Meg Cabot - Insatiable

“Leisha.” Meena took a deep breath. This was a nightmare. She was living an actual nightmare. “You guys have to leave. You guys have to turn around and get away from my building. Please don’t ask any questions. Just go.”

“What?” Leisha was understandably bewildered. “What are you talking about? Stop playing, I really have to pee. And there isn’t a Star-bucks for like two blocks. And believe me, I’m not going to make it.”

“Leisha.”

Meena’s heart was slamming into the wall of her chest. Jon, standing in front of her, was making frantic hand signals to her and whispering, “Tell them I’m running a fever. Tell them you think I have the flu and you don’t want to Leisha to get it. Don’t tell them the truth, Meen. You know what Alaric said about telling people the truth-”

But she didn’t care about preserving the Palatine’s conspiracy of silence about the existence of vampires.

All she cared about was keeping her best friend and her baby from dying.

“Remember Lucien Antonescu?” Meena asked Leisha over the phone.

“Yeah…,” Leisha said. “Mr. Perfect? What about him? Come on, Meena, make this quick.”

“He’s not so perfect,” Meena said. Her voice was trembling. All of her was trembling.

Was it her imagination, or were the sounds of the attack on the building dying down? Where was Abraham Holtzman, shouting orders to the friars? Why couldn’t Meena hear Sister Gertrude’s Beretta?

“He’s actually a vampire,” Meena said, ignoring Jon, who’d slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Okay, Leisha? He’s the prince of darkness. And a whole lot of vampires are staking out my apartment right now so they can kill him. So you and Adam need to get out of there right away in case some of them see you and somehow connect you with me. Okay? So just do it. Just go.”

Leisha didn’t say anything for a minute.

Then she said, sounding more amused than offended, “Meena, honey, if you don’t want Adam and me dropping by without calling first, all you have to do is say so. You don’t have to try out any of your crazy plotlines for Insatiable on us like this-”

“Oh, my God, Leisha, this is not a plotline for Insatiable!” Meena burst out. How could this be happening to her? And why now, when it really mattered? “It’s real! Do you remember Rob Pace, Leish? Do you remember how I told you not to get in his car? This is like that. If you don’t want you and the baby to end up like Angie Harwood, you’ve got to do what I say.”

“But you never said anything.” Leisha sounded stunned. “You never-”

“I’ve known something was going to happen to the baby for a while, Leish,” Meena continued, “but I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to scare you. That was wrong of me. I should have told you. I’m an idiot. This is all my fault. All right? You’ve just got to believe me when I tell you now. Something bad is going to happen to the baby. You’ve got to get out of there.”

She heard her best friend breathing on the other end of the phone. For a few seconds, that was all Meena could hear, except for Jon, panting heavily next to her, and the traffic noises over on Houston Street. It was silent around the churchyard. The Dracul, it appeared, had given up and gone home.

All of Meena’s being, all her concentration, was focused on the soft sound of Leisha’s breathing.

Then Leisha said, “Something’s going to happen to the baby?” in the tiniest voice Meena had ever heard her normally loud, self-assured, brassy friend ever use.

“If you don’t get out of there,” Meena said, her heart wrenching in her chest, “yes.”

Then, to her infinite relief, she heard Leisha say to her husband, “Go. Let’s go.”

“What?” Meena heard Adam say, sounding confused. “What’s going on?”

“We’re leaving. Meena says we have to get out of here. Go flag down a cab.” Leisha had apparently forgotten to turn off the phone. She was bossing Adam around, the phone hanging loosely in her hand as she did it. “Don’t just stand there. Get us a cab! There’s one, get it. Get it!”

“I don’t understand,” Meena heard Adam say. “Why don’t they want us to come up?”

“Just get in the damned cab,” Leisha was saying. “I’ll tell you later.”

Meena felt herself beginning to relax. A sort of semi-hysterical bubble of laughter even rose in her throat. Jon, standing in front of her, mouthed, “What’s going on?”

“They’re leaving,” Meena said and he gave her a relieved thumbs-up signal.

It was going to be all right. Leisha was going to be all right. The baby was going to be all right. All those crazy premonitions she’d been having for so long…they were wrong.

It had been close. Too close.

But everything was going to be all right after all.

Thank God.

“Oh, hell,” Meena heard Leisha swear. “Who’s this guy?”

Meena tensed up again, pressing the phone to her ear. “What?” Jon asked, noticing her expression.

She held up a hand to silence him so she could hear. A man’s voice was speaking. It sounded strangely familiar.

“Sorry,” the voice said. “But was that apartment 11B you were just trying to call up to?”

“No,” Leisha said hastily. “Sorry.”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “Actually, it was. Why do you ask?”

“Meena Harper, right?” the voice asked in a friendly way.

Oh, God, Meena thought in agony. No. No, no, no, no…this can’t be happening. Get out of there. Get out of there, Leish…

“No,” Leisha said quickly. “We don’t know her.”

“Yeah, we do,” Adam said. “Leish, what’s wrong with you? Meena’s a friend of ours. My wife’s best friend, actually.”

Meena sank to the gravel-strewn rooftop, the ground having suddenly pitched out from under her.

“Meena, what is it?” Jon asked, hurrying to kneel by her side. “What’s going on?”

Wordlessly-she couldn’t have spoken if she’d wanted to; her tongue had turned to lead in her mouth-she laid the cell phone down between them and turned on the speakerphone so that he, too, could listen to their friends being killed.

“No, she’s not,” Leisha was saying loudly. “I don’t know anyone named Meena Harper.”

“I think you do,” the stranger said. He had an oddly mellifluous voice, soothing, almost…hypnotic. Was that what he was doing to get Adam to admit all these things? Hypnotizing him? “I think you know Meena Harper very well.”

“Yes,” Adam said. “Of course we do.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jon exclaimed, looking down at Meena with a stunned expression on his face. “Who is that guy? How is he doing that? Adam hates everyone. He thinks everyone in the whole world is a potential serial killer. Adam!” he shouted into the phone. “Adam! Don’t listen to him!”

Meena just shook her head. Tears were streaming down her face. She murmured, “It’s no use. He can’t hear you. It’s already done.”

“What do you mean?” Jon said. He looked angry. “Did you…did you know about this?”

“I told you,” she said, reaching up to wipe away some of her tears. “The baby…”

Jon’s face blanched. “This is what you saw happening?”

“No, of course not.” Meena covered her face with her hands. “How was I supposed to know it was going to have to do with vampires?”

“Maybe because you started sleeping with one?” Jon shouted down into the phone. “Adam! Adam!”

But Adam wasn’t listening.

“Hey…aren’t you that guy?” they could hear him saying in an unnaturally-for Adam-enthusiastic voice. “That guy from that soap opera? Gregory Bane. That’s it! Look, Leish. It’s Gregory Bane.”

A wave of nausea rolled over Meena. Gregory Bane.