Jane Goes Batty (18 page)

“I was their head of security,” Byron answered. “They’d gotten some threats and needed someone they could trust.”

“ABBA are vampires?” said Jane.

Byron nodded. “Why do you think they look so young? Anyway, a hunter posing as a journalist with
Rolling Stone
tried to get to them. In Copenhagen he got into Björn and Agnetha’s room and would have staked them if I hadn’t stopped him.”

“I had no idea,” Jane said.

“Oh, the hunters are crafty,” Byron continued. “You know, of course, that Abraham Lincoln was a hunter.”

“You mean the book is true?” said Jane. “Good heavens. Anyone else I would know?”

Byron nodded. “There are dozens throughout history,” he said. “Cleopatra. Guy Fawkes. Brigham Young. Princess Diana.”

“Not Diana!” Jane exclaimed. “Oh, and I did love her so.”

“Of course, most of them are just ordinary people,” said Byron. “Those are only some of the more high-profile ones.”

“How in the world did Walter’s mother become involved with them?” Jane wondered.

“New members are always recruited by current members,” Byron said. “Someone had to invite her.”

Jane doubted she would ever know the answer to that question. “You said that Beverly has made some kind of arrangement with Miriam,” she said. “What did you mean exactly?”

“Occasionally a vampire who is captured will make a deal,” Byron said. “Continued existence in exchange for helping the hunters find other vampires.”

“That’s a bit traitorous,” Jane remarked.

“Generally their fangs are removed,” said Byron. “Because they can’t feed normally, their powers grow weak. They subsist on the bare minimum of blood required to keep them alive, and that blood has to be given to them by their human masters.”

“It sounds like slavery,” Jane said.

Byron shook his head. “The traitors have a choice,” he said. “No one forces them to betray us.”

“How long do you think Beverly has known about us?” Jane asked.

“It’s difficult to say,” said Byron. “My guess is not terribly long. Otherwise there would have been hunters before Miriam Ellenberg.”

“I can’t believe that Walter’s mother is a vampire hunter!” Jane said. “It seems a bit too coincidental that when I finally decide to attempt a relationship with a man his mother turns out to be part of some secret society dedicated to eradicating my kind from the world. Don’t you think?”

Byron looked at her and grinned. “Not really,” he said. “After all, we’re talking about
you
. You don’t exactly have the best of luck when it comes to men.”

“True,” Jane agreed. “Still, this seems excessive, even for me.”

“Forget about your failed love life for a moment,” said Byron. “We have to decide what we’re going to do.”

“Do you have any ideas?” Jane asked.

“We have to fight back,” said Byron.

“Fight back?” Jane said. “How? There are only two of us. Who knows whom else Miriam has on her side.”

“There are not just two of us,” said Byron. “Besides ourselves we have Ted and Ned. That makes four. Five if you include Chloe.”

“Which I don’t,” Jane said. “She was just turned. How much use can she be? And only Ted is a vampire. Or Ned. Anyway, how exactly are we going to fight back? I’m not killing anyone. Especially Walter’s mother. That would be beyond the pale.”

“That woman would have no qualms about killing
you
,” Byron reminded her. “She’d chop off your head as soon as look at you.”

“Pleasant,” Jane sniped. “Thank you.”

“Well, it’s true,” said Byron. “She’s your enemy now, Walter or no Walter, and enemies must be destroyed. Besides, you had no problem killing Our Gloomy Friend.”

“Why does everyone keep bringing that up?” Jane said. “I didn’t mean to
kill
her. I just sort of …”

“Pushed her into a fire,” said Byron, helpfully completing the thought.

Jane huffed. “I’m
not
killing Miriam,” she said firmly. “And neither are you.”

Byron opened his mouth and started to speak.

“No, Ned isn’t killing her. Or Ted. And before you even think it, Chloe isn’t going anywhere near her.”

Byron looked at his watch. “Speaking of Chloe, we should be getting back to her,” he said. “We can worry about this little problem later.”

