Meg Cabot - Insatiable

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Sick of hearing about vampires? So is Meena Harper.
But her bosses are making her write about them anyway, even though Meena doesn't believe in them.
Not that Meena isn't familiar with the supernatural. See, Meena Harper knows how you're going to die. (Not that you're going to believe her. No one ever does.)
But not even Meena's precognition can prepare her for what happens when she meets – then makes the mistake of falling in love with – Lucien Antonescu, a modern-day prince with a bit of a dark side. It's a dark side a lot of people, like an ancient society of vampire hunters, would prefer to see him dead for.
The problem is, Lucien's already dead. Maybe that's why he's the first guy Meena's ever met whom she could see herself having a future with. See, while Meena's always been able to see everyone else's future, she's never been able look into her own.
And while Lucien seems like everything Meena has ever dreamed of in a boyfriend, he might turn out to be more like a nightmare.
Now might be a good time for Meena to start learning to predict her own future…
If she even has one.

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Meena sat on the 6 train, trying not to make eye contact with any of the other people in her car. The last thing she needed right now was to get involved in someone else’s problems.

She had plenty of her own.

Scholarly Abraham Holtzman, listening to her and Jon frantically trying to explain what they’d heard on the phone after they’d come running down from the roof to find him, had nodded gravely and said, “Yes. Yes, of course. It all makes sense. St. George’s is under construction, you say?”

Jon had nodded. “Yeah. It’s closed to the public while it undergoes renovation.”

“When I was walking by it the night I first met-” Meena had interrupted herself. “Well, when the colony of bats attacked me, I thought one of the spires was falling down. It’s in pretty bad shape.”

Father Bernard, Sister Gertrude, and Abraham Holtzman had all exchanged uneasy glances when they’d heard this.

“What?” Meena had cried. “What difference does that make?” She’d already begun to regret telling any of them anything. She should have just run straight from the rectory and for the nearest train station…

“A church that has gone too long unused-or unrepaired-falls into danger of becoming deconsecrated,” Abraham had explained slowly. “Perfect for demon rites.”

“Demon rites?” Just the words had caused the hairs on the back of Meena’s neck to prickle. “Like…the coronation of a new prince of darkness?”

No one had answered her. They’d already begun running around, gathering weapons for what they obviously thought was going to be some kind of apocalyptic showdown up at St. George’s with the Dracul-who had all mysteriously vanished from outside of St. Clare’s. None of them-not Abraham Holtzman, nor Father Bernard, nor Sister Gertrude, nor the friars and other nuns…nor even the novices or her brother, Jon-showed the slightest flicker of fear or even of hesitation. They were perfectly prepared, Meena saw, to fight.

And perhaps to die.

But what they didn’t know-and she did-was that they were going to die. All of them. Every last one of them. The truth of what lay in store for them had hit her with perfect, almost stunning clarity in those few moments as she’d stood there in the rectory hallway:

Dimitri was holding her best friend-her pregnant best friend-captive at St. George’s Cathedral and wasn’t going to let her go unless Meena showed up to make the exchange.

Her own life for that of her friend.

Then when that happened, there’d be a second exchange: Meena’s life for Lucien’s.

After which Dimitri Antonescu, the demon half brother of Lucien Antonescu, son of Dracula, the prince of darkness, would crown himself the new prince in the deconsecrated cathedral…

…and a reign of vampiric terror and death would spread across Manhattan, if not the world.

Meanwhile, Meena’s brother; Abraham; Sister Gertrude…all of these good people dashing around her were going to die fighting to try to stop what Meena saw happening in her mind’s eye. She envisioned exactly the same death for them, in fact, that she’d seen for Alaric Wulf when she’d looked into his future while she’d been tying her scarf around his wrist:

Darkness. Fire. Lots and lots of fire. Then…

Nothing. Just…nothing.

It was what Meena had tried to explain to Lucien that first night she’d spent with him. How being dead was never a happy ending.

Because when Meena looked into the futures of people who were going to die, all she saw was a vast pit of nothingness, stretching out before her like a huge crevasse. She stood with the toes of her shoes poking over the edge of that crevasse, so deep she couldn’t even see the bottom.

She hoped there was some kind of afterlife beyond the pit of nothingness. But maybe it was better that if there was, she couldn’t see it.

Because it was the nothingness that drove Meena to warn people to look out, even though they often didn’t listen. It was nothingness she saw in her friends’ futures that night. Their lives were barreling straight toward it.

Which was why, standing there in the rectory, she took action. She grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper and jotted a quick note; scooped up enough change for train fare from a jar by the door, since Alaric had long ago taken her wallet; and left, making sure the note would be easily discovered.

She knew they’d be upset. In fact, Alaric Wulf’s explicit orders, when Jon had reached him over the phone, had been the exact opposite of what she was doing: to keep Meena as far away from St. George’s Cathedral as possible.

Oh, and he’d also said that her dog was fine and that Alaric was leaving him in the safekeeping of Pradip, the doorman, for the time being.

Apparently, Meena going to St. George’s was only going to hasten, not put an end to, the coming demonic apocalypse.

But none of that changed the fact that Meena knew she was the one who had caused all this.

And that she had seen what she had seen, and knew what she knew. Which was more than Alaric Wulf, with all his experience, or Abraham Holtzman, with his Palatine Guard Human Resources Handbook, knew.

She was the one who had looked into the future and seen it filled with fire, darkness, and finally, slow, agonizing death for all of them.

Then, nothingness.

No. Not today.

Because if she knew anything at all, it was that that was only one version of the future.

The future could change. She could change it. She’d done it before, lots of times. She’d stopped people from hurtling over the side of that precipice more times than she could count.

She was going to do it again tonight.

And no one, not Alaric, not Lucien, not even a crazed pack of vampires, was going to stop her.

The subway train roared into the Seventy-seventh Street station. Meena’s station.

She got up from her seat…then paused before stepping through the sliding doors when they opened. There was a couple that had been making out on the seat across from hers. They had gotten up at the same time she had. She glanced at them…

And saw, in her mind’s eye, both of them getting struck on the head and killed by a gigantic piece of flying blue scaffolding.

It looked suspiciously like the blue scaffolding that surrounded St. George’s.

The couple had their arms around each other, still canoodling as they started to get off the train. Meena, standing in the open subway car door, held up both her hands like claws, opened her mouth, and hissed at them.

“Get back!” she shrieked. “Don’t get off at this stop!”

“Shit!” the boy cried, staggering backward.

The girl looked torn between fear and embarrassment. She giggled nervously. “Dude,” she said to her boyfriend. “What’s wrong with her?”

“I’m a vampire!” Meena yelled, stepping off the train but staying in the doorway and still making menacing motions with her hands. “A vampire! Stay on the train!”

“Stand clear of the closing doors,” the voice announced.

The train doors closed, trapping the couple safely inside. Meena immediately dropped her hands, resumed her normal posture, turned, and began walking away. She saw the boy make an obscene gesture at her as the subway car pulled past her and out of the station.

She waved at him.

Meena hurried through the station, which was empty on a Saturday night, inhaling the familiar scent of stale urine, then jogged up the steps to Seventy-seventh Street.

It wouldn’t be long now. What would she do when she got there? She didn’t know, exactly. She still had the stake that Alaric had given her in her back pocket. Maybe she’d stake someone. Like Dimitri.

She’d demanded her cell phone back from Jon after he’d called Alaric. She’d texted Lucien about what had happened with Leisha.

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