by Meg Cabot
“Well, so there you go,” Leisha said, looking a little disappointed there wasn’t a dead wife who could be played by Rachel McAdams in the movie version of the story. “He just needs the love of a good woman to perk him up. A woman like you…the woman he saved from a bat attack! It’s so romantic. Except for the part where you boned him on the first date. That is totally so out of character for you. Let me feel your head again. I want to see if your fever’s gotten any worse.”
Leisha was reaching out to feel Meena’s forehead again when a young man, his skin almost as dark as Leisha’s and his black hair clipped into a light fade-a creation of Leisha’s, Meena didn’t doubt, since it suited his face shape perfectly-appeared in front of Leisha’s station.
“Oh my God, Meena!” he cried with a huge smile. “And Jack Bauer the Second! I’m so glad to see you both!” He walked right over to her, lifted Jack Bauer from her lap, and began coddling him. Jack lapped his face excitedly. “Leisha told me the good news!”
Meena recognized him as Roberto, one of BAO’s stylists-in-training.
But she had no idea what he was talking about.
“Good news?” she echoed as she leaned back in her chair.
“About Insatiable,” Roberto said as he rubbed Jack Bauer’s ears. “Finally getting some vampires on it. I’m so excited! It’s about time. I just love that Gregory Bane. I’m glued to the screen every time he comes on. Him and that other guy, from those vampire movies based on those books? Oh my God, they’re so hot. I want them to make a vampire sandwich out of me.”
Meena threw an aggrieved look at Leisha.
“Oh,” she said. “Right.”
“Oh, and I took your advice, remember, last time you were in here? I told Felipe no way was I going to Morocco for our anniversary, like he wanted.” Roberto went on, giving Jack more ear rubs. “Like you told me to. I said we should go to the Bahamas instead. So we did. And the weirdest thing happened: The hotel Felipe made a reservation at, the one in Morocco? The same week we were supposed to be there, some suicide bomber blew it up! Can you believe that? It was like you knew or something! Felipe can’t get over how lucky we were not to have been there. We could have been sitting there in the lobby having our breakfast and freaking died!”
Meena gave Roberto a watery smile. All she could think of, of course, were the people who had been there having their breakfast and who had freaking died…the ones she hadn’t saved. Just like Angie Harwood.
“I’m glad you had a nice time in the Bahamas,” Meena said as Leisha mugged at her owlishly behind Roberto’s back.
“Oh, are you kidding me?” Roberto beamed. “It was the best. Listen, so who’s going to hook up with the vampire on Insatiable? Is it going to be Victoria Worthington Stone or Tabby? Because I really think you guys should let Tabby get some. She’s like the oldest teen virgin on television-”
“Roberto,” Leisha said, interrupting him. Her patience for her fellow employees had never been high, but since her pregnancy it had been ebbing lower and lower. “I’m thirsty. Why don’t you run on back and get Meena and me a couple of seltzers? And a bowl of water for Jack Bauer.”
“Oh, no problem, sweetie,” Roberto said. With obvious reluctance, he put Jack Bauer back down on Meena’s lap. “You want some fruit or something?”
“Mango?” Leisha smiled. When Leisha smiled, no one could deny her anything. It had been that way since she and Meena were kids. “Cut it into the little squares; you know, how you did last time. That was so good.”
“No problem,” Roberto said. He scurried off to fulfill Leisha’s wish.
Leisha turned her dark, thick-lashed gaze on Meena.
“Okay,” she said. “He’s gone. Sorry about that. Thanks for saving his ass with the Morocco thing, by the way. I actually would have missed him if he’d have been blown to smithereens with all those other people. And not just because he brings me freshly sliced mango. Anyway, back to Lucien. So…irresistibly drawn to the stunningly good-looking foreign guy with the deep dark secret. Not that you would know anything about having a deep dark secret. What exactly did he do to you to get you into bed with him in the first place? You’re so repressed you wouldn’t even shower in the locker room with the rest of us after gym class, remember? That’s why Angie Harwood used to call you Steenka Meena.”
