“Because,” Meena said. She’d been wondering how she was going to explain this to Jon. And when. Now seemed like as good a time as any. “I’m going to start working for the Palatine.”
Jon, who was drinking a soda, immediately spat out the mouthful that he’d been about to swallow. This caused Yalena, still watching them both, to giggle some more.
“Wait,” he said. “What? What about Insatiable?”
“Well,” Meena said with a shrug. “I’m going to quit. I think it’s time I moved on. I need to start helping to make the world a safer place.”
“But you already do that,” Jon said. “You tell people all the time how they’re going to die. Not that anyone ever believes you. What makes you think this is going to be any different?”
“Uh,” Meena said, starting up the stairs with Jack Bauer at her heels, “because they’re paying me? So they might actually be inclined to listen.”
“Is not true no one believes her,” Yalena said from the couch. “I believe her.”
Jon gave Yalena a sour look. “Don’t encourage her,” he said. “Do you have any idea what she’s put me through my whole life, practically? You know they called her You’re Gonna Die Girl in high school? Try being siblings with that.”
Yalena just giggled yet again at that remark.
Laughing, Meena hurried the rest of the way up the stairs. She wanted to put a sweater on before going to see what Abraham needed to speak to her about. It was a little drafty in the rectory.
She opened the door to her windowless little room-she’d speak to Sister Gertrude tomorrow about moving to a new room, one with windows-and headed straight to the small, neatly folded stack of thrift-shop clothes on the chair by her bed.
She took the sweater off the top of the pile and was heading back out the door when she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. Something on the bed. It hadn’t been there when she’d left for the hospital earlier. She came back into the room to see what it was, Jack Bauer trotting after her.
A letter.
There was a letter sitting tucked beneath the edge of her pillow on the bed.
Meena sat down on the bed and reached for the letter, Jack Bauer bounding up onto the mattress to lay down beside her.
Meena’s fingers froze, however, when she saw the envelope’s color and size.
Silver. The exact same color as the note that had been in the box Lucien had sent her. The box that had contained the tote bag with the ruby dragon slinking down the side.
The tote bag that was now, along with her laptop, in ashes up at St. George’s.
Her blood seeming to freeze inside her veins, Meena looked quickly around the tiny bedroom with its bare white walls-bare except for the crucifix hanging over her bed.
No. It wasn’t possible. How had he even gotten in there? It was a windowless room. The front door to the rectory-definitely a sacred threshold, the kind over which he’d assured her vampires couldn’t cross unless invited-was always, always locked. And they’d repaired all the windows damaged from last week’s attack…
Maybe, she told herself, even as her heart began to drum so loudly in her ears that its beat was all she could hear, he’d had the note messengered, and someone-Yalena, maybe-had dropped it off in her room…
But as she ripped the envelope open with shaking fingers and read his elegant, old-fashioned script, she saw that this was not what had happened. Not at all.
Meena, my darling, he’d written.
What I meant to say just now, though I was in too much sorrow and shock, was that I think it’s right and good for you to work for the Palatine. I hope they know how lucky they are to have you.
But that doesn’t mean I will ever stop trying to have you for myself. You know as well as I do, Meena, that we belong together.
I hope that day will come sometime soon.
In the meantime: truce.
With all the love in my heart, Lucien
Stunned, Meena stared down at the ivory notecard, on which the ink was still not quite dry. She knew this because she’d already managed to smear it in one tiny place with her thumb.
How had he done it? How had he managed to deliver it to her so quickly, before, she was certain, she herself had even stepped out of her cab?
Meena didn’t know.
And she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. All she knew for certain was that it really had been his gaze she’d felt on her every night while she’d been doing the dishes in the rectory kitchen. Those really had been his eyes, watching her from the darkness.
Had he just never approached her before now because he’d suspected she wasn’t ready to see him again after what had happened, and had wanted her to have at least this one place to call her own, in which to feel safe?
Or had he just been waiting for her to be ready, finally, to stop being frightened and to come to him?
Of course. Of course that was what had happened.
Only instead of agreeing to become his wife when she’d finally come to him, the way he’d expected her to, she’d done the unthinkable:
She’d crossed sides and joined the enemy.
And now he wanted her to know that wherever she went, whatever she did for the rest of her life, she couldn’t escape. Not that easily.
He would always be there in the darkness. Watching. Waiting.
To protect her, was how he would probably think of it.
And Meena didn’t have the slightest doubt in her mind that he would protect her. He’d protect her to within an inch of her life.
She looked down at the graceful, slightly antiquated handwriting.
A truce, he was calling it.
She smiled.
Then she slid the note back beneath her pillow, called to her dog, and headed downstairs to join Abraham and the others.
She wasn’t afraid. Not anymore.
All she could think was that Lucien had been wrong in his first note.
She hadn’t slain the dragon. Not at all.
She hoped no one ever would.
Author’s Note
All of the details about the life of Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Dracula) mentioned in this book-including the suicide by drowning in the Princess’s River of his first wife; the lack of knowledge of the whereabouts of his remains; and the fact that Bram Stoker borrowed his last name for the title of his classic novel-are historically accurate.
THE PALATINE GUARD WAS an actual military unit of the Vatican, formed in 1850 to defend Rome against attack from foreign invaders. Today the Palatine Guard is listed in most encyclopedias and search engines as defunct.
THE CHURCH LOCATED ON 154 Sullivan Street in New York City is called the Shrine Church of St. Anthony of Padua, not the Shrine of St. Clare. St. Anthony’s really is, however, staffed by Franciscan friars. St. Clare, one of the first followers of St. Francis of Assisi, founded the Order of Poor Ladies, better known today as the Poor Clares.
ST. CLARE WAS DESIGNATED as the patron saint of television in 1958 by Pope Pius XII.
ST. MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL, St. Joan of Arc, and St. George are the patron saints of the military.
TRAGICALLY, THERE IS NO longer a cathedral located on East Seventy-eighth Street.
THERE ARE SO MANY people to whom I owe a huge debt of thanks for their help and support while I was writing this book that if I listed all their names, the list would be longer than the book itself. So I’ll just settle for saying thank you all so much! Extra special thanks go to Beth Ader, Jennifer Brown, Barbara Cabot, Benjamin Egnatz, Carrie Feron, Michele Jaffe, Laura Langlie, and Abigail McAden.
AN EXTRA-SPECIAL THANKS, TOO, to all my readers.
MEG CABOT
About the Author
