A Novel Seduction (7 page)

“And, em, Jamie… how does he stack up to Harold?”

“Jemmie,” she corrected. “Well, it’s hard to compare a Highland warrior to a vampire, and Jemmie’s pretty old-school.”

“‘Old-school’?”

She flushed. “You know.”

He didn’t, but nodded.

“Jemmie’s the man you wish every man was like,” she said. “He’s a slow burn. Harold’s a case of Roman candles viewed on your back from the flatbed of a pickup truck.”

He couldn’t quite tell her preference. Both seemed to delight her. “So… Jemmie, then?”

“Oh, believe me, there’s a place for the Harolds of this world.” She handed him the bag and he noticed a piece of paper stapled to the side. Jill was in the coffee shop, waving him over. Only she wasn’t alone: Ellery was seated at the table beside her, arms crossed, staring at him.

“Have a great day,” Sierra said.

“Not likely.”

“So nice to see you, ladies,” Axel said quickly, trying to finesse the conversation in a friendly direction. “I ran into Jill outside, and, may I add, what a shock. You’re in college, of course, at…?”

“Penn.”

“Oh, yes, I do think I’d heard that.” He hadn’t dared ask Ellery, but Kate, who apparently enjoyed some sort of aunt-like status, had had a picture of Jill wearing a Penn sweatshirt pinned over her desk a year or so ago.

“Did you hear?” Ellery looked like a baby seal about to be clubbed.

Axel blew out a quiet whistle of relief. Someone else had broken the news. That had saved him an hour’s worth of torture at least. “Yes. We can make it work. Don’t worry.” He wondered if baby seal fur could compare to that dark, gleaming mass of hair.

She dropped her forehead in her hands. “I know why Black picked me,” she moaned into her latte, “but why, oh, why did he pick you?”

Jill bit her lip to keep from smiling

“You may recall I’m actually pretty good at what I do,” he said politely.

Ellery groaned.

“Relax, Pittsburgh. I have—” He was about to say “a plan,” but caught himself. Ellery liked her own plans. “Em, some ideas.”

Her head snapped up.

“But I’d love to hear yours first.”

Her shoulders relaxed. “Well, I’ve pulled some articles on romance in popular culture. There’s a sociologist in Edinburgh I definitely want to talk to. The head of the Jane Austen Society teaches at London College, and there’s a historian at the University of Reading with some interesting things to say about Fielding.

Axel did his best to keep his eyes from glazing over as she went on. The story she was describing had none of the joy Black was looking for. More important, it had none of the joy he’d heard in the voices of his sister and the cashier when they talked about
Vamp
and
Kiltlander
. If he had any shot at all at rerouting this locomotive, he needed to infuse Ellery with some divine inspiration.

“… and then I thought a visit to Hardy’s Wessex, perhaps to the hanging site of Tess—”

“My goodness, that does sound like a lark.” He rubbed his palms together. “Is anyone as hungry as I am? I hear they make great Greek salads here.” He had no idea whether the Greek salads were good, bad or indifferent, but given the look brewing on Ellery’s face, an exit strategy was in order. Besides he knew from his time with the Sharpe girls, feta had magical calming powers.

To his relief they both wanted one, and he jogged to the counter. “Three Greeks,” he said, “and please take as long as possible.”

Jill appeared at his side. “El wants extra feta.”

“Of course she does.” The counter attendant had heard and he nodded.

“And a Sprite.” Axel turned to Jill. “You’re still a Sprite girl, aren’t you?”

“You bet.”

“And two Diet Cokes.” He turned to look at Ellery, who was scribbling furiously on a notepad. “Em, make that one Diet Coke and a really tall Beck’s.”

The counter guy looked at the clock, which barely showed eleven, shrugged his shoulders and angled his head toward the cooler with drinks behind them.

Jill lingered, gazing at the different offerings. “It’s really good to see you again.”

“You too. I was just so surprised to see you.”

