I showered and brushed my teeth in the shared bathroom and took my time slipping on my flannel pajamas.
Still no reply.
Darkness swallowed the light as I flicked off the bedside lamp and closed my laptop. My eyes remained open until a whisper of daylight peeked through the blinds. Sleep came and went. By the time I opened my eyes and sat up for good, the alarm clock on the desk read almost noon.
I pulled my laptop onto my knees. After it had booted up, I clicked open Facebook and held my breath as I saw a message from Dean Adams. It was only five words, but it was all I needed:
1803 Gentry Hill, Fernbrooke, Ohio.
Later that day, I sat in my car outside the modest two-floor home on Gentry Hill, gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles hurt. It wasn’t hard for me to find fake Aubrey’s street. She lived only a few blocks away from my parents. But really, in a town as tiny as Fernbrooke, everyone lived only a few blocks away from anyone else.
I scanned for signs of movement through the windows, running scenarios through my mind. It was possible this was all a setup. That this Dean Adams person was actually a serial killer, luring young fans of Viking Moon to his home with a false story about knowing the author. For all I knew, his basement was a collection of cages full of Viking wannabes or his lawn a freshly dug graveyard.
The house itself didn’t help. Nothing about it screamed, “A serial killer does not live here.” In fact, it barely looked like anyone lived there. If the smell of freshly cut grass weren’t wafting through my window, I might have assumed the home was vacant. It had a sad, unloved quality that made my heart ache.
I double-checked and triple-checked the address against the message on my phone. This was definitely the place.
I took a deep breath and opened the car door. My legs wobbled as I drew closer to the white fence surrounding the front lawn.
If I survived this meeting and a serial killer didn’t reside here, what would I say to this woman? What if she was a crazy person who had somehow convinced herself she actually was the writer of my books? Was she angry I chose to plaster her face on a series of young adult novels? She hadn’t seemed angry that night in the bookstore, but the first Viking Moon book debuted three years ago. I couldn’t help but wonder what she’d felt when she first saw her picture on the back cover. I’d spent the first year after the release waiting for my agent to barge through my door with the girl in tow, asking what the hell was going on. Every year since, I’d waited for the ax to fall and nothing had happened.
I stood at the door and took a few shallow breaths before pressing the doorbell. Then I waited. When the door remained closed after a few agonizing minutes, I pushed the button again.
My finger still hovered over the bell when the door flew open and a pair of angry eyes met mine. The woman from the bookstore stood in a white robe with a towel wrapped around her hair.
“What the hell? Didn’t you hear me tell you to hang on? You didn’t need to keep hitting the button like a freak.”
Her minty breath breezed across my cheeks, punctuating the sharpness of her words.
Well, we were off to a good start.
“Uh, sorry.” I rubbed my neck and stared at the hotel logo on her robe. It was from a popular spot in Las Vegas. “I’m actually deaf. I didn’t hear you.”
“Oh.” Her body remained tensed and she clasped her robe tighter. “Well, what do you want? Are you another fan? I don’t have a marker on me to sign anything right now.”
“Um, not really. I was actually wondering if I could come in and talk to you.”
“What? Are you crazy? No, I’m not letting a stranger into my house. You could be a stalker or something.”
I laughed under my breath. “I’m not, I swear.”
“Oh, and I’m supposed to take your word? Is that it? What, I should feel sorry for you ’cause you’re deaf and have a horrible scar on your face? Is this some kind of Make-A-Wish thing? Because I’m really not in the mood.”
Shame ripped through my body with hot talons. I lowered my head so my hair would fall over the sides of my face and I stared at her bare feet. They were perfectly pedicured, the toenails painted a deep violet.
“No,” I whispered. “That’s not it at all. I need to talk to you about Viking Moon and—”
Her hand shot out to my chest, nudging me back on the stairs. Her fingernails were the same purple as her toes.
“Look, I already said I’m not talking to any fans today. I don’t even know how fans keep finding me. Stop coming to my house. You people are crazy. They’re just books. Get over it.”
She started to close the door in my face. A burst of anger flooded up from my stomach and curled into my fists.
She had no right to talk to fans of Viking Moon that way. My fans. People who had made my career and allowed me to do the one thing I was good at.
I stopped the door with my palm and pushed it toward her.
“No.” I started at my own forcefulness before straightening my spine and looking her straight in the eye. “You have no right to talk to me like that. Not only because I know your secret, but because you’re not better than me, no matter what you seem to think.”
Her eyes widened and she studied me for a moment. “What secret?”
“I know you didn’t write the Viking Moon series. Because I did.”
There, I’d said it. It was out in the world.
Her mouth opened and shut. She raised her index finger and lowered it.
“Get in here. Now.” She grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the house, slamming the door behind me.
• • •
“Take a seat in the living room to the right,” she said. “I’m gonna go change and I’ll be right back.”
