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INSATIABLE
MEG CABOT
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Author’s Note
About the Author
By Meg Cabot
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
9:15 A.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13
Downtown 6 platform
East Seventy-seventh Street and Lexington Avenue
New York, New York
It was a miracle.
Meena hurried onto the subway car and grabbed hold of one of the gleaming silver poles, hardly daring to believe her good fortune.
It was morning rush hour, and she was running late.
She’d expected to have to cram herself into a car packed with hundreds of other commuters who were also running late.
But here she was, still panting a little from having run all the way to the station, stepping into a car that was practically empty.
Maybe, she thought, things are going to go my way for a change.
Meena didn’t look around. She kept her gaze fastened on the ad above her head, which declared that she could have beautiful, clear skin if she called a certain Dr. Zizmor right away.
Don’t look, Meena told herself. Whatever you do, don’t look, don’t look, don’t look. …
With luck, she thought, she might make it all the way to her stop at Fifty-first Street without making eye contact or having any interaction at all with another human being. …
It was the butterflies—life-size—that caught Meena’s attention at first. No city girl would wear white pumps with huge plastic insects on the toes. The romance novel (Meena assumed it was a romance, based on the helpless-looking, doe-eyed young woman on the cover) the girl was reading had Cyrillic writing on it. The giant roller suitcase parked in front of her was an additional clue that the girl was from out of town.
Though none of that—including the fact that she’d pinned her long blond braids onto the top of her head, Sound of Music style, and had paired her cheap yellow polyester dress with purple leggings—was as dead a giveaway to her new-in-town status as what the girl did next.
“Oh, I sorry,” she said, looking up at Meena with a smile that changed her whole face and made her go from merely pretty to almost beautiful. “Please, you want sit?”
The girl moved her purse, which she’d left on the seat next to her, so that Meena could sit down beside her. No New Yorker would ever have done such a thing. Not when there were a dozen other empty seats on the train.
Meena’s heart sank.
Because now she knew two things with absolute certainty:
One was that, despite the miracle of the nearly empty subway car, things definitely weren’t going to go her way that day.
The other was that the girl with the plastic butterflies on her shoes was going to be dead before the end of the week.
Chapter Two
9:30 A.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13
6 train
New York, New York
Meena hoped she was wrong about Miss Butterfly.
Except that Meena was never wrong. Not about death.
Giving in to the inevitable, Meena let go of the gleaming metal pole and slid into the seat the girl had offered.
“So, is this your first time visiting the city?” Meena asked Miss Butterfly, even though she already knew the answer.
The girl, still smiling, cocked her head.
“Yes. New York City!” she cried enthusiastically.
Great. Her English was basically nonexistent.
Miss Butterfly had pulled out a cell phone and was scrolling through some photos on it. She stopped on one and held it up for Meena to see.
“See?” Miss Butterfly said proudly. “Boyfriend. My American boyfriend, Gerald.”
Meena looked at the grainy picture. Oh, brother, she thought.
Why? Meena asked herself. Why today, of all days? She didn’t have time for this. She had a meeting. And a story to pitch. There was that head writing position, vacant now that Ned had had that very public nervous breakdown in the network dining room during spring sweeps.
Head writer was really where the money was on a show like Insatiable.
Meena needed money. And she was sure the pressure wouldn’t cause her to have a nervous breakdown. She hadn’t had one so far, and she had plenty of things to worry about besides Insatiable’s ratings.
A woman’s voice came over the subway car’s loudspeakers to warn that the doors were closing. The next stop, she announced, would be Forty-second Street, Grand Central Station.
Meena, having missed her own stop, stayed where she was.
God, Meena thought. When will my life stop sucking?
“He looks very nice,” she lied to Miss Butterfly about Gerald. “You’re here to visit him?”
Miss Butterfly nodded energetically.
“He help me get visa,” she said. “And—” She used the cell phone to mimic taking photos of herself.
“Head shots,” Meena said. She worked in the business. She understood exactly what Miss Butterfly was talking about. And her heart sank even more. “So you want to be a model. Or an actress?”
Miss Butterfly beamed and nodded. “Yes, yes. Actress.”
Of course. Of course this pretty girl wanted to be an actress.
Fantastic, Meena thought cynically. So Gerald was her manager, too. That explained a lot about the baseball cap—pulled down so low that Meena couldn’t see his eyes—and the number of gold chains around his neck in the photo.
“What’s your name?” Meena asked.
Miss Butterfly pointed at herself, as if surprised Meena cared to discuss her as opposed to the ultra-fantastic Gerald.
“I? I am Yalena.”
“Great,” Meena said. She opened her bag, dug around the mess inside it, and came up with a business card. She always had one handy for exactly this kind of situation, which unfortunately came up all too often … especially when Meena rode the subway. “Yalena, if you need anything—anything at all—I want you to call me. My cell phone number is on there. See it?” She pointed to the number. “You can call me anytime. My name is Meena. If things don’t work out with your boyfriend—if he turns out to be mean to you, or hurts you in any way—I want you to know you can call me. I’ll come get you, wherever you are. Day or night. And listen …,” she added. “Don’t show this card to your boyfriend. This is a secret card. For emergencies. Between girlfriends. Do you understand?”
Yalena just gazed at her, smiling happily.
She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand at all that Meena’s number might literally mean the difference between life and death for her.
They never understood.
The train pulled up to Forty-second Street station. Yalena jumped up.
“Grand Central?” she asked, looking panicky.
“Yes,” Meena said. “This is Grand Central.”
“I meet my boyfriend here,” Yalena said excitedly, grabbing her huge roller bag and giving it a yank. She took Meena’s card in her other hand, beaming. “Thank you! I call.”
She meant she’d call to get together for coffee sometime.
But Meena knew Yalena would call her for something totally different. If she didn’t lose the card … or if Gerald didn’t find it and take it away. Then give her a fist sandwich.
“Remember,” Meena repeated, following her off the train. “Don’t tell your boyfriend you have that. Hide it somewhere.”
“I do,” Yalena said, and scrambled toward the nearest flight of stairs, lugging her suitcase behind her. It was so huge, and Yalena was so small, she could barely drag it. Meena, giving in to the inevitable, picked up the bottom of the girl’s incredibly heavy suitcase and helped her carry it up the steep and crowded staircase. Then she pointed Yalena in the direction the girl needed to go—the boyfriend was meeting her “under the clock” in the “big station.”
Then, with a sigh, Meena turned around and headed for a train back uptown, so she could get to Madison and Fifty-third Street, where her office building was located.
Meena knew Yalena hadn’t understood a word she’d said. Well, maybe one in five.
And even if she had, there wouldn’t have been any point in telling the girl the truth. She wouldn’t have believed Meena, anyway.
Just like there was no point in following her now, seeing the boyfriend for herself, and then saying something to him like, “I know what you really are and what you do for a living. And I’m going to call the police.”
Because you can’t call the cops on someone for something they’re going to do. Any more than you can tell someone that they’re going to die.
Meena had learned this the hard way.
She sighed again. She was going to have to run now if she wanted to catch the next train uptown. …
She just prayed there wouldn’t be too many people on it.
Chapter Three
6:00 P.M. EET, Tuesday, April 13
History Department
University of Bucharest
Bucharest, Romania
Professor?”
Lucien Antonescu smiled up at her from the enormous antique desk behind which he sat, grading papers. “Yes?”
“So is it true,” Natalia asked, grasping at the first question she could think of, since she’d completely forgotten what she’d meant to ask him the moment his dark-eyed gaze fell upon her, “that the oldest human remains ever found were discovered in Romania?”
Oh, no! Human remains? How disgusting! How could she ask something so stupid?
“The oldest human remains found in Europe,” Professor Antonescu said, correcting her gently. “The oldest human remains ever found were discovered in Ethiopia. And they’re roughly a hundred and fifty thousand years older than the remains found in what we consider modern-day Romania, in the Cave with Bones.”
