by Meg Cabot
“Got it?” he asked as he felt her slim fingers close around what was at the bottom of his pocket.
“Got it,” Meena said, pulling out a small crystal vial and studying it curiously. “What is it?”
“Holy water. I want you to throw it in his face now.”
The vampire hissed with even more venom upon hearing this and clawed at Alaric’s arm.
Meena looked from the vial to the vampire, her expression horrified.
“I can’t do that,” she said, shocked.
“Yes, you can, Meena,” Alaric said. “He’s not a man anymore. He’s a monster. Look at him. And he just tried to shoot you.”
“It’s not that,” Meena said.
“I don’t want to upset everyone in this nice restaurant by cutting his head off,” Alaric said. It was true. Everyone at the tables around them had lain down their Sticky Wings and was staring, clearly confused by what was going on. “But I need to subdue him somehow. So please do as I ask and throw some holy water in his face. It’s really all right. He’s already dead. So you won’t be hurting him.”
“No,” Meena said, shaking her head. “I mean, I really can’t do that. That’s Stefan Dominic, the new star of Insatiable. I knew I’d seen him before somewhere. It was that picture Yalena showed me on her cell phone. He’s Gerald.”
“Great,” Alaric said, looking heavenward.
This was, without a doubt, the worst assignment he’d ever had.
Chapter Forty-six
1:00 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17
910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11A
New York, New York
Emil wasn’t certain how to console his weeping wife. He had never seen Mary Lou quite this upset.
“It’s probably only for a little while, darling,” he said as she threw armfuls of designer clothing, most of it still on the hanger, into her hard-sided Louis Vuitton suitcases. Because it was the maid’s day off, there was no one to pack for her.
“I love this apartment,” she sobbed. “I don’t want to go. And I’m going to miss all the sample sales!”
“We’ll be back in no time,” Emil said.
In no way did he believe this was true. But he said it to comfort her, since she was crying so violently.
“And there’ll be lots of shopping in Tokyo,” he pointed out.
“T-Tokyo!” Mary Lou echoed miserably. “What’s there for me in Tokyo? Nothing!”
Exactly, Emil thought to himself. No one for you to be hosting dinner parties for or sending e-mails to.
But he didn’t dare say any of this out loud.
“You’ll love it,” he said instead. “And I really don’t think you need to bring so many dresses. We can pick up whatever you need when we get there.” He added, a little hesitantly, since he didn’t want to upset her further, “Do hurry, darling. I saw the vampire hunter leaving on the elevator with the Harper girl a little while ago. They’ll be back shortly, I’m sure. I don’t think we have much time.”
“Meena!” Mary Lou snarled the name like it was a curse word. “After all I did for her! For her to be the one to turn on us!”
Emil looked furtively at his watch.
“I don’t think she had much of a choice,” he said. “And you were the one who set her up with the prince. I’m not sure what you thought would happen. It’s never good to mix our kind with the humans.”
Mary Lou had been trying to close her suitcase lid. It wouldn’t shut. Emil wasn’t sure if it was this fact or his remark that caused his wife to lose what was left of her patience and scream, “I was human when you met me! Remember? Are you saying we don’t mix?”
“Not at all, darling,” Emil said. He reached out, flipped back the suitcase lid, and began tucking in all the loose sleeves and fur cuffs that had been sticking out. “I’m just saying, pleased as the prince is with Miss Harper-and he seems to like her very much-it stands to reason that with all the attention the dead girls have been getting in the media, the Palatine would come sniffing around. And of course, that means they’d figure out where we are. And now…well.”
Mary Lou, sniffling, slumped down onto the bed next to the suitcase, her normally perfect blond hair limp. Her eye makeup was smeared as well.
“If he’s going to kill us, why doesn’t he just come already, then?” she demanded. “I’d rather be staked than have to leave Manhattan!”
