So I’m sick again, which is awesome. Not sure what I’ve got, except that it comes with aching muscles and joints, a fever and all the fun swimmy vertigo that comes with fevers, and a sore throat and swollen tonsils. Needless to say, not a lot of writing got done this week. I tried. I really did. One day, I swear I wrote for eight hours straight and was actually feeling pretty good about myself until I scrolled back to get a word count and realized I had not even written one entire page. Most of a page, but not quite. Eight hours. I don’t…even know how that can happen. Also, when I tried to read the not-quite-a-full-page I had written the next day, I discovered it was gibberish. Not just a rough draft, or even a bad rough draft, but complete word salad. Some of my character’s names were in there and they did things like talk and move around, but it was…it was almost like botnik had tried to write a page for me. I’ll be honest with ya’ll, I’m not 100% sure I’m writing this legibly right now. I’m taking it on faith that the chapter I’m uploading tonight is in readable condition, since I wrote and edited it before I got sick. I tried to go over it and make sure, but I couldn’t make anything make enough sense long enough to be sure. You’ll have to let me know how I did. In the meantime, I think I’ll just drag myself to bed and sleep until thorns cover the house and the local fairies start sending random princes in to sexually harass me.

But you know the drill by now! You can find the new chapter of Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones over at fanfiction.net or archiveofourown.org! Hope you’re all healthy and happy out there, and to all my American friends, hope you had a fun and safe Fourth of July!

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After all the suck that had already been packed into the day, Ana finally got a little bit of the good kind of luck. On only her third call, she found someone who had what she needed and would meet with her at eight o’clock on a Saturday night in the Walmart parking lot in Hurricane. He sounded understandably wary about the whole arrangement, although the prospect of cash in hand softened him up some, especially since she didn’t try to dicker him down on the price, and she bluntly told him she’d meet him in front of the police station if he’d rather have a big cash exchange there. He agreed that probably wouldn’t be smart and said he’d see her soon.

Eight o’clock. Ana checked her watch. Plenty of time.

She had been making her calls while walking up Faust’s long driveway, so it wasn’t more than fifteen minutes after arranging the meeting that she arrived at the glass house. More good luck: no cars parked out front, no lights in any of the hundred windows. Ana let herself in and went immediately to the office in the back wing, opening the secret door and then the safe. She took a couple bank-wrapped bundles of hundred-dollar bills and, after a moment wrestling with her bruised conscience, a couple more. Depending on how tonight went, she could either use it to pay Rider back for bail and a lawyer, or apply it to the renovations at Freddy’s. She wasn’t stealing it for herself, so it wasn’t really stealing, except in the legal sense of the word.

Ana closed the safe, closed the secret panel, headed for the door, and was about halfway there when the light snapped on in the hall outside.

For one split-second frozen perfectly in time, Ana looked through the wide-open doorway and down the long hall to Chad at the other end, who was standing with one hand still on the light switch as he faced away into another room, impatiently saying, “It’s back here. Come on, man, this isn’t a sightseeing tour!”

Before he’d finished speaking, Ana had bolted into the shadows, buying herself a few more seconds. Her options were brutally few. If she opened the window, she’d set the alarm off. She had to hide, here, in Faust’s minimalist office. No closet, no cabinet, no handy human-sized trunk. Not even curtains. It was either dive under the desk or behind the door and Chad was already coming, so she picked one, leaping into the little space behind the door right before it swung open, trapping her behind it. All he had to do was shut the door behind him and turn around…but he didn’t.

She stood silent, barely breathing, staring into the paneled inset of the heavy door as Chad turned on the lights and went over to the desk. Someone else was with him.