The girl was only half listening. He was the sexiest of all her instructors, and that included teaching assistants. On the University of Bucharest’s equivalent of Rateyourprof.com, Professor Lucien Antonescu had been given all 10s in the looks category.
And justifiably so, since he was over six feet tall, lean and broad shouldered, with thick dark hair that he wore brushed back from his temples and a smooth, gorgeous forehead.
As if all that weren’t enough, he had dark brown eyes that, in certain lights, when he was lecturing and grew excited about his subject matter—which happened frequently, because he was impassioned about Eastern European history—flashed red.
Surely the posts on the message boards were exaggerated … especially the ones hinting that he was related to the Romanian royal family and was a duke or a prince or something.
But since taking Professor Antonescu’s class, Natalia could see why he—and his course—was so popular. And why the line of girls—and some boys, though when he showed pictures of ancient Romanian art, Professor Antonescu spoke so appreciatively of the lush lines of the female form that there was no possible way he could be gay—at his office hours was so long. He was a gifted orator, with a regal yet very engaging presence. …
And he was so very, very hot.
“So,” Natalia said hesitantly, taking in the way his perfectly tailored black cashmere blazer molded those shoulders. She wondered why she couldn’t see his eyes—those dark, flashing eyes—better and realized it was because he had the shades to his office windows pulled down. She hoped he’d still notice that she’d worn a new shirt, one that showed off her cleavage to its best advantage. She’d bought it at a steep discount at H&M, but it still made her look irresistible. “It would be correct to say that Romania is the cradle of civilization in Europe.”
This, Natalia thought, sounded very intelligent.
“It would be a lovely idea, of course,” Professor Antonescu said, looking thoughtful. “Certainly there have been human beings living here for over two millennia, and this land has been the site of many bloody invasions, from the Romans to the Huns, until finally we had what today makes up modern-day Romania … Moldavia and Wallachia, and of course Transylvania. But the cradle of civilization … I don’t know that we can say that.” He was even better looking when he smiled, if such a thing were possible.
“Professor.”
The smile caused her to come undone. She knew she was not the first. His bachelor status was legendary, the intrigue heightening whenever he was spotted with a woman—never the same one twice—in the posher restaurants downtown. How many had he asked back to his castle—he owned a castle!—outside of Sighişoara, or to his enormous loft apartment in the trendiest district of Bucharest?
No one knew. Maybe hundreds. Maybe none. He didn’t seem to care to marry and start a family.
Well, all that would change when he tasted her cooking. Iliana, behind her in line to see him just now, had teased her for saying she was going to invite him over. So old-fashioned! She said Natalia should just offer to sleep with him right there, in his office, like Iliana was going to, and get it over with.
But Natalia’s mother had always told her she made the best sarmale of anyone in the family. One taste, her mother said, and any man would be hers.
“Yes?” Professor Antonescu asked, one of those thick dark eyebrows raising.
Natalia wished he hadn’t done this. It only made him look more attractive and made her feel more foolish for what she was about to do.
“Would you like to come to my place for a home-cooked meal sometime?” she asked, all in a rush. Her heart was beating wildly. She was sure he could see it thrumming behind her breast, considering how low-cut her new blouse was.
Something in the dimly lit office made a chirping sound.
“I beg your pardon,” Professor Antonescu said. He reached into the inside pocket of his expensive coat and produced a slim cell phone … top of the line, of course. “I thought I’d turned this off.”
Natalia stood there, wondering if she ought to say something about the sarmale or perhaps undo another button of her blouse, as Iliana would have done …
… but she hesitated when she saw Professor Antonescu’s expression change as his gaze fell on the name on the caller identification.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “This is an important call. I have to take it. Could we discuss this at another time?”
Natalia felt her cheeks growing red. It was merely because he was looking at her … and yet had never once lowered his gaze below her neck.
“Of course,” she said shamefacedly.
“And please tell the others,” Professor Antonescu said as he accepted the call, “that unfortunately I’ll have to end office hours early this evening. A family emergency.”
Family emergency. He had family?
“I’ll let them know,” the girl said, pleased. He trusted her! That would put Iliana in her place!
“Thank you,” Professor Antonescu said politely as she slunk from the dark, lushly decorated room, all in richly appointed leather-trimmed furniture and filled with manuscripts that were many centuries older than she was. Even Professor Antonescu’s office was different from the offices of her other instructors, which were as barren as a politburo’s and just as grim.
She opened the door, slipped through it, and turned to close it. …
But not before she heard him say, in a voice she had never heard him use before, and in English, “What? When?” Then, “Not again.”
Natalia turned then to see a look on his face that made her heart turn over in her chest.
But not in the joyful way it did when she spied him coming down the corridor toward the lecture hall.
Now she was afraid.
Deathly afraid.
Because those beautiful eyes of his had gone vermilion … the same color her shower water ran when she accidentally cut her leg while shaving.
Only this wasn’t a trickle of water. It was a man’s eyes. His eyes.
And they’d gone the color of blood.
His gaze was boring into her as if he could see straight through her blouse, past her bra, and into the most intimate places of her heart.
“Get out,” he said in a voice that she would swear later, when she told her mother about it, didn’t even sound human.
Natalia turned, threw open the door, and flung herself through it, flying with a face as white as death past the other students waiting to see their professor.
“Well, that obviously went well,” Iliana said with a sneer.
But when Iliana tried Professor Antonescu’s office door, she found it locked. She knocked and knocked, finally cupping both hands around her eyes and pressing them to the door’s frosted glass.
“The lights are out. I don’t see him in there. I think … I think he’s gone.”
But how could the professor have left a locked a room from which there was no other exit?
Chapter Four
9:45 A.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13
Outside the ABN Building
East Fifty-third Street and Madison Avenue
New York, New York
Good morning, Miss Meena. The usual?” Abdullah, the guy in the glassed-in coffee stand outside her office building, asked her when it was finally her turn to order.
“Good morning, Abdullah,” Meena said. “Better make it a large. I’ve got a big meeting. Light, please. And don’t bother toasting the bagel today, I’m running really, really late.”
Abdullah nodded and went to work as Meena narrowed her gaze at him. She could tell he still hadn’t seen a doctor about his out-of-control blood pressure, despite the talk she’d had with him about it last week.
Seriously, she was the one who was going to stroke out one day if people didn’t start listening to her. She knew taking time from work to go to the doctor was a pain.
But when the alternative was dying?
Precognition.
Extrasensory perception.
Witchcraft.
It didn’t matter what anyone called it: In Meena’s opinion, as a skill, it was totally useless.
Had it been particularly helpful when she’d finally managed to convince her longtime boyfriend, David, about the tumor that she could sense was growing in his brain?
Sure, she’d saved David’s life (had they found the tumor any later, it would have been inoperable, the doctors said).
But David had left Meena immediately after his recovery for one of his perky radiology nurses. Brianna healed people who were sick, he’d said. She wasn’t a “freak” who told them they were going to die.
What had Meena gotten out of saving David? Nothing but a lot of heartache.
And she’d lost half the down payment on the apartment that they’d bought together. Which she still owed him. And which he was being a total jerk about her paying back on her pittance of a salary.
David and Brianna were buying their first house together. And expecting their first baby.
Of course.
Meena had learned from that experience—and all the ones before it—that no one was interested in finding out how they were going to die.
Except her best friend, Leisha, of course, who always listened to Meena … ever since that time in the ninth grade when Rob Pace asked her to that Aerosmith concert, and Meena told her not to go, and Rob took Angie Harwood instead.
That’s how Angie Harwood, and not Leisha, ended up getting decapitated when the wheel of a semi tractor-trailer came spinning off and landed on top of Rob’s Camaro as it was cruising down I-95 on the way home from the concert.
Meena, upon learning of the accident the morning after it occurred (Rob had miraculously escaped with only a broken collarbone), had promptly thrown up her breakfast.
Why hadn’t she realized that by saving her best friend from certain death, she’d all but guaranteed another girl’s? She ought to have warned Angie, too, and done anything—everything—to stop Rob from going that night.
She swore then that she would never allow what had happened to Angie Harwood to happen to another human being. Not if she could help it.
