“They’re in front of your place,” Jon said to her, holding the phone away from his face. He looked as if he were going to be sick. “Nine ten Park. They want to know if they can come up.”

Meena felt as if the roof had suddenly shifted a little under her feet. And not because vampires were making another assault.

No, she thought. Not Leisha and the baby. Not this way.

Except…of course. Of course it was going to be Leisha and the baby.

And of course it was going to happen this way.

And she’d always known it was going to.

She’d just refused to see it, because it was too horrible even to contemplate.

Until now, when it was staring her straight in the face.

Chapter Fifty-two

9:45 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

Shrine of St. Clare

154 Sullivan Street

New York, New York

She reached over and snatched the phone away from Jon.

“Hello, Adam?” she said. Her fingers had gone numb. She couldn’t feel her fingers.

She couldn’t feel anything.

Except fear.

“Oh, hi, Meena, it’s your best friend’s useless, unemployed husband,” Adam said with his customary self-derision. “Leisha got tired of me hanging around the house all day doing nothing, so she said we had to go for a walk because it was such a nice afternoon, and we ended up in Central Park.”

“Hi, Adam,” Meena said. “Can I talk to-”

“Then we crossed the park and had dinner and ended up in your neighborhood,” Adam said. “So Leisha suggested we stop by and see what you were doing, since apparently you don’t answer any of your phones anymore-”

“Meena?” Leisha’s voice, strong and vibrant, rang in Meena’s ear. She’d apparently wrestled the phone away from Adam. “Hey. What is going on with you? I’ve left you, like, five messages. How was the concert? That boring, huh, that you can’t even call me back to tell me about it? Anyway, can you tell Pradip to let us up? I have to pee like crazy. This kid must have taken up residency on my bladder. And don’t give me that excuse about the place being messy, because at this point, I wouldn’t care if you guys had dead bodies piled up on the floor. That’s how bad I have to go. Your buzzer must be broken or something because Pradip says you aren’t answering, but Jon just said you guys are there-”

“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.”