“You want to make movies?” She had lost me. And so soon in the conversation, too.
“No, dumb shit, I'm like the assistant who tends to the little people.”
I felt my eyes bulge. “I don't think you should call them that.”
“I'm doing you a favor, okay? Usually these ghosts just want someone to listen, maybe point them in the right direction. You've got higher priorities right now, I gather.”
“Well, thanks.” I must not have sounded convincing, because she glared at me. “No, really. Thanks. The last thing I need this week is another needy ghost dropping by for favors.”
“You're welcome. It's actually kind of nice. They can see me and talk to me, just like you. I mean, look at my options! I have to talk to you, or I can talk to them.”
“Well, you've made the right choice,” I said with faux enthusiasm.
“Don't get too down. At least your hot, hunky boyfriend can see you and touch you. Your friends can see you and touch you. What have I got? A distracted vampire with a long to-do list ahead of me and my problems.”
“Cathie, that's not true!” I couldn't believe I was getting a lecture from a woman in a green sweatshirt. “I solved your problem right away, didn't I? The bad guy's dead, if memory serves.”
“Yeah,” she said, cheering up. “Your sister cracked his head open like an egg.”
“So what do you want from me now?”
“I dunno. But there's got to be more thanthis .” She sulkily floated through the wall.
“Tell me about it!” I shouted after her.
Chapter 15
Because things weren't awful enough, an hour later Marjorie the scary librarian popped by and chimed the bell. I put my foot down: no. Just because people—
“Very old, very powerful vampires,” Sinclair interrupted.
—stopped by without proper planning or scheduling—
“She says it's an emergency. You want her to plan her emergencies?”
—didn't mean I had to drop everything and rush to the parlor.
“No one was in the parlor,” Marjorie announced, pushing open the swinging door into the kitchen, “so I let myself in.”
Tina followed closely on the librarian's heels with a pained, helpless expression. I gave Sinclair a look.
“Ah,” he began. “Marjorie. So good to see you again. But perhaps now—”
“Majesty,” the elder vampire said, dipping her head. “Very rude to barge in, I know; but what I have is extremely important.”
“Of course it is,” I sighed. “A nice new crisis you're gonna drop in my lap.”
“Are you suggesting, Majesty, that I should let all important matters run their course without your intervention?” She smiled a little and fiddled with her sweater cuffs.
No, just call first.
Marjorie looked around the kitchen approvingly. The big wooden table in the center had plenty of chairs for all of us. More than enough to hold Sinclair, Tina, Jessica, and me. Everybody else was—heck, I didn't know, what was I, the fucking family calendar?
Marjorie was a severe-looking woman of ordinary height, dark hair 'with gray wings at the temples, and sensible shoes. She ran the vampire library in the warehouse district—the biggest, I had been told, in the Midwest.
She tried to keep tabs on all vampires, recently turned or otherwise, kept their mortgages and bills paid up (in the case of new vampires, that was especially nice… if they ever came back to themselves they would find a home and their credit rate unaltered), kept nice neat computer files (or, in earlier ages, carefully maintained paper files) on everyone she could. Howdid she do that? No one knew.
Anyway, she had been around before Nostro's time (Nostro = deceased disgusting despot), and before Nostro's sire's time, too. She had little interest in explicit displays of power, which was probably good news for the rest of us. Just stayed in her library, organizing lives, collecting a different sort of power—one that wasn't so intrusive, but nevertheless caught our attention when gently applied.
Anyway, she had that look of relieved approval because she saw a traditional scene that must have warmed her heart: the king and queen, with lackey (Tina) in attendance, with presumed blood-sheep (Marc and Jessica) close at hand.
“Nice to see you again, Dr. Spangler,” she said, since I wasn't reintroducing her to anybody.
“Hi, uh—sorry, I—”
“Marjorie.”
“Right.” He'd been heads together with Jessica until a few seconds ago, but now he was looking downright flustered. Marjorie had that effect on humans. She could snap her fingers and Marc or Jess would have obediently opened a vein. “Nice to see you again.”
“Thank you.”
A short silence followed while Marjorie waited for us to dismiss the peons.
“So,” I said before Eric could speak, because he actuallywould have dismissed the peons, “what brings you to Summit Avenue?”
“This,” she said, whipping out—a gun! A knife! A brick!
No, my nerves were just a little overwrought. It was—
Tina frowned, causing a neat wrinkle to form between her eyes. It made her look positively ancient—twenty-five instead of her usual eighteen. “That's a book catalog.”
“Correct.”
“Thank all that is holy and unholy,” I proclaimed with even less patience than usual, “that you didn't waste a second getting this over here! Why, we've been combing this entire mansion, top to bottom, for a book catalog. Our need has never been more dire.”
“Specifically,” Marjorie said, slapping it down on the table, “it's the Berkley Fall catalog for this year.”
Sinclair closed his eyes.
“Yes, well that is the Holy Grail of book catalogs,” I said, still walking the line between playing along and suggesting to this woman that she leave before my head exploded.
Sinclair didn't say anything, but his grim look and slight shake of the head suggested he knew where this was going.
I didn't. Marjorie waited for me to catch on. I quietly trusted she had packed a lunch. Finally, she said, “Page forty-seven.”
Nobody moved. Apparently she was talking to me. I picked up the slick catalog and thumbed to the appropriate page. And nearly dropped it like it had turned into a rattler. “Okay, I can see why you might think this is…”
“A catastrophe?” she said sharply.
“… bad. A little bit bad.”
Undead and Unwed by Anonymous was splashed across a two-page spread.Hilarious new take on the vampire genre ! was printed across the bottom, along with other critical comments (“abrupt transitions make for a rollicking ride all the same” and “low on plot but high on fun!”).
There was also a quick paragraph: “Playing along with the 'true autobiography' approach, the author poses the clever conceit of suggesting herself queen of the mythical undead. One of the fall's brightest!”
“Somebody wrote a book about you?” Jessica asked, staring at the catalog spread. “Wow!”
“Not wow. The opposite of wow.”What would that be , I asked myself wildly.It's not like you can just spell it backward and hope that works. Maybe invert it —owo? As in, “owo is me”?
“Majesties. I don't question your judgment—”
“But you're going to.”
Marjorie looked as anxious as I'd ever seen her. “How could you let this happen?”
“It was—”A favor for a friend , I started to say, but Sinclair stepped on that in a hurry.
“Can the book be pulled?”
“It's notour book,” she pointed out, sounding pissed. “You may as well ask if the new Stephen King can be pulled—we had nothing to do with it.”
“Canthe new Stephen King be pulled?” Marc joked. He was an “old-school” King snob—nothing good sincePet Sematary , he once claimed. I kept buying them, though. Letting go of King was like letting go of your favorite greasy spoon hangout. You don't. They're still open, so you keep going, out of pure love and memory of the good old days.