“Meena?”
Meena jumped nearly out of her skin. She whirled around, half expecting to find Lucien himself staring down at her.
But it was only Jon, looking extremely surprised to find her standing in front of St. George’s Cathedral on a Thursday evening, staring at nothing.
“What are you doing here?” Jon asked. “I thought you were taking Jack Bauer for a walk.”
“I was,” Meena said, tugging on Jack’s leash. Jack Bauer was actually lying on the sidewalk, licking his hind leg, and ignored her. “I mean, I am. I was just … thinking about something.”
“I can tell.” Jon stood next to her and looked up at the church spires. He was dressed up in pressed khakis and a nice shirt, and was, for some reason, wearing a tie. In his right hand was a brown paper bag. “Are you still freaking out about that flock of bats?”
“It was a colony,” Meena corrected him. “I looked it up on Wikipedia. Bats live in colonies. And I found out they don’t normally attack something—or someone—as a group the way they did the other night. That had to have been a total fluke. They’re really more solitary hunters. You know, because they use high-frequency sonar.”
Jon looked down at her like she was crazy.
“Okay,” he said. “Good to know. Are you going to come home and get ready? Because we have the Antonescus’ dinner party in half an hour.”
She blinked. “What?”
“The countess’s dinner party,” he said. “Remember? For her cousin, the prince. It’s Thursday night. You said we’d go.”
Meena rolled her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “That. Yeah. We can’t go. I didn’t RSVP.”
“Meena,” Jon said, shaking his head. “We talked about this. We said we’d go.”
“Well,” Meena said, “I never told her we’d go. So, I guess we can’t go. Too bad. Let’s watch a marathon of The Office instead.”
“No,” Jon said. “Free food. Remember? Besides, I already saw Mary Lou in the elevator today and she asked if we were coming and I said yes. So we have to go. Look, I bought them a bottle of wine.” He held up the paper bag. “It cost me six bucks. I’m not wasting it.”
Meena’s shoulders sagged. “Oh, my God,” she said. “I don’t think I can handle a party at the countess’s tonight. It’s been a really bad week.”
“I know,” Jon said, taking her by the elbow and turning her away from the church. “But you want to meet this prince guy, right? Isn’t he the guy you want to use as a model for the vampire slayer in your spec script? The one for Cheryl?”
“Actually,” Meena admitted as they started walking toward 910 Park, “I think I met someone who would be a better model for the prince.”
“Really?” Jon said. “Who?”
“Oh, just a guy,” Meena said, knowing what Jon would have to say about her adventure with Lucien outside the cathedral the night before last.
And if she told him, he’d only deliver a big-brotherly lecture about her leaving the apartment late at night, something she knew she ought not to have done. In their gender-unequal society, it still wasn’t totally safe for American women to wander the streets of New York City unescorted late at night. (Although to be fair, it wasn’t safe for anyone to do this, really. There were rampaging colonies of bats lurking everywhere.)
“Well, the guy we’re meeting tonight is supposed to be a prince,” Jon said. “Where else are you going to meet one of those?”
“Nowhere,” Meena admitted, realizing Jon had actually been looking forward to this dinner party. He didn’t get a chance to go out very often, since he was … well, broke and unemployed. And most of his friends were as well. Entertainment was the last thing on which any of them could afford to splurge. She ought to have known that to her brother, any chance to leave the apartment was a welcome one … even if it was just to go to the neighbors’ place across the hall.
She glanced over her shoulder at the spires of the church shooting up toward the lavender evening sky, the clouds pink in the setting sun, as Jon steered her away from it. Churches, she thought idly. What are they even for?
To worship in, obviously. But to worship what, exactly? A god who gave you gifts you never even asked for, that were basically just a curse?
On the other hand, what else did people have, exactly?
Nothing.
Nothing but hope that things might get better someday.
The kind of hope that Meena, on her TV show, and the priests at St. George’s tried to give people.
“You’re right,” Meena said with a sigh, turning around.
“We don’t have to stay all night,” Jon said as they rounded the corner. “If it’s bogus, we’ll leave.”
“Sure,” Meena said. “And who knows? It might even be fun.”
Even though, of course, she didn’t for one second actually believe this.
Chapter Twenty-two
7:30 P.M. EST, Thursday, April 15
910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11A
New York, New York
Lucien was quite certain his cousin had lost his mind.
“A dinner party?” he echoed as he handed his overcoat to the maid, who took it to hang in the hall closet.
“It’s just …,” Emil explained quietly, so that his wife, busy with the caterer in the dining room, couldn’t overhear, “she seems to have this fantasy that you’re in need of a bride and that New York is the place where you’re going to find one. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. If you want to smite me, my lord, I perfectly understand.”
Lucien, instead of being furious—which he knew was the reaction Emil was expecting from him—felt only amusement. Although he’d made it clear he wanted no one to know of his arrival in New York, that, of course, was a moot point. The damage was done. Clearly, his enemies already knew where he was: an attempt had been made on his life. The information had simply traveled.
Much in the way Lucien expected that news of how he’d treated his own brother would get around. He didn’t regret this. He counted on it. If everyone heard Dimitri had picked a battle with him and Lucien had won, they’d be even less inclined to stage a second attack of the sort that had occurred the other night, which he’d clearly survived.
The prince of darkness was in town and indomitable as ever.
But a dinner party? With humans?
The idea made Lucien smile.
“Your wife,” he said to Emil, “is a bold woman.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Emil said with a queasy smile. “But, honestly, my lord, if you wish to go back to the penthouse—”
“It’s all right, Emil,” Lucien said soothingly. Sometimes he thought Emil would self-implode, he was wound so tightly. “I’m assuming you have some decent wines to serve.”
Emil brightened considerably. “Of course, my lord,” he said. “Some lovely amarones I purchased just for you. Come, let me open them.”
Emil