It was no wonder then that high school, torturous for many, had been even worse for Meena.
Which was how she got into television writing as a career. Real kids may not have enjoyed the company of the “You’re Gonna Die Girl” so much.
But the people Meena discovered on the soap operas her mom liked to watch—Insatiable had been a favorite—were always happy to see her.
And when the story lines on the soaps she liked didn’t go the way she thought they should, Meena started writing her own.
Surprisingly, this hobby had paid off.
Well, if you call being a dialogue writer for the second-highest-rated soap opera in America a payoff.
Which Meena did. Sort of. She knew she’d landed what millions would kill for … a dream job.
And given her “gift,” she knew her life could have been a thousand times worse. Look what had happened to Joan of Arc.
Then there was Cassandra, daughter of the Trojan king Priam. She too had been given the gift of prophecy. Because she hadn’t returned a god’s love, that gift was turned by that god into a curse, so that Cassandra’s prophecies, though true, would never be believed.
Hardly anyone ever believed Meena either. But that didn’t mean she was going to give up trying. Not on girls like the one she’d met on the subway, and not on Abdullah. She’d get him to go to the doctor, eventually.
It was just too bad, really, that the one person whose future Meena had never been able to see was her own.
Until now, anyway.
If she was much later to work, she was going to lose any chance whatsoever she had at convincing Sy to take her pitch seriously.
And forget about that promotion to head writer.
She didn’t need to be psychic to figure that out.
Chapter Five
7:00 P.M. EET, Tuesday, April 13
The hills outside of Sighişoara
Mures County, Romania
Lucien Antonescu was furious, and when he was furious, he sometimes lost control.
He’d frightened that young girl in his office nearly to death, and he hadn’t wanted to do that. He’d felt her fear … it had been sharp and as tightly wound as a garrote. She was a good person, longing, like most girls her age, only for love.
And he’d terrified her.
But he didn’t have time to worry about that now. Now he had a very serious situation that was going to require all of his attention for the immediate future.
And so he was doing what he could in an attempt to calm himself. His favorite classical piece—by Tchaikovsky—played over the hall’s speakers (which he’d purchased and had shipped from the U.S. at enormous expense; quality sound was important).
And he’d opened one of the truly exquisite bottles of Bordeaux in his collection and was letting it breathe on the sideboard. He could smell the tannins even from halfway across the room. The scent was soothing. …
Still, he couldn’t help pacing the length of the great hall, an enormous fire roaring in the stone hearth at one end of the room and the stuffed heads of various animals his ancestors had killed leering down at him from the walls above.
“Three,” he growled at the laptop sitting on the long, elaborately carved wooden table in the center of the room. “Three dead girls? All within the past few weeks? Why wasn’t I told this before now?”
“I didn’t realize that there was a connection between them, my lord,” the slightly anxious voice from the computer’s speakers said in English.
“Three exsanguinated corpses, all left nude in various city parks?” Lucien didn’t attempt to keep the sarcasm from his tone. “Covered in bite marks? And you didn’t realize there was a connection. I see.”
“Obviously the authorities don’t want to start a citywide panic,” the voice said fretfully. “My sources didn’t know anything about the bite marks until this morning. …”
“And what attempts,” Lucien asked, ignoring this last remark, “have been made to discover who is committing these atrocities?”
“Everyone I’ve spoken to denies any knowledge whatsoev—”
Lucien cut him off. “Then obviously you’re not speaking to the appropriate people. Or someone is lying.”
“I … I can’t imagine anyone would dare,” the voice said hesitantly. “They know I’m speaking on your authority, sire. I feel … if I may, sire … that it isn’t … well, one of us. Someone we know.”
Lucien paused in his circuit around the room.
“That’s impossible,” he said flatly. “There’s no one we don’t know.”
He turned and approached the wine decanter, which was filled with rich ruby liquid. He could see the reflection of the firelight against one side of the perfect crystal globe.
“It’s one of us,” Lucien said, inhaling the earthy fragrance of the Bordeaux. “Someone who has forgotten himself. And his vows.”
“Surely not,” the voice said nervously. “No one would dare. Everyone knows the repercussions of committing such a crime under your rule. That your retribution will be swift … and severe.”
“Nevertheless.” Lucien picked up the decanter and watched as the liquid inside left a deep red film against the far side of the crystal bulb. “Someone’s savagely killing human women and leaving their bodies out in the open to be discovered.”
“He is putting all of us at risk,” the voice from the laptop agreed hesitantly.
“Yes,” Lucien said. “Needlessly so. He must be discovered, punished, and stopped. Permanently.”
“Yes, my lord,” the voice said. “Only … how? How are we to discover him? The police … my informants tell me that the police haven’t a single lead.”
Lucien’s perfectly formed lips curved into a bitter smile. “The police,” he said. “Ah, yes. The police.” He glanced away from the decanter he held, toward the face on the computer screen a few yards away. “Emil, find me a place to stay. I’m coming to town.”
“Sire?” Emil looked startled. “You? Are you certain? Surely that won’t be—”
“I’m certain. I will find our murdering friend. And then …”
Lucien opened his fingers and let the decanter fall to the flagstones beneath his feet. The crystal bell smashed into a thousand pieces, the wine it contained making a deep red smear across the floor, where, centuries before, Lucien had watched his father dash the brains of so many of their servants.
“I will show him myself what happens when anyone dares to break a vow to me.”
Chapter Six
10:30 A.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13
ABN Building
520 Madison Avenue
New York, New York
Meena was wolfing down her bagel when Paul, one of the breakdown writers, poked his balding head into her office.
“I don’t have time to help you update your Facebook page right now, Paul,” Meena said. “I’ve only got a minute before I have to meet with Sy.”
“I take it you didn’t hear, then,” Paul said morosely.
“Hear what?” Meena asked with her mouth full.
“About Shoshona.”
Meena’s blood went cold.
So it had finally happened. And it was all her fault for not saying anything.
But how did you warn someone that her advanced state of gymorexia was going to kill her? Treadmills were not widely known to be fatal, and Shoshona was so proud to have gotten down to size 00.
The truth was, Shoshona had never been one of Meena’s favorite people.
“She … died?”
“No.” Paul looked at Meena strangely. “She got the head writer position. I guess it happened last night.”
Meena choked.
“Wh-what?” She blinked back tears. She told herself they were tears from a chunk of bagel going down the wrong tube.
But they weren’t.
“Didn’t you see the e-mail?” Paul asked. “They sent it around this morning.”
“No,” Meena croaked. “I was on the subway.”
“Oh,” Paul said. “Well, I’m updating my résumé. I figure she’ll be firing me soon anyway so she can hire one of her club-hopping friends. Would you mind looking it over later?”
“Sure,” Meena said numbly.
But she was only half listening to him. They’d passed her over for Shoshona? After all the hard work she’d done this year? Much of it Shoshona’s work, because Shoshona was forever leaving the office early to go work out?
No. Just no.
Meena was standing in the door to Sy’s office exactly two minutes before their appointed meeting, anger bubbling over.
“Sy,” she said. “I’d like to speak to you about—”
That was when she noticed Shoshona was already sitting in one of the chairs in front of his desk, wearing, as usual, something from Crewcuts, the J.Crew children’s section; she was that skinny.
“Oh, Meena,” Shoshona Metzenbaum said, tossing some of her long, silky dark hair. “There you are. I was just telling Sy how much I love the little treatment you gave him. The one about Tabby being in love with that bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks? So sweet.”
Sweet? Up until today, Shoshona’s only job responsibility at Insatiable had been, like Meena’s, to write the dialogue for story breakdowns, especially those featuring the show’s biggest and longest-running star, Cheryl Trent, who played Victoria Worthington Stone, and now her teenage daughter on the show, Tabitha.
Except that Shoshona had rarely been able to handle even that, always leaving early to go to the gym or calling to say she’d be late because her convertible had broken down on the way back into the city from the Metzenbaum family weekend home in the Hamptons.
