back her vlog raw footage, particularly the ones she filmed during difficult nights with Hennessee. She knew she looked Rough, with a capital R, but they would be good for the show. The audience (and Xander) would appreciate seeing how truly worn-out she got.

A busy body meant a busy mind, and she needed to keep Hennessee in the dark as much as possible. She made a schedule, slotting in activities like reading books, wasting time on the internet, doing her own box braids, watching movies, and trying to conquer one new recipe every day. Had she also tried staving off restlessness by talking to a cat? Yes, but things could be a lot worse.

Honestly, she was grateful for Gengar’s company. She played and took naps with him. Tried teaching him tricks. He’d become her constant companion.

During his front yard patrol time, she supervised from the porch. He’d probably been an outdoor kitty for his entire life, but she’d never had a pet before. Heat exhaustion was no joke. He might need her.

She settled into her usual spot—the pillowed bench with her feet up on the banister. To pass the time, she started an unremarkable book with an unremarkable title that she was strangely desperate to read. She focused on the story slowly unfolding, and not at all on the mysterious anonymous writer whose words managed to give her a severe case of chills in the dry summer heat. When the mail arrived at noon, she thoughtlessly set a slender white box aside using a similar technique.

A large box directly addressed to Lucky with no return address had also arrived.

“Gengar, I’m going inside.”

The cat ran after her, rubbing across her ankles as it passed the threshold. She brought the box into the kitchen, set it on the counter, and grabbed a pair of scissors.

“Do you think it’s from Xander?”

Gengar yowled as she sliced it open to find an assortment of baked goods—cookies, muffins, pastries, an entire loaf of banana bread. He stood on his hind legs, ready to jump in.

“No cookies for you,” she said, knowing full well he just wanted the box. “You could be allergic.”

Lucky searched around the sides, eventually finding a greeting card–size blue envelope. The handwriting on the front was on the larger side, but neat and evenly spaced. Inside there was a card and when she opened it, something fell out and onto the counter. She’d thought they were postcards—that’s why she looked. But they were photos.

A picture of Maverick in the blue sweater wearing glasses and holding a stack of books.

A picture of her, Maverick, and Rebel outside the gates of Penny Place.

“Shit.” Lucky clenched her jaw and squeezed her eyes shut, summoning her brick wall to slam into place.

Hennessee House busted through it like the damn Kool-Aid man. She lurched forward from the force of it, gripping the counter to help her stay upright. No longer daytime dormant, it had fully woken up for this, ravenously craving the thing it knew she’d been hiding. It had taken that image of him, the thought of his name, and barreled through her mind like a tornado.

A chair at the kitchen table scraped backward across the floor like nails on a chalkboard. The second one moved, then the third and the fourth until they were arranged exactly the same way as when she and Maverick had accidentally slept in the kitchen. Her memory on display because Hennessee had finally found where she’d hidden them.

Three weeks of control, straight down the drain. Opening the box had been a rookie mistake. She’d gone through incredible lengths to keep Maverick and Rebel off Hennessee’s radar and it’d all been for nothing.

Lucky took a deep, shuddering breath. Shoulders hunched, she bowed her head in failure and fear. There’d be no stopping it now. Specter-Maverick was going to break her heart.

Gengar yowled softly in front of her on the counter, headbutting her arm. He sat down, yowling again in her face.

“I’m fine,” she lied with a smile and scratched behind his ears the way he liked.

Lucky fixed the chairs, putting them back into place, and sat down with her baked goods box. She realized she hadn’t read the letter yet. Might as well.

Dear Lucky,

I made the macarons by myself!

We miss you! I asked Xander if you could come to movie day and he said maybe! You have to finish your work first so hurry up okay? We’re going on Saturday. Riley says hi. I told him all about you and he said he thinks you sound made-up. I showed him the pictures we took at Penny Place and he shut up about it. His mom says he has a crush on you now but I don’t believe her. Riley likes Cathy at school. Don’t tell him I told you, please. It’s a secret.

Love, your Shortcake

“Oh, Rebel.” Lucky searched for the macarons to eat them first. A little lopsided in shape, they came in a variety of creative colors as vibrant as Rebel, like robin egg blue, pastel green, and salmon pink.

“Good afternoon, Lucky.”

She squinted at Xander darkening her doorway for their weekly check-in. “You.”

Xander never looked anything less than immaculate. Dark colored, well-fitting suits seemed to be his preference, but not so stuffy that he didn’t own jeans and tennis shoes. He probably had his plain white T-shirts tailored, though.

“Would you like some baked goods?” She gestured to her box. “This is a test. You don’t strike me as the sugar type. I want to know if I’m right.”

“What is a sugar type?”

“Someone who ingests sugar and other bad-for-you foods for fun.”

Xander ignored her offering, sitting in the chair across the table. He might’ve sat next to her, but she had her feet up and had no intentions of being a hospitable host.

He asked, “Did you buy these?”

“Special delivery from Maverick and Rebel.”

Upstairs, a door slammed. Lucky sighed.

Xander gave her a questioning look. “I take it that means your embargo has been lifted?”

“Yep,” she said. “Lifted. Smashed. Destroyed. Whatever works.”

“Maverick continues to be furious with me. He believes I tempted you away from him.”

She snickered. “Did he say it like that?”

“I’m not comfortable repeating his exact words. Don’t worry—I didn’t fire him.” Xander stared at her for a beat and then added, “He needs someone to blame other than himself.”

She hadn’t been worried until he said that. “Blame himself? For what?”

Xander shrugged, a disgustingly casual gesture for Mr. Formal. “Your happiness is of the utmost importance to him. He would never stand in the way of you attaining it.”

“A non-answer answer? I must be rubbing off on you.”

“Perhaps.” He shrugged again. “How has the week been?”

Every fiber of Lucky’s being dreaded what was coming at sunset. A distraction might be nice.

A distraction might actually be the answer.

Lucky grinned at him, a new plan suddenly coming together with ease. “Interesting. I’m thinking it might be time for a little experiment.”