I nodded and she released me before heading up the stairs. The inside of the house looked as uninhabited as the outside. No pictures adorned the walls and no personal effects littered the shelves. The words living room seemed misused when describing the room I’d been directed to. A pale beige couch and matching chair were my only choices for seating. I chose the chair and settled against a fabric so spotless I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone had ever sat in it before me.
A silver letter opener and some mail sat in front of me, the only indication the room was used at all. I inched an unopened envelope toward me and squinted at the name on the front. Veronica Wilde. At least I had my imposter’s real name now.
As I waited, I bounced my leg up and down and wondered how the woman upstairs would approach me. She’d been so nasty at the door, I couldn’t imagine a scenario in which this conversation would go well. Perhaps she was upstairs calling the police to have me carted away as a crazy fan. Or maybe she was plotting a way to make me disappear. After all, I was the one thing standing in the way of her secret.
And she was the person in the way of mine.
I reached forward and plucked the letter opener off the table, stuffing it behind the chair cushion.
There, at least she wouldn’t have any sharp objects in her vicinity when I confronted her.
Ten minutes had passed, according to my phone, by the time she came into the living room. She moved to a bar in the corner and picked up a crystal bottle of brown liquid before turning to me.
“I need a drink,” she said. “You want one?”
The staleness of the old home settled in my throat and dried my tongue. I swallowed and nodded. She poured two glasses of the golden liquid and handed one to me.
I took a sip and gagged. The fluid burned my tongue and throat, the warmth marking a trail down my esophagus and into my chest.
“Not a fan of whiskey?” she asked.
“I guess not,” I said. I set my glass on the table in front of me and watched as she downed her drink in one swift gulp. She parked herself on the couch and leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees.
> “So,” she said. “What’s this about you being Aubrey Lynch? You look a little young to be a bestselling author.”
“I’m nineteen,” I said. “I wrote the first Viking Moon when I was fifteen and it was published when I was sixteen. Young, yes, but not impossibly so.”
Veronica stood. She poured herself another drink and held up the container to me in question. I shook my head and she plopped the decanter on the table and took her seat on the couch.
“That’s quite an accomplishment, Aubrey,” she said. “Can I ask why—if those really are your books—my picture is in the back of them?”
I twisted my fingers together, wringing them back and forth. “My name’s actually Elise. Aubrey Lynch is a pen name.”
“Veronica.”
“Nice to meet you, Veronica.” I unfurled my fingers and held a hand out to her. She stared at it as though I were offering her a dead puppy. I retracted my hand and clutched it to my chest. “Anyway, as you can see, I’m not exactly book-cover material.”
She raised a perfectly arched brow and made a gesture as if to say, Well, isn’t that obvious? I shot her a glare and continued.
“Anyway, when my publisher asked for my photo for the bio, I kind of panicked. I scoured the Internet for a picture of someone who looked the opposite of me and found you. I don’t know what I was thinking when I sent it to them. I suppose if I’d have pleaded my case, they probably would’ve printed the book without a photo, but I was sixteen and naïve and it seemed like the best solution at the time.”
Veronica dropped her hand to her lap and narrowed her eyes. “You do realize my life flipped upside down when you did that? People came up to me at school, congratulating me on publishing some novel I’d never even heard of. Then strangers approached me on the street. Slack-jawed, acne-covered teens expressing their love for people named Dag and Theresa.”
“Thora.”
“Whatever.” She sat back on the couch. “It was messed up. I had no idea what was happening.”
“I can only imagine. I’m so sorry about that. I didn’t even think about the person in the photo. It never occurred to me what would happen to her until the book was in my hands and I saw the picture in print.”
“It freaked me out at first,” she said. “I ended up grabbing some kid’s book to see what they were fussing about. I kept his copy and went home to read it.”
I grabbed my glass from the table and downed the rest of the liquid. My hands shook, but the whiskey quickly took care of that. I traced the rim of the glass with my index finger.
“What did you think?” I asked.
She shrugged. “It was okay. Not really my cup of tea. I mean, teenage Vikings? Not enough sex and violence, if you ask me.”
“Okay.”
“I was in my first year of college and failing everything. My profs hated me. Then this book became popular and everyone took notice. My grades increased without me changing a damn thing. Apparently, being a bestselling author guarantees you an A in English or something. I got free meals in restaurants, free drinks in bars. Basically, anyone who’d read the books recognized my face and sucked up to me. So I decided it wasn’t that bad a deal. I started telling people I was Aubrey Lynch. I booked hotel rooms and trips and if I flirted with the teenage boy at the counter, they’d comp everything.”
I gulped in a breath of stale air and gripped my glass so hard, I worried it might shatter.
“Wow. I had no idea that kind of stuff happens for authors.”
“Me neither. I mean, I spent most of my life avoiding reading. Now, I was waiting right along with everyone else for the next book to come out. Not because I gave a crap about the characters, mind you, but because I wanted to see if the popularity would hang on. Imagine my surprise when it only increased. Thanks to your books, I coasted through college.”
“So,” I said, “you’re not mad at me for using your photo?”