Meena blushed again.
“Well, for one thing, he took me on a private after-hours tour of the Met,” she said. “That’s where I first saw him looking so sad…and I don’t know…it just…it felt right. I really like this guy, Leish.”
Leisha stared at her. “Uh-oh,” she said. “I do not like that look in your eye, Meena. You don’t just like this guy. You love him. Even worse…you want to save him. Admit it!”
“So what if I do?” Meena looked down at the top of Jack Bauer’s head and sighed. “It doesn’t matter. He’s going back to Romania.”
“When?” Leisha asked.
“I don’t know,” Meena said with a shrug. “I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to be that girl, you know?”
“You mean you didn’t want to be yourself?” Leisha asked.
“Shut up.” Then Meena brightened. “He asked me to the symphony tonight.”
Leisha made a face. “Oh, ugh! Does he even know the real you at all?”
“I love the symphony,” Meena said in protest. “I happen to be extremely cultured. I played the clarinet in sixth grade.”
“Um, badly, if I remember,” Leisha said. “You were like twentieth chair. Out of twenty-one.”
“Says the person who sat in the twenty-first chair,” Meena retorted wryly.
“So he doesn’t know about this”-Leisha tapped her head-“either?”
Meena made a face. “Why would I tell him about that? I’m not going to mess this up like I’ve messed up every other relationship with a guy I’ve ever had.”
Leisha frowned. “Meena. Seriously. If you want this to go anywhere, you’ve got to be honest with him. You can’t play games. Your ability is a huge part of who you are-”
“But not the only part,” Meena cried.
“You mean like the part where you don’t ever want to have kids?” Leisha asked pointedly.
Meena’s eyes widened. She was speechless.
“I’m not trying to be hurtful,” Leisha insisted. She wasn’t teasing anymore. “I think you’re amazing. Why else would I have picked you to be my best friend, instead of Lori Delorenzo? She had way better hair than you did. I think you’re generous-so much so that it gets you in trouble sometimes. You care about total strangers-again, to the point that you go out of your way to help them, which I think is a little above and beyond. And you’re funny and smart and pretty and sweet. But the truth is, Meena, if this guy sticks around, he’s going to find out who you really are. Like he’s going to find out you don’t really like the symphony. Maybe you should just be straight up with him from the beginning and see what happens. You might be surprised.”
“Like with David?” Meena gave a sarcastic laugh. “I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll just ease him into getting to know the real Meena Harper a little bit at a time.”
“Yeah, well, it sounds like he got to know at least a pretty good part of Meena Harper last night,” Leisha said with a sarcastic laugh of her own. Then she sobered. “Seriously, though, Meena. I know I bitch about Adam, but the reason we’ve lasted this long is because he’s the first guy I’ve ever been with who I’ve been able to just be myself around, no holds barred. If you can’t be who you really are with this guy, you might as well just keep being alone.”
Meena looked at her friend thoughtfully. Leisha had a point…a good one.
The scary part was that she didn’t know how much Meena was holding back from her… Meena was just going to have to tell her.
And judging from the size of her belly and the level of alarm bells that went off in Meena’s head every time Leisha mentioned the baby, it was going to have to be soon.
“Hey,” Leisha said, glancing at
her watch. “Shouldn’t you be at work or something?”
“Yeah,” Meena said slowly. “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about… Can I leave Jack here until after work, then come pick him up? You know how everyone loves him-”
Roberto, coming back with a bowl of water for Meena’s dog and a plate of perfectly cubed mango for Leisha, overheard this last part and gasped. “Yes, please!” he cried. “We’ll babysit the puppy!”
Meena, suppressing an urge to laugh, glanced at Leisha. “It’s just, I don’t want to go all the way back uptown to my apartment to drop him off, then have to come all the way back downtown to go to work-”
“We love the puppy!” Roberto cried. “We’ll give him a puppy pedicure!”
