She's alive and well! ~ Chapter 42
Hi alien lovers,
I'm alive! And well!
Well, I'm currently fighting a little cold from my bed, but all is good under the grey sky of Vancouver.
Here's a recent proof of life from one of my trips to Montreal:
I crashed out in mid-November after a work trip to Montreal. I got stranded in Calgary overnight and struggled for weeks to finish school assignments... buuuuut, I survived.
The semester is DONE! I got some good and deeply (DEEPLY) needed time off spent gaming, reading, and writing! Perilous is moving forward, and so are the other fun projects I've been working on.
2025 kicked my timeline's ass, but I'm working hard so 2026 will see my projects come to life. This year, we'll be leaning into radical rest, queer creativity with a sprinkle of revolution, and lots of love on and off the page.
farewells for now xx
Chapter 42 is all about the special and lovely friendship Maple shares with Brooklyn, who will be the protagonist of the next novel in the series. This chapter was also a great way for me to tie up some loose ends and get us up to speed for the final chapters. Denouement, here we come...
Previously in Perilous Love Stars (Chapter 41)
Chapter 42
Maple had let Daphne convince her to drink an Irish coffee as she made the second phone call of her day. She was still reeling from the exchange with her crew and took a long sip of the hot liquid, letting the liquor burn her throat, reminding her she was still alive and had a lot of work to do. She was being given a second chance, and she wouldn’t fuck it up.
She’d isolated herself in the bedroom to talk to Brooklyn. Salvatore had left the submarine to swim to the surface and check the premises, while Daphne kept a drunken eye on him via the ship’s surveillance system. Salvatore didn't need a boat to leave the secret lab, as Maple had just discovered that he could swim and breathe underwater for as long as necessary. The extent of his alien powers would never cease to amaze her.
Brooklyn picked up on the third ring. “Brooklyn Du Brie speaking.”
“Brooke, hi, it’s me—”
“Maple!” she exclaimed, relief piercing through her high-pitched voice. “You’re alive!”
“Barely,” Maple mumbled. “You sound surprised?”
“You’re not answering your phone. Your moms keep dropping by the bakery and the house to check if I've heard anything from you. People are worried. You’re national news, too! You and Salvatore are all over socials! CBC talked about you on five different segments today! Mrs. Parviere even asked about you.”
After the events of the past few days, Maple wasn’t sure much would surprise her anymore, but she had been wrong. Her former fierce nemesis and next-door neighbour checking on her wasn’t on her bingo card—former because it was, in part, thanks to Mrs. Parviere that Maple had convinced Daphne. Maple and Mrs. Parviere would never be friends, but maybe this would usher in a new era in their fraught relationship.
“Where are you?” Brooklyn asked.
“It’s complicated, I—”
“What do you need?”
Maple blinked. “What?”
“What do you need?” Brooklyn repeated, metal pots clanging in the background. “I’m baking right now, but as soon as my apricot-truffle croissants are done, I can grab my laptop and help.”
“I called to apologize, Brooke.” Maple had also hoped Brooklyn would help them with finding Charles’ research, but apologies had to come first. “I just got off a call with the crew, and I know I owe you an apology—”
“It’s okay, Maple. I get it.”
“You do?”
She heard hands rubbing together. “Yes, you lied to everyone, including me—your best friend and roommate—and had me find Daphne’s address under pretenses because what I only assume to be one of your many lies had gotten out of hand. I can guess the rest pretty easily. You went to find Daphne’s place, with the help of a charming superstar, hoping you could convince the recluse actress to come back to the show. Shenanigans and Peyter’s usual harassing tendencies got in the way, busting your bubbles of lies, which is why you turned your phone off and went M.I.A. Now you’re in an undisclosed location formulating a plan of some sort, because there’s no way you’re going to let Not-A-Single-Creative-Fibre-In-His-Being Ermett ruin the last hurrah of your show—am I correct?”
Maple took another sip of her drink, giving herself some time to think about her response. Her first instinct, the one that had guided her for so long, was still to hide the truth from the people she loved in a misguided attempt to protect them from her mess. It would take her some time to unlearn years of falsehoods.
“You’re correct,” she said after a beat.
A timer rang on the other end of the call. There was a pause as Maple assumed Brooklyn was tending to her croissants.
“Wonderful!” Brooklyn said cheerfully. “Now that’s out of the way—”
“I didn’t apologize! You haven’t let me.”
“Maple!” Brooklyn’s voice was intransigent. “You don’t need to apologize to me, I’m your best friend. I get it. Sometimes people lie because they think they have to. You were backed into a corner. I’m mad that I didn’t trust myself and my instincts when I knew you were hiding something—but that’s something I can speak to Yonah about.”
“You’re seeing your therapist again?”
