Afterworlds Read online

  Down on the street, deliverymen unloaded fish in styrofoam boxes from a rumbling truck as dawn edged into the sky. True to her word, Imogen never wrote while the sun was up, which had turned Darcy’s waking hours upside down. She was still amazed at the drama of sunrise, how quickly a hint of pink overhead jolted the streets of Chinatown into busyness.

  Imogen was making tea. This was ritual now, three weeks into their writing together, eating together, everything together. Darcy should have closed her laptop at this point, or finally written a post for her dusty and windblown Tumblr. But another ritual had established itself in these few minutes while Imogen was away in the kitchen.

  Darcy opened a search window and typed, Changed her name to Imogen Gray. This phrase was so simple and obvious, but she’d never tried it before.

  There were no exact matches, just a scattering of hits about Pyromancer, less than two months away from publication.

  “Crap,” Darcy whispered, and salved her disappointment by looking at the images the search had found. A few unfamiliar photos appeared from a reading in Boston last year, when Imogen’s hair had been longer.

  When the teakettle began to sing, Darcy closed the window and cleared her search history. She’d never promised not to search the internet for Imogen’s old name, but this was still a guilty business.

  It was just so strange, not knowing her first girlfriend’s name.

  Some days Darcy felt as though she didn’t know anything, not if she was a real writer, or a good Hindu, or even whether she was still a virgin. Annoyingly, Sagan had proven correct: the internet had more questions than answers. Was it a night together, fingers, a tongue, or something intangible? Or was “virgin” a word from a dead language whose categories no longer made sense, like some ancient philosopher, brought back to life, asking if electrons were earth, water, air, or fire?

  Darcy’s hypothesis was simpler than that: the real world worked differently than stories. In a novel you always knew the moment when something Happened, when someone Changed. But real life was full of gradual, piecemeal, continuous transformation. It was full of accidents and undefinables, and things that just happened on their own. The only certainty was “It’s complicated,” whether or not unicorns tolerated your touch.

  * * *

  It was hours later, in the early afternoon, that Darcy woke up.

  It was still a surprise sometimes, finding Imogen beside her, and she stared at her girlfriend, noticing new things. Two cowlicks in Imogen’s unkempt hair that reared up at each other, like crossed swords in a duel. The white marks left by her rings, growing gradually more pronounced as the summer tanned her hands. The freckles rising on Imogen’s shoulders now that it was hot enough for sleeveless T-shirts.

  Maybe it was certainty enough, knowing these things.

  Darcy reached for her phone and checked her email.

  “Hey, Gen,” she said a moment later, nudging and prodding. “Kiralee wants to have dinner with us. Tonight!”

  The reply was gummy with sleep. “Had to happen.”

  “What do you . . . ,” Darcy began, then realized: “She’s read my book.”

  Imogen rolled over, stretching her mousing wrist as she did every morning.

  “Did she tell you anything?” Darcy asked. “Does she like it?”

  All she got in answer was a shrug and a yawn, even as another dozen questions cascaded into her mind. How brutal were Kiralee’s critiques? Why had Afterworlds taken her almost a whole month to read? Did she know that Darcy was already rewriting, that whole chapters had been replaced? Was it a good sign that they’d been invited to dinner?

  But Darcy knew that these questions were all desperate sounding, so she boiled them down to the most important.

  “Do you think she’ll start with praise?”

  Imogen groaned and rolled over, pulling Darcy’s pillow over her head.

  * * *

  Kiralee Taylor had summoned them all the way out to Brooklyn, to a restaurant called Artisanal Toast. The walls were covered with paintings of toast, photographs of toast, and a giant mosaic of Jesus made from actual toast. The matchbooks that Imogen had scooped up at the entrance had pictures of toast on them.

  After a few minutes of searching the menu, Darcy frowned. “Wait. They don’t actually serve toast here?”

  “Dude,” Imogen said. “This is the dinner menu, not breakfast.”

  Kiralee nodded. “They aren’t fanatics. Where do you think we are, Williamsburg?”