Or the decorator who was redoing her downtown loft hadn’t shown up on time.
Or she’d missed the last flight out of St. Croix and was going to have to stay another night.
Not that anyone who mattered ever got upset about these things, considering who Shoshona’s aunt and uncle were: Fran and Stan Metzenbaum, Insatiable’s executive producers and cocreators.
It would have been different, Meena thought, if Shoshona had actually deserved this promotion. If it had been Paul or any of the other writers who actually showed up to the office once in a while, Meena wouldn’t have minded.
But Shoshona? Meena had once overheard her bragging on the phone to a friend that she’d never even watched the show until her aunt and uncle had hired her to come work for them … unlike Meena, who’d never missed a single episode—not since she turned twelve. Shoshona didn’t know the names of every single one of Victoria’s ex-husbands, the way Meena did, or why they’d broken up (Victoria was insatiable, it was true, but not terribly lucky in love). Or that Victoria’s beloved teenage daughter, Tabitha, was following in her mom’s footsteps. (So far they’d managed to kill off every single one of Tabby’s love interests. The latest had just been blown up in a Jet Ski accident intended for Tabby by a spurned stalker.)
“I’m glad you like it,” Meena said with forced patience. “I thought throwing in a bad boy for Tabby might attract a younger demographic—”
“That’s exactly what we’re hearing from corporate,” Shoshona said, flinging Sy an astonished glance. “We were just sitting here discussing that. Weren’t we, Sy?”
“We were,” Sy said, beaming at Meena. “Come on in, kid, and take a seat. You heard the great news about Shoshona?”
Meena couldn’t bring herself to look at Shoshona, she was so furious. She kept her gaze on Sy as she sank into the other Aeron chair in front of his desk.
“I did,” she said. “And I was really hoping to have a word with you in private this morning, Sy.”
“Nothing you can’t say to me in front of Shoshona,” Sy said jovially, waving a hand. “Frankly, I think this is just fantastic. We’re going to have some real estrogen power going on here!”
Meena stared at him. Had Sy really just said the words estrogen power?
And could he actually not know that Meena had been the one doing all of Shoshona’s work for the past twelve months?
“Right,” Shoshona said. “So I think Meena should be one of the first to know about the new direction the network would like to see us start heading in.”
“The network?” Meena echoed bewilderedly.
“Well, our sponsor, really,” Shoshona said, correcting herself.
To Meena’s knowledge, Consumer Dynamics Inc.—Insatiable’s sponsor, a multinational technology and services conglomerate, which also happened to own Affiliated Broadcast Network—had never once lowered itself to bother with the show.
Until now, apparently.
“In a word,” Shoshona said, “they want us to go vampire. All vampire, all the time.”
Meena immediately felt the bagel and coffee she’d had for breakfast come back up.
“No,” she said after swallowing hard. “We can’t do that.”
Sy blinked confusedly at Meena. “Why the hell not?”
She ought to have known. Her day, which had already started off so badly, could only get worse. Lately her whole life had been headed in a steady downward trajectory.
“Well, for one thing, because there’s already a soap opera on a rival network with a vampire story line that’s killing us in the ratings,” Meena said. “A little show called Lust. Remember? I mean, we have to have some pride. We can’t just outright copy Lust.”
Shoshona pretended to be busy straightening her patterned hose as Meena spoke. Sy, peering over his desk, couldn’t take his eyes off her long, coltish legs.
Meena wished she had a mini-Butterfinger for sustenance. Or to smash into Shoshona’s flat-ironed hair.
Flat-ironing! Who even bothered anymore?
Certainly not Meena, who had hacked off most of her dark hair at Leisha’s command—Leisha’s “gift” was that she could look at anyone and immediately tell them exactly the most flattering way they ought to be wearing their hair—and who had enough problems making it to work on time without having to worry about flat-ironing, even when she wasn’t busy trying to save young girls on the subway from certain death by white slavery.
“We’ll look like total fools,” Meena said.
“I don’t think so,” Shoshona said coolly. “Lust is obviously doing something right. It’s one of the few soaps right now that hasn’t been canceled or been forced to move to L.A. to shoot to save money. It’s actually going up in the ratings. And like you said, if we’re going to survive, we need to pull in a younger demographic. Kids don’t care about soaps. It’s all about reality shows to them.”
“And what’s so real,” Meena demanded, “about vampires?”
“Oh, I assure you, they’re real,” Shoshona said with a catlike smile. “You’ve read about those girls they keep finding, drained of all their blood, in parks all over New York City, haven’t you?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Meena said sourly. “They weren’t drained of all their blood. They were just strangled.”
“Um, excuse me,” Shoshona said. “But I have an inside source who says all three of those girls were bitten everywhere and drained of every drop of their blood. There’s a real-life vampire here in Manhattan, and he’s feeding on innocent girls.”
Meena rolled her eyes. Okay. It was true some girls had turned up dead lately in a few city parks.
But drained of their blood? Shoshona was taking vampire fever—which, yes, gripped the country, there was no denying that; it was obvious enough that even Consumer Dynamics Inc. was aware of it, and they were so oblivious to trends that they still thought having a MySpace page was cutting-edge—too far.
“So let’s give the show a pulled-from-the-headlines feel,” Shoshona went on, “and have a vampire feed on the girls in Insatiable. Tabby’s friends. And let him brainwash Tabby, and let Tabby be his vampire bride.”
Sy pointed at Shoshona. “Vampire bride,” he yelled. “I love it. Even better, CDI loves it!”
Meena contemplated getting up, walking over to Sy’s office window, opening it, and jumping.
“And you haven’t heard the pièce de résistance,” Shoshona said. “I can get Gregory Bane—”
Sy gasped and leaned forward. “Yes?”
Meena moaned and dropped her head into her hands. Gregory Bane played the vampire on Lust. There wasn’t a single person on earth who was sicker of Gregory Bane than Meena.
And she’d never even met him.
“—to get Stefan Dominic to read for the part of the vampire,” Shoshona went on.
Sy, looking disappointed, sank back into his chair. “Who the hell is Stefan Dominic?” he barked.
Shoshona smirked.
“Only Gregory Bane’s best friend,” she said. “I mean, they go clubbing together practically every weekend. I know you’ve seen his picture with Gregory in Us Weekly, Sy. The press we’ll get from hiring him will be huge. I can’t believe no one’s snatched him up already. And the best thing? He has his SAG card, and he can come in this Friday to read with Taylor.” Shoshona looked like the cat who’d swallowed the canary. “I already talked to him about it. He goes to my gym.”
Suddenly, Meena knew exactly why Shoshona was spending so much time on that treadmill. And it didn’t have anything to do with fitting into those Crewcuts.
“There is no way,” Meena said, fighting for inner patience, “that Taylor”—Taylor Mackenzie was the actress who played Tabby—“is going to agree to play a vampire bride.”
Taylor had recently gone on a macrobiotic diet and hired a personal trainer, shrinking herself down to Shoshona’s size. Although Taylor was delighted about this—and the attention the tabloids were paying to her because of it—she needed to watch out if she too didn’t want to end up in a coffin … something Meena had been trying to warn her about by leaving large deli sandwiches in her dressing room. Not exactly subtle, but the best Meena could do.
“Tabby will like it if the network tells her to,” Shoshona said. “This is what ABN wants.”
Meena was trying very hard not to grit her teeth. Her dentist had already chastised her for doing this in her sleep and prescribed her a mouth guard. Meena dreaded wearing it, because it wasn’t exactly the most romantic thing to show up wearing to bed. She looked like a hockey goalie.
But it was that, the dentist said, or a new, less stressful job.
And there were none of those to be found. At least not in television writing.
And since Meena was currently sleeping alone, she guessed it didn’t matter what she looked like anyway.
“Cheryl isn’t going to like it,” Meena warned them. Cheryl was the veteran actress who’d played Victoria Worthington Stone for the past thirty years. “You know she’s been hoping this is the year she’ll finally get that Emmy.”
Thirty years, ten marriages, four miscarriages, one abortion, two murders, six kidnappings, and an evil twin later, and Cheryl Trent still had never won a single Daytime Emmy.