Among the three trans women living under the same roof, Brooklyn was definitely the most balanced. Maple was just starting to emerge from her Messy Era slowly, and Storm… well, Storm Saint-Georges was the emotionally charged person that she was.
“Yes, I had some things to work through,” Brooklyn said vaguely. “Maybe you should give her a call, too. You could use a good therapist.”
Maple sighed because her friend was right. She could have used a Yonah before, and she would need one after all of this. It was unfortunate that there was only one therapist in all of Sobriquet Lake, and a little awkward that she was the mother of Fitzgerald Garfunkel, a chaotic homosexual Maple had gone to high school with. But if she was sincere about her apology tour, then Maple had to commit to real change. Maybe she could give Yonah a call when most of this current mess was under control.
“Brooklyn, I know you say I don’t need to apologize to you, but I do. I’m so sorry,” Maple said before her best friend could stop her. “Now that it’s out of the way, you are right—I did call to ask for something."
Another timer went off in Brooklyn’s kitchen. “I knew it!” She clapped her hands triumphantly. “I’m good at this.”
“Yes, you’re great at seeing through my bullshit—”
“No, I meant my croissants look delicious. But, also, yes, I’m a skilled human-bullshit detector. So, tell me, what do you need?”
After calling the crew, Maple and Salvatore had discussed and agreed to trust Brooklyn with finding Charles’ research. There wasn’t much they could do from the confines of the submarine, and without certainty about how long they’d have to hide there, and with Salvatore’s symptoms showing up at random, time was of the essence. The secret alien superstar had been reticent to let anyone else in on his secret. Still, Maple had vouched for her best friend , who also happened to be an ex-private investigator turned skilled baker. If someone could figure out where the secret research that could save Salvatore’s life was, it was Brooklyn Du Brie.
Maple caught her friend up on what they knew so far—the strange alien disease, the divide, the need for secrecy, and the urgency behind finding a cure. Brooklyn had a million questions that Maple promised to answer when she wasn’t calling her from a secret submarine lab. She also explained to her best friend the lead they were pursuing, thanks to the clue left by Charles and how Salvatore and she believed the string of numbers would reveal the next step in finding the research.
“Let me check that theory out,” Brooklyn said after she noted the numbers down. “If it pans out, I’ll follow the next lead—”
“You don’t have to do that. Just let me know if we’re right about the numbers. I know you’re busy, I don’t want to impose more than necessary.”
Brooklyn let a long sigh out. “Well, I’m not that busy.” She paused, and Maple heard the sound of someone biting into a crisp croissant. “I didn’t get into the competition,” Brooklyn spoke with a mouthful.
Maple’s heart sank for a friend. She’d known how important that competition was for her. Their intense work ethic and commitment to their professional goals had been one of the many common traits Maple, Storm, and Brooklyn had discovered in each other the first night they’d met.
“Brooke, that sucks. I’m sorry. I know how much this contest meant to you.”
Brooklyn sniffed. She was crying, and Maple wished she could comfort her with more than platitudes. “It’s fine. I guess I wasn’t meant to be British Columbia’s Most Influential Young Baker.”
“Did they say why?” Maple had a hard time understanding how a talented baker like her best friend could get rejected three times in a row. Her pastries and delicacies were famous all over Sobriquet Lake.
“Same as the last two times. The jury deemed my recipes too ‘adventurous’ for their taste. They were looking for more ‘mainstream flavours.’”
Maple recalled a few rejection letters from agents after querying An Alien 2 Die 4 before she had decided to explore self-publishing. All of them had used different words to say the same thing—her stories filled with smutty aliens and horny humans were too avant-garde for the mainstream market. “Fuck mainstream,” she said, the whiskey warming her blood and temper. “I fucking love your baking, and so does everyone else in town.”
Brooklyn sighed. “Well, the jury didn’t appreciate my choco-mango polenta take on the apple pie.”
“Fuck the jury, Brooke!” Maple raised her fist in the air, enraged on behalf of her friend. “I know you really wanted to get in—but trust me when I tell you, you don’t need a competition to tell how talented you are.”
“Well, their rejection had some positive effect on me, actually. I got so depressed and so bored that I did some investigating for you.”
Maple swallowed her questions about Brooklyn’s past, her investigative skills, and how quickly the former private eye was able to shift gears. She had never shared any details of her former life with Maple or Storm. Some boundaries didn’t need to be spoken to be respected.
“What investigating?” Maple inquired instead.
“I dug into the incidents on the set of Betteraves & Betrayals,” Brooklyn answered, as if that was a normal thing to do after being rejected from your dream competition. “I knew there was more to it than what the news had reported, and I was right. Of course, now that you told me about Salvatore’s alienhood, I realize I completely missed that part, but that explains a few things.”
“What things?”
