One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

22. Jenny

Jenny opened the back door and checked to make sure the coast was clear.

“Why do you do that?” I asked. “Check that no one’s coming? Only I can see you, right?”

Jenny looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “When you’re illusory like me,” she said, with great clarity, “it pays to keep an eye out for imaginary foes.”

She checked again and beckoned me out. I followed her down to the end of the garden and opened the door that led into the garage behind. I knew that my car would be kept here, but Thursday’s figment had no time to waste and hurriedly led me down the rear access road until we came back out onto the same street. Landen had been correct. Parked outside the house was a large Toad News Network van, complete with transmitter dish ready for bouncing a live feed to a handy airship.

“Landen will be surprised to find me not there.”

“Nothing could surprise Landen. This way.”

“Miss Next?” asked a man who had just gotten out of a car opposite. “May I have a word?”

I looked around, but Jenny seemed to have vanished. “I suppose so.”

“I just heard about your return. I’m a huge fan of your work. Adrian Vole of the Wapcaplit and Vole Advertising Agency. We understand you travel in Fiction, and we were wondering if you wanted to do a bit of product placement around the written world.”

“I hardly think that’s appropriate, do you?” I said, adding quickly, “Even if there is a BookWorld, which is by no means proven.”

“Thirty grand to plug the Toast Marketing Board in the Thursday Next series. You can introduce it how you want.”

“I’ve never even heard of the Toast Marketing Board.”

“You wouldn’t. It’s new. What do you say?”

“What do you think I’m going to say?”

“Yes,” said Vole unhappily, “we thought you’d tell us to stick it in our ear. Here’s a check. If you cash it, we know you’re on board.”

I took the check and moved on. Oddly enough, as soon as Vole turned away, Jenny was back.

“What’s going on?” asked Square, who had suddenly reappeared. “It’s not like the BookWorld, where I can be five or six places at once.”

“Landen thinks I might actually be Thursday,” I said, “and if I can see Jenny, then he might be right.”

“Who’s Jenny? I don’t see anyone.”

“She’s one of the wraiths I’ve been seeing. And if I am Thursday, then I’m simply imagining you.”

“Who are you talking to?” asked the figment Jenny, which seemed a bit impertinent given her less-than-definite existence.

“Agent Square,” I said, “in Jurisfiction deep cover.”

“Who are you talking to?” asked Square.

I sighed. This was getting more and more complex, but in a way I was heartened that they couldn’t see or hear each other. If they were both in my head, they should be able to converse—unless I was more insane than I thought possible.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I said as we crossed another road, walked through the graveyard of the Blessed Lady of the Lobster, took a right down the hill and then an immediate left, where we found a small apartment building. Jenny led us into the lobby, and we paused while she consulted the names on the mailboxes.

“Fifth floor.”

We took the stairs, as neither I nor Square wanted to get into the elevator, and arrived at the upstairs corridor, from which four apartments could be accessed. As I walked along the corridor, one of the doors opened and a nurse walked out, glanced at me and moved off towards the elevators. As the door closed on the apartment, I could see that other medics were in attendance, clustered around a bed.

“You brought me here to see a guy dying?”

“Sort of,” replied Jenny, “but not him in there—him out here.”

She pointed. At the far end of the corridor were five more of the wraithlike figures I had seen earlier. They all stood around looking solemn, trying to comfort one of their number, who flickered in and out like a badly tuned TV set. They all spoke in a low growl that I couldn’t really understand, and as I walked closer, I noticed that they were dressed rather oddly.

“You brought me here to see some spooks?”

“They’re not spooks,” said Jenny. “They’re like me and you, Thursday—made up. Figments, inventions. Created in the white-hot heat of a child’s imagination, they linger on even when redundancy renders them invisible to their creators. Sometimes people catch a glimpse of them, but for the most part they’re invisible. You can see them because you’re fictional. So can I. You, them, me—we’re all one and the same. A living fiction that needs no book.”

I looked closer at the figures. They were partially dressed as clowns, had bold, large features and spoke in a simple dialect of basic verbs and a limited number of nouns.

“They’re . . . imaginary childhood friends, aren’t they?”

Jenny smiled. “Bravo, Thursday—a chip off the old block. They follow their creators about, an echo of a vibrant childhood imagination.”

She indicated the one who was flickering.

“Pookles here is about to leave—they can have no independent existence without their creator.”

As we watched, the flickering imaginary friend started shaking hands with the others, hugging them and thanking them, and then, with a final bright burst, it vanished. Almost immediately we heard a cry of grief from the bedroom behind us, and one by one the ethereal figures took their leave, walking through us and along the corridor, leaning on one another for support and shaking their heads sadly.

“So where does Thursday come into all this?”

“This is how I know she’s still alive. I’m still here. Unlike you, who are the figment of a ghostwriter and are now carved into a textual matrix, a part of Thursday is all I am. If she were dead, I wouldn’t be around to be thought of. I’m bound to her, like a dog on a leash.”

“Right,” I said, “I get that. But it doesn’t tell us where she is. Any ideas? The Dark Reading Matter, for instance?”

“That was one of her interests, certainly, but the whole Racy Novel stuff had taken over her life. The last time we spoke, she said something about Lyell being boring.”

“Lyell? Boring?”

“Yes. I don’t know who Lyell was or why he should be boring, but boring he was—and Thursday didn’t like it. Not one little bit.” Jenny shook her head and took me by the hand. “I miss her, Thursday. It’s lonely not being directly imagined on a day-to-day basis.”

We walked back towards Landen’s house.

“I’m confused,” said Square. “What, precisely, is going on?”

“I’m not really sure. I feel like I’m following in Thursday’s footsteps, only several hundred yards behind, and—hello, that’s odd.”

I looked around. Jenny, who’d been with us just a second ago, was nowhere to be seen. I twisted this way and that to see where she’d gone, and as I was doing so, a black van screeched to a halt in front of me. Within a few moments, the sliding door had opened and I’d been bundled inside in a less-than-polite manner, a sack put over my head. With another screech of tires, the van set off, and to make matters worse, I was then immediately sat upon by someone who smelled strongly of Gorgonzola.