It was a crime, in Meena’s opinion. Not just because Meena was one of Cheryl’s biggest fans and getting to write for her was the thrill of a lifetime, but because Cheryl was one of the nicest ladies Meena had ever met.
And part of Meena’s plan, in the story line she’d submitted to Sy—but which he’d just passed over for Shoshona’s vampire plot—had been for Victoria Worthington Stone to fall for Tabby’s new boyfriend’s father, a bitter police chief Victoria was going to help reunite with his wayward son … giving Cheryl a sure shot at that golden statuette for which she so longed.
But a vampire story line? No one was going to be handing out Emmies for that.
“Yeah, well,” Shoshona said, narrowing her eyes at Meena, “Cheryl can cry me a river.”
Meena’s jaw dropped. This was the thanks she got for having saved Shoshona’s butt so many times with her late scripts?
Why had she even bothered?
“I love it,” Sy said, snapping his fingers. “Run it past your aunt and uncle. I gotta go, I’ve got a meeting.” He stood up.
“Sy,” Meena said. Her mouth felt dry.
“What?” He looked annoyed.
“Don’t …”
There were so many things she wanted to say. Felt as if she had to say. For the good of her soul. For the good of the show. For the good of the country as a whole.
Instead, she just said, “Don’t take Fifth. There’s congestion. I heard it on 1010 Wins. Have the cabbie take Park.”
Sy’s face relaxed. “Thanks, Harper,” he said. “Finally, something useful out of you.” Then he turned and left the room.
Meena swiveled her head to stare daggers at Shoshona.
Not because she was irritated that she’d just saved Sy’s life—if he took Fifth, his cab would, indeed, meet with congestion that would so irritate him, he’d get out and walk, causing him to jaywalk injudiciously at Forty-seventh and be struck by a Fresh Direct truck—and he wasn’t the least bit grateful, but because she knew what “Run it past it your aunt and uncle” meant.
It meant Shoshona had won.
“Vampires,” Meena said. “Real original, Metzenbaum.”
Shoshona stood up, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Get over it, Harper. They’re everywhere. You can’t escape them.”
She turned and walked out.
And for the first time, Meena noticed the gem-encrusted dragon on the side of Shoshona’s tote.
No. It couldn’t be.
But it was.
The Marc Jacobs tote Meena had secretly been lusting after for half a year but denying herself because it cost $5,000.
And no way could Meena afford—or justify spending—that much money on a bag.
And, all right, Shoshona had it in aquamarine, not the ruby red that would perfectly round out Meena’s wardrobe.
But still.
Meena stared after her, grinding her teeth.
Now she was going to have no choice but to make an emergency run at lunch to CVS in order to restock her secret candy drawer.
Chapter Seven
12:00 P.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13
Walmart parking lot
Chattanooga, TN
Alaric Wulf didn’t consider himself a snob. Far from it.
If anyone back at the office ever bothered to ask—and, with the exception of his partner, Martin, none of those ingrates ever had—Alaric would have pointed out that for the first fifteen of his thirty-five years, he’d lived in abject poverty, eating only when his various stepfathers won enough money at the track, and then only if there was enough cash left over for food after his drug-addicted mother was done scoring.
And so Alaric had chosen to live on the streets (and off his wits) in his native Zurich, until child services caught him and forced him go to a group home, where he’d been surprised to find himself much better cared for by strangers than he’d ever been by his own family.
It was in the group home that Alaric had been brought to the attention of, and eventually recruited by, the Palatine Guard, thanks to what turned out to be a strong sword arm, unerring aim, an innate aptitude for languages, and the fact that nothing—not his stepfathers, social workers, priests who claimed to have the voice of God whispering in their ear, or blood-sucking vampires—intimidated (or impressed) him.
Now Alaric slept on eight-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets every night, drove an Audi R8, and routinely dined on favorite dishes like foie gras and duck confit. His suits were all Italian, and he wouldn’t have dreamed of donning a shirt that hadn’t been hand pressed. He enjoyed swimming a hundred laps, then sitting in the sauna every morning at the gym; had an active sex life with numerous attractive and cultured women who knew nothing of his background; collected Betty and Veronica comic books (which he had to have specially shipped to Rome from America at a not-unimpressive cost); and killed vampires for a living as part of a highly secretive military unit of the Vatican.
Life was good …
True, he had a lifestyle upon which most of his coworkers frowned. The majority of them, for instance, preferred to stay in local convents or rectories while traveling, while Alaric always checked into the finest hotel he could find … which he paid for himself, of course. Why not? He didn’t have any children or parents to support. Was it his fault that an early interest in investing (particularly in precious metals, specifically gold, which he couldn’t help noticing there seemed to be a great deal of around the Vatican) had made him his Zurich banker’s favorite client?
Still, in no way did Alaric Wulf consider himself a snob. He could “rough it” like anyone else. He was, in fact, “roughing it” now.
Sitting in his rental car outside a large discount retail establishment in Chattanooga—Chattanooga; what a name for a city!—Alaric watched as the lunchtime crowd flooded toward the store. A sketchy report from a pair of frantic parents had worked its way to his superiors at the Palatine Guard: A young woman who worked at this particular Walmart had been attacked by a vamp in this very parking lot on her way home from work one night. She still bore the telltale puncture wounds on her neck.
The problem was that she insisted to her parents that the marks were not from an “attack” at all but were the result of a “love bite.”
In other words, she adored her attacker.
Of course, Alaric thought with his customary cynicism. They all do. Society had romanticized vampires to the point that many impressionable young women threw themselves at the actors who played vampires in movies and on television.
Not that it was their fault. Women were genetically programmed to be attracted to powerful and good-looking men, men with a high testosterone level who would make good providers for their children, which was how vampires—rich, tall, strong, and handsome—were usually portrayed on film.
Alaric wondered if women would feel quite the same about vampires if they could have seen his former partner Martin in the ICU after they’d tangled with the nest of vamps they’d found in that warehouse outside of Berlin. They’d torn half of Martin’s face off. He was still sucking his dinner through a straw.
Fortunately, the demons had left him the use of his eyes, so he would still see the daughter he and his partner Karl had adopted—Alaric’s goddaughter, Simone—celebrate her fourth birthday.
Thus Alaric’s dedication to his work.
Of course, he’d been dedicated before that particular incident. How many other careers allowed you to use a sword? He could think of very few.
And Alaric was very fond of his sword, Señor Sticky. The blade, unlike humans, did not lie. It didn’t cheat, and it didn’t discriminate … even if vampires were stupid. Especially American vampires. They hung out in places Alaric himself would never have gone, especially if he were immortal. Such as high schools. And Walmart.
If Alaric were a vampire—and that was never going to happen, because if by some heinous accident of fate he were even bitten enough times for that to occur, Martin was under instructions to kill him instantly, no matter how much he fought—he’d step it up. Target, maybe.
Alaric supposed vampires avoided Target because of the parking lot security cameras. (It was a myth that vampires wouldn’t show up in mirrors or on film. Certainly in the old days it had been true, when silver-backed mirrors and film had been the norm. But now that the world had gone digital—and mirrors were cheap—vampire reflections could be caught just like anyone else’s.) Alaric actually liked Target. They didn’t have Target in Rome. He’d bought a Goofy watch the last time he’d been in a Target. The other guards had made fun of him, but he liked his Goofy watch. It was old-fashioned and didn’t do anything but tell time.
But sometimes all you needed was to know the time.
Alaric’s cell phone buzzed, and he laid down his Betty and Veronica comic and fished the phone from his coat pocket, then read the text he’d received with interest.
Manhattan. Reports of completely exsanguinated bodies. At least three dead.
Alaric had to read the message twice to make sure he’d read it right.
Exsanguinated bodies? There hadn’t been a vampire stupid enough actually to drain a body completely of blood in a century. At least not that Alaric knew of.
Because that—unlike what this vamp was doing in Chattanooga—was murder, and not simply assault with a pair of fangs.
