She turned and found him staring at the picture. The picture, the one that had taken her three hours to alter, using a photograph Honey had of the fun house, taken during Winston’s time. She had carefully put it in the place of the original photograph the night before, when the carnival was silent and still.
For seventy years, the fun house that had been abandoned and left to rot in the back acre of the carnival had been called, simply and uninspired—THE FUN HOUSE.
But here, in this photo, painstakingly edited, the name had been changed.
Nova came to stand beside Adrian, peering at the framed black-and-white photograph, and the letters over the yawning entrance. Not THE FUN HOUSE, but THE NIGHTMARE.
“Coincidence?” said Adrian.
“Maybe,” she responded.
“It’s just called the Fun House now, right? I wonder when they decided to change it.”
She said nothing.
He looked at her, and she could already see the conviction there. He did not think it was a coincidence at all. “Do you think we should go talk to your old boss about it? Maybe he could tell us when the name was changed, or…” He trailed off and it was clear he was grasping for any sources that might lead to a real clue, no matter how tenuous the evidence was.
“I doubt he would know much,” said Nova. “It was the Fun House during the Age of Anarchy, so the name must have been changed a really long time ago.” She swallowed, before adding, “I think we should just go check it out.”
Adrian did not hesitate for long before he nodded. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
“Are we supposed to call for backup?”
“We haven’t found anything yet,” he said, sounding almost—but not quite—amused. “But we will, at the first sign of trouble. Agreed?”
She curled her fingers at her sides. “Agreed.”
As they left the gallery, Nova could sense that everything had changed. The lightness and ease that had been emanating from Adrian all day was replaced with tension and renewed focus. She saw that he was holding his marker again, almost like a weapon, though she wasn’t sure when he had grabbed it. She found her own hand curling around the hoops of her belt, though why she should be anxious made no sense.
She knew exactly what they were about to find.
There was no gate that they could see along the perimeter of the chain-link fence, so Adrian clamped the marker between his teeth, clawed his fingers through the wire mesh, and climbed over. The metal rattled from his weight, but he was a nimble climber. He dropped down to the soft dirt on the other side and glanced back to check on Nova, but she was already to the top herself, perched delicately on the metal crossbar.
“Look,” she whispered.
Adrian did. His body stilled for only a moment, before he walked forward and crouched down beneath a patch of soft dirt. He pulled back the weedy grass at its edges, revealing the crisscrossing paths of boot prints. The treads of thick rubber soles denoting a clear pathway between the far corner of the fence and the abandoned rides in the distance.
It had been the last clue Nova had decided to leave, early that morning, not an hour before the park was meant to open. Wearing the boots she’d found remarkably comfortable as Nightmare, even if she had to admit they were not on par with the footwear she’d received as part of her Renegade uniform, she had trudged back and forth, back and forth, hoping to suggest a path frequently traveled.
Nova hopped down to join him.
He took the marker from his teeth. “They’re fresh,” he said, standing and peering toward the fun house. She could see the debate evident on his features before he lifted his wrist toward his mouth. “Send team communication. Insomnia and I are at Cosmopolis Park. We think there might be a connection between Nightmare and the abandoned fun house on the back acre. We’re going to investigate. So far there’s been no sighting of the villain, but we’re preparing for an altercation and might need reinforcements.”
He ended the message and let his arm hang. “Do you think she’s in there?”
“It would be a good place to lay low.”
Adrian started trudging through the overgrown pathways. They passed a graveyard of broken-down rocket ships and cars from one of the original roller coasters, now with prickly blackberry bushes sprouting around their metal carcasses. Though their paint was faded, the bright colors were still at odds with the dreariness of this corner of the park—the rusted tracks and mechanical gears, the broken bits of fence rails and food carts.
Adrian paused at a ticket booth that had once been white but was now so covered in filth and water damage it was difficult to tell. He sketched two sets of handcuffs onto the wood siding. He handed one to Nova and tucked the other set into his pocket. It occurred to Nova that if this day had really been about finding Nightmare from the start, he already would have had these with him. She stared at his profile as he set the point of the marker against the ticket booth again.
“Adrian?”
Hand stilling, he turned his head to look at her.
She swallowed. “Was this a date?”
His lips parted, at first in surprise, but then in hesitation as he searched for a response. Pulling the marker away from the booth, he used the capped end to scratch behind his ear. “Well. This was the first time a girl’s ever won me an enormous stuffed Dread Warden doll, so … you tell me.”
Her cheek twitched. “That wasn’t a real answer.”
“I know.”
They stared at each other, and Nova’s heart started doing acrobatics inside her chest.
“Would you have said yes,” said Adrian, “if it was?”
No, her brain said. Emphatic and aggressive. No.
While something else whispered back … Maybe.
But Nova, suddenly a coward, looked past Adrian’s shoulder and plastered a startled frown to her face. “I think I just saw something.”
Adrian spun around, simultaneously reaching his arm out to tuck her behind him, which was so obnoxiously gallant Nova found herself wanting to both shove the arm away and also take his hand into hers. In fact, as she stared down at the fingers that were just barely brushing against her own, she had the most absurd notion to lace her fingers through them and lift his hand to her mouth, to place one single kiss against those knuckles.