Chương 290: Book Six, Chapter 52: Daphne Part IV

Logan was making some good points. Too many good points. Why had she been so careless? Why had she underestimated him? They stood in the kitchen as the group discussed whether the wedding could go forward, and whether or not to call all of the NPCs into the banquet hall for safety's sake. Logan was arguing against the idea because he had a trope, apparently, that would strengthen a plan that he helped to vet.

"With the rain coming down the way it is," he said, "I'm not sure how much longer the banquet hall is going to be above water. We can do the wedding quickly, but I wouldn't rely on being able to stay on the first floor. Is there a large room in the tower? Maybe the penthouse?" Now he was really getting on Daphne's nerves, talking about bringing everyone to the penthouse, her honeymoon suite. The nerve on that guy. But all of this was a minor inconvenience.

He was just throwing out these ideas so that Bobby and Jules could shoot them down, because that was how his Cynic trope worked. Confrontation. Antagonism. Contrarianism. Cynics were trouble, perhaps even more so than Defiants or the other meta aspects. Logan would be spending all of his time playing devil's advocate, and worse, squeezing the players, forcing them to confront even the most remote possibilities.

Was it possible that he had a trope that might make it desirable for him to argue that Daphne herself was an enemy? Was it possible he had a trope that could make him an enemy and, in doing so, might open his eyes just enough to be dangerous? Why had she been so foolish thirty minutes earlier? This could have all been avoided. She had just escaped the basement where Antoine was murdered and was headed to her room.

She had been examining her blackmail note and had noticed it had a faint scent of cigarette smoke, the cheap stuff. Not only was she being blackmailed, but apparently, the culprits didn't have a taste for the finer things. She had almost run into him, Logan. She was so preoccupied as she made her way through the halls. They were Off-Screen, so it wasn't that important, and she was able to get her blackmail note hidden in time for him not to see it. Or at least she thought she had. No matter.

His mind was on other things.

"It seems like Riley figured out what he wanted to use the Insert Shot on," he said.

"Oh," she asked, "what did he use it on?" Logan looked at her funny.

"Well, I'm going to assume it's on the fire axe. It would be kind of strange for him to have used it on the cigarettes in the corner." Cigarettes in the corner? she thought to herself. Only then did she realize that Logan must have been able to see what Riley had used the Insert Shot on, on the red wallpaper. And if he could see it, then maybe she was supposed to be able to see it too, if she had in fact been a player.

"Of course," she said.

"I don't know what I was thinking." He nodded, but his piercing gaze never left her.

"No worries. They say smoking can kill," Logan said.

"But somehow I doubt the conflict in this story is going to be resolved by poisonous cigarettes." He was joking. He had a clever voice. A disarming voice. He disguised it sometimes, but not now. He was smart, and more than that, he was distrustful. Had he figured her out? He didn't need to be able to see that she wasn't a player to be able to see that she was up to something. She had plenty of experience with players who were more than willing to see her for who she was, even if they didn't know what she was.

And she knew, just from talking to him for a few minutes, that he was going to be a problem.

"I like Jules a lot, but she's acting odd, isn't she?" he said.

"Strangely antagonistic. Am I making that up?" He was walking her to her room. Neither of them had anywhere to be for the moment, though Daphne was hoping to find Riley soon.

"No," Daphne said, trying to hide the quiver in her voice as she played with her handbag against her will.

"She has been very testy so far." He nodded.

"Makes you wonder if even a companion NPC can somehow go bad. I mean, she's been great so far, but you realize she's a killer, some type of elite soldier. Maybe even a super soldier. When we were in the jungle and those things were wailing in the distance, I swear she was smiling."

"I'm sure she was just playing a character," Daphne said.

"Aren't we all?" he said.

"But the thing is that murder mysteries in Carousel usually have a rotating cast of killers, right? There can be multiple different suspects. Maybe every character we meet could be a killer. And since Jules is an NPC herself, what if her number came up? She's got keys to the whole building." He had a dangerous mind.

"Did she do anything that makes you suspicious?" Daphne asked.

"Not yet," Logan said.

"But it never hurts to be suspicious, wouldn't you say?" Sometimes it does, Daphne thought.

"Well, I think we need a bit more evidence," she said.

"Anyway, this one is me." She pointed to her door.

"I hope you stay safe out there."

