I waited in the crowd for a moment until I could sense that the chapter was over, then approached Thursday1–4, who had her back to me and was talking to a badly realized version of Bowden, who in this book was known by the legally unactionable “Crowden Babel.”

“Good evening,” I said, and Thursday jumped as though stuck with a cattle prod.

“What are you doing here?” she asked without turning around.

“Text Grand Central saw a few wrinkles in the narrative, and you’re too unpleasant for anyone other than me to come and have a look.”

“It’s okay,” she said, “everything’s fine. It’s probably a Storycode Engine on the fritz. A buildup of irony on the dialogue injectors or something.”

She seemed jittery but still didn’t want to turn and look at me straight on.

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure—do you think I don’t know my own book? I’m afraid I must go. I’ve got to run through some lines with the replacement Hades.”

“Wait,” I said, and grabbed her arm. I pulled her around to face…someone else entirely. It wasn’t Thursday1–4. It was a woman with the same coloring and build, clothes and general appearance, but it wasn’t her.

“Who the hell are you?” I demanded.

She sighed heavily and shrugged. “I’m…I’m…a character understudy.”

“I can see that. Do you have a name?”

“Alice-PON-24330,” she replied resignedly.

“This series isn’t up for maintenance for years. What are you doing here?”

She bit her lip, looked away and shifted her weight uneasily. “If she finds I’ve talked…well, she has a temper.”

“And I don’t?”

She said nothing. I turned to Crowden Babel. “Where is she?”

He rubbed his face but said nothing. It seemed I was the only person not frightened by Thursday1–4.

“Listen,” I said to Babel, pointing at Alice-PON-24330, “she’s just an understudy and is like a phone number—replaceable. You’re in every book and have a lot more to lose. Now, either you talk to me right this minute and it goes no further or we turn you over to Jurisfiction and thirty tons of prime-quality shit is going to descend on you from a very great height.”

Babel scratched the back of his head. “She does this every now and then. She thinks the series is too small for her.”

Babel and the ersatz Thursday glanced nervously at each other. There was something else going on. This wasn’t just a simple substitution so Thursday1–4 could have a break.

“Somebody better start talking, or you’ll discover where she gets her temper from. Now, where has she gone?”

Babel looked nervously around. “She came back furious. Said you’d fired her on false pretenses and she wanted to get some…serious payback.”

“What sort of payback?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you’re lying to me!”