“You,” Leisha said, glaring at Meena as she popped a mango cube into her mouth, “owe me one.”
“I really do.” Meena agreed.
“You’re going to watch my kid for me when he’s born,” Leisha said. “For free.”
“Believe me,” Meena said under her breath as she surrendered a wiggling Jack Bauer to Roberto’s waiting arms. “I already am.”
Chapter Thirty-two
1:00 P.M. EST, Friday, April 16
15 Union Square West, Penthouse
New York, New York
This is the latest victim,” Emil said, producing a red file folder and placing it solemnly on the black-granite-topped table.
Lucien stared down at the photo.
She’d probably been pretty once…the kind of girl who would have had difficulty keeping herself from smiling when a camera was pointing in her direction.
Except…how had he known that?
But violent death had robbed her of any beauty. Now her face was a dour gray mask, dark purple shadows beneath her eyes.
And below her neck…
Lucien turned the photo over. He’d seen this kind of ravaging before.
But not in the past two centuries.
“They estimate that her time of death was around three this morning,” Emil said.
What had he been doing at three in the morning while this girl’s blood was being drained from her body?
He knew perfectly well. If he’d been doing what he’d come here to the city to do, she might have been alive right now.
“The killings are happening closer together,” Emil observed. “Whoever is behind them, he seems to be getting more desperate. Or greedy. He tried killing once and found that he liked it. He wants it all the time now. He doesn’t want to stop. Perhaps he can’t stop.”
“Perhaps,” Lucien said. He wasn’t sure what to believe anymore about these killings. “It can be addictive. Which is why it can’t be allowed. But these bite marks aren’t from a single individual.”
“It’s still going to get us all staked when the humans finally realize what’s going on,” Emil said mournfully, “and decide to eradicate us the way the Palatine wants to…the way they did your father.”
Emil shuddered, perhaps remembering how Lucien’s father had met his ignominious fate. Then he raised his suddenly guilt-ridden gaze to Lucien’s and blurted, “It’s my fault, my lord. This latest girl’s death. Mine, and mine alone. I should never have allowed my wife to invite…er…her to our home last evening.”
There was no mistaking whom Emil meant by her. The name seemed to linger in the air of the penthouse the way the scent of her humanness did…
Meena Harper. Meena Harper. Meena Harper.
Emil went on. “I realize in doing so, I was very wrong. Of course you were distracted from your duties. I would understand it if you chose to kill me, my lord, for my gross negligence.”
Lucien looked down at the smaller man, who was bowing his head, humbly waiting for his body to be lifted and hurled through one of the UV-blocked windows and into the daylight, where he would instantly fry in the sun like a potato crisp.
But Lucien could no more blame his cousin for what had happened the night before than he could explain it. He didn’t yet know why he was so convinced that the dark-eyed girl in pajamas he’d rescued that night outside St. George’s Cathedral would turn out to be the source of his spiritual and emotional redemption.
He certainly hadn’t treated her the way one would treat a redeemer. He had spent the night doing things to her that, in the light of day, he wasn’t sure she remembered…but it had to be admitted that at the time, she’d seemed to fully enjoy them.
God knew he had.
Now Meena Harper’s essence seemed to have entered his long-empty veins. They thrummed with her life force and energy, giving them a kind of electric vitality.
But that wasn’t all. He seemed to…know things.
He couldn’t explain it. It didn’t make any sense. It was almost a sort of…madness. Her madness, the exact same flickering images that he’d seen coming and going inside her head every time he’d entered it. How had he known, for instance, that the girl in the photo had difficulty keeping herself from smiling when there was a camera around?
The girl in the photo was dead. And he had never met her.
What did it mean?
He didn’t yet know.
But he knew it meant something different.
And different, after five centuries, was good.
Very, very good.
“It’s all right, Emil,” he said. He felt kindly toward his cousin. Which was ridiculous. Merely a week ago, he’d have been raging over this colossal cock-up. Was it Meena Harper who was making him feel so mellow?