"I'll try my best," Logan said, still looking at her with that clever gaze. Was he flirting? Or was he on to her? Her Moxie hadn't changed. If he knew her secret in-character, her Moxie would start to drain away as her Mettle and Grit improved. That was the problem with these meta players: they're so good at getting information that their characters don't even have. They could have her dead to rights, and she would have no way of knowing. Her tropes weren't infallible.

Even Riley, who should have been doped up on love, was resisting her. Logan was on the cusp of becoming trouble. He had to go. But that was going to be quite the challenge. Carousel had handcuffed her, forcing her to target characters who knew her secrets or who could get in the way of her secrets before targeting the players. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. She had the blackmailers to deal with.

If she didn't attend to them soon, they could become a bigger problem. Even if Logan had sussed her out, his character had not. She was going to have to change that. Carousel might have intended for her to assist the players against the escalating threat of the blackmailers before the finale, but that didn't mean she had no wiggle room. She hoped Carousel wouldn't mind. She had so many things to do. Kill the blackmailers, keep the players handled, hide her plans and true identity...

Wedding planning was so stressful. She waved goodbye as she went into the room and quickly started cutting up her blackmail note. Carousel wanted footage of her doing it, but not much. She cut angry strokes, turning the entire page into thin little strips of paper by folding it up before cutting it. She was frustrated. Dealing with players was hard enough, but dealing with blackmailers who had suddenly decided they were tough killers? That was going to be a problem. They were only supposed to get violent later.

Something was amiss. As she cut, she thought about the locations of fire axes around the building. She only knew of a handful. That meant there was going to be a lot of walking. She would have to find one that was near some cigarettes. She didn't dare ask Logan where this Insert Shot had been used. That would give the game away. She had a lot of work to do. But Logan might have been useful in other ways. After all, poisoned cigarettes wasn't the worst idea, if only she had more poison.

On-Screen"It's just over this way, a total disaster," she said, leading the receptionist blackmailer back toward the Chapel. Luckily, Riley and everyone else were still in the banquet hall now that the wedding ceremony had ended.

"I'm sure if there's a problem, we could get maintenance to handle it," the young woman was saying.

"What exactly is wrong?"

"We don't need to bother housekeeping," Daphne said.

"You are perfectly capable of handling this situation." Daphne led her back toward the Chapel, but not the front entrance. There was a side corridor that led to the office belonging to the resident Officiant, in this case, Logan.

"See, the banners are all wrong," she said once she had lured the receptionist into the dark hallway.

"I don't see any banners," the young woman said, looking along the hallway.

"You don't see them?" Daphne asked, getting right next to her and pointing up. Fortunately, these blackmailers didn't seem to know all of her secrets, because while the receptionist did act awkwardly around her, she was able to lure her into a dark hallway. That would change after they started dying.

"Right there," Daphne said as she reached into her handbag, pulled out her letter opener, and quickly pierced the receptionist's underarm with one hand while covering her mouth with the other. Straight through the heart. Off-Screen It was all part of the plan. All part of the little dance she needed to do to kill Logan.

Normally, she would have to wait till the finale to start killing players, unless they entirely dropped the ball or started making a scene like that Hysteric had, but there were ways for her to fudge the rules. She had to make her plans entertaining enough for Carousel to go along with them. Killing this receptionist, a blackmailer who Daphne had seen cut the Achilles tendons of Antoine, sent her Off-Screen to give her time to hide the body.

For years, she had operated without the assistance of No Body, No Crime, but now that she had it, she wondered how she had ever managed to hide her kills before. Now, however, Daphne had no intention of hiding the body. She intended to get caught, quite the opposite of what her instincts told her. Carousel understood. She was only Off-Screen for a few moments when she heard someone coming from the direction of Logan's office.

On-Screen If Logan saw her in the middle of the act of killing one of the blackmailers, he would know too much, and she would be able to take him out of the equation. He had already served his only function, as far as she was concerned, by officiating her wedding. And she was thankful for that, but he was too nosy and too clever, and it was time for him to go. A figure approached from down the dark hallway, and as soon as he was able to see Daphne standing there holding a fresh kill, he screamed.

"Damn it," Daphne said. It wasn't Logan. It was the photographer. Why was he not at the banquet? It was literally his job! On the bright side, there was a good chance he was a blackmailer too, though she had not seen him in the act, so the red wallpaper would not reveal it to her. Quickly and carefully avoiding getting blood on herself, Daphne said, "Quick, you have to get help. I think she's been stabbed with this." She held out the letter opener. The man stared at her, wide-eyed and terrified.