“I came into town for Grandma Marion’s annual ‘Birthday with the Granddaughters’ luncheon.”

“Oh, God.” Axel remembered the woman distinctly. “Did she go into her avocado tirade?”

“Yes. Also, salt, the New York Lottery, gabardine and people who don’t read newspapers. Do you remember the time she asked you if photographers made enough money to earn a living, and you said you got paid by the inch which is why you always tried to volunteer for assignments about skyscrapers and giraffes? God, I laughed so hard I thought I was going to die.”

“Yeah, well, you’re an easy laugh.”

“No, I’m very particular.”

She paused, tracing a finger on the display case, and he wondered if something was bothering her. Then he realized a question was coming.

“So I hear you and Ellery are going to be working together again.”

There was more there than the words would suggest. “You know your sister,” he said lightly. “Can’t stay away.”

She smiled. She knew how angry Ellery had been with him. “And what exactly do you have planned?”

“Nothing,” he said flatly. “I have nothing planned.”

“Jumping her bones counts as nothing?”

He winced. With all the Team Ynez and Jemmie stuff, he’d forgotten Jill had heard that. “To hear Ellery tell of it, yes.”

She giggled, and Axel remembered with a rush of guilt how sad she’d been when he and Ellery split.

“I don’t mind if you jump her bones,” Jill said with a glint far more knowing than he would have thought possible, “just don’t hurt her.”

“Thank you for the clarification.” He felt distinctly off balance at having such a conversation with someone who’d been reading
The Princess Diaries
last time he looked. He wished he hadn’t told the attendant to take his time. “You may recall, hurt can be a two-way street.”

Her eyes widened. Oh, God. She hadn’t known. He’d said too much.

“Look, our salads are ready.” He took the tray out of the counter guy’s hand and headed toward the table. Pittsburgh was staring at him with the same X-ray gaze as her sister. He pressed his way forward, buffeted by the
debilitating pulse of roentgens. Out of the frying pan into the real firepower.

“And I have a tone for the piece,” Ellery said as he distributed the salads.

“Excellent.” He slid the tomatoes off his plate and onto Jill’s. “Let’s hear it.”

“Docu-style. Pulling no punches. The good, the bad, the ugly. You’ll do a Diane Arbus sort of thing with the shots.”

Axel ran a hand across his stubble, groaning silently. Diane Arbus had photographed oddballs and outsiders—the circus folk of life. The piece sounded like it would be about as uplifting as a Centers for Disease Control report. He supposed he should be glad at least Ellery thought there might actually be a good to go along with the bad and the ugly.

“I had a slightly different take,” he said.

Ellery, who had been transferring the cucumbers from her plate to his, paused. “Oh?”

“More… magical.” “

‘Magical’?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s how women look at romances.” He slipped the books out of his bag and spread them across the table. Ellery looked at them as if he had just dissected a kitten and was offering her the remains.

“The covers.” She moved a horrified finger closer, but not close enough to come into actual contact. “Look at them.”

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Jill said, picking up
Vamp
. “Don’t you like the apple? Very Garden of Eden. You know, of course, this is set in Pittsburgh.”

Axel’s head snapped around. “It is?”

“Oh, yeah. Metaphor for hell. The old steel town image. The vampires hang out at the Monkey Bar on Carson Street. It’s supposed to be at the gates to their underworld.”

Axel gazed down, chagrined. The Monkey Bar had been a sticking point with him and Ellery. He’d hung out there frequently, enjoying the wide selection of European beers, watching hockey and closing the place down as often as he could. Since Ellery devoted evenings to writing, he’d felt justified giving her the quiet she needed. Of course, he thought with a kick from his conscience, it probably wouldn’t have mattered whether he’d felt justified or not.

He ran a finger down the moisture that had condensed on the side of the Beck’s. When he looked up, Ellery looked away.

“I, em, have to hit the head.” He dug a small leather case out of his bag and headed to the back, feeling Ellery’s eyes on him the whole way.

Ellery felt the familiar icicles of anger form in her gut.

