The Astonishing Mistakes of Dahlia Moss

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Max Wirestone

  Excerpt from The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss copyright © 2017 by Max Wirestone

  Excerpt from The Shambling Guide to New York City copyright © 2013 by Mary Lafferty

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Cover design by Wendy Chan

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

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  First ebook edition: March 2017

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  ISBN 978-0-316-38603-6

  E3-20170110-JV-PC

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  MEET THE AUTHOR

  BY MAX WIRESTONE

  A PREVIEW OF THE QUESTIONABLE BEHAVIOR OF DAHLIA MOSS

  A PREVIEW OF THE SHAMBLING GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY

  NEWSLETTERS

  For Clay, expectedly, and Yoko Shimomura, somewhat less so.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Internet was making fun of me.

  I couldn’t blame the Internet, honestly. Things were going very badly. I had been on some disastrous arena runs, double 1-3 records, and the commentariat was letting me have it. That’s what happens when you’re losing while streaming to an audience on Twitch. Then again, it’s also what happens when you’re winning. The Internet, as a rule, just likes making fun of things.

  This did not bother me so much. I mean, it bothered me in a global sense, as in: Internet, I See This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things. But it didn’t unnerve me.

  What unnerved me was the tip jar, which suddenly had $500 dollars in it.

  Grief I expect. Money I do not.

  Let’s be clear. I am not a major streamer. I’d only even started it a month ago when money from my last case meant I could afford a computer nice enough to stream without lagging. And while I’m sure there are big-shot streamers who wouldn’t be all that surprised by a $500 donation, I’m no big shot. As my double 1-3 records would attest.

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s super nice of you, Doctor XXX. Thanks for the cash.”

  The donor’s name was Doctor XXX, incidentally. I’m not redacting to protect anybody. Nobody in this adventure gets protected.

  “kool,” typed Doctor XXX.

  What the Fuck, said the rest of Twitch chat. What the actual fuck. I’m summarizing, because there were probably fifty guys in the channel typing away like spider monkeys, but this was the gist of it. Everyone could see the tip jar—there was actually a little animation of an oinking piggy bank that played—and the question of the moment was “Who the hell would tip $500 to me—a noob with a 1-3 record?”

  Honestly, I was a little with Twitch chat on this one. Let’s consider:

  1. Some people on the Internet are Creepers.

  2. People who give you large sums of money for no apparent reason probably have a reason.

  Creepers be real, y’all. I don’t want to hit this point too hard, but the two questions I’m asked most on Twitch are: “Do you have a boyfriend?” and “Where do you live?”

  As it happens, the answers are “kind of,” and “St. Louis,” although when I answer this for Twitch, I round the “kind of” up to a “yes, definitely, he’s very strong,” and Missouri.

  So I tried to play the $500 thing coolly, like this was the kind of thing that happened all the time. Oh, another five hundred bucks from a nameless stranger? Cool, I guess. Thanks for watching.

  But Twitch chat did not play it coolly, because cool is not a part of the Internet’s wheelhouse. How to explain Twitch chat, really? It’s a bit like if the mouth breathers who wrote YouTube comments could type really fast and were also dangerously caffeinated. Dangerously caffeinated. Like Trish’s maniac boyfriend on Jessica Jones, but after the mind-altering drugs.

  Anyway, Twitch was all like: Doctor XXX wants some action. Romantic action, was the implication, because why else would anyone suck up to a girl with a 1-3 record, or so went their reasoning. Although, they conveyed this idea with considerably more lewdness than I just managed. It was moments like this that made me generally glad that Twitch didn’t know my name.

  My handle on Twitch is Sunkern, named for my second-favorite Pokémon. My favorite Pokémon is Jigglypuff, but I didn’t want to run a channel with the word “Jiggly” in it, and even “Puff” suggests a marijuana-themed production that I do not have the funds or endurance to provide. So: Sunkern.

  “Ha ha, you guys, let’s start another arena run!”

  Go hang yourself, said Twitch chat.

  “Could I message you privately?” asked Doctor XXX.

  And I thought: Oh lord, here it is. Creeper City.

  “Let’s not,” I said, trying to sound cheerful and bright. “Just type whatever you want to say in front of everyone. Now, what class should we choose for the next run? Shaman, Warrior, Priest?”

  Burnt! said Twitch chat—I’m paraphrasing—Dahlia Done Stole ALL your money. Only they didn’t say Dahlia, because I am secretive. In fact, I’ve even “slipped” on the channel and accidentally used my “real name,” which as far as they know is Louise.

  “I’m opening the voting right now,” I told the chat.

