But when Hannah pulled out her keyring, I gasped a little. It had the exact little silver bunny charm hanging from it, the silver house key capped with an anime character, the sleek black key fob that unlocked the sleek black sedan that Penelope got as a gift from Reiko about halfway through the book.

"You ok?" Hannah said as she unlocked the door and looked back at me.

I wasn't, at all. An intense feeling of vertigo, or maybe a sense that The Matrix was glitching, made my head twirl. The hallway was a coincidence, but the keyring was a confirmation.

"Hannah, what…what is going on? Who are you?" I said. My mind had gone from girlish swooning to fight or flight within seconds of putting the pieces together. Was she some kind of Nicole Marcel superfan? A stalker? A black widow that drew unsuspecting romance fans into her lair to…I didn't even want to imagine the possibilities.

Hannah paused and looked at me, noticing my change in demeanor. She chewed the insides of her cheek and her expression tightened. "I guess I should probably come clean about things now that you've…probably made some connections, right?"

"If this is some kind of psycho stalker thing, or I'm going to end up in fifty trash bags after I step into your apartment…" I looked around, seeing that the elevator had already closed, remembering that it was slow to get up to this floor. Now that Hannah knew I knew something was up, if she wanted to take drastic measures, I wouldn't have time to escape. "Well, it's probably too late for me since you've lead me right to your door without a way to get out, isn't it?"

Hannah grinned. "Yeah…probably. I guess the easiest way to put it is, you're in a book right now."

I narrowed my eyes and gave her an are you kidding me? face. "Hannah…"

"No, really…you are." Hannah said, stepping back and pulling her keys from the lock and pocketing them. She took a deep breath, then turned back and put her hands on her hips. "I couldn't really come up with a creative place for Penelope to live, or a unique quirk about her, so, I just…wrote about what was in front of me."

I had a feeling in my stomach like I was at the top of the first hill on a roller coaster, except the hill was miles in the air and the drop in front of me was straight down.

"You mean…" I said, my voice shaking.

Hannah nodded. "Yep."

"You're Nicole Marcel."

Hannah grinned and gave a little nod. "And you're the cute girl on the train who reads my books all the time that I hadn't quite figured out a way to approach you, so I did the most obvious thing possible and sat there reading my own damn book for a week hoping you'd notice."