Emil thought this was a particularly dramatic sentiment but didn’t say anything, since his wife was already so overwrought with emotion. He himself was feeling somewhat at loose ends from his very early morning encounter with the prince, who’d appeared unexpectedly on his terrace, then come strolling into his living room from the balcony doors.
“My lord!” Emil had cried. “Is everything all right?”
“No,” Lucien said. His shirt had been unbuttoned to the waist, showing off his lean physique. Emil wished he’d been taken when he was in such prime condition and not, as had been the case, when he’d been so close to middle age. “There’s a Palatine vampire hunter next door in Miss Harper’s apartment.”
Emil nearly dropped the glass of human blood he’d been drinking for breakfast.
“What?”
“Yes,” the prince had replied grimly. “I would suggest you and Mary Lou find alternate lodgings immediately.”
Emil hadn’t been sure he’d heard the prince correctly.
“Sire? Wouldn’t it…shouldn’t we…” Emil was babbling, but honestly, what else was a man supposed to do in the face of such a pronouncement? “I mean, shouldn’t we just…kill him?”
“I’m afraid we can’t,” Lucien said, sinking into one of Mary Lou’s favorite overstuffed living room chairs. “Meena’s psychic, you know.”
This statement had completely perplexed Emil. “What?” he’d asked again. Rather stupidly, he supposed. A century younger than the prince-fortunately for him, from what he’d heard concerning the things Lucien had gone through at the hands of his newly turned father-he’d never quite gotten used to the fact that he was related to royalty and was never certain how to act around him.
“She can tell how everyone is going to die,” Lucien explained. “Humans, anyway. And so can I, when I’ve drunk from her.”
He didn’t look very happy about it.
Suddenly, Emil understood what the prince had been doing all night.
How extraordinary. He’d never heard of a psychic before, not a real one. Not one who could give consistent predictions.
And for Lucien to be able to make predictions now too…of course it would be better if he could predict something more interesting than when a human was going to die…such as the score in sporting events.
The prince went on. “In any event, Meena’s had a vision that I’m going to kill her brother and the slayer. Obviously, we can’t have that.”
Emil heard this last part with astonishment.
The prince didn’t want to kill a member of the Palatine Guard who was threatening their well-being?
Emil understood that Lucien wanted to do things differently than his father had when he’d been the lord of darkness.
And it generally made good business sense, from a publicity standpoint, not to go around killing people for food-especially women and children-something Lord Dracula had seemed never to understand.
But when a papal society was intent on wiping out your entire species, it just didn’t seem like a good idea to let them.
But Emil knew better than to argue with the prince. He valued his neck too much.
“Certainly, my lord,” he said.
“But I can’t have you and Mary Lou being put into danger, either.” Lucien went on. “So you’ll both need to pack up and go. I wouldn’t suggest going to Sighi oara. I think they’re probably onto all that by now.”
Emil listened to all of this with growing horror. They were onto Sighi oara? He’d been living there under the very noses of the Palatine for centuries.
And now, because the prince had fallen for the gi
rl next door-who was some kind of psychic freak-he had to abandon it forever? Instead of staying and fighting?
“All right, my lord,” was all Emil said, however.
Because that was all he ever said.
But it wasn’t what he wanted to say.
“And what about your brother?” he’d asked.
“What about my brother?” Lucien’s tone had been sharp.
Perhaps, Emil had thought, he’d gone too far.
But Dimitri, surely, would want to stay and fight.
And this was going to cause a problem.
“Well…” Emil knew he was going to have to choose his next words with care. “I just thought that you might want to warn your brother that the Palatine is in town, so that he and your nephew can make their escape, as well.”
“And I shall say something to my brother,” the prince said. “When the time is right.”
Emil thought he had seen which way the wind was blowing with that remark.
And that was when he decided that he had best do as the prince said and get Mary Lou out of town as soon as possible.
And not just because there was a Palatine guard staying next door, or because that Palatine guard was about to be used as a pawn in the ongoing vampire war between two brothers…
But because there was a glint in the prince’s eye that Emil had never seen there before.
