“I know where the bullet came from.”
Will took the bullet from me and led me to a kitchen chair. “Well, then, let’s go there. Where is it?”
I swallowed hard. “Chinatown.”
Will stood up. “So what are we waiting for?”
I bit down hard. “I’m not sure. I ... It was Vlad.”
Will’s eyebrows rose and he sat down again. “Vlad is responsible?”
“No!” I shook my head. “Vlad gave me the information. He took it from Dixon.”
“Nicked it?”
I nodded. “I think so. And something about it just doesn’t feel right.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Nina said as she tore out of her room. Her red silk kimono was flailing behind her. “Listen to this.” Her eyes went wide when she saw Will. “Oh! Hey, Will. I thought I smelled you.”
Will smiled uneasily and looked relieved when the teakettle started to whistle. He disappeared into the kitchen and I went to assist, but Nina commanded me to “sit,” pointing at the chair I had just come from. I sank down and swallowed hard. “Go ahead.”
“Lady and gentleman,” Nina stated, her pale face positively beaming, “today I am proud to present to you the first reading of my new novel/memoir, Pale Is the New Black.”
I raised my eyebrows when Nina flopped a three-inch-thick manuscript onto the tabletop and fixed a pair of glasses at the end of her ski jump nose.
Have I mentioned that vampires have impeccable vision in their afterlife?
I must have furrowed my brow because Nina pushed the cheaters up her nose and said, “They make me look more literary.”
I couldn’t tell whether it was Nina’s fake glasses or the great tower of manuscript pages, but I wasn’t feeling Nina’s literariness, and I wasn’t all that thrilled about it.
“Now”—Nina began again as her small, pale hands clutched her book—“this first portion might be a little emotional for me, so I’m going to read the scene the whole way through.”
I looked over my shoulders, half expecting to see the literary masses Nina seemed to be speaking to.
“If you need any bathroom breaks,” she continued, “I suggest you go now and hold all questions and applause until after I’ve finished.”
In retrospect I should have run for the relative safety of our little 1920s-style bathroom, with the chipped black-and-white tile floor.
“Ahem.” Nina cleared her throat and began to read in earnest.
“‘Darkness touched the Paris night sky like a gentle kiss, and I—young, beautiful, supple ...’”
I shifted in my chair, and Nina pinned me with a death squad glare.
“‘... was bored. I waited for something to happen, for something to whet the appetite for blood that was stirring within. I could taste my want. My need rose until it was almost too much to bear, and then I saw him. Tall, warm, soft, in the darkest night.’”
I raised a tentative hand. “What kind of book is this again?”
Nina snarled, a single nostril flaring. “I asked you kindly to please hold all commentary until the end.”
“I was just—”
“Please hold all commentary until the author has finished, thank you. Now where was I?”
“Supple,” I reminded her.
Nina fixed her glasses and started again.
“‘He turned and I could see the vein throbbing in his neck. I longed to sink my teeth into the flesh, to taste of meaty life juice.’”
I clamped my jaws shut. Every muscle in my body winced and I bore down against the torrent of laughter.
“‘Suddenly my fangs were in him and he was underneath me, writhing.’”
My stomach dropped into my fuzzy slippers when the heroine was introduced as she plunged her fangs into her beau Horatio’s “tender virgin neck.”
When Nina was through, she looked up, beaming, expectant. “Well?” she asked breathlessly.
Somewhere around Cecilia falling into Horatio’s arms and her going back for a second taste of “that meaty life juice,” Will must have returned from the kitchen. He stood in our doorway; his face pale, his lips drawn. The little Arsenal Football logo on his chest was jumping as his heart thudded underneath. He held his tea to his lips, a statue with darting eyes.
Will eyed the stack of papers Nina held. “Is that her diary?” he asked, voice low.
Nina’s eyes went wide and her chest swelled. “Do you really think it’s that good? That believable?” She shook the papers. “Because I wrote it.”
Will eyed her. “You wrote it down or made it up?”
“Made it up.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Inspired by true events?”
“A little.”
Will’s smile showed a small amount of relief. “Then you’re either a hell of a writer or a very, very scary woman.”