“Hell no.” She shook her head and her still damp, dark bob swung around her face. “I sucked the fame up like a vacuum. It gave me an excuse to leave my own crappy existence.” Her eyes flashed—dark evergreen amid the emerald—but she lowered her impossibly long eyelashes to block me out. By the time she looked back up at me, any trace of pain or regret had vanished. “I even moved to this shitty town last month, since the bio said I lived here. It’s good for my backstory. Do you really hike and water-ski? ’Cause you do not look like the water-skiing type.”
I exhaled the breath I felt like I’d been holding in for three years. She wasn’t going to kill me. This could actually work.
“No,” I said with a laugh. “I’ve never water-skied in my life. My publisher thought it sounded better than ‘sits in her room and does nothing all day.’ ”
“Hmph.” Veronica took a swig of her second drink. “So, why are you here, then? It took all these years for you to track me down. Why now?”
“Well, I don’t know if you heard, but they’re filming a Viking Moon TV show.”
She set her glass down on the table and licked her lips. “With Gavin Hartley. I heard. What does that have to do with me?”
I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear and placed my cup beside hers.
“They expect Aubrey Lynch on set to oversee production. They want my input so the show stays as true to the books as possible.”
Veronica pursed her berry-red lips. “Well. That’s quite a predicament for you. I assume you’re not who they’re expecting.”
“Exactly,” I said. “They’ll be looking for you.”
“And you want me to, what, show up and pretend to be you?”
“It’s not like you haven’t done it before. Except this time I’d be with you. I figured I could pose as your assistant or something. I’ll do all the actual work when it comes to consulting on the books. I can read and note the scripts, and supply you with answers if they ask you any questions. All you’ll have to do is stand there and say you’re Aubrey.”
“Interesting.” Her gaze never wavered from my face, and I shifted under her scrutiny. “What’s in it for me?”
“Well, you can keep up your guise of being me. It seems to be making your life way easier than it is mine. Plus, you’ll be on a television set. With Gavin Hartley and Leila Clarke.”
“That’s all well and great.” She blew on her nails and buffed them against her sheer white blouse. “But I think, if I’m going to do this for you, I should get something more.”
My mouth went dry and I looked at my empty glass with longing. Perhaps I should’ve accepted that second drink.
“What exactly do you want?” I asked.
She looked up from her nails and her smile sent a shiver down my spine.
“Well, I hate to be a cliché, but it is what it is. I want money,” she said. “More specifically, I want half your royalties from Viking Moon.”
Veronica’s face spun before me as all the air left my lungs. “You . . . you what?”
She crossed her legs and the chic navy skirt she was wearing slipped higher on her thigh. “I want half your royalties. I mean, I’m partly responsible for your popularity. I could’ve said something a long time ago. Perhaps retained a lawyer, sued you for using my likeness without permission. But I didn’t, because, to be honest, I felt sorry for you. Even before I met you today, I felt sorry for you. It’s pretty sad you had such low self-esteem you needed to use my picture instead of your own.”
My voice seemed to have jumped out of my mouth and headed for cover. I closed my eyes and tried to find it. When it finally came, it felt small and weak on my tongue.
“I don’t have the royalties,” I said. I opened my eyes and met her gaze. “My parents are holding the money in a trust until I’m twenty-one.”
“That’s your problem, not mine.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. If I didn’t agree to her terms, I’d have to fi
nd another way. But I’d thought of everything else already. And this was the only workable solution. My parents were reasonable people. I could tell them I needed the money for school or something. They might believe me.
“Fine,” I breathed. “I agree. But it could take some time for me to get the money. I might not have it all right away. And we start filming in two weeks.”
“That’s okay,” Veronica said. “You can give me part of it now and part of it at the end of filming. I’m reasonable.”
My head nodded of its own accord. The room suddenly seemed far too small, and I struggled for a proper breath. I needed to get out of there.
I stood on shaky legs and held my hand out again. This time, she took it. I handed her my phone so she could input her phone number and e-mail address.
“So,” I said, “I’ll send you an e-mail transfer this week. And I’ll let you know the production schedule when I get it.”
“I look forward to it.”
I bet.
“Sure. Thanks for the drink.”
My body felt numb as the door swung shut behind me. I barely registered getting into my car. Leaning on the steering wheel, I took a deep breath, then screamed.
• • •
Since my parents lived only a few blocks away, I figured I might as well get my plea for money over with. I knew there was no way I could be honest with them. If I told them the money was to pay a woman to pretend to be me, they would either laugh in my face or have me shipped off to the nearest crazy house. They’d never approved of my decision to put Veronica’s picture on the cover, but they’d silently accepted it because they felt guilty about what happened to me. This seemed above and beyond what they might consider acceptable.
I pulled into their driveway and turned off the car. My father sat on the porch, a glass of iced tea in his hand as he rocked in his favorite chair. His face broke into a grin as he spotted me coming up the walk.
“Elise!” He pulled me into a hug, the iced tea sloshing against my back and dampening my shirt. I shivered as the cold liquid hit my spine.
Flirting With Fame (Flirting With Fame) Page 7