  Darcy shook her head, because that wasn’t what she’d been thinking. Mostly, she was nervous about what Kiralee thought of her book, and wondering whether she would be able to eat at all. A piece of toast sounded good about now.

  Waiters arrived and effected a swift makeover of the table—copper chargers were removed, silverware adjusted, napkins unfolded and placed on laps. It seemed all very crisp and efficient to Darcy, as intimidating as waiting for a critique to begin.

  But it was Imogen who Kiralee questioned first.

  “How are the Ailuromancer rewrites?”

  “At the spring-cleaning stage.” Imogen’s gaze drifted about the restaurant, unmoored and unhappy. “I’ve emptied all the closets out onto the floor. The rugs are hung and waiting to be beaten. In other words, a mess.”

  Kiralee patted her hand. “It has to get worse before it gets better. And what about that awful title?”

  “Paradox is back to wanting the -mancer suffix for all three books, but they hate everything except Cat-o-mancer. Which I hate.”

  “There’s felidomancy,” Darcy said. “Which also means cats.”

  “But isn’t much better, is it?” Kiralee said. “I’m sure you’ll think of something, dear. Just keep pondering and the title fairy will show up one day. Have you started book three?”

  Imogen shrugged. “No pages yet.”

  “Ideas? Notions? Inklings?”

  “Well, I had this one . . . phobomancy.”

  “Phobos as in fear?” Kiralee leaned back into her chair and took a long, silent look at the Jesus made of toast. Finally she smiled. “You can make some serious magic out of fear. And it’s easy to relate to. Everybody has a phobia or two.”

  Darcy nodded in agreement, a little surprised, a little confused.

  Imogen leaned forward now, her hands moving as she spoke. “The setup is pretty straightforward. The protag starts off with a bunch of crippling phobias—crowds, dolls, spiders, and small spaces. Then one day she gets trapped in a closet, and has to face her claustrophobia head-on. Getting through that gives her the key to defeat her other fears, one by one. And as she does, she gains her magic. At first she can only see other people’s phobias, like auras or something.”

  “But eventually she can control them.” Kiralee’s eyes were sparkling. “Could be a ripper.”

  “Really awesome,” Darcy said. “And so well thought out.”

  The last words came out sharper than she’d meant them to, and Imogen turned to her with a hint of apology in her eyes. “Yeah. I’ve been mulling it for a while.”

  Darcy looked down at the table, surprised at the sharp feeling in her stomach. First she’d spent all afternoon nervous about dinner, and now this. “It’s a great idea, Gen.”

  And it was. But in their three weeks of writing together, Darcy had run every Afterworlds decision, every worry, every inspiration past Imogen, who in return had shared the details of her own rewrites. But Darcy hadn’t heard a single word about phobomancy.

  Kiralee Taylor’s opinion was more important than her own, of course, because Kiralee had written a half-dozen nearly perfect novels. But why had Imogen kept this idea a secret until now?

  Darcy felt her hand being squeezed beneath the table.

  “Some things need to stay inside for a while,” Imogen said softly. “I don’t even realize I haven’t told anyone about them, until they pop out.”

  “Sure.” Darcy willed the sting of her jealousy to fade. Kiralee had to be thinking she was pathetic. “You
should talk to my little sister. Nisha’s got some great phobias.”

  “Like what?” Kiralee asked brightly.

  “She’s afraid of ice skates,” Darcy said. “Raisins in cookies, and car batteries. She says it’s unnatural for batteries to be square instead of round.”

  “Whoa,” Imogen said, pulling out her phone to tap some notes.

  “This could be the beginning of a whole new trilogy,” Kiralee said. “With phobias instead of mancies.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” Imogen was still typing, her metal rings flashing.

  “Nisha’s also scared of dogs in sweaters,” Darcy said. “And socks. Not dogs in socks, all socks.” She smiled, happy to be contributing to this perfect idea. Even in her rush of jealousy, there had been something exciting, almost sensual, about having heard it direct from Imogen’s lips.

  At least the other two were pretending her hissy fit hadn’t happened.

  “You could combine both trilogies with a book called Mancyphobia,” Kiralee said.

