THE ILL-GOTTEN bottle rests, repackaged, in my WWF tote when the time comes for me to take over for Charlotte. Just carrying it around makes me feel guilty. And there’s a nervous burble in my stomach. What if the product has no effect on Lillian? It won’t mean she’s definitely human, it could just mean that holy water doesn’t bother her. Or what if she has extrasensory perceptions and knows that the Crème de la Mer bottle has been tampered with?
I’m so out of my league.
Happily—or unhappily, I’m not yet sure—Lillian is in. In fact, she’s lying on her back on the heavy, black-glass table in her office while an Asian woman in spa whites stands over her, swooshing her hands through the air, frowning intently.
“Hi, it’s Kate.” I knock on the partially opened door. “I’m taking over for Charlotte.”
“Grab my appointments book and entrez!” Lillian calls.
Charlotte, not yet departed, gives me an evil look, as if reading Lillian’s appointments to her while she receives Reiki is the world’s greatest privilege. I stare back at her until she picks up her Balenciaga knockoff bag and goes. Then I drop the Crème de la Mer product from my bag into the mail bucket of swag, scoop the heavy leather appointments book off Lillian’s desk, stack them on top of each other, and entrez, staggering under the weight.
“How are you doing, Lillian? Are you feeling better?”
“Do you ever feel,” she asks, “that you’ve got nothing to look forward to?”
I think of the holy-water spritz and answer truthfully, “I have lots of things to look forward to.”
“You’re young yet,” she says. “You haven’t had time to grow bored with everything, the way I have. The advertisers eternally clamoring for better coverage. The assistants eternally writing personal missives. The celebrities eternally plucking their mustaches and walking around topless at photo shoots. And I vow to you, Kate, if I have to see the eighties come back one more time, I’ll put out my own eyes.”
“Do you want to see what came in today?” I soothe her.
“Is there anything that warrants a look?”
“Some Taschen hotel books, a La Perla camisole, a new Provençal line from Crème de la Mer.”
Lillian sighs. “Oh, I suppose so. Later.”
I read the calendar out loud to her, going over Thursday, Friday, and Monday at her request, looking for slots to schedule more Reiki appointments. Penciled in during the features meeting in Lillian’s elegant, old-fashioned script is a note that says “tOdeliv.” Tode liv? To deliver?
“I can’t read one,” I tell her. “It looks like t-o-deliv. And it looks like it’s scheduled for the middle of the features meeting on Monday.”
“Don’t worry about that one,” she says.
Something about her tone of voice gives me pause. “Are you sure you don’t want me to reschedule it?”
“Quite.”
T-O-deliv? Could t-O stand for type O blood, the universal donor? A fluid known at Tasty as beet juice? It’s possible that I’ve even witnessed the type O delivery. On my very first day, while I sat with Felix filling out paperwork, a man came in pushing a handcart stacked with coolers. It would make so much sense if the vampires have found alternative methods of sustenance rather than killing humans right and left. But one drink a day…that must be the worst diet on earth for all eternity. No wonder fashion people are so bitchy all the time—they’re starving.
“Kate?” Lillian asks.
“Oh, sorry. What?”
“I have your “Clean Clothes” edit here.”
Nervousness of a different kind twists my guts. She’s read it already?
Lillian gropes on the table beside her, then hands over a stapled printout of my article, drenched in red pen.
“I’m so sorry,” I tell her. “I tried…”
She laughs, earning an extra hand-flourish from the Reiki master. “You can’t expect to get it perfect overnight,” she says. “You’ve done fabulously well for a first effort.”
“You’ve changed almost everything!” I protest.
“That’s what editors do, my dear. You didn’t think someone just writes it and we publish it in the magazine, did you?”
Well, yeah, that is what I thought.
“If you look closely, you’ll see that you had all the correct ideas, which I must tell you is phenomenally promising. I’ve just moved them around a little. You’re very talented, Kate. Most first drafts from so-called professional writers look worse than this.”