And assault like that could never even be proven—not in a regular court of law—because the victim had given consent … due to mind control, of course.
But only the Palatine and the girl’s parents would ever believe that.
If some vamp was stupid enough actually to be murdering his victims, that could only mean one thing:
The prince would be crawling out of whatever hole he’d been hiding in for the past century.
He’d have to. He’d never allow something like this to jeopardize the safety of his minions.
Alaric grinned. His week was looking a whole lot brighter.
Suddenly, through the crowds, Alaric saw a uniformed Walmart employee coming his way, toward the car the girl’s parents had described as hers and that Alaric had carefully parked alongside.
Sarah didn’t resemble the photo her parents had provided … at least, not anymore. Being a vamp’s personal blood donor could do that to a woman. Her formerly round cheeks were thin, and her uniform was hanging on her wasted frame. Her curly red hair had lost its bounce, and she was wearing a kerchief of some kind around her neck to hide the “love bite” her new friend had left behind during his last visit.
She was so anemic, she didn’t even notice when Alaric got out of his car and stood there in front of her, a massive figure in the noonday sun, Señor Sticky carefully hidden—for now—in the folds of his trench coat. She just kept slurping on the large cup of soda she was holding.
She needed all that soda, he supposed. She had to keep building up new plasma if she was going to be someone’s dinner tonight.
“Sarah,” Alaric said quietly.
She stopped short and finally looked up at him, her blue-eyed gaze listless.
Now was the time to show her the sword. Sometimes it was the only thing that got through to them in their ardor-induced stupors.
Alaric pushed back the folds of his coat.
“Just tell me where he is, Sarah,” he said gently. “And I’ll let you live.”
Chapter Eight
2:00 P.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13
ABN Building
520 Madison Avenue
New York, New York
YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED. …
WHAT: A fancy dinner at our place, 910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11A
WHEN: Thursday, April 15, at 7:30 P.M.
WHY: Emil’s cousin, the prince, is in town!
DRESS: Fancy! DRESS UP! This is your chance to meet real, old-fashioned royalty! Dig out your fanciest, sexiest, most expensive shoes and dresses and have fun! No need to feel down just because your husband won’t let you take the platinum card out for a spin! Shop your closet and we’ll see you on Thursday!
xoxo Mary Lou
Meena stared at her computer monitor.
She was supposed to be working on the dialogue for next week’s explosive scene in which Tabby confronted her mother for sleeping with her riding instructor, Romero, on whom Tabby herself had a crush.
But all she could think about was Shoshona’s promotion and her horrible vampire story line, which Fran and Stan had, of course, approved, agreeing with the network (who agreed with CDI) that it was going to make Insatiable more appealing to the all-important eighteen-to-forty-nine female demographic … which would in turn bring in more advertising money. Which would in turn get them all raises (the Insatiable writing staff had been under a pay freeze for more than a year).
Then Mary Lou’s e-mail had popped into her in-box.
And Meena lost all ability whatsoever to concentrate on anything else.
Appalled, Meena forwarded the e-mail to her best friend, Leisha.
“Who is this person?” Leisha called a few minutes later to ask.
“My next-door neighbor Mary Lou,” Meena said, astonished that Leisha wouldn’t remember. She only complained about something Mary Lou had said or done every other day.
“Oh, that’s right,” Leisha said. “The one you used to like until she started stalking you on the elevator every day—”
“—trying to fix me up with every single guy she knows,” Meena finished for her, “after David and I broke up. Right. Plus, she keeps going on about how she traced her husband Emil’s ancestry back to Romanian royalty. She figured out he’s a count, which makes her a—”
“Countess,” Leisha said. Meena could hear hair dryers buzzing in the background. Leisha worked as a stylist at a high-end salon in SoHo. “Wasn’t she the one on the co-op board of your building who wouldn’t let you and David buy the apartment at first because you weren’t married? But then when she found out you write for Insatiable, she changed her mind because she’s a big Victoria Worthington Stone fan?”
“Yeah,” Meena said. She took a bite from the mini-Butterfinger she’d pulled from her secret snack drawer. “And she hates Jon but she pretends she doesn’t.”
“What’s she hate your brother for?” Now Leisha sounded surprised.
“She thinks he’s a mooch for moving in with me,” Meena said. “The real question is, how am I going to get out of going to her party?”
“Uh,” Leisha said, “no offense … but why wouldn’t you go? Last I heard, your social calendar wasn’t exactly jam-packed.”
“Yeah, well,” Meena said, “I don’t have time to be hobnobbing with alleged Romanian princes when I need to be worrying about what’s going to happen next to Victoria Worthington Stone and her vulnerable yet headstrong daughter, Tabitha.” Meena took another bite of her mini-Butterfinger. The important thing was to make each one last as long as possible, which was difficult, because they were so small.
“Stupid of me,” Leisha said. “Of course. So what is going to happen to Victoria Worthington Stone and her vulnerable yet headstrong daughter, Tabitha?”
Meena sighed. “One guess. It came down from on high today. Written on a stone tablet from Consumer Dynamics Inc. itself.”
“What was it?”
“Lust started a vampire story arc, and they’re killing us in the ratings. So …”
Leisha let out a little burble of laughter. “Oh, yeah. Gregory Bane. Guys have been asking me to do their hair like his for weeks. Like it’s an actual style and not something accomplished with a razor blade and some mousse. People are psycho for that guy.”
“Tell me about it.” Meena spun around in her office chair so she could look away from her computer screen and out over the gray valley of skyscrapers that made up Fifty-third Street between Madison and Fifth. She knew that, somewhere out there, Yalena was finding out that her dreams of a new life in America weren’t exactly turning out the way she’d expected them to. Meena wondered how long it would be before she’d call. Or if she’d ever call. “I don’t get it. The guy looks like a toothpick. With hair.”
Leisha bubbled with more laughter. Meena loved the sound of Leisha’s laughter. It cheered her up and reminded her of the old days, before they’d both ended up with mortgages.
Still, Meena felt obligated to say, “It’s not funny. You know how I feel about vampires.”
“Yeah,” Leisha said, sounding a little bored. “What is it you’re always saying again? In the cult of monster misogyny, vampires are king?”
“Well,” Meena said, “they do always seem to choose to prey on pretty female victims. And yet for some reason, women find this sexy.”
“I don’t,” Leisha said. “I want to be killed by Frankenstein. I like ’em big. And stupid. Don’t tell my husband.”
“Even though these guys admit over and over to wanting to kill us,” Meena went on, “the idea that they’re nobly restraining themselves from doing so is supposed to be attractive? Excuse me, but how is knowing a guy wants to kill you hot?”
“The fact that he wants to but doesn’t makes some girls feel special,” Leisha said simply. “Plus, vampires are all rich. I could deal with having some rich guy who wants to kill me—but is nobly restraining himself—being super into me right now. Adam doesn’t have a job, but he won’t even help with the laundry.”
“Vampires aren’t real!” Meena shouted into the phone.
“Calm down. Look, I don’t see what the big deal is,” Leisha said. “If someone who can tell how everyone she meets is going to die can exist, why can’t vampires?”
Meena took a deep breath. “Did I tell you Shoshona got the gig as head writer? Why don’t you just twist the knife?”
“Oh, my God.” Leisha sounded apologetic. “I’m so, so sorry, Meen. What are you going to do?”
“What can I do?” Meena asked. “Wait it out. She’s going to screw up eventually. Hopefully when she does, the show and I will both still be here, and I can step in and save the day.”
“Got it,” Leisha said. “Hero complex.”
Meena knit her brows. “What?”
“Vampires are monster misogynists,” Leisha said. “And you have a hero complex. You always have. Of course you think you’re going to save the show. And probably the world, while you’re at it.”
Meena snorted. “Right. Enough about me. How’s Adam?”
“Hasn’t gotten off the couch in three days,” Leisha replied.
Meena nodded, forgetting that Leisha couldn’t see her. “That’s normal for the first month after a layoff.”