They drove to Byron’s house without speaking. Jane knew that the issue of what to do about Walter’s mother and Beverly Shrop could not be ignored forever, or even for much longer. But she didn’t want to think about it. There were no scenarios in which things ended well.
Especially for me
, she thought as they pulled into Byron’s driveway.

The front door was open. Exchanging looks, Jane and Byron got out of the car and dashed across the lawn. Once inside, they went quickly up the stairs and down the hall to the guest bedroom.

It was empty.

J
ANE FELT ONLY SLIGHTLY GUILTY ABOUT LEAVING
B
YRON TO DEAL
with the Chloe situation. After all, it was he who had forced Jane to turn the girl. She never would have done it on her own.

But really, you ought to be angry with Ted … or Ned
, she told herself.
It’s his fault the girl needed to be turned at all
.

This was true, and Jane planned on giving the young man—whichever one it was—a stern talking-to. But first she had another odious task to perform. She had agreed to meet Jessica Abernathy for lunch to discuss the new book. Foolishly she’d thought she might be able to churn out twenty or thirty pages to give to her editor as proof that she was working on something, but she had written nothing. Nor did she have any idea what she might
want
to write.

I suppose I could just feed on her
, Jane thought as she walked down the sidewalk toward the restaurant at which she’d told Jessica to meet her. It was not a place she liked, and she’d chosen it precisely for that reason. If the meeting with Jessica went poorly—as she fully expected it to—she would not feel any sense of loss that might later occur due to associating the restaurant with the experience. It was, Jane thought, rather clever of her.

She more than half hoped that Jessica would have forgotten or by some miracle (or unfortunate tragedy requiring her immediate
attention) have returned to New York. But there she was, sitting at a table in the rear of the restaurant. Jane almost overlooked her, as Jessica was sitting with another woman. The woman was quite short and uncommonly wide, with hair dyed candy-apple red, and Jane had no idea who she was. The two women were talking animatedly as Jane approached the table.

“Hello,” Jane said pleasantly. “I hope I’m not late.”

“Just a few minutes,” said Jessica, failing to stand or otherwise greet Jane.

Jane, who knew full well that she was exactly on time, bristled but said nothing. Instead she extended her hand to the strange woman. “I’m Jane Fairfax,” she said.

The woman beamed. “I know,” she replied. “I love your books.”

“Book,” Jessica said. She gave Jane a curt smile. “There’s just the one.”

The woman laughed. “I’m sure there are more on the way,” she told Jane.

Jane pulled out a chair and sat down. “Thank you.” She paused expectantly, hoping someone would tell her the woman’s name. When no one did she added, “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

“This is Posey Frost,” Jessica said, her tone more than suggesting that Jane ought to already know this.

Jane regarded the woman beside her. “Really?” she said. “Posey Frost of the Vivienne Minx novels?”

The woman nodded and giggled again. “I know,” she said. “I’m not what you expected.”

This was an understatement. Jane had always imagined the author of the Vivienne Minx novels to be young and sultry, someone who would be comfortable wearing only stiletto heels and diamond earrings as she lounged on her black leather couch sipping champagne. Never had she imagined the very ordinary woman who was now picking pieces from her dinner roll and popping them into her mouth.

“No,” Jane said. “It’s just that—”

“It’s all right,” Posey interrupted, patting Jane’s hand. “I
have
looked in a mirror before.”

Jane was unsure how to respond. Posey Frost seemed quite comfortable with herself. Still, it seemed rude to agree with her. Jane decided to avoid the subject altogether. “Are you here for the festival, Posey?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” said Posey. “I don’t do any public appearances. My publisher doesn’t want to spoil the fantasy for my readers. When the books first got popular they thought about hiring an actress to play me at readings and whatnot, but then they decided it would generate more interest if people didn’t know anything about me. Also, they would have to get a new actress for every book, because who would want to make a career out of pretending to be Posey Frost? Oh, and you can call me Shirley. Posey isn’t my real name.”

