for a moment, and then turned around. “What do you think of this?”
Sid took it, reading the cover. “Do you know this book?”
“I just thought it looked old,” she said, smiling.
Sid read the title aloud. “The Skein: A Study of Narrative Form, by David Cracknell.” The book seemed to wheeze and crack as he opened it and he began gingerly flipping pages.
The short story, unlike the novel, allows no freedom to lose the rhythm that is key to every moment. Rhythm finds its way into the reader’s mind, and the author fails if he does not maintain it.
Sid looked up. “It’s a theory book.”
“Está bien,” said Vienna. “We tried.”
“No, no,” Sid said, smiling. He seemed relieved. “No, this is the one for me.”
“Way to go,” said Alex to Vienna, and she curtsied slightly, jokingly. Paul and Minhi were reading through their own Master Plots books, and Alex began to search the shelves, looking for something that might call to him the same way. But his heart wasn’t in it. In truth he had no intention of giving the story competition more than a cursory effort. There was too much going on in the off-hours. There was Ultravox, after all.
He turned, opening his mouth to ask Vienna if she would be entering the contest, and discovered she was no longer standing there.
Alex looked across the room and saw Vienna in front of the bay window, looking out into the street. Alex grabbed another copy of Master Plots off the shelf and walked over.
“So what about you?” he asked.
She didn’t respond, and Alex followed her eyes through the window, moving closer to look down to the cobblestone streets below.
Someone was standing across the street, stock-still and staring up at the window.
Her again. Elle wore black pants and boots and a pair of dark glasses, and had a white leather coat pulled close and tied with a belt.
Alex darted his eyes to Vienna, who had not diverted her gaze. “Do you know that girl?” he said softly.
Vienna spoke low after a second and he saw her scarf dance. “No.”
Elle pursed her lips in a smile. She had spotted him.
“Tell the others I had to run,” Alex said. He launched himself down the stairs, past the café, and onto the first floor. He slammed past shoppers in line at the checkout counter and hurtled outside, aware of the sound of the bells jingling on the door.
All up and down the street, people moved slowly, hands thrust in their pockets against the October chill. Elle was no longer there.
Alex looked down the block and saw the white coat disappearing around a corner. He ran for it.
Elle could be insanely fast. If Alex had seen her disappearing around a corner, there was a good chance it was because she was toying with him. So be it.
Alex turned onto an avenue called Matthias, which was lined with dark wood, bars, and restaurants. People were gathering, meeting one another for early dinner. As the street sloped down he saw it terminate at the docks of the marina, the gray water of the lake yawning in the distance.
There she was, running faster now, headed for the docks.
By the time Alex reached the docks, he had lost her. He nodded at a yacht’s captain as he stepped out onto one of the narrow jetties, moving past a myriad of small craft, the sound of wind and the clanking of boats and lines filling the air.
What was she doing here? Alex ran through all that he knew about her from when he had faced her before, in the hidden school called the Scholomance. Was she watching for him? She had been staring at Vienna, though. Or she had been staring up and Vienna had spotted her. Spotted was an obvious and inexact word in this case—Elle had been standing out like a sore and bone white thumb; she had wanted to be seen.
Alex stepped along the boards, feeling the chill against his sport coat. He reached the end of the pier and turned left, looking around him, moving along a walk that led to other piers of the marina. A stone picnic table sat up ahead, a long, thick umbrella still piercing down through the center of it. The blue cloth of the umbrella fluttered, and he reached out to move it aside.
As he touched the umbrella, a white hand reached around and grabbed his wrist.
Alex saw his own reflection in Elle’s Italian sunglasses as she dragged him off his feet,