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The answer landed in Tempest’s mind immediately, without any doubts or arguments. No residue, just the name, sitting there waiting to be written down. She and Dan both scribbled furiously and held up their cards.

Across the stage she heard Dan Wilder say it at the same moment she did.

“Arnold Schoenberg.”

The audience went very still for a moment. Then it buzzed. Heads were turning. She heard a ripple of murmured conversation. Tom Horner raised an appreciative eyebrow from the podium. Two competitors, on opposite sides of the room, answering simultaneously in the final round was good theater. She kept her eyes on her answer card and did not look at Dan Wilder.

Question ten was harder.

“Name the distinctive smell produced by the degradation of paper over time, caused by the breakdown of lignin and cellulose, and… identify at least one of the chemical compounds responsible.”

Tempest didn’t know this one from a book, or a voice in her head, she had not absorbed it from someone else’s opinion, along with the facts. She knew it from experience. From years of handling books in all conditions, from the smell of old libraries and charity shop backrooms and the boxes dropped off at the intake desk at Owl’s. The smell of aged paper was as familiar to her as her own name.

She wrote down the answer: The smell is known as bibliosmia, one of the most distinctive chemical compounds of which is vanillin.

Dan Wilder was still writing when the buzzer went off. He shook his head and didn’t even bother reading his answer. She heard the hush that usually followed a misstep, the held breath of a crowd doing the math and hanging on to hope.

But Dan didn’t show any signs of frustration with himself. She glanced at him twice between questions and he looked, if anything, energized by the competition. His eyes were even brighter than before. He met her gaze, raised his brows, and leaned into the next question.

Tom Horner cleared his throat with the air of a man who had been saving this one.

“Johannes Gutenberg is credited with inventing the movable type printing press in Europe. To the closest decade, give the year most commonly cited by historians for this invention.”

Two voices arrived in Tempest’s mind at the same moment. One insisted on 1436, steady and certain. The other was equally certain of 1440. She sat with both of them for half a second too long, trying to reconcile the difference, and in that half second she heard the buzzer calling time.

Dan Wilder read out his answer confidently: “1440.”

She knew he was right the moment she heard it. The correct answer seemed obvious now, the way it always did after the pressure lifted. When it was already too late. Even though her cheeks were flaming she fought to keep her expression completely neutral while the scoreboard updated in Dan’s favor.

He caught her eye across the room. She looked away first.

Tom Horner tipped his face toward the microphone, milking the moment with an expression of pure delight. “In the early 1500s, in the city of Strasbourg, a woman named Frau Troffea began dancing alone in the street. Within a month, as many as four hundred people had joined her, unable to stop. Physicians of the time, stumped for an explanation, recommended more dancing as a cure. Name this documented historical phenomenon.”

Question twelve was all hers.

She’d known it was going to be the Dancing Plague of 1518 before he even finished the first sentence. She waited long enough to be sure she’d heard the question correctly. Then she wrote the answer on her card.

Tom Horner repeated the question, along with her answer, and the audience applauded. Perhaps less enthusiastically than they had for Dan when he walked onstage, but warmly enough. She didn’t mind one bit.

Dan tore his card in half without reading what he’d guessed at. Someone in the audience gasped. Tempest heard a few low boos.

She kept her eyes on the scoreboard and tried hard not to look at Dan Wilder at all, which was made considerably more difficult by the fact that she could feel him staring at her. And then a surprised murmur ran through the crowd. Tempest heard the loud whisper of one viewer asking with disbelief, “So that’s it? Really? That woman just beat him?”

She sat still at her table while the scoreboard updated for the final time. The crowd applauded again, then began to break apart, now that the show was over.

She had been in enough of these now to know what came next. The perfunctory handshake, the envelope, occasionally an announcement or message from Lucky Duck’s corporate sponsors. She smiled appropriately and squeezed Tom’s hand back as he pumped hers.

She couldn’t believe this was happening. Tonight’s win was her most significant prize yet. Seven thousand dollars. To Tempest, who’d hardly had a hundred dollars to her name a month ago, this felt like a small fortune.

Dan Wilder was observing her from the wings. He watched her collecting the envelope with an expression she couldn’t quite read. Not disappointment, not anger. Not jealousy and not shock. If she had to call it, she’d say he looked curious. Like there was something he needed to figure out. And she was that something.

He met her eye again and tipped an imaginary hat. The intensity of his gaze made her heart take off running.

She looked away first, again.

People were starting to move towards her, all of them wanting to congratulate her, or have a word. Dan was watching that too. Tempest felt claustrophobic. She didn’t want to stick around anymore. Not even to ask to sign the book, which she couldn’t ask him to do now. Not after she’d shown up out of the blue and beaten him at his own game like that.

She gathered up her tote and prepared to go.