“Who?” Jane asked.
“The Frost woman,” said Byron. “And I must say, she’s quite good. You could learn a thing or two from her.”
“Out!” Jane ordered.
Byron, laughing, went invisible and slipped out the door, leaving Jane alone with Chloe. The girl had said not a single word during Jane and Byron’s exchange and seemed almost to be in a trance as she continued to mouth her lines. Now, as Jane stared at her, her eyes opened.
“Hey,” she said. “When did you get here?”
“Ages ago,” said Jane, now in a foul mood. “Thank you for noticing.”
“Run lines with me,” Chloe said, thrusting her script at Jane.
“Excuse me?” said Jane.
“Run lines,” Chloe repeated. “You read Tucker’s lines and I’ll say mine. It’s how we practice.”
Jane took the script from the girl and plopped down in the trailer’s other chair. She looked at the script and found Tucker’s first line.
“ ‘I hope you had a nice time,’ ” she read.
“Don’t use your voice,” Chloe said. “I can’t do a romantic scene with a woman. Try to sound like a man.”
Jane began to object, but Chloe said, “Please. It will really help.”
“Fine,” Jane huffed. She cleared her throat and began again, this time making her voice lower and gruffer. “ ‘I hope you had a nice time,’ ” she said.
“That’s better,” Chloe said. “Now me. ‘I had a swell time, Jonathan. Thank you for asking me. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure you liked me.’ ”
“Swell?” said Jane in her own voice. “Who says swell?”
“Just read the lines,” Chloe said. “I didn’t write them, so don’t get mad at me.”
Jane gritted her teeth. “ ‘Why would you think that?’ ” she read.
Chloe shrugged. “ ‘I don’t know,’ ” she said in a breathy voice. “ ‘I guess because you’re always talking to Connie, and you gave her your letterman sweater.’ ”
“Please tell me she didn’t rename Constance Connie,” Jane said, putting a hand to her forehead. “Please tell me that.”
“You really suck at this,” Chloe replied, snatching the script from Jane’s hand. “Forget it. I’ll do it myself.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jane. “I can do it. It’s just that this is all very upsetting.”
“I don’t know why,” Chloe said. “They’re making a movie out of your book. You should be happy about it.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” said Jane. “You’ve never written a book.”
“No,” Chloe agreed. “But I know if I did I’d be pretty excited if someone liked it enough to make a movie out of it.”
Jane sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “Still, it’s not really my book anymore. It’s someone else’s story now.”
“Oh, boo-hoo,” said Chloe, picking up a pack of cigarettes and tapping one into her hand. She began to light it, then suddenly stubbed it out. “Shit. I can’t smoke.”
“Why not?” Jane asked.
“Tucker has a thing about cigarettes,” Chloe explained. “If you’re going to kiss him, you can’t taste like cigarettes.”
“That sounds like a reasonable request,” said Jane.
Chloe snorted. “Yeah, except that he always tastes like garlic.” She looked at Jane with a worried expression. “Do I have to worry about that?” she asked. “You know, the whole garlic thing?”
Jane shook her head. “Probably not,” she said. “That’s pretty much a myth, although some vampires do have an allergic reaction to it. But you should be fine.”
“How will I know if I’m allergic?” Chloe said.
“Well, you’ll probably break out in hives,” Jane explained.
“Hives?” said Chloe. “Like beehives?”
Jane wondered if the girl was joking, realized she wasn’t, and said, “Not like beehives, no. Like welts.” Chloe looked at her blankly, so Jane added, “Small red spots that itch.”
“Right,” Chloe said. “I get those when I’m around cats.”
“So you’re allergic to cats?” said Jane. “Then you know.”
“Oh, I’m not allergic,” Chloe said. “I just get all itchy and sneeze and stuff.”
Jane decided against further discussion of the subject and said simply, “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
A knock at the door interrupted them. “Come in,” Chloe shouted.
A young woman holding a clipboard and looking very anxious poked her head in and said, “They’re ready for you on set, Chloe.”
Chloe stood up. “You coming?” she asked Jane.
“I don’t know,” said Jane. “I might be in the way.”
“Oh, come on,” Chloe prodded. “It’ll be fun.”
Jane hesitated a moment, then stood up. “Maybe it will,” she said.
The two of them left the trailer and walked over to where a camera had been set up near a convertible parked in front of the house that in the movie belonged to the Wexley family. In reality it belonged to Agatha Martin, the town librarian. In a stroke of good fortune, Agatha had maintained the house exactly as it had looked in 1955, when she’d been a sixteen-year-old sophomore at Brakeston High and lived there with her family. As a result, the set decorator had only to remove the satellite dish from Agatha’s roof and add a few more garden gnomes to those already occupying the petunia beds.
Julia Baxter was peering at a monitor when Jane and Chloe approached. Seeing them, she straightened up. “All right, people!” she called out. “Let’s make a movie!”
All around them crew members scrambled to do their various jobs. Jane watched in amazement as what had moments ago seemed like total chaos turned into an operation of military precision with Julia Baxter as the commander.
“I should have eaten something,” Chloe said to Jane as lights were adjusted and someone polished the convertible’s hood. “My stomach is growling.”
Jane stiffened. “Your stomach is growling?” she asked.
Chloe nodded. “I should have had a muffin or some toast or something.”
“No,” said Jane. “That wouldn’t help.”
What Chloe needed was blood. It hadn’t occurred to Jane that the girl might be hungry. She’d assumed Byron had taken care of that. But perhaps Chloe hadn’t realized what was happening to her. It was difficult the first few times it happened to differentiate the need for blood from normal human hunger.
Before Jane could do anything, Tucker Mack appeared. Like Chloe, he was dressed like a 1950s student, wearing jeans, a striped polo shirt, and a varsity jacket with PEARSON HIGH SCHOOL written on the back in white letters. His dark hair was slicked back.
“Pearson High School,” Jane said, distracted by the jacket. “There’s no Pearson High School in Constance. There’s no high school at all.”
“I had to write it in,” said a voice.
Jane turned to her right and saw Shirley standing there. She was holding a script on which were numerous cross-outs and arrows and words scribbled in the margins.
“Pearson is the name of one of the producers,” Shirley continued. “He wanted to be in the movie somehow, and this was an easy way to do it. Just be glad Elena Wawrzyniak-Kobayashi settled for an extra half a percent of the gross. We’d never have gotten that on a jacket.”
“Chloe, get in the car,” Jane heard Julia Baxter say.
“Wait a moment,” Jane said, grabbing the girl’s wrist. “You need to eat something,” she whispered in Chloe’s ear. “And I don’t mean a muffin. You need blood.”
“Chloe!” Julia called.
Chloe pulled away from Jane. “There’s no time,” she said. “Besides, I’ll be fine. This won’t take long.”
Jane watched, tension rising in her belly, as Chloe got into the convertible. Tucker Mack was already seated behind the steering wheel, one arm on the edge of the door and the other stretched along the back of the seat.
“All right,” Julia said. “Chloe, I want you to lean into him as he says his lines. But look a little bit afraid, as if you don’t know what he’s going to do.”
Julia put a pair of headphones over her ears and took a seat behind the camera. A boom was lowered over the car so that the microphone was only a few feet above the heads of the actors.