 
; “I know this is going to sound forward,” typed Doctor XXX, “but I was wondering if you could come to the Endicott Hotel in St. Louis tomorrow.”

  Um, no, I cannot. This is not The Vanishing, Doctor XXX. But I did not say that aloud, I just smiled at the votes, which were all for Priest—the worst possible class—because these guys were fucking with me. Every last one of them.

  “Gosh, I don’t know, Doctor XXX,” I said, trying to sound positive and not at all concerned. “I have a plan for tomorrow.”

  This was true, in that my plan was not to be drugged and murdered in a hotel.

  Meeting someone named Doctor XXX at a place I had never heard of was so obviously a bad idea that even Twitch was against it. DON’T DO IT!!! said Twitch chat, with all caps and exclamation points and Kappas, which are these screaming disembodied heads that are hard to explain because they don’t make a lot of sense out of context. Actually, now that I think about it, they don’t make a lot of sense in context. But no matter.

  Even a Twitch chatter whose name was—and I’m not making this up—The Grim Raper—typed:

  “Louise—I hope you’re not seriously thinking of going to this hotel.”

  There was a lot of uproar. For a group of people who tended to complain about white knights—Twitch chat was being positively paternal.

  Take his money and mute him, said Twitch chat. Take all the money.

  But Doctor XXX just kept on typing.

  “There’s going to be a tournament there tomorrow. For Dark Alleys? Kind of a big deal. The winning team is going to take home $20,000.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’d heard about that, but I don’t really play a lot of fighters.”

  This was a sort of a lie, because I had gotten slightly obsessed with Skullgirls for a while, but this was a detail Doctor XXX did not need to know. Besides which—being good in one fighting game doesn’t mean you’re going to be any good in another. The sports equivalent is sort of like: oh, I heard you like soccer, so I’d figured you’d be great at ice hockey. Yes, the two sports are, very broadly speaking, similar, but the devil is really in the details, as you’ll discover when you break your legs as you try to run across a sheet of ice.

  “Some serious stuff is going to go down at that tournament,” said Doctor XXX.

  “Sounds like a fun day,” I told him, right-clicking to bring up the mute option.

  “And I think that there should be a detective on hand.”

  And that stopped me cold, because who was Doctor XXX to be aware of the Dahlia Moss, Geek Detective phenomenon? As far as Twitch chat knew, my name was Louise NoLastName, and the only mysteries I’d ever solved for them were Nancy Drew Hidden Puzzle games, which I actually struggled with a lot.

  Doctor XXX knew who I was.

  “Why do you think there should be a detective on hand?” I asked, with as much disinterest as I could feign.

  “I don’t want to say in chat,” typed Doctor XXX. “But if you showed up, I could tell you in person. I’ll be wearing a green hat if you do. I hope you do.”

  Girl, don’t, said Twitch chat.

  I don’t know why I’m making Twitch sound like my gay best friend, because that is fundamentally not their vibe.

  You better just take that money and forget this scrub. *swooshy hand* *finger snap*

  See? I keep doing it.

  But I listened to Twitch, actually. I know that seems out of character—actually taking someone’s good advice. But with all those Kappas and exclamation points, how could I not? I clicked Mute on the drop-down menu and said: “All right; let’s start another run.”

  I even went 7-3; and I made $500, so I was having a pretty good night. But that’s just it, isn’t it? Things are always great until the bodies start piling up.

  CHAPTER TWO

  My roommate, Charice, has this theory about curiosity killing the cat. People always throw that line out at you as though the cat has gotten into something he shouldn’t have. Right? There was a mysterious noise that he shouldn’t have investigated, or a scent that he shouldn’t have tracked down. The implication is always that the cat looked for something evil, and the terrible thing he discovered bumped him off.

  The moral is: Don’t be curious.

  Charice’s theory, on the other hand, is that the cat never investigated the noise, never tracked the scent. He died from curiosity the way a young lover might die from pining. He yearned to find out what was around the corner, but could never check. He wasn’t eaten; he wasted away.

  Isn’t that a great little idea? Okay, maybe not great, but it’s a solid thing to tell yourself when you’re contemplating doing something crazy.

  And it’s what I was telling myself while I sat at our dining room table and learned about the tournament Doctor XXX suggested I attend. Or it’s what I was telling myself until I was interrupted by Charice’s man candy of the month.

  “Hellor there, Dahlia,” said Daniel.

  “Hello there,” I said.

  Although you may be wondering what’s going on with me and Nathan—I’m here to report that the only major relationship upgrade of late has been on the Charice front. Point in case now: Daniel was standing in our kitchen, as he often did, partially naked.

