Chapter 1: The Jolly Rogers

He'd told Jazz he was meeting a contact about a legal consulting job at nine. It was now three in the morning, and he was sitting on a bench in Regents Park with his oboe case beside him and the realization that he'd somehow ended up in the wrong country.

Jarrin didn't own a watch. Wristbands irritated his skin, and he'd tried phones twice and lost them both within a week, partly from carelessness and partly from not understanding the concept of pockets that weren't a joke. So he'd been going by a vague sense of time that involved the sky getting lighter, which at least meant the park wasn't currently a crime scene.

His excuse, honestly, had been straightforward enough. He'd walked out the front door with the intention of heading to a coffee shop near Tottenham Court Road, where the contact supposedly worked. He'd walked for about forty minutes, gotten distracted by a street performer doing fire juggling, and then somehow found himself following a path toward the Serpentine without any clear memory of when that shift happened.

The bench was damp. Classic. He shifted his weight and wished, briefly and without conviction, that he'd worn pants with pockets that actually held something.

The oboe case contained nothing he'd ever learned to play. He'd bought it from a shop on Carnaby Street on a whim, and it served better as a prop for when he wanted to look like he had depth. Jazz had laughed at him for a full three days and then filed it under the same mental category as his Wing Chun training and his six-month obsession with making homemade pasta.

A pair of shoes appeared in front of his face. Black leather, polished. He followed them up. A black dress. A red leather jacket thrown over her shoulder like a fashion statement, even at three in the morning.

"You were supposed to be at the coffee shop at nine, Jarrin." Jazz's voice had the specific exhaustion of someone who'd driven across London for nothing.

"It's a legal consulting job. Coffee shops are where the money is."

"Jarrin."

"What? I'm being creative with my narrative."

She stared at him for a long moment, then grabbed the back of his collar and yanked him off the bench. He went with it, partly because his balance was already questionable and partly because he was too tired to resist. They stumbled into a tree. His back hit bark.

"I'm taking you home," Jazz said. "Then you're going to explain how you got lost between Tottenham Court Road and whatever coordinate this is."

"I didn't get lost. I got creatively rerouted."

"You were sitting on a bench in a park at three in the morning with an oboe case."

"The oboe case is relevant to my brand."

Jazz let go of his collar. She turned around and marched toward the car, and he followed, though slower, as a person does when they have already accepted that whatever they were doing that night had clearly not worked out.

The flat was on the fourth floor of a converted building in Islington that they'd rented because Jazz liked the exposed brick and Jarrin liked the fact that the landlord didn't mind the occasional smell of whatever he was cooking. It smelled like rosemary and garlic tonight, which meant he'd been trying again.

He'd cooked at least three times tonight. Jazz had found the kitchen counter covered in preparation stations: one bowl of chopped shallots, another of sliced leeks, a third of what appeared to be some kind of herb butter he'd been working on for forty-five minutes. There was also a pot of pasta water that had gone from boiling to tepid to something best described as apologetic.

"Did you eat?" Jazz dropped her bag on the counter.

"I had a late lunch. A very ambitious lunch. I had four things that day."

"Jarrin."

"I'm fine."

They sat at the kitchen table. Jazz pulled up a chair. Jarrin sat across from her, still wearing the same clothes he'd worn to get lost in a park three hours ago. His blue Hawaiian shirt was wrinkled in places that suggested a long afternoon on a park bench. The black tank top underneath had a coffee ring on the left sleeve, which he'd gotten from a vendor in Notting Hill who tried to sell him a replica pocket watch for forty pounds. The watch had been plastic.

"Sit down," Jazz said. "Tell me what happened tonight."

"Okay, so. I left here, I was aiming for the coffee shop, and then I saw this guy juggling fire. The fire was impressive. I watched him for about fifteen minutes, which is a long time for most people but not for me. Then I got hungry and found this Indian place, had a curry, and then I walked around for a while looking at buildings."

"You were supposed to meet this contact."

"The contact wasn't important enough to hold my attention. Honestly, Jazz, I think the real meeting is the one I had with myself in that park. Very productive session. Lots of self-discovery."

She was watching him. She could always tell when he was lying to her. That was the worst thing about their marriage. She could read him like he read nothing.

"You're sitting on a bench in Regent's Park right now," she said. "Your phone was in your back pocket, and I can see from the GPS data on my watch that you wandered in a circle for ninety minutes before you sat down. You were looking at birds."

