The blonde returned bearing drinks, and the stricken fan made his escape.
“So you see, Damon,” Nordgren asserted. “They read our books, and all their attention is directed toward the creations of our hungry imaginations. We absorb a little psychic energy each time they read us; we grow stronger and stronger with each new book, each new printing, and each new fiction. And see — like proper vampire fodder, our victims adore us and beg for more.”
Trevor squinted at the blonde’s name badge. “Julie, my love, how long have I known you?”
“Since we met in the elevator this morning,” she remembered. “Julie, my love. Would you like to drop up to my room with me now and peruse my erotic etchings?”
“Okay. You going to sign your book for me?”
“As you see, Damon.” Nordgren pushed back his chair. “The vampire’s victims are most willing. I hereby appoint you my proxy and empower you to sign anything that crosses this table in my name. Good night.”
Harrington found himself staring at two Bloody Marys.
The visit with Nordgren in New York was a lot of fun, and Damon promised to return Trevor’s hospitality when the World Fantasy Convention came to Los Angeles the following year. Aside from the convention, Harrington’s visit was chiefly remarkable for two other things — Nordgren’s almost embroiling them in a street fight with a youth gang in front of the Hilton, and their mutual acquisition of an agent.
“Damon, my man,” Nordgren introduced them. “Someone I’d like you to meet. A boxer needs a manager, and a writer needs an agent. There is Helen Hohenstein, and she’s the goddamn smartest, meanest, and best-looking agent in New York. Helen, love, this is our young Robert E. Howard.”
“I saw your panel,” she said.
“Sorry about that,” Harrington said.
Helen Hohenstein was a petite woman of about forty whose doll-like face was offset by shrewd eyes — Harrington balked at deeming them predatory. She had passed through the revolving door in various editorial positions at various publishers, and she was now starting her own literary agency, specializing in science fiction and fantasy. She looked as if she could handle herself well under about any situation, and probably already had. Harrington felt almost intimidated by her, besides not especially willing to sacrifice 10 per cent of his meager earnings, but Nordgren was insistent.
“All kidding aside, Damon. Helen’s the sharpest mind in the game today. She’s worked her way up through the ranks, and she knows every crooked kink of a publisher’s subnormal brain. She’s already got a couple major paperback publishers interested in The Sending— and, baby, we’re talking five figures! It’s a break for us she’s just starting out and hungry for clients — and I’ve sold her on you, baby! Hey, think about it — she’ll buy all those stamps and manila envelopes, and collect all those rejection slips for you!”
That last sold Harrington. They celebrated with lunch at the Four Winds, and when Hohenstein revealed that she had read most of Harrington’s scattered short fiction and that she considered him to be a writer of unrealized genius, Damon knew he had hitched his wagon to the proper star.
A month later, Harrington knew so for a certainty. Hohenstein tore up Fairlane’s contract for the sequel to Iron Night, wrote up a new one that did not include such pitfalls (unnoticed by Damon in his ecstasy to be published) as world rights forever, and jumped the advance to $3500, payable on acceptance instead of on publication. Fairlane responded by requesting four books a year in the “Saga of Desmond Killstar” series, as they now designated it, and promised not to say a word about Conan. Damon, who would have been panic-stricken had he known of Helen’s machinations beforehand, now considered his literary career assured throughout his lifetime.
He splurged on a weekend phone call to Nordgren to tell him of his success. Nordgren concurred that Hohenstein was a genius; she had just sold paperback rights to The Sending to Warwick Books for $100,000, and the contract included an option for his next novel.
The Sending had topped the paperback bestseller lists for three straight weeks, when Trevor Nordgren flew first class to Los Angeles that next World Fantasy Convention. He took a suite at the con hotel and begged off Harrington’s invitation to put him up at his two-room cottage in Venice afterward. Helen was flying out and wanted him to talk with some Hollywood contacts while he was out there, so he wouldn’t have time for Damon to show him the sights. He knew Damon would understand, and anyway it was due to be announced soon, but Warwick had just signed a $250,000 paperback deal for The Rending, so Trevor had to get back to New York to finish the final draft. McGinnis & Parry had put up another $100,000 for hardcover rights, and Helen had slammed the door on any option for Nordgren’s next — that one would be up for bid.
Harrington could hear the clatter of loud voices as he approached Nordgren’s suite. A pretty redhead in a tank top answered his knock, sizing him up with the door half open.
“Hey, it’s Damon!” Nordgren’s voice cut above the uproar. “Come on in, baby! The party’s already started!”
Nordgren rose out of the melee and gave him a sloshing hug. He was apparently drinking straight Jack Daniel’s out of a pewter mug. He was wearing a loose shirt of soft suede, open at the throat to set off the gold chains about a neck that was starting to soften beneath a double chin, and a silver concho belt and black leather trousers that had been custom tailored when he was twenty pounds lighter.
Harrington could not resist. “Christ, you look like a peroxide Jim Morrison!”
“Yeah — Jimbo left me his wardrobe in his will. What’re you drinking? JD, still? Hey, Mitzi! Bring my friend James Dean a gallon of Jack Daniel’s with an ice cube in it! Come on, Damon— got some people I want you to meet.”
The redhead caught up with them. “Here you are, Mr Dean.”
It was a stronger drink than Damon liked to risk this early in the afternoon, but Trevor swept him along. Most of the people he knew, or at least recognized their faces. There was a mixed bag of name authors, various degrees of editors and publishers, a few people Harrington recognized from his own Hollywood contacts, and a mixture of friends, fans, groupies and civilians. Helen Hohenstein was talking in one corner with Alberta Dawson of Warwick Books, and she waved to Damon, which gave him an excuse to break away from Trevor’s dizzying round of introductions.
“I must confess I’ve never read any of your Killstar books,” Ms Dawson felt she must confess, “although I understand they’re very good for their type. Helen tells me that you and Trevor go way back together; do you ever write occult fiction?”
“I suppose you could call my story in the new Black Dawns anthology that Helen is editing a horror story. I really prefer to think of myself as a fantasy writer, as opposed to being categorized as a specialist in some particular sub-subgenre.”
“Not much profit to be made in short stories.” Ms Dawson seemed wistful. “And none at all with horror fiction.”
“I gather The Sending is doing all right for you.”
“But The Sending is mainstream fiction, of course,” she said almost primly, then conceded: “Well, occult mainstream fiction.”
The Rending, it developed, was about a small New York bedroom community terrorized by werewolves. Nordgren’s startling twist was that the werewolves were actually the town children, who had spread the curse among themselves through a seemingly innocent secret kid’s gang. However Alberta Dawson would categorize the novel, The Rending went through three printings before publication at McGinnis & Parry, and the Warwick paperback topped the bestseller charts for twenty-three weeks. Harrington was no little amused to discover that the terrorized community included a hack gothics writer named David Harrison.