This made sense. I’d never really thought about it before, but it explained why the Edward Rochester and indeed all the borrowed characters in my series were of varying degrees of depth. Some weren’t that bad, but others, like Jane Eyre herself, were thin enough to be slipped under the door and could sleep rolled up and slipped into a drainpipe.
“How’s all that cloak-and-dagger stuff going?” asked Flat Thursday.
It seemed she thought I was the real one, and I wasn’t going to deny it.
“It’s going so-so,” I said. “How much did I tell you?”
She laughed. “You never tell us anything. Landen sent another message, by the way.”
“That’s good,” I replied, attempting to hide my enthusiasm. “Lead on.”
Thursday turned, and as she did so, she almost vanished as I saw her edge on. I wondered whether perhaps Agent Square might not be a Flatlander as he claimed, but a hyperfiction cube or something.
“We all think Landen’s totally Mr. Dreamcake,” said Flat Thursday as we walked past a reinterpretation of Middle Earth that was every bit as good as the real one, only flatter, “but he won’t speak to anyone except the real one.”
We walked down Thursday Street, and everything started to look vaguely familiar. The characters and settings were sort of similar, but the situations were not. The combinations were unusual, too, and although I had not personally supposed that Thursday might battle the Daleks with Dr. Who in a literary landscape, in here it was very much business as usual.
“He’s in there,” said Thursday, and she ushered me into a large, square room with a stripped pine floor, a thin skirting board and empty walls painted in magnolia. In the middle of the room was Landen, and he smiled as I walked in. But it wasn’t actually him; it was just a feeling of him.
“Hello, Landen.”
“Hello, Thursday. I needed to speak to you.”
“What about?”
“I’m sorry,” he said apologetically, “my answers are limited.”
I stared at him for a moment. Flat Thursday had said this was another message, so he must be communicating on a one-way basis by writing a short story—possibly with himself and his wife in conversation.
“Which Thursday do you want to talk to?” I asked.
“The written Thursday.”
So far, so good.
“Do you now believe I’m from the BookWorld?”
“You vanished as I was about to kiss you. Thursday never did that. I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“Do you know what the real Thursday was doing with Sir Charles Lyell?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “my answers are limited.”
“Do you know who was trying to kill Thursday?”
“The Men in Plaid have tried to murder her on numerous occasions. At the last count, she had killed six of them. She doesn’t know who orders them to do it, or why.”
This was good news. Between Thursday and Sprockett and me, we’d taken out fourteen Plaids.
“Where is she now? Do you know?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “my answers are limited.”
&n
bsp; “Why did she ask the red-headed man to give me her badge?”
“She didn’t—I did. As soon as she was out of touch for over five days, I contacted Kiki.”