“What I saw on the missing surveillance footage for one. When I saw Salvatore and the floating light, I thought of another AI—”
“How do you know about the missing footage? And where did you get it?”
Amusement made its way into Brooklyn’s tone. “I talked to your crew. They were all going crazy with no news from you or anyone else from production. They spilled a lot. You should definitely PR train them.”
Maple groaned under her breath because she could only imagine what cesspools of gossip the crew could become if left unattended. “What did you learn?”
“Maurice is the one who stole the footage from your desk,” Brooklyn said. “He confessed almost immediately. He cried, which was both endearing and a bit too intense for an 8 am coffee chat. Poor Maurice was afraid he’d be accused of hurting you. He only took the surveillance footage to figure out who destroyed his precious light.”
Maple thought about the video and what it showed. “He must think Salvatore did it then.”
“He did, at first. It took a lot of reasoning with Maurice to convince him that Salvatore would not benefit from sabotaging the show. I told him it was an AI deep fake, which somehow sounded more likely to me at that time than Salvatore being an actual alien, which really highlights my own prejudice regarding who is and isn’t an alien.”
Maple nodded to herself, remembering the day Salvatore had told her about his alienhood. It seemed so far away. Now, she was looking through one of the portholes that showed the bottom of the lake, and thinking about him. He was swimming somewhere in these waters, risking his life to ensure they were safe.
“The lab results for the cup came back, by the way,” Brooklyn continued, “Impressive that you remembered to take care of it while your show was being shut down and after you had lied to the entire world about Daphne. However, you obviously didn’t break the cup as you told me, which Cruz confirmed when I asked him.”
Maple felt herself blush at another one of her lies being busted. She should have been honest with Brooklyn in the kitchen that day when she had asked about the broken cup in the ziploc bag. “Someone poisoned the cup, right?”
“Yes, with a chemical agent called XCX, which is commonly used as a medicine to help people with alien DNA fall asleep. It’s effective on aliens and can be deadly for humans if taken in high doses. But the agent was probably so powerful on Cruz’s body that it shut down before he could finish the beverage, thus saving his own life.”
Maple shook her head, trying to make sense of the new information. “Someone slipped an alien soporific in Cruz’s mug? Why? To kill him?”
“Unlikely. If you wanted to kill a human with XCX, you’d inject it directly into the bloodstream. The agent is derived from extraterrestrial matter, which makes XCX very rare and difficult to obtain. Whoever did this was specifically targeting an alien.”
“The Saboteur,” Maple concluded. “They stole the wig, spiked Cruz’s mug thinking he was an alien… and messed with the light?” She phrased the last part as a question to get confirmation from her friend.
Brooklyn took another bite of her croissant and chewed a little before replying, “No. I believe someone else messed with the light. It’s a different modus operandi. The Saboteur is focusing on non-violent actions. The light and the billboard were meant to harm you.”
Maple’s breath quickened. Salvatore had been right. Someone was trying to kill her. “You could have led with that,” she reacted more sharply than she wanted to.
“I thought it might be a bit abrupt to start the conversation with ‘Hi bestie, I know the entire country is obsessed over your supposed downfall while you’re on the run with a sexy superstar, but also, good news, someone wants to kill you!’”
Brooklyn’s playful tone got a smile out of Maple. “In general, I like to know when someone is actively trying to murder me.”
Something resembling a dry chuckle echoed from Brooklyn. “Noted. We’re learning so much about each other in times of crisis, aren’t we?”
Maple dropped on the bed, face down. She inhaled the sheets, catching Salvatore’s familiar and comforting scent. “So, to summarize, once I find a way out of the current mess I am in and come back to Sobriquet Lake, I have a Saboteur and a Killer to look forward to. Fantastic.” She exhaled deeply, refraining from screaming into the mattress. She was really starting to get over people wanting to kill her. “Any idea who they might be?
“Well, after reviewing all the surveillance footage from the days the incidents occurred–”
“How did you get access to it?”
“I found out your head of security is cheating on her wife with the script supervisor. She gave me full access when I threatened to reveal her affair, a very classic blackmail situation. I told you, I got very bored after the contest’s rejection.” The detached way Brooklyn spoke about blackmail reminded Maple how little she knew of her friend’s past and what she was truly capable of. “From what I could see from the footage, which is nothing, it’s clear that both culprits—the Saboteur and the wannabe Killer—are very familiar with the set and its security system. They made sure to leave no trace, always moving from one blind spot to another.”
Maple shook her head, confused. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that both the person sabotaging the show and the person trying to kill you are people working on your crew, Maple. Whoever they are, you know them, and they know you. Until we figure it out, everyone who works on Betteraves & Betrayals is a suspect.”
to be continued...
Lying Doll 🩷 Sexy Alien in Perilous Love Stars (Chapter 1).
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