by Ali Brandon
“Remember I told you before that she had published a few category romances? It was about ten or twelve years ago when the first one came out under the name Val Vixen. The books were well reviewed, but she didn’t get any sort of push from her publisher, and most of the big book chains turned her down when she asked to do signings in their stores.”
“Val Vixen?” Jake gave a considering frown as she slurped down another forkful. “You know, I think I used to read her books. She had a series featuring lady cops that was decent. The first one was pretty funny. A gal breaks up with her fiancé and goes to the police academy, and when she graduates, her first official bust turns out to be her ex. Oh, don’t look so shocked,” she added with a snort when Darla raised a brow. “You work a high-stress job, you need a little escapist reading.”
“No, I think it’s great,” Darla protested, quite sincerely. Already, she’d seen her share of customers who would load up on the romances but then insist they be bagged so no one else could see what they were buying. The old written-by-women-for-women-so-it’s-got-to-be-sneered-at syndrome, she thought, realizing that becoming a bookseller had also raised her feminist sensibilities a few notches.
“Anyhow, only a few of the independents, including Great-Aunt Dee, bothered to host her anytime she had a new book out,” she went on. “The publisher finally dropped her after a few books, and she quit writing romance. But when she hit it big with her Haunted High series writing as Valerie Baylor, she remembered which stores had treated her right back in the day, and which ones had blown her off. When her new publisher put together her big tour, Valerie told them that the only places she would make appearances were the independent stores and any place where Val Vixen had been allowed to sign. As for everyone else . . . up theirs.”
“Good for her,” Jake declared through a bite of egg roll. “Sounds like my kind of girl.”
“Well, maybe not. Apparently it’s not only the bookstores that snubbed her that get the ‘up yours’ treatment. Rumor is that all the fame and success has gone to her head, and that she’s turned into a real bitch on wheels. She travels with a whole entourage—makeup, publicity, personal assistant, even a bodyguard—and all of them hate her guts.”
“Meh, a bitch, I can handle. It’s those five hundred teenage girls that have me worried,” Jake said with a grin. “By the way, did I tell you I’ve strong-armed an off-duty cop friend of mine to help me work crowd control for you? I think everything is in place now.”
She gave Darla a quick rundown of the steps she was taking to keep the potential chaos down to a workable level that weekend.
Given the bookstore’s small size, only the first five hundred people in line would receive one of the coveted numbered wristbands that would allow access to the event. That had been fine by Valerie’s publicity representative, who said that the author preferred to limit her crowds, so as not to get overwhelmed. The waiting line would start at the bottom of the bookstore’s front steps and stretch down the block, with barricades dividing the sidewalk lengthwise, so that regular pedestrian traffic could pass. Jake had also arranged for traffic control in case the sight of several hundred teenage girls proved a driving distraction. To keep the crowd entertained during their wait, Darla planned to have Lizzie periodically hand out trivia quizzes and raffle tickets for drawings of Haunted High memorabilia. Inside, they would keep the fans orderly by means of the old velvet-rope routine.
“If we start right at seven and keep the line moving, we should be able to get everyone through by ten o’clock, latest,” Jake finished with a satisfied nod. “The outside stuff is already cleared with the city, and the barricades will be delivered Sunday morning. Reese and I will want to do a final sweep of the shop around six, so if you close early at five, we should be fine. Oh, and I’ve also made arrangements for a couple of patrol cars to make a few extra drive-bys of the area once the signing begins.”
They finalized the details over servings of bean curd ice cream; then, sharing mutual groans at their overindulgence, they each paid their own bill and headed back home. Darla breathed a sigh of relief to see that the Lone Protester, as she’d come to think of the Valerie clone, had apparently abandoned her post for the night.
Once they reached the brownstone, Jake waited on the sidewalk while Darla trotted up a second, smaller set of steps situated to the right of the bookstore’s main entry. At the top of that stoop was a more modest glass door that opened into her private entrance hall. It was a convenient arrangement in that she didn’t need to cut through the store to reach the two flights of stairs leading up to her apartment but could enter directly from the street. Even better, an inner door connected that hallway to the shop, which meant she could travel from home to business at any time of day or night without ever leaving her building. Talk about an easy commute!
