Page 58 of Ghostridden
“No! I’m totally a Jake Fields fan. But none of those things happened inBorderline.”
“There.Was. No.Borderline,” Avi shouted, and the edges of a good half of the papers started to flutter. “The last completed book wasAll In, but I hadn’t turned it in to my agent yet because I wanted Oren to read it first, even before Patrice, and he hadn’t had a chance because of the Toronto project and moving and he probablylostthe manuscript while he was packing anyway because he never said a single thing about it in any of our calls. The only thing that wasborderlinewas the stupid WIP that refused to cooperate. I actually changed the working title toBorderline Garbage, because that’s what it was.”
My ears rang as though someone had conkedmewith the Lang, becauseholy shit, wasthatwas this was about? I lifted a finger. “One moment, okay? Just, um, hold that thought.”
I scrambled to my feet and crossed to the desk. The top few pages of Patrice’s neat pile of the deconstructedBorderlinewere askew from Avi’s latest paper maelstrom, but it was mostly intact. I grabbed the stack and plopped back down, facing Avi.
“Take a look at this.”
He reared back, revulsion flickering across his face. “What is that?”
“This is the only thing you’ve truly destroyed since I arrived.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. I’ve never destroyed a book before in my life. I don’t remember doing itnow.”
“Maybe it was instinct.” I lifted the title page and showed it to him. “Borderline. By Jake Fields.”
“No.” He tried to snatch it from me, and while he didn’t manage to grasp it, it did flutter in my hand. “No no no no no.”
Oren’s papers started to make a break for it again. “Avi, I know you’re not happy about this, but do you think you could maybetargetthe paper levitation a bit?”
“What?” He tried to grab the page again.
I set the whole stack on the floor, oriented toward him. “If you can flip over one at a time, you can read the book even if you can’t hold it in your hands.”
He pressed his lips together, throat working, but he nodded and focused on the pages in front of him. At first, he was only able to scatter them like they’d been hit by a wind gust, but after a few minutes of strain that brought out ghostly perspiration on his forehead, he gained enough control to be able to manipulate one page at a time.
As soon as he read the opening paragraph of the first chapter, his breath hitched. “This is…” Another few pages fluttered away. Then a few more. Then he lifted his chin and met my eyes. “These are the chapters I was working on before I— Word for word, Maz. Word for fuckingword.”
“You only got to about chapter four, right?”
“Halfway through five, actually.”
“Check out six.” Or maybe not. Six opened with the news of Corchran’s death. “Ten. Check out chapter ten.”
He nodded and bent over the book again, his forehead knotted as he concentrated on paper domination.
“So, Avi.”
“Hmmm?”
“Who knew you were Jake Fields?”
“A lot of people,” he said distractedly, as he flipped another page. “I mean, it wasn’t universal, but everyone in Ghost. My agent. My publisher. My writing group. The— Oh my god. This is worse than that drivel you were reading the other day.” He jabbed a finger at the book, skewering it with enough phantasmagorical force that the edges jumped. “Idid notwrite this.”
“Well, you did write the first four and a half chapters, which is all readers would have seen in any online retailer sample. That’s one of the reasons your fans were so angry, because it started out like a Jake Fields book—like a Harcourt book—and then practically did a U-turn. One of the great things about Harcourt was the community he built over the course of the series, and in one book—hell, in onechapter, and always off-page—all of them get axed one way or another because he decides they were holding him back and blocking him from seeing what was truly important. After that, stuff justhappensto him. He has zero agency while he goes on this random journey of self-discovery.”
Avi closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please tell me there wasn’t a dream sequence.”
“There was a dream sequence.” I scratched the back of my head. “Actually, there were eleven.”
“Eleven?”
I shrugged apologetically. “What can I say? Harcourt got super into meditation and directed dreaming.”
“My editorhateddream sequences. She’d never have let this fly. How did my publisher evengetthis?”
“I don’t think they did.” I rooted around until I found the copyright page. “See? This wasn’t published by the same house that handled the other Harcourt books.”