"I was observing the urban pigeon population."

"Tell me about the job."

Jarrin shrugged. The shrug was an art form. He'd been practicing it since law school and had it down to a science, or at least to something that looked like a science and confused people enough to move on to other, easier targets.

"I don't remember the job," he said. "Probably not real. Honestly, I might have made up the contact's name in my head. Sounds like a very plausible name. Derek something."

"Derek Whittington." Jazz had her phone out. She'd been tracking him through the shared location they both pretended to hate. "He works at a firm on Fleet Street. You walked past their office at noon and went into a pub instead."

"The pub had nice beer."

"Jarrin."

"What? I have standards."

She pinched the bridge of her nose. The gesture always made him feel a little guilty, and right now he was feeling exactly as guilty as he wanted to be feeling, which was about nothing at all. There was no real problem here. He'd gotten lost. The world had continued to exist around him. The sky hadn't fallen.

"So," Jazz said. "Since we're both up and neither of us is sleeping, I'm thinking we do something useful for once."

"Such as?"

"I've been looking at Kensington. There's a jewelry store on one of the main streets. They do private client appointments after hours. The vault is old, the security system is decent, and the insurance payout would fund a trip anywhere we wanted to go for the next six months."

Jarrin stared at her. "You want to rob a jewelry store."

"I want to borrow a jewelry store's inventory temporarily, yes. There's a difference."

"I was going to have dinner and watch a documentary about penguins."

"Too late for that. You're already awake."

"You're right." He leaned back in his chair. The chair creaked. He liked the creak. It meant the furniture was still functional, unlike his sleep schedule. "What do you have in mind?"

They picked the store on a Tuesday evening. Jazz had spent two days case-studying it. The owner, a man named Aldous who apparently thought a single security camera and a motion sensor were sufficient for a place selling diamond watches, closed at eight but left the back office lights on all night. The vault sat in the back room behind a reinforced door that would take Jazz about forty-five seconds to pick, assuming she wasn't distracted. Jazz never got distracted.

They arrived at half past ten. Jazz wore her usual uniform: black dress, red leather jacket, fishnet stockings, and thigh-high boots. She also wore a choker with dice on it, and Jarrin made a mental note later that she'd put on extra effort tonight, which meant she considered this heist important.

His outfit was simpler. Blue Hawaiian shirt, black tank, gray pants. Navy blue shoes. The outfit he wore to get lost in parks.

"Here's the plan," Jazz said, standing across the street from the store. "I'll create a distraction at the front entrance. Something loud enough to pull the staff, something small enough that it won't bring the police. You go in through the back. I've already scoped the route."

"And the vault?"

"I pick the lock. You handle whatever's inside."

"Whatever's inside. Got it."

He followed her around to the side entrance. The lock on the back door was cheap. Jazz didn't even need to pick it. She twisted the handle, pushed, and walked in. Jarrin followed.

The back room was dim. Shelves lined the walls with display cases, and at the far end, the vault door sat like a small steel monument. Jazz pulled a set of picks from her jacket and got to work. Jarrin stood behind her, watching. He'd learned that watching Jazz work was half the fun. She moved like she was performing, turning each tool over and examining it before inserting it into the lock mechanism. Her movements had a rhythm, and the rhythm was always different. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, always precise.

Four minutes. The lock clicked.

"The alarm system," Jarrin said. "We should deal with that first."

Jazz looked at him. "I thought you'd never ask."

Jarrin pulled his hand forward. A bubble appeared from his fingertips, translucent and shimmering, about the size of a grapefruit. He pushed it toward the alarm control panel mounted beside the vault door. The bubble touched the panel and pulsed once, and the panel went dark.

"What did you take?" Jazz asked.

"The concept of being triggered. The alarm can still be physically tampered with, but it won't sound until someone restores the concept of triggering to it. Probably never."

"Brilliant. You just stole causality from a security system."

"I steal things. That's kind of my thing."

The vault door swung open. Inside, rows of jewelry glowed under individual spotlights. Diamond necklaces. Platinum watches. Pendants, rings, earrings, all worth more than most people's houses. Jarrin pulled bubbles from his fingers, each one a different size. Some he made small for the smaller items. Others he made large, big enough to swallow entire display cases. Each bubble absorbed its contents and floated to his belt buckle, where a golden clasp held them all in a shimmering collection.

