“We’ve all heard of ESP. Heck, every one of us has probably had a premonition that turned out to be true. Am I right?”
I craned my head to see delighted heads bobbing all around me.
“And does that mean each and every one of us here is psychic? Of course not! There is a sixth sense, indeed—but it’s not the one you’ve been fed through movies and tall tales and so-called ‘true accounts’ of run-ins with Big Foot, Dracula, angels, and ghosts. But don’t get me wrong. All of these things exist. As do aliens, and unicorns, and mermaids, and—and—”
“Leprechauns!” someone from the audience supplied.
“Witches!” Another hoot from behind me.
The energy in the room was heavy, tinged with electricity as people shouted out their mythological creatures. Though people were smiling, nibbling cookies, and pawing through Harley’s books, the reading started to feel a lot less jovial and a lot more like a hate rally.
I leaned over to Nina. “I don’t think we should be here,” I whispered.
Nina waved me off, her eyes intense, focused on Harley.
“Right!” Harley said, quieting the crowd, hands up, preacher style. “All of these things do exist.” He took a long pause, his eyes glittering as he scanned the crowd. Finally he pressed his index finger to his temple. “In the mind!”
I gaped at the eruption of applause and felt physically ill when I saw Nina, next to me, her small hands clapping away.
“You can’t be serious,” I hissed at her.
“Shhhh,” she said emphatically, not taking her eyes off Harley.
I sat through another forty-five minutes of Harley’s “patented technology” and “psychological studies” that proved the nonexistence of half the demon population. Half the demon population that I had the privilege of validating week after week at the Underworld Detection Agency. He blew the cover off trolls—blaming the Brothers Grimm and the occasional land baron for creating the “silly little bridge dwellers.”
Naturally, he forgot to mention that trolls are not silly. As a matter of fact, they pride themselves on their intelligence (hence the constant questioning). Unfortunately, they do not pride themselves on bathing (hence the putrid stench of blue cheese and feet whenever one strolled by). He said that werewolves were nothing more than a Hollywood mock-up of an old Native American legend; ditto for witches (but they were the progeny of Disney); and my personal favorite, vampires.
I stiffened and glanced at Nina, who sat back in her chair coolly, as if about to witness a chat about organic gardening rather than her lover bash her existence.
“Now, we’ve all noticed the proliferation of vampires in the last five years. Vampire books, vampire movies, and, of course, vampire sightings.”
Nina’s attention remained fixated on Harley. Her pallid glow was obvious in the fluorescent Java Script light.
“Now, we all know vampires don’t glitter.”
Applause.
“Or fly.”
Applause.
“Or exist.”
Huge, hooting applause as though Harley had just made the revelation of a lifetime or had just moon-walked across Market Street. Harley sat back and basked in the cacophony of crowd adoration. His research may have been flawed, but his crowd control was not. He had the stage presence, the somewhat serious lip purses, and the easy stance of someone who knew exactly how to be the apple of his public’s eye. Even Will sat rapt, and Vlad and his cronies, though struggling to look cool and nonchalant, were clearly at attention.
“We know that the so-called vampire—or night walker, as you’ll often hear them referred—”
And I just have to break in here, because as someone really, really well-versed on what it is that vampires do (and more so, what they like to be called), I feel it’s important. Night walker falls with frightening speed immediately down to the bottom of the list. Just above pointy-toothed bloodsucker and Nosferatu. And for good reason, too. Vampires no longer spend their nights “walking,” pacing, prowling, whatever. It’s modern times and all the vamps I know have gotten with the program and either spend their evenings holed up playing Bloodsport and protesting various improper vampire images (Vlad), or boogying away at the latest vamp hot spot (Nina); this week it’s an underground club in the Haight called AB Negative.
Harley continued strutting around the makeshift stage as though he was about to heal the lame and blow the cover off Kim Kardashian’s week-long marriage once and for all. He dashed ideas of zombie takeovers, mutant fish, and the Rapture.