“Why are you looking at him that way?” Jill demanded.

Reluctant to expose Jill to the sort of man Axel had been and apparently still was, Ellery shook off the feeling. “It’s nothing.”

Jill looked from her sister’s face to the men’s room to Axel’s bag. “You think he’s taking drugs.”

“It’s not out of the question,” Ellery said after weighing the options. “I’ve seen him do it before.”

“So have I.”

Ellery’s jaw fell, but she pulled it up quickly. She hadn’t realized how much her young sister had seen and understood. “Then you can see why I’d be suspicious.”

“Axel never hid what he did. Why would he hide it now?”

“Maybe it’s worse.”

“Maybe you’re paranoid. Weed and some uppers do not exactly enshrine him in the John Belushi Hall of Fame.”

“He may have done coke too.”

“
May
have. Hmm. You know, your little sister
may
have done coke too.”

Ellery’s heart seized. “Have you?”

“Can’t remember. The lacrosse team left before the roofies wore off.” She flashed a bright smile.

Ellery forked a large hunk of feta. “I hate you.”

“No you don’t. You just hate that I’m right. Speaking of that, are you going to go to the Monkey Bar for this story?”

“Er…” Ellery gazed at the shot of a shirtless vampire holding a bloody apple on the cover and growled. Pittsburgh, of all places? She had loved the town growing up, but now it represented all the things that had gone wrong for her. Spending a day reliving any of it, especially with Axel at her side, would be like ripping open a scar. “I doubt it.”

“You should. I want a picture. Is it really like, well, like what they say?”

Ellery frowned. “I don’t know. What do they say?”

Jill leaned forward and lowered her voice. “In the book, Ynez owns the place. Her vampires are almost all women.
The way they earn her trust is by crossing the bars.”

“The bars?”

“The monkey bars.”

Ellery almost snorted a kalamata olive up her nose. She hadn’t thought about monkey bars since the third grade. She had been the girls’ champion at Howe Elementary School. “You’re telling me that vampires earn their stripes in this hell-with-the-lid-off vampire headquarters by crossing a set of
monkey bars
?”

“It’s not just that. The bars are high and they lead to a platform. If the vamps want to wear Ynez’s coat of arms, they have to take off their outer skins and throw them in the fire there.”

“There’s a fire at the end of the monkey bars, like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow?”

“A fire pit,” Jill said. “It symbolizes the casting off of their old life.”

“Uh-huh. And then what? Navigate a corn maze to find their new one? Or is it a game of hide-and-seek to the death?”

“You’re making fun.”

“Damn right I am.”

“It’s pretty cool when you read about it. Very feminist. Very empowering. Makes you want to join Ynez’s army yourself.”

Feminist? Empowering?
Ellery looked at her sister. “I thought you were majoring in economics?”

Jill grinned proudly. “Ynez
is
an economist. She works for the State Department.”

Which no doubt explained why Ellery’s passport had taken so long to arrive.

“Try it,” Jill said, pushing the book toward her. “And definitely go to the Monkey Bar.”

Ellery didn’t know what she would do. Once she’d determined her preferred strategy of running wasn’t going to work out, she had figured out a way to get her arms around the topic. But she was perfectly aware that the way she’d chosen was not in keeping with the way Black wanted it to be written. Every assignment had an ebb and flow, and as one did research and interviewed sources and responded to changing internal or external requirements, the whole nature of a piece could change. Ellery prayed this was going to be one of those times. She knew she couldn’t write the article the way Black wanted. She was too close to another job—the job of her dreams—to have even the hint of romance novels wafting through her résumé.

Axel ambled back, looking pleased with himself. It was profoundly irritating to Ellery that his tattered insouciance still made her breath catch. Why, when she had her pick of grown-up men with custom-made suits, investment portfolios and nicely creased trousers, did the sight of those muscular forearms extending from their rolled-up sleeves and the perennially scuffed Nikes make her shift in her seat like a college coed?