“Really?” I want to believe her.
Lillian sighs. “I wish it weren’t so, but yes. If only the people who make their living by writing could actually write, darling, my job would be so much easier. You can write. It’s apparent already.”
Warmed by her praise, I look more closely at the comments, quickly realizing that Lillian has honed and clarified what I was trying to say without changing it too dramatically.
“You’ve really improved this,” I admit.
“I learned from one of fashion’s greatest editors, Gene Gantor. I’m sure you’ve heard about him from your mother.”
“Yes, of course,” I murmur, heart thumping. “Annabel told me that Gene Gantor doted on Eva.”
“What did Eva herself tell you?”
Lillian’s voice is light, but I sense a subtext. I wish she wasn’t staring up at the ceiling; from this angle I can’t see her expression.
“I was young, I don’t remember,” I dodge.
“It’s true that Gene took Eva under his wing. By that time, I was practically his equal—we’d been partners for simply centuries, darling. Eva must have mentioned me.”
“She didn’t talk to me about her career. I’d never heard of Gene Gantor until I started working here.” And I don’t like to think about him now. The last thing my family portrait needs is infidelity.
Lillian rolls her head, turning toward me for the first time during this conversation. She looks pleased, or maybe it’s just the Reiki taking effect.
“Ah, well. Eva dropped Gene when she dropped the rest of us.”
Good. I’m glad.
“The poor darling was heartbroken. Shortly thereafter he went back to the Continent. He said the colonies are no more civilized today than they were three hundred years ago. He did love to amusingly condemn things; it was one of the many traits that made him such good company.” She sighs.
Her crystal-blue gaze probes me. “I hope Eva gave you and your father more warning than she gave us,” she says.
“Not really,” I reply. “I didn’t realize she was unhappy until one of her fall collections bombed. She fell into a deep depression. After a few weeks of lying in her bedroom with the lights off, only to sneak out of the house to God knows where at night, she announced that she was leaving us to ‘save her career.’”
I was sixteen years old and my mother threw some cosmetics and a trademark slip dress or two into a Vivienne Westwood rolly suitcase and walked out, never to return.
“What happened after that?” Lillian’s voice is soothing. The Reiki woman pretends not to listen and at the moment I don’t care whether she is or not.
“At first she sent cards on my birthday and at Christmas, but it’s been years since she made even that effort.”
“Do you know what she’s doing now?”
I sigh. “We hired a private detective. Eva wasn’t in New York. She wasn’t working in the industry. The apartment on Seventh Avenue that she’d rented the year before, when her weekends in the city became weeks in the city, turned out never to have existed. We don’t know where she was living all that time. We tracked her to Milan, but she wasn’t working there, either. And after that the trail vanished. Then, a couple years ago, an old friend of hers gave my dad a page torn out of an Italian fashion magazine. Eva—at least it sure looked like a very skinny version of her—was on the arm of someone identified as Prince Dimitri of Moldova, attending a film opening at Cannes. She was listed as ‘friend,’ so I guess that career isn’t goin
g so well.”
Lillian nods sympathetically. “It must have been very hard for you,” she says. “Your mother leaving like that must have felt like a vote of no-confidence in you, though I’m sure it wasn’t.” She gets it. That is how it feels. I smile tremulously.
“She was a fool not to understand how promising you are,” she says. “I’m so proud of how you turned out. Seeing you makes me wonder what it would have been like to have a daughter.”
The Reiki woman does a last flourish, then stands back. “Finished!” she says.
We three pause awkwardly. This is a pretty intense conversation to be having with a boss.
“Okay.” Lillian sits up, looking girlish. “Let’s see what you have in the bucket.”
Obviously, after how we’ve just connected, it’s now impossible for me to spray Lillian with holy water.
I start laying the loot out on her table, trying to avoid setting out the mister. But Lillian sees it and pounces on it.
“I’m not sure about that one!” I say, trying to take it away from her. “The packaging was damaged.”