“Does it bother you that your readers don’t know who you really are?” Jane asked. She couldn’t help but compare Shirley’s situation to her own, and she was curious to hear how Shirley felt about her own anonymity.

“Not at all,” Shirley said as she dabbed butter on a roll. “My own family doesn’t know. Well, Harvey does. That’s my husband. But no one else. Not even the kids. They think we got all our money from my Uncle Horace when he died.” She laughed. “Horace was a drunk and had about three dollars in the bank, but we told the kids he’d put everything into bonds during World War I.”

“What do they think you do all day when you’re writing?”

“I don’t write during the day,” Shirley told her. “I do regular mom stuff—clean the house, bake cookies, chauffeur the kids to soccer and piano lessons. I get an hour or two here and there, but mostly I write at night.”

Jane was shocked. “So they’ve never read one of your books?”

“Tara—my thirteen-year-old—thinks the Vivienne Minx novels are, and I quote, ‘fast-food fiction.’ She likes Jane Austen,
Virginia Woolf, and Banana Yoshimoto. Ryan is sixteen, and he’s more interested in baseball than books. Harvey read the first book, but it wasn’t his thing. He’s a Tom Clancy kind of guy.”

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a waiter, who took their drink orders and went away again. Jane wanted very much to question Shirley further, but she felt she’d already pried enough. “So you’re not here for the festival,” she said. “Just for fun, then?”

“I’m here for the movie,” Shirley told her.

“The movie?” said Jane.

Shirley nodded. “They’ve asked me to do some rewrites on the script. Well, they asked Posey to do them. I guess they want to sex it up a little.”

Jane, confused, didn’t understand what Shirley was saying. Then it hit her. “You mean
my
movie?” she said. “
Constance
?”

“That’s right,” said Shirley. A worried look crossed her face, and her eyes darted to Jessica and then quickly back to Jane. “Didn’t anyone tell you?”

Jane shook her head and looked meaningfully at Jessica, who was examining the menu in her hand. “No,” Jane said. “No one did.”

“I’m sorry,” said Shirley. “I thought you knew. Jessica said you were too busy working on the new novel to do it, so she recommended me.”

Jessica set the menu down. “I worked with Shirley on the first Vivienne Minx novel,” she said quickly, as if that explained everything.

“Of course, I’m still not Posey Frost,” Shirley said. “We’re telling the director that I’m Posey’s assistant, and that Posey can’t come out of the hotel because she’s afraid of paparazzi finding her.”

“Hollywood people will believe anything as long as you throw paparazzi into the story,” Jessica remarked. “They’re
terrified
of them.”

“And you say they want to
sex up
the script,” said Jane, ignoring the editor and addressing Shirley.

“That’s what I understand,” Shirley replied. “I’m meeting with the director this afternoon to discuss it. It all happened very quickly.”

“It must have,” said Jane. She looked at Jessica and narrowed her eyes. “As I said, this is the first I’ve heard about it.”

“It was all very sudden,” Jessica said. “Kelly called me yesterday afternoon to see if I thought you had time to do both the script and the new novel, and I said I didn’t think we should—”

“Kelly?” Jane interrupted. “Kelly Littlejohn?”

“Well, yes,” said Jessica. “Is there another one?”

“I’m just surprised he didn’t call me,” Jane said.

Jessica waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, I told him not to bother you. As I was saying, I didn’t want to overburden you. I know you’ve been having trouble with the novel.”

“I’m not having trouble!” Jane exclaimed. “It’s just that there’s a lot going on at the moment and—”

This time Jessica interrupted. “See? That’s exactly what I’m saying. You have a lot going on.” Her tone made her sound as if she were talking to a small child.

Shirley, who had been listening to the exchange and systematically reducing her roll to tiny balls of dough that she pinched between her thumb and forefinger, suddenly stood up. “Will you excuse me?” she said, taking up her purse. “I need to go to the ladies’ room.”

As soon as Shirley was out of earshot Jessica said, “Now look what you’ve done. You’ve upset her.”