Bettina’s eyes.
The pipe was hidden under a stack of VERM propaganda.
The Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement. Vlad.
I worried my lower lip.
“Sophie?” Nina was asking.
“Yes, vampires, no,” I said, forming sentences that would make my high-school English teacher weep.
Harley looked at the group of us and smiled softly. “Thank you so much. It really means a lot that you came here to hear my talk. I hope you enjoy it.”
“They all read your book. My copy. But they’re all going to buy their own. And the Kindle version, too.” Nina looked at each of us, smiling politely, the edge of one sharp fang just visible against her pink lips.
“Loved it,” Vlad said.
“Going to buy a copy for my mum,” Will reported.
“Sophie?” Nina prodded.
There was a table heaving under the weight of Harley’s books, and I eyed the cover, the faded images of vampires, werewolves, witches, and ghosts covered with big red X’s. I felt a snarl growing.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’ve been sleeping with Nina’s copy underneath my pillow. She doesn’t sleep so much, you know.”
Harley looked adoringly at Nina. “I know, she’s such a night owl.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Will said.
Java Script was starting to fill up and Harley ushered us to our seats—a few reserved folding chairs in the front row.
“You’re not planning on throwing your panties up there, are you?” I asked Nina, nudging my head toward Harley’s vacant podium.
Nina waggled her eyebrows. “Who said I’m wearing any panties?”
I shuddered, then rolled around in my chair and was half relieved, half terrified, to see Vlad and his cronies sitting in the back row. Their arms were crossed, and their faces were drawn and stern.
“Hey, Neens, has Vlad borrowed your car recently?”
Nina snarled. “He better not have. He still has a nineteenth-century driver’s license. Buggy certified.”
Just then, Roland Townsend, Harley’s sweaty little agent, took his spot behind the podium. His bushy eyebrows were just barely visible over the wooden rim. He cleared his throat, then fished another yellowed handkerchief from his suit pocket and mopped his brow.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he addressed the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, please may I have your attention? Please?”
The slight din of conversation in the room quieted and Roland cleared his throat again.
“How many of you believe in ghosts?”
A few people in the small crowd raised their hands halfheartedly; others didn’t even bother looking up from their iPads.
“Okay,” Roland continued. “How many of you believe in the afterlife? Heaven? Hell? Spirits who walk the earth even after their corporeal being is physically dead?”
I cut my eyes to Nina, who stayed rapt. I stared at Will, then, who rolled his eyes and flashed me his “
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, you know my client Harley Cavanaugh from his previous best sellers. The book that stayed on the
There was a small smattering of applause as Harley came out from behind a maroon curtain with a handwritten EMPLOYEES ONLY sign safety pinned to it. He was grinning wildly, hands splayed, apparently under the guise that the group of us, two homeless guys, and a couple of tourists who recently walked in were his very adoring public. I decided that a latte and a donut (hey, dire times, okay?) would make this situation more palatable. When I turned toward the aisle behind me, however, I was shocked to see that every folding chair was taken, and there were several people—people who looked like they knew where they were and had actually intended to be here—standing in the aisles, grinning, and clutching copies of Harley’s book.
“Christ,” I mumbled, sinking back into my chair.
“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
“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