She ignores me and starts taking it out of the box.
“No, no!” the Reiki lady intervenes. “No product! Block energy! Energy very weak.”
Thank the Lord! I take custody of the bottles. “I’ll pack this up for you to take home.”
Time for Plan B.
Plan B involves asking Lexa if she’d like to try a refreshing lavender facial mist—“The press release said it makes your skin look luminous and photogenic,” I add, so she’ll bite.
Lexa takes off her black-frame glasses and tilts her face back.
I hold my breath.
She opens her eyes again. “Can it go on over makeup?” she asks me.
Annabel has been looking at the packaging. “The box says it can.”
Lexa closes her eyes and I pump the nozzle several times, releasing the mist.
And nothing happens.
Then Lexa opens her eyes, looking straight at me. “This stings,” she says. Her expression twists in pain. “This really sodding burns, Kate!”
“I’ll get a washcloth!” Annabel hurries out of the office.
Spectral white hands waving, Lexa leans back in her chair. A pained hiss emits from her blanched lips. Redness seeps into her skin. Tears well and pour from her eyes. I’m horrified to see that tiny blisters are appearing on the delicate skin around her mouth. It’s difficult to think I’ve harmed anyone. Even, as it turns out, a vampire.
Oh my God, she’s really a vampire.
“This isn’t a Crème de la Mer product. What is this?”
“I don’t know,” I stammer.
Lexa’s eyes bore into me, and I think I see the gleam of red behind their feline green. “I think you do,” she growls. “I think you know quite a bit, don’t you?”
“Let me go find Annabel.” I turn and flee the room. My brain tries to contradict what it’s learned, telling me maybe it’s a coincidence, an allergic reaction to something left in the bottle. But it was only scented water. Nothing more. I spritzed my own face last night to no ill effect at all.
On instinct I return to the intern room, forcing myself to walk, not run. Despite the fact that it’s only three-thirty, I shut down my computer, gather my things, and leave the building.
I don’t plan on coming back.
14
Death Is the Most Fabulous Makeover
I WAKE UP from disturbing dreams.
Slowly the living room coalesces around me. I’m curled up on the extra-wide L-segment of Victoria’s slate gray sectional sofa, sleeping underneath my sweater. Muted, the flat-screen shows Fashion TV. A trend piece on the vampire look, ironically. The models have been made up to look ghoulish, with dark circles under their eyes and hollow white faces. Designers are showing black satin capes, shirts appliquéd with funeral wreaths, and plunging, tantalizing necklines. Coffin chic. The clock reads 8:05 A.M. My necklace of garlic bulbs rustles when I move.
I conclusively demonstrated yesterday that at least one of my coworkers belongs to the legions of the undead.
I leave messages on both Lauren’s voice mail and Lexa’s. To Lauren, I apologize and say simply that a matter of a personal nature has come up and I won’t be able to return to work. To Lexa, I apologize profusely, hope that she’s recovered from her reaction to the product, and wish her all the best with the Tasty Girl photo shoot. I’m trying to imply that she has nothing to worry about from me. I’ll just go on my way (med school, only two months away) and she can go hers (fashion shows, until the end of time). Neither one of us needs to worry about the other.
Seconds after I hang up, the phone rings.
The caller ID shows an Oldham exchange. I don’t answer it, imagining Lexa, enraged, swathed in bandages from the neck up. After an excruciatingly long twenty rings, the phone falls silent. The caller dials again after only a few seconds. I rush to unplug the phone from the wall, but I can still hear it ringing, faintly, from the extension in Victoria’s bedroom. And then my cell phone starts ringing, too. With trembling hands I silence it.
The calls continue every twenty minutes. The pacing and duration seems deliberately intended to intimidate and harass. And it’s working.
I hope Sylvia is up early. I dial her West Coast number.
Sleepily, she asks, “Has anything happened?”
“They’re calling me every twenty minutes. Do you think I should make a run for the bus station and go to my dad’s?”