After Darla had locked the outer door behind her, she returned the favor by watching through the mottled glass until Jake made her ungainly way down the half dozen steps to her garden apartment, as Jake had informed her the basement dwelling was euphemistically called. Once Jake had flashed the outside light twice—the older woman’s signal that she was safely inside—Darla gave a satisfied nod.
“Goils gotta look out for other goils,” she reminded herself with a grin as she managed a fair imitation of her friend’s streetwise accent. Then, flipping on the replica Tiffany lamp that sat on the hall table, she unlocked her mailbox and grabbed up the handful of mail. A reflexive glance at the blinking red light on the keypad installed beside the door leading into the shop reassured her that the store alarm was properly set. Tucking the mail beneath her arm, she started up the two flights of stairs leading to her apartment.
TWO
BARELY HAD DARLA TAKEN HER FIRST STEP UP THE STAIRS when a sleek black shadow dashed between her legs and vanished around the curve at the first landing. Heart pounding, she grabbed for the banister with her free hand and managed to avoid stumbling.
“Damn it, Hamlet, you sorry little so-and-so!” she yelled up the steps after him.
The stair race was one of his favorite tricks, along with burrowing in her underwear drawer, using her jar of expensive face cream as a soccer ball, and assorted other mischief designed to torment a hapless human. Bolstered by fond childhood memories of her family’s placid orange tabby Topsey, whose worst offense had been leaving the occasional dead mouse on the back step, Darla felt certain that none of this was instinctual cat behavior, but instead was carefully plotted in Hamlet’s little feline brain. As she’d told Jake only the day before, if the cat had opposable thumbs, he’d be running a major corporation . . . that, or ruling a third-world country.
By the time she reached the second landing, Hamlet was already seated like a small deity in front of her apartment door: body erect, tail tightly wrapped around his body, and green gaze focused with luminous intensity upon the knob as if willing it to open. Which, of course, it did when Darla inserted the key.
“Must be nice to have your own personal doorwoman,” she muttered, kicking off her shoes and dropping the mail on the antique sideboard. Then, well-trained human that she was, Darla bypassed the combination foyer/living room/dining nook that comprised most of the third floor and obediently followed Hamlet into the sleek galley kitchen. There, she scrubbed out his cut-glass drinking bowl and refilled it with filtered water.
A sharp meow stopped her just as she was about to set it down on his woven grass place mat there in the tiny butler’s pantry.
“Sorry, I forgot,” she apologized with exaggerated dismay, punching the button on the refrigerator to dispense a handful of ice—crushed, not cubed—into his lordship’s drinking water. After checking to make sure his food bowl was full (surprisingly, he preferred the basic store-brand kibble to the fancy stuff in a can), she left Hamlet to his evening repast and flopped down on Great-Aunt Dee’s horsehair couch.
As always, Darla also failed to remember that the century-old hide retained something of its original wild nature, in that i
t had a tendency to poke through clothing and stab at delicate flesh. Grabbing the well-worn quilt that was folded over its curved back, she spread it over the offending cushions and then flopped again, this time with a sigh. She’d not yet eased into a formal evening ritual; in fact, though she’d lived there almost half a year now, the apartment still felt unfamiliar enough to her that she often felt she was merely house-sitting for her aunt and would be hopping on a plane for home in the next few days.
Part of the problem was that, when she’d moved into the place, it had been pretty much as her great-aunt had left it . . . not surprisingly, since the old woman had simply passed away one night in her sleep. Luckily, James and her aunt’s friend, Mary Ann, had cleared the kitchen of all perishables and tactfully disposed of the mattress where she’d breathed her last. But Dee’s personal effects had still filled the drawers and shelves for Darla to sort through. She had dutifully taken on the task, alternately chuckling and raising her brows over various of her aunt’s possessions she had discovered in the process. She’d also taken an immediate vow to destroy or dispose of anything of her own that she would be embarrassed to have found should she suddenly depart life without any warning.