She was worried that he would take a picture, but it was soon clear he didn't have the capacity for rational thought at that moment.

"I'll go get someone," the photographer said as he skittered by, slowly, fidgety. He wasn't a good actor. He was about to puke, though, so that might cover it up. Was it his first day in Carousel? As soon as he was past and was brave enough to turn away from her and begin running, she gently put down the ill-fated blackmailer and pounced on him.

Between the receptionist who knew she was living under a false identity and the photographer who had seen her kill the receptionist, Daphne's secret was out, and that meant she had the Mettle to pull off a quick kill. She snapped his neck and went back Off-Screen as she started dragging the body to a nearby closet that the red wallpaper told her would be a good hiding spot. She was playing it as comedy. Her films were always a little funny. Dark and funny. The audience was loving it.

After she had his body secured, she started to hear a strange sound. She worried that she had stepped in some of the receptionist's blood, but that wasn't what the sound ended up being. The hallway was beginning to flood.

"Not now," she said aloud. She returned to the receptionist and picked her up, carefully holding the letter opener as if the kill was fresh. She began moving the body, but only enough so that when the cameras came back on, it wouldn't look like she had just been standing there. On-Screen Finally, from that same direction, Logan was walking down the hallway. She thought about pulling a similar stunt to make it look like she had found the body, but that wasn't exactly her goal.

She wanted Logan to realize the truth, or at least a truth. And he did, very quickly.

"Rachel, what are you doing?" he asked. He looked down at the receptionist, and clearly, he was on the ball because he figured out that she must have been one of the blackmailers.

"That's the receptionist who was talking about how she knew who Antoine was, even though his show just aired," he said.

"Is she involved with the blackmailing? Did she attack you?" He got closer, but not too close. He was wary of Daphne, clearly.

"I just found her like this," Daphne eventually said, putting no effort into being convincing. And Logan picked up on that very quickly. He started trying to edge along the far side of the hallway, staying away from Daphne. Logan must have been figuring out things quickly, both in character and out, because Daphne's Mettle began to rise. She only needed to hold out a few more seconds. She dropped the body and backed away in the direction that Logan was going, hoping to block him off.

"It's not what it seems like," she said.

"I know," he said.

"I think we should go talk to the others to figure this out. She might have accomplices, in fact, she must, after what she did to that poor man, right?"

"Yes, let's go," Daphne said, getting closer to him.

"Will you walk with me? I'm afraid." She started walking toward him quickly. He picked up on things very quickly himself. No wonder he had chosen such high Savvy. Unfortunately for him, he hadn't chosen high Hustle. He grabbed for a weapon hidden on his person, but he was too slow. He defended himself as best he could, but true to his character, he went down like a man of peace. Pastors rarely fought back, even when they were players, though that might have been Daphne's memory playing tricks on her.

She thought it was because they wanted to go to heaven, so why resist? She got him in a headlock and held him until he passed out. He was strong, but his Mettle wasn't higher than hers anymore. She would have to figure out something creative with him, some way to explain his death. Knocking a player out first was always easier than killing them outright. It avoided a lot of Carousel's tricky rules. Maybe she could fabricate a blackmail letter for him to frame the blackmailers.

There would be a typewriter in the office somewhere. Or better yet, she could really throw some chaos into the mixture if she were to frame him as being a blackmailer himself. The players would have to go along with it On-Screen, because their characters don't know he's a player too. A little chaos could go a long way. She realized, to her dismay, that she couldn't leave. The script wouldn't allow it. Logan had taken one final revenge.

His trope, Dead Giveaway, was still working in death and would force her to take souvenirs from all of her kills. How annoying. A ring off the finger of the receptionist and a film roll from the photographer would do. Logan wasn't dead yet, and before she could make him that way, she heard people coming in the distance. So she dragged his unconscious body along to find the nearest set of stairs, a small passageway to go unseen. As for the receptionist's body, there was nothing she could do about that. What a shame.

It would have been better if she could have hidden it, but no matter. She took her prize to the freight elevator so she could find the best place to put him. She went from fire axe to fire axe, looking for the special one. There was one good thing the storm had done: there was no one to watch. Up near the exit onto the roof, she found the axe that she believed must have had the Insert Shot used on it, because right next to it in its case was a pack of cigarettes.

Logan would be a nice little surprise for the players when they got to the roof. One blackmailer down. One nosy player out of the way. Hopefully, Carousel wouldn't punish her too harshly for her little detour. She was so close to accomplishing her goals.