Page 61 of The Midnight Frequency

“I guess not then. Your show went viral enough to crash our servers. And that opens this whole big can of worms where Mr. Lane has about a thousand demands on us and expectations about how we are going to capitalize on this situation. And would it kill you to have a phone?”

“Let’s walk this back,” he said. He held out a hand. “The show went viral. That is a good thing, correct?”

“Correct.”

He shook his head at that. “I remember when things being ‘viral’ meant significantly less enthusiasm.”

“Well, now it means that I have five times the work to do in the same exact amount of time.”

“What is it Mr. Lane is asking you to do?”

“Work on a merch line.”

“People want to buy merchandise for my show?”

“Well, they mostly want to buy stuff about their SilMad ship.”

“Ah, so this comes back to Madison, does it?”

I couldn’t tell if he was frustrated or intrigued. Maybe both.

“Here. You have to see for yourself,” I told him. I found the most viral of the videos and held out my phone to him.

“Hm.” That was his only response. So I went to the next video. Then the next. “I see what they’ve done here. A little fantasy to escape into, I suppose. There’s only one problem: my show isn’t about Madison.”

Oh, it was now. Whether he liked that or not.

“Mr. Lane might have something to say about that. Which reminds me, you need to be here at like five minutes after sundown tomorrow.”

“Why is that?”

“Mr. Lane needs to meet with us.”

Two meetings with him in one week. I was overjoyed.

“To discuss the new success.”

“And merch and social media and… who knows what else. I’m sure he’ll have a dozen new ideas by tomorrow. I have Tess talking to her designer about some merch. But you don’t have a logo for your show. I think we should brainstorm that and get it going too.”

“I’ve thought about that on occasion. I have an idea I’d like to use.”

“I’m all ea—I’m listening.”

“I feel like there’s a story in that almost slip,” Silas said. “But I sense you are on the edge, so I will ask another time. My idea is a moon with a frequency symbol and a vintage desk mic. Then curving around the moon on the top and bottom would be the name of the show.”

“That… that might be perfect, actually. I will ask a designer to mock it up and hopefully have it to you before you leave in the morning.”

“It’s good to get one thing almost settled. Do you need anything else from me?”

“Not right now. But I will let you know.”

“I’m sure you will,” he agreed. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a show to do.”

A show I would have to find time to call into, on top of everything else. Maybe I could call in at the very end of the show. That would give the listeners what they were looking for but allow me to focus on my job.

Though, in a twisted kind of way, calling in and pretending to be Madison had somehow become a part of my job.

Even if I was the only person who would ever know that.