Of course, her late great-aunt’s brownstone had not been totally unknown to her when she’d taken up residence there. Back when she was in grade school, she and her mother had occasionally paid visits to New York to see the original Darla Pettistone, after whom Darla had been named. By then, however, her great-aunt was on her third well-to-do husband and had long since shortened her given name to Dee, claiming that “Darla” was too quaint for a woman of her status. She had also abandoned the blond beehive that every good Texas female of her generation had proudly sported, instead wearing her hair cropped fashionably short and hennaed a blinding shade of red that made Darla’s auburn hair appear positively subdued in comparison.
Tellingly, though, the old woman had never lost her twangy, and somewhat grammatically challenged, manner of speech.
Those grade-school-era visits had comprised most of perhaps a dozen times that Darla had ever actually met her great-aunt in person, but the two of them had always had a rapport. Even so, learning that, save for several charities, she’d been named the sole heir to the woman’s sizeable estate had been such a shock.
But a welcome one, Darla reminded herself. Especially given that after losing her job and having her snake of an ex-husband conveniently declare bankruptcy, leaving her responsible for what remained of their mutual debt, she’d been a couple of weeks from having her home foreclosed upon at the time.
Not wanting to dwell on that unpleasant past, or worry about Sunday night’s stellar event, Darla sat up again and took a look at her to-be-read pile on the end table. At the top lay an advance reader copy of the latest Haunted High novel, Ghost of a Chance, which had languished there for the past couple of weeks. It was the book that Valerie Baylor would be signing Sunday night.
Might as well find out what I’ll be selling a thousand copies of this weekend, she told herself with a shrug.
Darla hadn’t read the previous two books in the series, but she had read the reviews, so she knew the basic story line: In Book One, Dead But Still Doing Homework, the main character, Lani, was killed in a bleacher collapse during a homecoming football game with her school’s biggest rivals. Even though the now-ghostly teen realized that she was dead, she found herself unable to move on to her appropriate afterlife destination.
Instead, for reasons Lani didn’t understand—at least, not until Book Two, School Spirit—the teen ghost was stuck there in the school. She was not alone, however. Her otherworldly companions included other phantom classmates who also had died in strange accidents on school grounds over the years. A few of Lani’s grieving friends could actually see her, but her own family and almost everyone else had no clue that her spirit still remained trapped in the school.
“Yep, sound just like my old high school days,” Darla muttered with a snort as she flipped open the cover of Ghost of a Chance and began to read.
What she expected was a frothy, teen-angsty read enlivened by spooky doings and targeted to a junior high through high school audience . . . entertainment light for the under-twenty set. She got the froth, angst, and scares. But what she also discovered, as she delved deeper into those pages, was a sly and often poignant send-up of the teen years, replete with themes of loss and marginalization designed to resonate with readers of all ages.
About fifty pages in, Darla came up for figurative air and a literal diet cola. Hamlet had long since finished his evening meal and lay sprawled alongside the refrigerator, taking advantage of the marginal heat its energy-efficient motor put out. His snores matched the appliance’s soft rumble. The dual sound lent the apartment a surprisingly homey ambiance, she thought with a small smile as, glass in hand, she made her way back to the couch and took up her book again.
As she settled in, however, she couldn’t help recalling the girl who’d been standing across the street from the shop. Did the girl really have cause to think that Valerie Baylor had plagiarized her work, as her handmade sign proclaimed? Or was she instead a fan who had crossed the line into angry obsession and now sought to bring down the woman she’d once admired?
“Not my business,” she decided.
Darla turned back to the page where she’d left off and read straight through for the next hour. She’d just started the chapter where the ghostly Lani was being pursued through the high school hallways by malevolent beings that had sprung from the frightening Janitor’s closet, when the retro princess phone on the end table beside her abruptly rang. The unexpected sound almost sent her leaping off the horsehair couch.
