“You don’t know me,” I say. “But you’re right. With everything. You just don’t know it yet.”
“Look, I’m really sorry,” Jack says to me. “But I have no idea what you’re talking about. Do you want a book signing or something?”
“No. But we need to talk.”
“About what?” He asks. He pushes his glasses back, and looks around. He looks more nervous than I’d noticed.
“About the Ravens. You know what that means.”
“It’s a legend. That’s all.” He says. “Some crazy person read the legend and tried to make it come true. It’s not… look, I know the reputation that I have, but this isn’t the kind of thing – “
“Magic’s falling,” I say. “It’s started, and we need to stop it. This is all your idea. You already know it.”
He looks scared. I’ve miscalculated this. “Look, I’m going to go now. It was interesting talking to you.”
I pass him a piece of paper. “Please, just take this.” I say. “Please. It’s got my phone number on it. Call me when you’ve thought this over a bit. You know what I’m talking about.”
He takes the piece of paper, more to shut me up than anything. “Okay, thanks. Take care.” He says, before getting into his car.
As he starts the engine, I say it again to him. “It’s falling, Jack. You’ve been thinking of the Knights. And you’re right. It’s the only way.”
A haunted look crosses his face, and he frowns. “Good bye.” He says, and drives away.
I look down.
The piece of paper is on the ground.
*************************************************************************
“I don’t believe this,” Nina says, looking at the television screen as I walk in. “Have you seen it?”
I’d been expecting her to be anxious to have the conversation she’d talked about earlier, so I am somewhat surprised. “Seen what?”
“The lottery news.” She looks at me as if it is self-explanatory, and seems amused that I don’t know.
“What lottery news? I’ve been catching up with someone, so I hadn’t – “
“Four thousand, two hundred and forty-two people won the lottery last night.”
I hadn’t been expecting that at all. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean four thousand, two hundred and forty-two people won the jackpot on the lottery last night.”
I frown, confused. “That’s… strange.” I say, unsure what else to say.
“They’ve not won much each. Nobody seems very happy about it. It gets weirder.” She says.
“How?” I ask, hanging my coat up.
“The numbers were four, eight, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-three and forty-two.“
I stop, my hand still on my coat. I am frozen for a moment, because something is gnawing at the back of my brain. “Why do those numbers ring a bell?” I ask. I leave the coat and walk into the room. Nina is grinning and almost bouncing on her chair.
“You know it, come on.” She says to me.
“Damn it, what are they? It’s not the Fibonnaci sequence…”
“No, it isn’t.”
“It’s not the Valley of Fear or something like that…”
“You know it. Come on. Everyone’s talking about this on twitter.”
“Prime numb…no, of course not.” I correct myself, and look towards the screen, hoping for some clue, but she has paused the screen.
“Lost.”
“What?”
“Lost.”
“Lost?”
“Lost.” She confirms.
“The TV show?”
“That’s the one.”
“I…” She’s right. Nina had been more of a fan of the TV series than I, but I watched parts of it. The sequence of numbers had been part of a plot point. “Wow.”
Something else is now doing more than gnawing at my brain, and is now instead just stabbing it repeatedly and urgently.
“Isn’t it weird?”
“It’s weird.”
“Darren?” she asks.
“Yeah?”
“Are we okay?”
I walk over to her and hold her. “We are, I promise.”
I can feel her relief as she buries her face into my shoulder.
“It feels like something’s going on.” She says. “Something you know about but I don’t.”
“I…” I hesitate. “I’m trying to figure it out myself. Can we talk about it when I’m more ready?” I’m willing to talk about it now, but I really don’t know where to begin.
“When you’re ready. As long as we’re okay.”
“We will, I promise. I just… need to work some stuff out. It’s not us.”
“Okay.”
I stand there in somewhat awkward silence. I’m not sure what to say.
Nina turns back to the television. “It’s so weird about that lottery thing.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Weird.”
That stabbing in my brain becomes clear.. Damn it. Of course. The lottery. It had to be her. I should have talked to her before I spoke to Jack. It wasn’t just the numbers that were picked. She may as well have signed the thing.
I was going to have to speak to Maria.
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