  I’m rounding down here, to be sure, as he was wearing short cutoff gym shorts and a tank top. But I had seen him in this kitchen wearing significantly less, and so I’m inclined to round toward clotheslessness. Daniel—whom you may remember as “Jesus Christ” or simply “a hot guy with abs” basically lived with me now, as he and Charice had formed some sort of sex alliance, the exact nature of which I did not understand. They were obviously dating, and Daniel slept over here constantly. Although, seriously—it was an alliance—the kind you would see on a reality television show. Their affair seemed to involve an awful lot of whispering and also bizarre physical challenges. Last week they went through Forest Park on a tandem bike.

  “Hellor, Dahlia,” said Daniel again. This time I noticed his weird pronunciation.

  “Are you trying to do an accent?”

  “I’m Australian,” said Daniel. “An Aussie. I’m from Brisbane.”

  “It needs work,” I told him.

  “Yeahr,” said Daniel. “That’s why I’m practicing it. I don’t go around practicing the accents I can already do.”

  This was not entirely true, because Daniel faked a British accent plenty, although he was usually being egged on by Charice. I could have reasonably asked him why he needed to learn an Aussie accent, but I was busy learning about Dark Alleys, and this tournament, which I was not going to attend, no sirree, because that would be crazy, and I am known for reason and clarity.

  “What are you looking at?” asked Daniel.

  I always found it very easy to talk to Daniel, largely because he usually wasn’t listening to me. Even now, for example. Was he really asking questions, or was this just him practicing sound?

  “I’m looking at a tournament that’s happening tomorrow,” I said. “Twenty-thousand-dollar prize. Split two ways.”

  “That sounds like a right good time,” said Daniel. “An honest hoopla.”

  Yeah, Daniel was practicing sound.

  “I was thinking about going,” I told him. I never would have mentioned this to Charice, or even Nathan, because they would have freaked out, Charice with enthusiasm, Nathan with concern. But talking to Daniel—at least Daniel in practice-an-accent mode—was a lot like talking to ELIZA or some old chat bot. There was no through line. No development. He just reacted to the last thing you said.

  “You should go,” said Daniel. “It’ll be a zinger of a time.”

  I don’t think “a zinger of a time” is the sort of thing an Aussie would say, but Daniel made it sound strangely plausible. That was the troubling thing about Daniel. He was actually pretty good. I kept expecting him to disappear—not just because Charice’s boyfriends always disappeared—but because he seemed like someone who was destined for New York or Los Angeles. Twentysomething actors as go
od as Daniel don’t stick around the American Midwest.

  “I want to go,” I said. “But I’m thinking that it’s probably a terrible idea. You should tell me that I shouldn’t go.”

  “Why?” asked Daniel, who must have been interested, because he didn’t throw any extra Aussie verbiage into the question.

  “Well,” I told him, a little surprised that he was listening, “a guy who watches my stream gave me five hundred bucks and wanted me go there. He made it seem mysterious, like something was going to happen.”

  “Something detective-y?” asked Daniel. “Charice told me all about this.”

  “That’s what he made it seem like.”

  Daniel nodded. He was thinking. Probably he was doing that in an Aussie accent too.

  “And you don’t want to go because you think the guy could be crazy?”

  “I think there’s a reasonable chance.”

  Daniel sat down at the dining room table across from me. Charice’s Max Beckmann self-portrait scowled down at us, as though he could see where this was going and did not like it one bit.

  “Would you like some company?” asked Daniel.

  “Nah,” I told him. “I’m just going to read a bit and go to bed.”

  “Not now,” said Daniel. “Tomorrow. I could accompany you. I could be your Aussie bodyguard.”

  This offer surprised me nearly as much as the $500, because Daniel had not taken a lot of interest in my comings and goings. Mostly it was just accents and tandem bikes and couples lacrosse.

  “You realize the tournament’s for a video game. It’s not polo or mountain hiking or whatever Danielian nonsense you like to partake in.”

  “Yearh,” said Daniel. “I figured. And for the record, mountain hiking isn’t a thing. It’s either mountain climbing or just hiking.”

  “Why would you want to go?” I asked, with just the sort of suspicion that had helped me solve my last case. “You don’t spend time with me. And answer in your real voice, because I want to be able to tell if you’re lying to me, and I find that accent distracting.”

  I really don’t know what kind of answer I was looking for. I certainly didn’t think that Daniel was romantically interested in me, because he was completely all-in for Charice. I’d seen the evidence. In his pants. But I also knew that he wasn’t into geek culture, and so what else was left?