  “I know you’re just trying to be annoying, but that actually doesn’t suck.” Imogen put down her phone and raised her water glass. “To Phobomancer!”

  Darcy followed suit, but Kiralee shook her head. “Toasting with water is bad luck, darlings. Wait for the wine.”

  As they obediently lowered their glasses, Imogen mumbled, “Talk about phobias.”

  “Superstitions are an entirely different trilogy, my dear.” Kiralee opened her menu. “Now, let’s eat family-style. I’ll order, shall I?”

  * * *

  Just after the waiters had cleared the appetizers (barramundi risotto cakes with pickled red onions), Kiralee began out of the blue.

  “I was intrigued by Anna.”

  It took Darcy a moment to realize that the long-awaited critique of Afterworlds had arrived, and her voice broke a little as she asked, “Lizzie’s mom?”

  Kiralee nodded. “I love how she hadn’t told Lizzie about her murdered childhood friend. That she had a skeleton in the closet, literally.”

  “Not literally,” Imogen groaned. “Mindy’s not a skeleton, she’s a ghost.”

  “She was literally in the closet, and surely ghosts have skeletons. Otherwise they’d be wobbly.” Kiralee turned back to Darcy. “And Mindy is very sturdy indeed. I like that Lizzie doesn’t simply realize that the world has ghosts, she finds out that she has ghosts. Or rather, that her mother does, which is more interesting. Well done.”

  “Thanks,” Darcy said, relieved that Kiralee had begun with praise. “Actually, that’s where I got the whole idea.”

  “How so?”

  “From my mom. When she was little, her best friend was murdered. But she never told me about it.” Darcy thought back to the fevered musings of last October, which seemed so long ago now. “I found out by accident, randomly googling my mom’s family name. The case was a big deal in Gujarat.”

  Kiralee swirled her wine, watching it carefully. “And did your mother explain why she never told you about her friend?”

  “I never brought it up with her. It was too weird. But I kept wondering about Rajani—that was the friend’s name. Did my mother remember her? Because if she was haunting Mom, maybe she was also haunting me and Nisha. That started me wondering what a world with ghosts would be like, and the rest of Afterworlds kind of fell into place.”

  Darcy paused, realizing that she’d never said all this aloud before. She’d always been afraid to disturb the seed that had started everything.

  She glanced at Imogen. “Sorry I never told you about this. I never told anyone but Nisha.”

  Imogen smiled. “Like I said, some ideas need to stay inside.”

  “What did your mother think after she read Afterworlds?” Kiralee asked.

  “My parents haven’t read it yet.” Darcy stared at her hands, which were neatly folded on the table, like a little girl’s. “I’m making them wait till it’s published for real, with a cover and everything.”

  “Perhaps that’s for the best,” Kiralee said. “Until you’re finished with that world, maybe you need to stay haunted.”

  Darcy looked up at her. “Haunted?”

  “The fact that your mother’s friend was a secret is what kept her ghost alive. When you talk about it with your mother, you’ll put something to rest between you. So don’t have that talk yet—stay haunted until you’re done writing about Mindy.”

  Kiralee said this with a seriousness that sent a cool trickle through Darcy.

  Which was strange. Even as a little kid, Darcy had never believed in ghosts or monsters. Her father, ever the engineer, had always been very clear about the difference between reality and make-believe. What Darcy liked about ghosts and vampires and werewolves were their traditions and rules: cold spots and holy water and silver bullets. The actual possibility of them was just silly.

  “I don’t think of Rajani that way. I’m not even superstitious. I toast with water all the time!”

  Kiralee smiled. “I’m not talking about superstition. I’m talking about characters. How they die a little when you reach the last page. Try to keep Mindy out of your mother’s sight until you finish writing about her. You sold two books, I recall?”

  Darcy nodded, though she hadn’t started Untitled Patel, and had no idea when it would be finished. The contract said she had another year to turn in the first draft, which seemed both too much time and too little. The contract didn’t call for a third book, but so many fantasy series were like ghosts, rattling their chains forever, never fading.

  “I can’t stop my mom from reading Afterworlds once it’s published. I mean, all her friends will be reading it.”

