making that man angry, and he already seemed awfully impatient. “Lucille Annabelle Lanfair.”
“Very good. And what do you do, Lucy?”
“I work in the Ancient Near Eastern Studies Department at Binghamton University,” she said, wondering why her tongue felt too big and her esses were lispy.
“And what does that work entail?”
“I teach classes about ancient Sumerian culture and the Sumerians’ written language. It was the earliest form of writing, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that. That’s fascinating. Why don’t you tell me about this most recent translation of yours? The one that got you noticed by Will Waters.”
At the mention of the talk show host’s name, she cringed, squeezing her eyes tightly shut once more, and hearing again the gunshots, seeing the chaos, feeling the horror. “He’s dead, isn’t he? And that crazy old man, Folsom, too? I saw it.”
“Yes. Yes, they’re both dead. Some crazed fan. Did you meet Mr. Folsom?”
Keeping her eyes closed, she said, “In the greenroom.”
“And did you talk to him?”
She nodded. “He was…a little crazy, I think. Said vampires were real.”
“That is crazy. Did he say anything else to you?”
“Said this involves me, too. Said my translation wasn’t about humans, that it was about vampires, and about…them.”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “Twins, he said. Mongrel twins. Crazy.”
“I see. And did he say who or where these twins are?”
“No. He had to go.” Lucy felt her heartbeat quicken, and her breath came a little faster. “And then someone shot him—” Her voice broke as her throat went too tight for words to fit through, and hot tears surfaced in her eyes.
“It’s all right, Lucy. It’s all right. You’re safe here,” the woman who sounded like Stevie said softly. Lucy wished she would sing. “Now I want you to think about what happened right after that terrible shooting. What did you do?”
Lucy kept her eyes closed, but the scalding tears slipped through anyway. “I ran.”
“And why did you run?”
“It’s what I always do.”
The woman was silent for a moment. “When have you had to run before, Lucy?”
But before Lucy could answer, the man spoke, his voice deep and low and rough, like sandpaper. “When she was a kid. Eleven, I think. On a dig with her archaeologist parents in the Northern Iraqi desert, by special arrangement with the government. Bandits raided the campsite by night, shot the entire team and took everything that wasn’t nailed down. She was found cowering in a sand dune, sole survivor. It’s all in her dossier.”
Lucy felt the woman’s hand covering hers. “That must have been awful for you.”
“It was the worst day of my life. Until today.”
“I’m very sorry, Lucy. And I’m sorry to have to make you relive this, too. But we’re nearly done. Now, I want to get back to what happened at the studio. You were in the greenroom, but you saw the shooting. How did you see it, when the greenroom is so far away from the soundstage?”
“I…I saw it on the TV.”
“I see. So you saw it happen on the TV in the greenroom, and then you ran.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“And then what happened?”
Lucy sniffled hard and wondered why she was spilling her guts this way. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “S-Someone told me to stop. He was dressed all in black, I think. And he had sunglasses. So I froze, and I tried to stay still, like he said, but I just…I just couldn’t. My legs just wouldn’t obey. And I ran. And he…he shot me. He shot me.”
“But you’re all right now,” the woman said.
“There was all this blood. It was everywhere. And I fell down, right in it. And it started to hurt. And then…and then he was there.”
“Who was?”
“I don’t know.” She frowned, her eyes still closed, as if to keep the memory inside. “He touched me, and I felt like I knew him. And he had these eyes…”
“And what did he do to you, Lucy?”
“Nothing. He just touched me.”
“How, Lucy? Where did he touch you?”
“My chest.” She lifted a hand to press it to her own sternum, where she was sure there had been a gaping, jagged hole before. But there was only soft fabric, not her own clothing, and though she explored with her fingers, she felt no sign of any injury beneath it. “And then the man who shot me and…other men who looked like him were pushing him away and putting me in the ambulance. And now I’m here.”