Insatiable

feeling of evil from the cathedral, even though the exact spot where she stood had very nearly

been the site of a savage mauling.

Meena didn’t flatter herself that as a dialogue writer for a show of Insatiable ’s quality

she was particularly gifted. She didn’t put on airs that she was a creative genius.

Nor did she think of herself as any more creative than the artists she sometimes saw

outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the ones who painted amateur sunsets and landscapes

and then sold them to tourists who happened to be walking by.

Meena felt her scripts for Insatiable were much the same thing: a reflection of what was

happening daily in front of the average American, just like a sunset…only maybe a little more

dramatic, to keep people interested.

But she’d always been aware of being a tiny bit more sensitive to mood than other

people, possibly because of her ability to tell when something horrible was going to happen to

someone.

Maybe there just wasn’t anything horrible about St. George’s to sense. Because a tragedy

at St. George’s had been averted …thanks to Lucien, whoever he was. He’d saved her life. She

didn’t know how or why, but he had.

Did Lucien, Meena wondered, ever think about what had happened outside the church

and how strange it had been? Perhaps he too had come to stand outside St. George’s and asked

himself the very same questions she was. Maybe he’d posted a Craigslist Missed Connections

ad about her (she’d been too shy to post one about him). She’d better remember to check….

“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 genderunequal 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

L ucien 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

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