Jazz worked the front of the store while he handled the vault. She was doing card tricks for the few staff members still in the building. Jazz could hypnotize people with cards if she wanted to, using specific patterns of movement and timing that bypassed conscious attention entirely. Tonight she didn't need hypnosis. She had enough charisma to distract a room of three people while Jarrin cleared out a vault.

He filled the belt buckle. Diamond necklaces, platinum bands, emerald pendants. The bubbles were getting larger now, heavier. The bigger the theft, the more kinetic force would be released if the bubbles popped, so Jarrin had to be careful. The clasp on his belt buckle held them. One slip, one wrong movement, and a diamond the size of a fist would detonate with enough force to take a hole through the wall.

Almost done. He pulled a bubble from his fingers, the largest one yet, aimed at a particularly impressive collection of antique rings.

The bubble was mid-air when a voice cut through the back room.

"Don't move."

Jarrin froze. Jazz, across the store, was already turning toward them. Standing in the doorway to the front room was a man. He was tall, mid-forties, wearing a dark coat and holding nothing in his hands. He had a calm expression. The expression of someone who had walked into a jewelry store vault at eleven at night and felt entirely in control of the situation.

"Evening," the man said. "I'd ask what you're doing, but the vault is open, the alarm is off, and you're wearing a belt buckle full of stolen diamonds. I think I can handle the math."

"Who are you?" Jazz asked. She still had her cards in her hand, which she held loosely, like a magician keeping a trick ready without giving it away.

"Richard Castle." He stepped into the back room. His posture was relaxed, and he didn't seem to notice that two people with Stands were standing in his line of sight. "I live upstairs. I was writing, heard something, came down. I'm a writer, by the way. Detective novels. I know what a heist looks like."

Jarrin didn't know what a heist looked like, and honestly, Castle didn't either. The man was just standing there, talking to them like they were guests at a dinner party. Jarrin's instincts were going off. The man was too calm. Too close. Something was wrong with him.

The air around Castle shifted. Jarrin could feel it. His Stand, Jolly Roger, the white pirate that materialized beside him in a flash of blue and white light, stepped back. Jolly Roger had red eyes and a blue bandana with a skull, and the bird eyes registered danger before Jarrin's conscious mind did.

Castle's eyes moved to Jolly Roger. Then to Jarrin. Then to Jazz.

"Oh," Castle said. "So you see them too."

Jarrin's breath caught. The man could see Stands. That meant one of three things: Castle was another Stand user, or he had some ability that let him perceive Stand manifestations, or he was already dangerous in a way that Jarrin couldn't immediately categorize. None of those options were good.

"What do you see?" Jazz asked.

"I see a white pirate standing next to a man in a Hawaiian shirt. And a gray woman with bunny ears standing next to a very beautiful woman in a red jacket." He paused. "You're not the only ones with gifts, I'm afraid."

Castle raised his hand. A gray shape flickered near his shoulder, something like a woman with white hair and a magician's tailcoat. Jazz's Stand, Poker Face, a gray woman with white hair and bunny ears, reacted instantly. It moved to defend her, a card materializing in its hand.

Jarrin's body moved before his mind could process what was happening. His hand shot forward. A bubble burst from his fingers, aimed at Castle. The bubble expanded as it moved, growing from grapefruit to melon size. He aimed it for the man's chest, a direct hit that would steal whatever his Stand could take.

"Mine," Jarrin shouted. He punched forward. A barrage of bubbles erupted from his fist, each one carrying a chunk of kinetic force. "Mine! Mine! Mine!"

The bubbles hit Castle's chest and stopped. They didn't pop. They hit and simply stopped, like a bullet caught in a wall, and then the kinetic force that should have blasted outward reversed. The energy came back, redirected through Castle's body, through the air, and into Jarrin.

The impact hit him in the ribs. Jarrin folded. His vision went white at the edges. He hit the floor hard, and everything went dark.

The last thing he registered was Jazz shouting his name. Then the world dissolved.

A wall appeared. Massive, invisible, solid. It slammed into the back room of the jewelry store and shattered the vault door outward, sending steel and glass in a wide arc. Jazz's Poker Face materialized in a burst of gray light, and the cards in its hand spun out like a storm.

Kate Beckett appeared at the same moment. She came from the front of the store, moving fast, a woman in a dark jacket with a gun in her hand. She raised the weapon, aimed at Jazz, and fired.

