Cormac hadn’t been at New Moon last night, I was sure of it. Had Ben told him? “Are you spying on us? On New Moon?”
“Like I said, just keeping my eyes open. So, how’s that going?”
I slouched in the seat and growled. “It’s fine, everything’s fine,” I said, noncommittal. He gave me a sidelong look.
“When’s full moon, Saturday? He going with you?”
“What, you thinking of tagging along, just in case?”
“I could.”
I glared at him. “And how exactly would you accomplish that? You think you’re going to dig some of your silver bullets out of storage and sit on a hillside playing sniper?” That was exactly the kind of thing he’d have done in the old days, before his time in prison. Now, as an ex-con, handling firearms could get him thrown back into prison. Ben and I seemed to treat the threat more seriously than he did. Or he was purposefully pulling our chains. I would never know. “No. We’ll be fine.”
“You change your mind, call.”
“We can handle it. This is normal pack stuff. Everything’s fine.”
“You keep saying that.”
He was worried. This was his way of saying he was worried. So I didn’t snap back at him. This time, instead of saying everything would be just fine, nothing to worry about, I said, “If we need you, we’ll call.” Which was all anybody wanted to hear from family in the end, wasn’t it?
* * *
“GOOD EVENING, this is Kitty Norville and in case you didn’t know, you’re listening to The Midnight Hour. Cutting edge, controversial, and all that good stuff. I know what you tune in for, and I’m here to make sure you leave happy. Tonight I’ve got a couple of guests on the show, calling in from their respective offices to discuss with me a brand-new book making the rounds: In the Blood, a memoir by a guy named Edward Alleyn. That’s Edward Alleyn, vampire, in what might be the first widely published vampire memoir ever. I should also mention that the author claims to be Edward Alleyn, the Elizabethan actor who starred in the great plays of Christopher Marlowe, which means he’s been alive for some four hundred years, and he wants to tell us all about it. The book is stirring up a lot of heated discussion in some quarters. It’s been called a window into the Elizabethan age, as well as the century’s lamest hoax. What do you think? Have you read the book, and was it really written by a four-hundred-year-old vampire celebrity, or is it some ghost writer’s shameless bid for publicity? I’ve found a historian and a literary scholar who’ve both read the book and have come to different conclusions about the author’s claims. For all our edifications, I’ve brought them here to discuss.”
Now, I knew very well that the book really was by Edward Alleyn, vampire, who really was the Elizabethan actor. These days, he was Master of London, and I’d stayed with him last year when I traveled to the city for the First International Conference on Paranatural Studies. I was the one who talked him into writing the thing, and I read an advance copy to give him a nice glowing review. Not that he needed it. He’d sparked enough publicity all on his own to hit the bestseller list in the first week of release. This was without doing any kind of promotion, public appearances, interviews, or anything. That was his condition for doing the book—that he could remain in the shadows, out of the public eye, as he’d done since his “death” in 1626. Plenty of controversy could be generated without his direct participation, though, and I had a feeling he was enjoying the show from the safety of one of his sumptuous manor houses.
“Professor Sean Eret is a historian from the University of Michigan, and he’ll start us off. Welcome to the show, Dr. Eret.” Eret had written articles defending the book, and I was looking forward to hearing from him.
“Thank you for inviting me. This should prove energizing.”
“Lay it out for me: you believe the author of In the Blood is telling the truth and really is the actor Edward Alleyn turned vampire.”
He had a pleasant, rumbly professor voice. Like he ought to be sitting in a big comfy chair by an old-fashioned fireplace. I chose to imagine him so. “It’s not outside the realm of reason that this book is a work of fiction. But if it is, a ridiculous amount of historical research went into its creation. Alleyn has details here that most historians have never even thought to research. The names of Queen Elizabeth’s hounds and falcons, for example. He’s right, by the way, and I had to call in favors at the British Library to check. It’s astonishing.”
“So the historical accuracy was enough to convince you?” I said.
“It’s impressive all on its own, but there’s so much more to the book than that. It’s the personality of it.”
“You want to explain what you mean by that?”
“Facts, historical detail, no matter how obscure, can be researched. But the author of this book has managed to take on the mind-set of a person living in that time and place. The chapters dealing with his early life—they’re exquisite. It’s difficult for a modern author, no matter how diligent, to replicate the historical mind without some kind of judgment or commentary on that time as history. Alleyn is so comfortable with the biases and prejudices of a man from that time and place, I’m very much inclined to believe his claims.”
“The gossip about Shakespeare and Marlowe doesn’t hurt, either,” I said.
“If the anti-Stratfordians won’t take the word of Edward Alleyn that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s plays, I’m not sure there’s any hope for them.”
“I think I have to agree with you, sir,” I said. “This sounds like a fine time to bring on my second guest, to offer a counterpoint. Professor Amanda McAdams, who teaches literature at the University of California at Santa Barbara and has written extensively on Elizabethan drama, thank you for joining us.”
“Thank you,” she said, brusque and businesslike.
“I know you have your own thoughts about In the Blood and its author.”
“Yes, I do. Professor Eret has been fooled by a very convincing piece of fiction,” she said. “All those facts, those details he praises—they can be researched and constructed. All the cross-referencing with secondary sources in the world will just tell you what the author used for source material. Even if the man himself came forward and allowed himself to be interviewed, and even if he does turn out to be a vampire, what proof do we have that he’s really Edward Alleyn the actor? Birth certificate? Driver’s license? I don’t think so.”
“What proof would convince you that this book really was written by the Elizabethan Edward Alleyn, Professor McAdams?”
“That’s just it, I don’t believe this book could possibly have been written by someone from the Elizabethan era. There’s no hint of historical idioms in the writing, of Elizabethan uses of language. The facts and mind-set within the writing may be historically accurate, as Dr. Eret says. But that’s just a matter of research and careful characterization. The syntax of the writing itself is that of a modern author.”