Jane Goes Batty

“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.

Chapter 16

Jane felt only slightly guilty about leaving Byron 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.”