“He just lies there in front of CNN, like a zombie. He’s starting to freak out about this serial killer thing.”
“What serial killer thing?” Then Meena remembered what Shoshona had been talking about in her meeting with Sy. “Oh, that thing with the dead girls, in the parks?”
“Exactly. You know, he actually grunted at me the other day when I asked him if he’d picked up the mail from the box downstairs.”
Meena sighed. “Jon was the same way after he lost his job and had to move in with me. At least he does laundry now. Only because I have a washer-dryer unit in the apartment and you can’t help tripping over the piles on the way to it.”
“I asked Adam when he was going to get started with the baby’s room,” Leisha said. “Or the baby’s alcove, I guess I should call it, since that room is so small, it’s practically a closet. Still, he has to put a door on it, and the drywall, and paint it and everything. You know what he said? It’s still too early and that there’s plenty of time. Thomas is coming in two months! Sometimes I don’t know if we’re going to make it. I really don’t.”
“Yes, you will,” Meena said soothingly. “We’ll get through all of this. Really, we will.”
Meena didn’t believe this, of course. It had been months since her brother, Jon, had been laid off from the investment company where he’d worked as a systems analyst, and he was no closer to finding a job than he’d been the day of his firing … same as Leisha’s husband, Adam, who’d been Jon’s college roommate before Jon had introduced him to Leisha. The few jobs that were out there in their fields had hundreds, maybe thousands, of equally qualified applicants vying for them.
“Is that a prediction?” Leisha asked.
“It is,” Meena said firmly.
“I’m holding you to that,” Leisha said. “Well, good luck with the prince. I’d wear black. Black is always appropriate. Even for meeting royalty.” She hung up.
Meena set the receiver down, chewing her lower lip. She hated lying to Leisha.
Because things weren’t going to be fine.
Something was wrong. Leisha kept telling Meena that her due date was two months away.
And maybe that’s what her doctor had said.
But the doctor was wrong. Every time Leisha said it—“Thomas is coming in two months”—Meena felt an uncomfortable twinge.
The baby—Meena was positive—was coming next month. Possibly even sooner than that.
And Thomas! Leisha and Adam wanted to name their baby Thomas Weinberg!
That kid was going to be a pretty funny-looking Thomas, considering that it was a girl and not a boy.
But how did you tell an expectant mother that everything her doctor was saying was wrong … when it was all just based on a feeling? Especially when all of your previous predictions had been about death, not a new life?
Easy. You didn’t tell her at all. You kept your mouth zipped up tight.
Turning back to her computer monitor, Meena was confronted again with Mary Lou’s e-mail. Sometimes she found it hard to believe there were still people who didn’t have to work for a living … ladies with princes for relatives who did nothing but plan elaborate parties and use their husband’s credit card to go shopping all day.
And then meanwhile there were girls like Yalena, being preyed upon by scumbags like her boyfriend, Gerald, about whom the cops could do exactly nothing. …
But these people existed.
And they lived right in her building. Right next door to her, in fact.
Meena resolutely hit Delete, then opened a new document and began to write.
Chapter Nine
11:00 P.M. GMT, Tuesday, April 13
Somewhere above the Atlantic
Lucien Antonescu did not like to fly commercially, but not, perhaps, for the same reasons other people might dislike it. He had no control issues—other than his concerns about controlling his own rage—and of course no fear of death. The idea of a fiery or otherwise painful end did not trouble him in any way.
He was, however, disturbed by the way the airlines packed their customers into the metal tubes they were currently calling “planes,” then expected them to sit in those impossibly small, cramped excuses for “seats” for so many hours on end, with no exercise or fresh air.
So it had been some time since Lucien Antonescu had been on an airplane he himself did not own (his personal Learjet was ideal for most trips but not powerful enough for nonstop transatlantic flight). When asked to speak at an overseas conference or tour for one of his books, Lucien tended simply to decline. He wasn’t fond of publicity in any case …
But today Lucien was flying first class. The seats there were designed as individual compartments, so that other passengers seated in front of, behind, or beside him were not visible.
At a certain point during the flight, the attractive and very pleasant stewardess—they were called flight attendants now, he reminded himself—presented him with a menu from which he was asked to choose from a dizzying selection of food choices and wines, including some quite decent Italian Barolos. …
Later, after the pilot turned out the lights, the flight attendant asked him if he’d like her to make his bed for him. He accepted, purely out of curiosity. What bed? His wide and spacious seat, it transpired, automatically folded out into a reasonably sized (though not for him, being several inches over six feet tall) bed, all at the touch of a button.
The lovely flight attendant then produced a padded mattress from yet another hidden recess, real sheets that she “tucked in,” a duvet, and a pillow, which she fluffed.
She then handed him a cloth bag containing a large pair of designer pajamas, a toothbrush and paste, and an eye mask.
Finally, she wished him good night with a smile. He smiled back, not because he had any intention of changing into the pajamas or of going to sleep, but because he found the entire procedure—and her—so utterly charming.
His smile made her blush. She was divorced from an unscrupulous man who had been cheating on her throughout their eight-year marriage and was supporting their toddler on her own. She wished only that her ex-husband would pay his child support on time and visit their daughter once in a while. She did not tell Lucien these things … but then, she did not have to. He knew them because he could not be around people without their secret thoughts intruding upon his own. It was something to which he’d grown accustomed over the years, something that he occasionally enjoyed. It made him feel human again.
Almost.
She excused herself to see to another passenger, a corpulent businessman seated across the spacious aisle, in 6J. The passenger in seat 6J could not seem to stop complaining: His pillow was not soft enough, his pajamas were not large enough, his toothbrush bristles were too stiff, and his champagne glass was not filled quickly enough.
Based on Lucien’s observations, the man in 6J was pressing the call button approximately every four to five minutes, annoying both the flight attendant and the lady in the seat in front of him, who raised her sleeping mask and peeked out from her darkened compartment to see what all the commotion was about. She had an important meeting in the morning and needed to get her rest.
Lucien rose while the flight attendant slipped back to the galley to fetch the businessman another pillow. Then he stepped across the aisle to pay a visit to 6J.
“What do you want?” The man—whose mind was as shallow as a thimble—looked up to sneer at Lucien.
When the flight attendant came back, she was surprised to find the passenger in 6J appearing alarmingly pale and in such a deep sleep, he seemed almost to be comatose. She threw a quick, questioning glance around the cabin, meeting Lucien’s gaze, for he was standing, reaching for a book he’d left in the overhead bin.
“Tired out from all that champagne, I expect,” Lucien said to her. “Not used to so much alcohol at such a high altitude.” He gave her a wink.
The flight attendant hesitated, then, as if transfixed by Lucien’s grin, smiled shyly back and offered him the extra pillow.
“Why, thank you,” he said.
Later, as he strolled along the darkened aisles while the jet hurtled through the night sky toward New York, listening to the breathing of the unconscious passengers and sampling their dreams, Lucien looked down at their bare, vulnerable throats as they dozed and thought that really, someone should do something to make airline travel more enjoyable for everyone, not just the privileged few in first class.
Chapter Ten
6:30 P.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13
910 Park Avenue
New York, New York
Meena stabbed the Up button, then looked around furtively. She was tired after her long day and hoped one thing—just this one little thing—would go her way.
And that was slipping onto the elevator of the building in which she lived without running into her neighbor Mary Lou, so that she could take the eleven-story ride to their floor in restful silence.
Meena’s building—910 Park Avenue—was elegant, with a doorman guarding its shiny brass doors, a marble lobby, a crystal chandelier, and an underground garage with parking spaces for which residents could pay an additional $500 per month (though Meena would have preferred to put that money toward a certain Marc Jacobs jewel-encrusted dragon tote … if she could have afforded an extra $500 a month, which she couldn’t).
But her apartment didn’t exactly live up to the building’s elegance: it needed repainting badly; the moldings along the ceilings were crumbling; the parquet floor needed sanding; the antique fireplaces didn’t work; and the French doors leading to the minuscule balcony that looked out over her neighbor Mary Lou’s terrace (which was practically the size of Meena’s whole apartment) stuck. And she was running out of closet space.