Or something else?
Emil raised his head, confused.
“Then…” He looked around the room, as if expecting to see another of Lucien’s minions appear, stake in hand. “You don’t want to kill me, my lord? Or my wife?”
“I think there’s been enough death lately,” Lucien said mildly. “Why don’t we concentrate instead on finding this killer and stopping him-or them. Are you telling me that no one,” Lucien asked, getting up from the table and going to stand by the plate-glass windows, “was able to give the police any kind of description of any sort of suspect? No one at all was seen dumping the body or anywhere around it?”
Emil, looking immensely relieved to have been given a reprieve, grabbed his files, then leafed quickly through them.
“Oh, plenty,” he said. “So many possible suspects the police are still interviewing them all. Everyone thinks they saw something. Which means, of course, that no one saw anything. Because whoever did this had sense enough to wipe the memory of anyone who might have seen anything useful.”
Lucien frowned, staring out over the city. He could see the red warning lights of the airport towers across the East River in the distance.
The lights reminded him of the glow he’d seen the other night in his brother’s eyes. Dimitri had always been power hungry, forever looking for new ways to expand his business, his dominance, his control. It had nearly killed him when their father had left all his immense fortune to his eldest son…even though Lucien had been more than willing to share it.
Did Dimitri’s hunger for wealth and power extend to other things, as well? Lucien wasn’t certain he knew for sure.
Which was a sad thing for a man to have to admit about his own brother.
Lucien turned away from the window with a start. Emil had been speaking to him all this time, and he hadn’t been paying the slightest bit of attention.
“Of course,” he said. Whatever it was, Lucien was certain Emil would handle it admirably, as he did all of his endeavors on the prince’s behalf. “Emil.”
“Sire?”
“I’m going to have to cancel my previous plans for this evening.”
Emil looked uncertain. “My lord?”
Lucien ignored the pulsing in his veins-a new sensation…or at least one he hadn’t felt in half a millennium-and said, “I’d made plans to go to the symphony tonight with Ms. Harper. But in light of…this”-he indicated the file on the table-“I obviously have more pressing affairs to see to.”
&n
bsp; “Oh,” Emil said, his eyes reflecting true disappointment. “I see. Of course. I’ll take care of it. But are you certain? Surely there’s time for pleasure as well as-”
“Later.” The skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan stretched out beneath him. Somewhere down there, he knew, lurked a killer. More than one. He needed to find and stop them.
But would it be before they killed again?
“Four women have already died,” Lucien said. “I can’t afford to be so negligent again.”
But even as he said it, he knew it would be a matter of only hours before he began craving her again. He talked of the killers being addicts.
Yet who, precisely, was the true addict?
Chapter Thirty-three
2:00 P.M. EST, Friday, April 16
ABN Building
520 Madison Avenue
New York, New York
I know who you are,” Tabitha Worthington Stone said in a breathless voice. “Or I guess I should say what you are.”
“Do you?” The tall, dark-haired young man looked down at her with a gaze that smoldered, a faint smile playing on his perfectly formed lips. “What am I?”
“You’re a…a…” Taylor glanced away, biting her luscious lower lip and throwing an arm dramatically over her forehead. “No! I can’t say it. It’s just not possible!”
“Say it.” Maximillian Cabrera grabbed her by both shoulders. “Just say it!”
“Oh, hey.” Paul, one of the breakdown writers, nodded at Jon. “Here to see Meena?”
Jon tore his gaze from the incredibly passionate scene being acted out on the empty soundstage in front of him. Taylor Mackenzie still somehow managed to look sexy in leggings and a large gray cardigan, which she wore open over a belly-revealing black T-shirt.
Too bad Jon didn’t have anything as good to say about her costar-to-be, Stefan Dominic. He thought Dominic looked terrible, all black skinny jeans, greasy hair, and a two-day growth of razor stubble.