And Emil had a pretty good idea what-or, more accurately, who-had put that glint there.
He would never look at Meena Harper in the same way again. If he ever saw her again, that is.
Now he turned to his wife, who was piling shoes into another suitcase, and said, “Darling. Enough. They have shoes in Tokyo.”
Mary Lou looked at him with streaming eyes. “But I’ve had some of these for over forty years! And you know they’re in style again now.”
“We’ll be back for them, darling,” he said, laying a gentle hand on her arm.
“Are you sure?” she asked with a sniffle.
Emil thought back to the steadfast expression he’d seen on the prince’s face. He didn’t know what Lucien had planned.
But he was certain the prince had a plan of some kind.
And it wasn’t going to be pretty, for anyone who happened to be around, when that plan got under way.
“I’m quite sure,” he said to his wife. “We have to go. I think there’s a battle brewing.”
“You said that already,” Mary Lou said, sniffling. “The Palatine…”
“No,” Emil said. “Between the prince and his brother.”
“Well, of course there is,” Mary Lou said bitterly. “They’ve hated each other for centuries. That’s why I thought if the prince met a nice girl, he might mellow out a little. And I thought Meena would be perfect for him, because of that thing she does.”
Emil stared at her. “What thing is that, dear?” he asked.
She couldn’t, he told himself, know. How could she? He hadn’t known until the prince had told him himself, that morning. And he knew everything that went on in their world. Didn’t he?
“You know.” Mary Lou waved a hand impatiently over her head. “She predicts how people are going to die. I thought the prince might like it. It makes her different, you know, than other girls.”
“You knew about this?” Emil asked with a feeling of growing horror. “You knew Meena Harper could do this when you asked her to dinner at our home…with the prince?”
“Of course I did.” Mary Lou stared at him like he was an idiot. “I ride the elevator with her nearly every day. You think I don’t know what’s going on in that head of hers? Well, I’ll admit…it’s a little confusing in there. But that brother of hers, he’s an open book. I just put two and two together. I’ll admit, I was always a little tempted to take a bite myself, just to see what it would be like. But you always said not to eat where we live. But when I found out the prince was coming, I thought, Wouldn’t it be nice if they got together? A girl who can tell when everyone is going to die, and your cousin, the prince of darkness, with everything he can do. Together…well, talk about a power couple! And then if he turned her…well, think about the possibilities!”
“Mary Lou,” Emil said. He felt as if his entrails had turned to stone. “You haven’t told anyone, have you? About Meena and her ability. And about her and the prince getting together. Tell me you haven’t told anyone.”
“Well, no,” Mary Lou said, her eyelids fluttering. “I mean, no one who matters. Just Linda. And Faith. Well, and Carol, from your office. And Ashley. Oh, and Becca, of course.”
“Oh, God,” Emil said with a groan.
Then he reached for his cell phone.
Chapter Forty-seven
7:00 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17
Shrine of St. Clare
154 Sullivan Street
New York, New York
Meena sat at the gleaming kitchen table across from Yalena, watching her as she lifted the mug of steaming cocoa to her lips with fingers that still shook hours after her rescue. Meena wasn’t sure Yalena would ever stop shaking after everything she had been through.
“More hot milk for your cocoa, dear?” Sister Gertrude asked her, hovering nearby with a pitcher.
Yalena didn’t respond. It wasn’t clear if she didn’t understand what the nun was saying or if she was deaf from all the blows she’d received at the hands of her captors.
Or maybe she was just in shock from everything that had happened.
Meena didn’t blame her. She was still in a little bit of shock from the way Alaric had leapt across all those tables, single-handedly subdued Stefan, then assured all the stunned lunch patrons at Shenanigans that Stefan was a meth head and that Alaric was an undercover cop who was putting him under arrest.
Meena was pretty sure if she’d been sitting there, eating Sticky Wings at Shenanigans, she’d never have believed it.