The important thing was, it was hers—or at least it would be, when she finally paid David back for his share of the down payment. They’d been fortunate to have bought when the market was at rock bottom and the previous owners had been divorcing and desperate to sell … and just as a small inheritance from Meena’s great-aunt Wilhelmina, for whom she’d been named (her mother had spelled it Meena for fear that her teachers and classmates might forever mispronounce her name “Myna”), finally came through.
Though David was long gone, Meena never pictured her apartment as a place to which she could bring back a date. But when she’d seen Shoshona leaving the office with a good-looking guy (whom she now realized had to have been the infamous Stefan Dominic; Meena had only managed to catch a glimpse of the back of his dark head before the two of them had disappeared onto the elevator for after-work drinks), she’d felt a twinge of envy.
Meena couldn’t even remember the last time she’d been on a date … unless she counted the first—and last—time she’d let Mary Lou set her up with a guy, someone from her husband’s office … the one whom Meena had felt compelled to inform over calamari when they’d met at a trendy restaurant downtown that he needed to have his cholesterol checked, or he was going to have a heart attack before the age of thirty-five.
Needless to say, he’d never called for a second date.
But hopefully he had called his doctor and gotten on Lipitor.
And yet she persevered in praying for the one thing that never, ever seemed to come true.
With the frequency of their encounters, Meena might as well have been dating her neighbor.
Every morning, poof! Mary Lou appeared, just as Meena pushed the Down button. Same thing each evening.
It was uncanny.
And every single time, any hope of having a civilized commute was shot.
Because then Meena was forced to listen to Mary Lou wax enthusiastic about whatever new guy she’d met whom she was convinced would be just perfect for Meena or whatever incredible story line idea she’d thought up the night before for Insatiable.
Oh, really? Meena would be forced to reply politely. Thank you, Mary Lou. Actually, I’m seeing someone. Someone from my office.
Or, No, really, I’ll definitely run your idea that Victoria Worthington Stone should become foreign ambassador to Brazil by Fran and Stan. I’m sure they’ll love that.
Except that there was no guy from Meena’s office whom she was seeing (except Paul, platonically; he’d been happily married with three kids for twenty-five years), and the countess had never, not even once, come up with a single usable story line for her favorite character, Victoria Worthington Stone.
It was too bad, because Meena genuinely liked warm, if somewhat over-the-top Mary Lou and her unassuming, slightly harassed-looking husband, Emil.
It was just that Meena was beginning to feel a little how Ned must have felt the day of his nervous breakdown in the ABN dining room … especially since David had left, and Mary Lou had become obsessed with Meena’s love life. How was Meena going to bring a date home if her older brother was always hanging around the apartment, making fettuccine Alfredo? Someone just needed to give Meena a little push in the right direction.
And Mary Lou had obviously appointed herself that person.
This became especially obvious that day, when Meena was once again unable to meet her goal of avoiding the countess at the elevator. …
Poof!
There she was.
“Meena!” the countess cried. “I’m so glad I ran into you! Did you get my e-mail? Emil’s cousin, the prince, is coming to town. You’re going to love him; he’s a writer, just like you. Only he writes books, not for a soap opera. A professor of ancient Romanian history, actually. You got my e-mail about the dinner party I’m having in his honor this Thursday, right? Do you think you’ll be able to make it?”
“Oh,” Meena said. “I don’t know. Things are crazy at work—”
“Oh, your job!” Meena realized she should have kept her mouth shut, since Mary Lou warmed to the subject immediately. “You work way too hard at that job of yours. Not that I don’t love every minute of it. Last week when Victoria made out with Father Juan Carlos in the vestibule after she went to confession over her guilt about sleeping with her daughter’s riding instructor, I had to stuff a napkin in my mouth to keep from screaming my head off and startling the maid while she was vacuuming, I was that excited. That was so brilliant! That story line was one of yours, wasn’t it?”
Meena inclined her head modestly. She was proud of the Victoria-and-the-hot-priest story line. It was different when it was a priest who was nobly restraining himself from sleeping with a woman. Father Juan Carlos didn’t also want to kill Victoria.
“Well, actually—” she started to say, but Mary Lou interrupted her.
“Still, you’re going to drive yourself into early menopause slaving away for that show. Anyway, listen …”
With a ding the elevator doors opened, and Meena and the countess stepped inside to begin what would, for Meena, anyway, be the eons-long ride up.
Mary Lou then proceeded to give Meena a long description of the castle in which the prince spent his summers in Romania. Mary Lou was intimately acquainted with it, because it was near the castle where she and her husband summered for two months every year—two blissful months during which Meena was able to ride the elevator countess-free.
By floor five, Meena was wondering why she’d never gotten a feeling about Mary Lou’s or her husband Emil’s impending demises. It was odd, really.
On the other hand, it was possible her power to predict death, which had shown up when she’d reached her tweens, was starting to wane now that she was approaching thirty (a girl could dream).
More likely, however, given Meena’s luck, it was morphing into something else … look at the strange feelings she got around Leisha and her baby.
By the tenth floor, Meena had heard all she could stand about Saxon architectural influences.
“Oh, would you look at that,” Meena said when the elevator doors finally, and mercifully, opened at their floor.
“Oh, Meena,” the countess said as the two of them strolled toward their respective doors. “I forgot to ask. How’s your brother doing?”
And there it was. The Head Tilt.
The Head Tilt was accompanied, of course, by the Sympathetic Look. The countess was no stranger to Botox, as Meena well knew, since the countess had to be well over forty, but her face was as unlined as if she were Meena’s age—perhaps because Mary Lou had such an extraordinary collection of picture hats, as well as gloves, which she wore with fierce resolution to keep out the sun. Today’s was a gargantuan maroon concoction.
So it was all there, the Head Tilt, the “eleven” between the eyebrows (two crinkled lines of concern), the purse of the lips as if to say, I care. Deeply. Tell me: How’s your brother doing?
“Jon’s doing great,” Meena said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, given how many times a week she was forced to repeat this phrase. “Really great. Working out, doing a lot of reading, even cooking. He tried a new recipe last night for dinner. He made a great Chinese orange beef for me that he got out of the Times. It was delicious!”
This was an outright lie. It had actually been terrible and Meena had been furious with Jon for even attempting it. He was no great chef. Steaks on Meena’s hibachi on the balcony were his forté, not something they could just as easily have ordered in. She’d had to throw it down the garbage chute. Meena hoped the countess and her husband Emil hadn’t smelled it when they’d come home from whatever benefit they’d been attending. They were always going to—when they weren’t hosting—charity events, all over the city, late into the night, and had their names mentioned on the society pages regularly, as much for their generous gifts as for their party-hopping.
“Oh!” Mary Lou flattened her hand against the front of her Chanel jacket. “That’s great. I so admire what you’re doing, letting him live with you until he gets back on his feet. So generous. The prince just loves generous people, and so he’ll just love you. Of course …” Mary Lou brought her hand away, and the seven- or eight-carat diamond that she’d been wearing beneath the glove she’d stripped away flashed in the glow from the overhead light in the hallway. “Do bring Jon when you come over for dinner to meet the prince on Thursday night. He’s always welcome as well. Such a sweet young man.”
Meena kept a smile frozen on her face.
“Well, thanks,” Meena said with forced cheer. “But I’m not sure about our plans. I’ll let you know. Have a good night!”
“You, too,” Mary Lou said. “Au revoir!”
One thing, Meena thought as she hurried toward her apartment. One good thing could still happen to her today. She was never going to give up hope. Without hope, what did you have?
Nothing. That’s what.
She could still find the ruby dragon tote. Maybe online, used somewhere.
Except that, even used, it would still be more expensive than she could afford. It would be selfish and horrible of her to buy something so frivolous that she clearly didn’t need, especially when so many people were out of work and could barely afford food and had horrible people like Yalena’s boyfriend preying on them.
She was never going to buy the bag, of course. Not even used.
But it was important to have hope.
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