When Derrick carried in his Lean Cuisine dinner, steaming in the chilly room, Bob set into motion the new, desperate plan he had come up with.

“Look, Derrick, the closer I get to the end of the book, the more I realize I need my researcher. Bridget keeps track of all the details.” His rueful smile wasn’t entirely fake. “Over the years, I’ve just created too much. Too many creatures, too many cultures, too many backstories, too many relationships, too much history. I can’t keep everything straight anymore. To finish the series, I really need Bridget’s help.”

“No,” Derrick said flatly as he set the plate down on the nightstand. Bob actually ate fruit now, so it was mostly empty. “I’ll just bring you all the previous books in the series. If you need to know something, try asking me. And if I don’t remember, then you can look it up.”

Bob sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up the plate. He’d learned not to butt heads with Derrick. It just made the boy stubborn. “But a lot of times I’m not exactly sure where or when I’ve said things. That will take hours. Instead of writing, I’ll be sitting here skimming thousands of pages. Bridget has this huge cross-referenced database. Without it, I’m going to make mistakes.” He tried for a connection. “You know how fans are. Change a character’s eye color, and they start obsessing it’s a hint it’s not the same character at all.”

“Like the were-fox,” Derrick said.

“Right. The fans will never forgive me for that one.” In King of Swords, Bob had said a character named Sonder Cozen was a were-fox. By the time Sonder popped up again in Mountains of the Moon, Bob’s faulty memory had decided he was a were-lynx, a mistake neither the editor nor the copyeditor caught. After Mountains of the Moon came out, complaints and speculation had dominated the Swords and Shadows Reddit for weeks. “So if you could let me borrow your phone, I can email Bridget some questions.” He peeled back the lid of the entree. Today it was two tiny pieces of chicken covered with a yellow sauce and flecked with a few bits of red pepper. Next to them was approximately a quarter-cup of white rice. He picked up his plastic fork and dug in. After weeks of limited food and limitless treadmill, he was now about the size he’d been in college.

The boy made a scoffing noise. “Right. In two seconds, you’d be dialing 911.”