  “My dad still hasn’t read Pyromancer,” Imogen said. “Novels aren’t his thing.”

  Darcy nodded. Her own father preferred old aircraft manuals, but novels were definitely Annika Patel’s thing. She devoured prizewinning literary works, rubbishy bestsellers, the occasional YA series that Nisha and Darcy had raved about, on top of rereading the complete works of Jane Austen every other year. Extracting a promise from her to avoid Afterworlds until it was published had been almost as tricky as coming to New York.

  “It’ll be weird when she reads it,” Darcy said. “But even weirder if she doesn’t.”

  “That’s publication in a nutshell,” Kiralee said. “Both terrifying and necessary. As long as Rajani stays with you.”

  The chill came again, hearing Kiralee say the murdered girl’s name. Darcy had never uttered it aloud before tonight. Rajani had always been more a concept than a person, but now a presence hung in the air around the table, like someone missing from an empty chair.

  A moment later, though, three waiters swooped in with main courses in hand, breaking the spell and leaving only a few wisps behind.

  Kiralee went on to dissect the book’s opening chapters, pointing out the same problems that Nan Eliot had. With Imogen’s help, Darcy explained the changes she was making, and Kiralee seemed appeased.

  But then she said, “How old is your Agent Reyes? FBI agents have to be twenty-three, it turns out.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that,” Darcy said.

  “Is your Google broken?” Kiralee tutted. “There’s a checklist for hiring on their site. You might also want to differentiate a bit more between the old man in the patched jacket and the bad man. Because the bad man is rather old, and the old man is definitely bad.”

  “But one’s a normal human serial killer,” Darcy said. “And the other has psychopomp powers. How would anyone get confused?”

  “Because serial killers are the death gods of the modern world,” Kiralee said. “That’s why they always have superpowers. Perhaps you should give one of your bad old men a name.”

  “I have a name for the man in the patched coat,” Darcy said. “But it’s kind of obvious, so I didn’t use it.”

  Kiralee raised her glass. “No one ever starved from being too obvious.”

  Imogen raised her own glass at this, and Darcy toasted with them.
Her anxiety was gradually fading into contentment mixed with a red wine buzz. Maybe Kiralee wasn’t as scary as she liked to pretend.

  So Darcy broached the issue she’d been dreading most: “I’ve been working on the whole religion thing, trying to make Yamaraj more serious. Less Disney.”

  Kiralee looked puzzled.

  “At Drinks,” Darcy said. “You said I was using someone’s god for purposes of YA hotness.”

  “Ah. I think the key word there is ‘drinks.’ Sorry for descending on you like that. It sometimes happens when I’ve had a few.” Kiralee gave her a sheepish smile. “You don’t need some whitefella’s permission to adapt your own culture.”

  “But what if it’s not mine?” Darcy stared at her plate. “I eat meat. I don’t pray. It feels weird, erasing a god and using him as a mortal.”

  “Maybe it is.” Kiralee considered this a moment, pressing two fingertips against her forehead, for a moment like her old author photo. “But speaking as an atheist, raised Catholic, who finds her only succor in the stories of the Wemba-Wemba people, how the hell should I know?”

  Darcy sighed. “So I have to figure this out for myself.”

  “You write as respectfully as you can, and then you publish. You uncover your mistakes by lobbing your books into the world.”

  “But people might yell at me!”

  “Yes, it’s a bit like learning French. When you open your mouth, you risk sounding like an idiot. But if you don’t take that chance, you’ll never speak at all.”

  “Yeah,” Imogen said. “But bad grammar doesn’t offend anyone’s religion.”

  “Have you met the French?” Kiralee asked.

  Darcy leaned back in her seat, letting them argue. She’d been silly, of course, coming to Kiralee for absolution. She would find her answers in the words she wrote, in the stories she told, not by asking for permission.

  “What else did Nan suggest?” Kiralee asked as they began to eat again. “Nothing catastrophic, I trust.”

  Darcy shared a long look with Imogen, and neither spoke.

  “Oh dear. What is it?”

  When Darcy still didn’t answer, Imogen spoke up. “Nan wants to change the ending. Less tragic. More marketable.”