“I still think you’ll be safer at Victoria’s.”
Her rationale is that a vampire can’t enter a dwelling or privately owned building unless invited. But once they’ve been invited, they can come back anytime. Annabel, Sylvia rightly pointed out, would be able to walk right in to my dad’s house. If she’s one of them.
“Did you get more garlic?”
After work yesterday, I cleaned out all three delis close to Victoria’s, staying on the sunny part of the sidewalk and looking around like a crazy person for any sign of a woman in designer duds.
“I did. And I’ve scattered it on all the windowsills and by the doors and I’m wearing a big wreath of it.”
“That’s what they did in Dracula. So don’t worry, you should be fine.”
“I don’t like the sound of that ‘should be.’”
“Well,” she says, “they could use mind control to force you to invite them in. So avoid direct eye contact. That’s usually how they assert their will on people.”
“I’d like to avoid laying eyes on them in general. But what am I supposed to do, never leave this apartment again?”
Sylvia sighs. “I haven’t figured that out yet. But Kate, you can’t face this alone. You should tell your dad what’s going on.”
“Out of the question. He’ll think I’ve lost my mind. Or started taking drugs.”
“Then call Victoria. She’s cosmopolitan. She’ll believe you. Or at least she’ll humor you.”
She has a point.
“I’ll call her right now.” I don’t tell Sylvia my suspicions about Sterling. It feels disloyal to my aunt.
“Okay, honey,” Sylvia says, signing off. “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be fine!”
Victoria’s phone goes straight to voice mail. I’m not sure how to explain my situation. “Hi, Aunt Vic, it’s Kate. I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m having a little problem. Don’t worry, the apartment is fine. It’s the job.” I’m about halfway through—mentioning the word vampire, actually—when the line goes dead.
I dial again only to be met with a blare of static.
I WAIT for a long time in the living room, too wound up even to watch TV. Until, paradoxically, I start to feel sleepy. Around twilight, I find it impossible to keep my eyes open, yet every time I close them, I see horrors. A bat’s wing flaps behind my eyelids. A red eye opens in the dark. Blood pools in an empty stiletto. I smell earth. And jolt awake again, revived by the pungent stench of garlic all around me.
Suddenly I’m roused by loud tapping on the glass of the terrace door.
Standing outside swathed in ruffled party dresses are Annabel and Lexa. White skin glows in the dark. And their eyes are inhuman red.
I shriek and dive behind the sofa.
They have materialized outside my window on the eleventh floor. They can fly.
Attempting to control my hyperventilating, I peek back over the sofa. They’re still there. And even though I was expecting something like this, seeing two Tasty staffers where no staffers should be is terrifying.
“Go away! You are not invited!” I yell.
Lexa digs in her handbag, pulls out her mobile phone, and dials. I notice, to my great relief, that the ill effects of holy water were fleeting. Her skin looks normal—except for the fact that it glows in the dark. My mobile, tucked in the pocket of my skirt for easy access to 911, begins to ring.
This time I answer it.
“Invite us into the flat, darling, we need to talk.”
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Kate, this is really unprofessional.”
Annabel taps Lexa on the shoulder and takes the phone from her. I’m watching from my position behind the sofa, peering through my fingers like you do when you see something scary on TV.
“Hi, you,” she says. “I know you’re freaked out right now, but I want to tell you that it’s all going to be good. We’re friends, right?” She smiles, revealing her chic, wicked-looking little incisors.
“You’re one of them.”
“I am,” she preens. “They transformed me in the spring and I’ve never been happier. Plus, you know, stopping the aging process is great for your skin.”
“Congratulations. I’m happy for you. Why bother with Botox when you can be one of the living dead?”
“Don’t be that way. Death is the most fabulous makeover ever.”
Lexa grabs the phone back. “If you were in any danger, darling, you would have been dead on your first day at the office. There are very strict rules on how to get along without attracting attention in First World societies.”
Blood Is the New Black Page 16
