Book Six, Chapter 52: Daphne Part IV

Logan was making some good points. Too many good points.

Why had she been so careless? Why had she underestimated him?

They stood in the kitchen as the group discussed whether the wedding could go forward, and whether or not to call all of the NPCs into the banquet hall for safety’s sake.

Logan was arguing against the idea because he had a trope, apparently, that would strengthen a plan that he helped to vet.

“With the rain coming down the way it is,” he said, “I’m not sure how much longer the banquet hall is going to be above water. We can do the wedding quickly, but I wouldn’t rely on being able to stay on the first floor. Is there a large room in the tower? Maybe the penthouse?”

Now he was really getting on Daphne’s nerves, talking about bringing everyone to the penthouse, her honeymoon suite. The nerve on that guy.

But all of this was a minor inconvenience. He was just throwing out these ideas so that Bobby and Jules could shoot them down, because that was how his Cynic trope worked.

Confrontation. Antagonism. Contrarianism.

Cynics were trouble, perhaps even more so than Defiants or the other meta aspects.

Logan would be spending all of his time playing devil’s advocate, and worse, squeezing the players, forcing them to confront even the most remote possibilities.

Was it possible that he had a trope that might make it desirable for him to argue that Daphne herself was an enemy? Was it possible he had a trope that could make him an enemy and, in doing so, might open his eyes just enough to be dangerous?

Why had she been so foolish thirty minutes earlier?

This could have all been avoided.

She had just escaped the basement where Antoine was murdered and was headed to her room. She had been examining her blackmail note and had noticed it had a faint scent of cigarette smoke, the cheap stuff. Not only was she being blackmailed, but apparently, the culprits didn’t have a taste for the finer things.

She had almost run into him, Logan. She was so preoccupied as she made her way through the halls. They were Off-Screen, so it wasn’t that important, and she was able to get her blackmail note hidden in time for him not to see it.

Or at least she thought she had. No matter.

His mind was on other things.

“It seems like Riley figured out what he wanted to use the Insert Shot on,” he said.

“Oh,” she asked, “what did he use it on?”

Logan looked at her funny. “Well, I’m going to assume it’s on the fire axe. It would be kind of strange for him to have used it on the cigarettes in the corner.”

Cigarettes in the corner? she thought to herself.

Only then did she realize that Logan must have been able to see what Riley had used the Insert Shot on, on the red wallpaper. And if he could see it, then maybe she was supposed to be able to see it too, if she had in fact been a player.

“Of course,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

He nodded, but his piercing gaze never left her.

“No worries. They say smoking can kill,” Logan said. “But somehow I doubt the conflict in this story is going to be resolved by poisonous cigarettes.”

He was joking. He had a clever voice. A disarming voice. He disguised it sometimes, but not now.

He was smart, and more than that, he was distrustful.

Had he figured her out? He didn’t need to be able to see that she wasn’t a player to be able to see that she was up to something. She had plenty of experience with players who were more than willing to see her for who she was, even if they didn’t know what she was.

And she knew, just from talking to him for a few minutes, that he was going to be a problem.

“I like Jules a lot, but she’s acting odd, isn’t she?” he said. “Strangely antagonistic. Am I making that up?”

He was walking her to her room. Neither of them had anywhere to be for the moment, though Daphne was hoping to find Riley soon.

“No,” Daphne said, trying to hide the quiver in her voice as she played with her handbag against her will. “She has been very testy so far.”

He nodded.

“Makes you wonder if even a companion NPC can somehow go bad. I mean, she’s been great so far, but you realize she’s a killer, some type of elite soldier. Maybe even a super soldier. When we were in the jungle and those things were wailing in the distance, I swear she was smiling.”

“I’m sure she was just playing a character,” Daphne said.

“Aren’t we all?” he said. “But the thing is that murder mysteries in Carousel usually have a rotating cast of killers, right? There can be multiple different suspects. Maybe every character we meet could be a killer. And since Jules is an NPC herself, what if her number came up? She’s got keys to the whole building.”

He had a dangerous mind.

“Did she do anything that makes you suspicious?” Daphne asked.

“Not yet,” Logan said. “But it never hurts to be suspicious, wouldn’t you say?”

Sometimes it does, Daphne thought.

“Well, I think we need a bit more evidence,” she said. “Anyway, this one is me.”

She pointed to her door. “I hope you stay safe out there.”

“I’ll try my best,” Logan said, still looking at her with that clever gaze.

Was he flirting? Or was he on to her?

Her Moxie hadn’t changed. If he knew her secret in-character, her Moxie would start to drain away as her Mettle and Grit improved.

That was the problem with these meta players: they’re so good at getting information that their characters don’t even have. They could have her dead to rights, and she would have no way of knowing. Her tropes weren’t infallible. Even Riley, who should have been doped up on love, was resisting her.

Logan was on the cusp of becoming trouble.

He had to go.

But that was going to be quite the challenge. Carousel had handcuffed her, forcing her to target characters who knew her secrets or who could get in the way of her secrets before targeting the players.

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She had the blackmailers to deal with. If she didn’t attend to them soon, they could become a bigger problem.

Even if Logan had sussed her out, his character had not.

She was going to have to change that. Carousel might have intended for her to assist the players against the escalating threat of the blackmailers before the finale, but that didn’t mean she had no wiggle room. She hoped Carousel wouldn’t mind.

She had so many things to do. Kill the blackmailers, keep the players handled, hide her plans and true identity… Wedding planning was so stressful.

She waved goodbye as she went into the room and quickly started cutting up her blackmail note. Carousel wanted footage of her doing it, but not much.

She cut angry strokes, turning the entire page into thin little strips of paper by folding it up before cutting it. She was frustrated. Dealing with players was hard enough, but dealing with blackmailers who had suddenly decided they were tough killers? That was going to be a problem. They were only supposed to get violent later. Something was amiss.

As she cut, she thought about the locations of fire axes around the building. She only knew of a handful. That meant there was going to be a lot of walking. She would have to find one that was near some cigarettes. She didn’t dare ask Logan where this Insert Shot had been used. That would give the game away.

She had a lot of work to do.

But Logan might have been useful in other ways. After all, poisoned cigarettes wasn’t the worst idea, if only she had more poison.

On-Screen

“It’s just over this way, a total disaster,” she said, leading the receptionist blackmailer back toward the Chapel. Luckily, Riley and everyone else were still in the banquet hall now that the wedding ceremony had ended.

“I’m sure if there’s a problem, we could get maintenance to handle it,” the young woman was saying. “What exactly is wrong?”

“We don’t need to bother housekeeping,” Daphne said. “You are perfectly capable of handling this situation.”

Daphne led her back toward the Chapel, but not the front entrance. There was a side corridor that led to the office belonging to the resident Officiant, in this case, Logan.

“See, the banners are all wrong,” she said once she had lured the receptionist into the dark hallway.

“I don’t see any banners,” the young woman said, looking along the hallway.

“You don’t see them?” Daphne asked, getting right next to her and pointing up.