Realizing on the second ring that the obnoxious trill wasn’t caused by anything supernatural, Darla swiftly fumbled for the receiver. “Hello?” she gasped out, pressing her free hand to her chest to help slow her heartbeat.
Jake’s voice answered. “Darla, are you all right? I just wanted to see if you were in the apartment, or down in the store.”
“Nope, just lying here on the couch. Actually, I’m reading the new Haunted High book, and it’s pretty—”
“Did you go back downstairs recently?” Jake cut her short, sounding concerned. “Maybe to check on something, unpack a few more books?”
“No, why?” Darla sat up, the book forgotten in her lap. “What’s wrong?”
“Probably nothing, since the alarm hasn’t gone off, but a few minutes ago I thought I heard what sounded like someone walking around upstairs in the store. I went outside to take a look, and I saw a light in the back room go on. And I could have sworn I saw someone moving around in there.”
A shiver that had as much to do with her ghostly reading as it did with Jake’s troubled words sent gooseflesh down both Darla’s arms. Then, almost as swiftly, an explanation occurred to her, and anger supplanted fear. “Oh, crap, do you think one of those fan girls managed to hide out in the store after all?”
“That, or your Great-Aunt Dee is haunting the place. I’m going to grab the spare key and take a look.”
“I’ll be right down,” Darla replied, hanging up before Jake could tell her not to.
Grabbing her keys, she didn’t bother with her shoes but hurried out her front door and down the two flights of stairs to the entrance hall below. The LED on the keypad next to the door leading from hall to store now glowed with a solid green light, indicating that Jake must have already deactivated the alarm and gone in. Opening the door slowly, Darla stuck her head inside the shop.
From what Jake had said, she’d expected to see lights blazing. Instead, the only illumination came from the yellow streetlights trickling through the store’s front window and from the soft glow from her Tiffany lamp in the hall. Softly she called, “Jake, are you in there?”
“Right here,” came the other woman’s voice practically in her ear, causing Darla to have her second mini heart attack in almost as many minutes. Jake waved Darla inside the shop, then clos
ed the door after her.
“You hung up on me before I could tell you to stay the hell outside,” Jake accused her in the same hushed tone, sounding pretty well ticked. “Rule number one, Nancy Drew . . . never go barging into a dark place when there’s an intruder running around. Let the cops do their thing.”
“Okay, okay,” Darla muttered back. “But what’s with the lights? I thought you told me they were on?”
“When I went back outside after calling you, all of them were off again. Now, stay put and don’t move!”
With that whispered demand, Jake stepped to the side of the Haunted High display and clicked on an oversized police-issue flashlight, sending a blinding stream of white light across the store. She swung the beam toward the back room, where the first editions and collectible volumes were shelved, and then back toward the front door, while Darla strained her eyes and ears to catch any sight or sound. As far as she could tell, however, the floor was empty save for the two of them.
Of course, that didn’t mean someone hadn’t moved up to the second-floor lounge and storeroom area while Jake was on the phone to her a few moments earlier.
“I’m going to hit the main lights,” Jake murmured. “You wait here.”
Darla did as instructed, one hand on the doorknob behind her in case she needed to make a strategic retreat. Not that she’d leave Jake alone with an intruder, she told herself. But if someone came flying out from behind the stacks and somehow overpowered Jake, despite the flashlight the size of a club that she was packing, Darla wanted to be able to go for help. On the other hand, if it was Great-Aunt Dee’s ghost skulking around . . . well, Jake was on her own.
A line of incandescent light fixtures—Great-Aunt Dee had not approved of fluorescent bulbs—abruptly sprang to life above her. Darla squinted against the onslaught of brilliance and scanned the store. Everything appeared in place, and as far as she could see, no one was lurking in the stacks. A glance at the cash register showed it was turned off and closed, just as she’d left it. Jake took a quick look at the register herself before making a swift tour of the back room and then the restroom. Darla made her own brief rounds, peering into those odd corners behind various shelves where she’d known the occasional child customer to conceal himself while his distracted parent was shopping.