But everyone-even the waitstaff and manager, who’d offered all the customers free Onion Bricks for their inconvenience-seemed fine with it.
It wasn’t until they’d started down Shenanigans’ back staircase to grab a cab to St. Clare’s-where, Alaric had insisted, they’d get help for Yalena and “the rest of this straightened out”-that they’d discovered two more “vamps” (as Alaric called them) waiting in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs.
They’d fled upon seeing Alaric holding Stefan at sword-point, tearing through the restaurant’s kitchens and out a back door to a Town Car waiting in a darkened alley. The car, its windows tinted almost black, took off with a squeal of brakes…or so Jon, who’d chased after the vampires, reported. Apparently they’d been expecting only Meena, Yalena, and of course Stefan…not Meena, Yalena, Stefan, Meena’s brother, and a hulking demon hunter from the Palatine Guard.
First Meena’s boyfriend. Then her next-door neighbors. Now one of the actors on the show on which she worked.
Was everyone she knew going to turn out to be a vampire?
Meena had known Stefan Dominic looked familiar. She just hadn’t been able to place him back at the studio. But why had Stefan-who’d turned out to be Gerald, of all people-tried to kidnap her?
Alaric was in another part of St. Clare’s, applying holy water to different parts of Stefan Dominic’s body, trying to discover the answer to that very question.
From where she sat, in the rectory kitchen, Meena could barely hear the vampire’s screams.
“There you go,” Sister Gertrude said soothingly, pouring more milk into Yalena’s mug, even though the girl hadn’t indicated she wanted more. Then the nun bent down to straighten the downy comforter she’d draped around Yalena’s shoulders. “Nice and hot. Good for the body. Good for the soul.”
Yalena didn’t know how lucky she was to still have a soul.
Or maybe she did. Meena wasn’t sure what the girl knew.
One thing Meena knew:
The way Alaric had saved Meena-and Yalena-at Shenanigans had softened her attitude toward him. There was something to
be said for someone who would leap over several restaurant tables to wrap his bare hand around the throat of a vampire who was trying to kidnap you.
“Does this happen often?” she asked Abraham Holtzman, pointing in the direction from which the faint sounds of Stefan Dominic’s screams could be heard. Abraham had introduced himself to Meena and Jon as Alaric Wulf’s boss. He was currently pacing nervously up and down the kitchen, occasionally bumping into Sister Gertrude and saying, Oh, I beg your pardon, Sister.
“Good heavens, no,” he said, coming to a halt in the middle of his path across the kitchen. He looked horrified. “We don’t condone this sort of thing under normal circumstances. Alaric has his own methods, of course, and, well, though I can’t say I actually approve of them, they have been shown over time to have surprising effectiveness-”
Meena held up a hand to stop him. “Say no more,” she said drily. “I get the picture.”
It did bother her a little, however, that her brother had volunteered so cavalierly to “help” Alaric, and several of the Franciscan friars who lived in the rectory, torture Stefan.
“Miss Harper,” Abraham Holtzman said, looking slightly disturbed, “I can tell by your tone that you may not be particularly fond of Guardsman Wulf-and, by extension, the Palatine-which, for a woman in your current circumstances, is perfectly understandable.”
Meena felt herself blushing. She was aware that Alaric had told his boss what her “current circumstances” were-that she was sleeping with the prince of darkness-and she was thoroughly mortified. That this total stranger (who was old enough to be her father) knew the most intimate details of her life was not okay.
Did Sister Gertrude know, too? Meena darted a nervous look in the older woman’s direction, but she was serenely trying to get Yalena to eat a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie from the batch she’d just pulled from the oven. (Meena had been shoveling Sister Gertrude’s cookies into her mouth nonstop since the nun had led them back into the rectory’s kitchen from the cab they’d all come tumbling out of-Alaric had kept Stefan Dominic smothered under his own black leather trench coat in order to protect him from the sun, and at sword-point, the entire ride downtown…much to the bemusement of their cabbie.)