Poker Face intercepted the bullet. The card caught it mid-flight and held it, suspended, before fusing it into the next card in the sequence. A cascade of energy exploded outward. Jazz countered with her own cards, throwing them like knives. The cards linked together in midair, stepping into one and stepping out of another, a path of steel that bypassed Kate entirely and appeared at her back.

Kate dropped the gun. She rolled. She was good. Faster than Jarrin had expected, faster than most people he'd ever fought. She was a cop. He could tell from her movement patterns. She'd been trained for this, or close to it.

Then the room dissolved.

It didn't break. It didn't crack. It just faded, the walls peeling away like wallpaper dissolving in water, and through the gaps, Jarrin saw it. A world made of books. A vast, shifting landscape where pages floated in the air like leaves in a storm, and the pages turned into islands, and the islands shifted and moved and connected in patterns that shouldn't have been possible.

The stolen items from his belt buckle were floating. Diamonds, necklaces, watches, all of it drifting through the air like debris in a hurricane. The stolen concept of being triggered from the alarm system was manifesting around them, appearing as sudden, unpredictable events. A bookshelf materialized five feet from Jazz and knocked her sideways. A display case appeared under Jarrin's feet and pushed him into a wall. A ring box appeared in Kate's hand and materialized a shotgun that fired twice before vanishing.

"Where are we?" Jazz shouted. She was on her feet, already counting her cards, already calculating.

"A book," Castle said. He was standing near a floating island made of pages. His gray Stand, whatever it was, hovered behind him like a shadow with teeth. "Some kind of book. I don't know which one."

"Can we leave?"

"No."

The landscape shifted again. A new island formed from scattered pages, and on it stood a figure. A giant. Not enormous, just large, maybe twice the height of a man, wearing something that looked like a coat made of storybooks. The giant's eyes were open and watching them.

Jarrin pulled himself off the floor. His ribs hurt. His head was spinning. The confrontation with Castle had short-circuited something in his nervous system, and he had to blink twice before he could see clearly again.

Poker Face was already in combat stance. Jazz had a dozen cards in her hand. Castle stood behind her, his Stand visible to all of them now, clearly a manifestation of something far more sophisticated than anything Jarrin had seen. The gray woman with white hair and a magician's coat had a calm, predatory stillness about her. She wasn't just a tool. She was a presence.

"The Stolen things," Jazz said, pointing at the floating diamonds and watches drifting through the air around them. "They're here. Your bubbles didn't just disappear, Jarrin."

"No." He looked at his belt buckle. The clasp was empty. Every bubble he'd created had popped, and what they held had been released into this strange world. "They're floating everywhere. Everything I've ever stolen is just sitting out here."

"And that," Castle said, "is the problem."

He was right. The stolen concept of the alarm system's being triggered was still manifesting, and it was getting worse. Objects and events appeared around them with no pattern, no rhythm, no logic. A shelf appeared. Then a man with a sword who swung and missed and vanished. Then a door that opened onto a room full of cats, which then dissolved.

This place had rules. The fairy tales were manifesting, and their rules were overriding whatever normal physics and reality had been governing the world before. And they were trapped inside all of it.

Kate Beckett was scanning the landscape with the focused attention of a woman who was trying to solve a puzzle while the puzzle solved her. She looked at Jazz, then at Castle, then at the floating pages and the drifting diamonds and the giant watching them from across the shifting void.

"We need to find a way out," Kate said. "Now."

"How?" Jazz asked.

"I don't know yet."

Castle stepped forward. His Stand moved with him, flowing like smoke. "I think we're going to have a conversation, all four of us. Together. The way we're doing this, none of us are walking away unchanged."

Jarrin looked at Jazz. She looked at him. They'd been through worse things than this, but they'd also never been inside something this weird. The stolen concepts and objects from his bubbles were floating everywhere, becoming part of this world, and the alarm system's being triggered meant danger could come from anywhere at any time.

This wasn't a robbery anymore. This wasn't even a fight. They were inside a story that had its own rules, its own logic, and its own inhabitants. And the inhabitants were starting to pay attention to them.

Jazz looked at the giant again. The giant had moved closer. It was watching them now with an expression that could have been curiosity, or hunger, or both.

"I think," Jazz said, "we're going to need to be very careful."

Jarrin nodded. The pain in his ribs was still there, but it felt distant now, like something that belonged to a different version of himself. The version of himself that had gotten lost in a park that morning.

That version of himself was gone. This version was inside a book with a diamond thief, a retired detective, and a woman who could see Stands. And the book was starting to turn its pages toward them.