The Vampire Stalker

Chapter 14

"THAT'S IT, seventy-one Oak Drive," Ms. P. said the next afternoon, pointing to a white house at the end of a cul-de-sac. It looked like all the other houses on the block, except its lawn was shaded by an unusual amount of shrubbery and trees. I wondered if it was the result of rabid Otherworld fans trying to peek in Elizabeth Howard's windows.

The neighborhood surprised me. It was affluent, with large new-looking houses, but it wasn't ultra-posh. With her millions, I'd have pictured her living in a hilltop mansion.

We got out of the car and walked up to the house. Alexander pressed the doorbell. After a few moments a voice came through the intercom. "Yes, who is it?"

"Alexander Banks and my friends Amy Hawthorne and Ms. Parker."

"I'll be right there."

Seconds later the door opened, and Elizabeth Howard greeted us with a fragile smile, ushering us in. In jeans, a mint wool sweater, and not a speck of makeup, she looked different from the glamorous author she'd been at the book signing. But she still gave off an air of elegance and intelligence. She showed us to the living room. "Please, come in."

A girl with brown pigtails ran up and skidded to a halt in front of us. "Hi!"

We said hi back. The girl giggled and ran away as quickly as she'd come. I could hear the beeps and explosions of a video game coming from another room.

"I kept them home today," Elizabeth said. "I know it's daylight but ... I just couldn't."

Her living room had taupe walls and cream couches, stylish but homey. The mantel was filled with pictures of her children and some older people, probably her parents or in-laws.

Although the room had huge bay windows, the shrubs blocked out a lot of light, making the atmosphere somber, even though it was a sunny day. We sat on the couch and she sat on a loveseat across from us.

"Thank you for coming." Elizabeth's hands were tightly pursed in her lap, maybe to stop them from trembling. I could see the smudges of fatigue under her eyes.

In many ways, I felt like I already knew Elizabeth Howard. But she didn't know me. Judging from the way she was looking at Alexander, though, she felt a familiarity with him. He was one of her characters, after all.

"I'm sorry I didn't believe you, Alexander," she went on. "On some level I think I did, but it was too hard to grasp."

"You shouldn't apologize," he said gently. "I would like to apologize for being so forceful."

She managed a smile. "I wouldn't have expected anything else." She looked from Alexander to me, then to Ms. P. "How did this happen?"

Ms. P. took over, diving into an explanation of literary physics. Watching Elizabeth's shocked face, I worried that the information was too much for her to take in at once. She listened, spellbound, as Ms. P. completed her explanation.

"So ... you're saying that I didn't make up Otherworld at all," Elizabeth Howard said slowly. "That I somehow tapped into another dimension?"

We all nodded.

Her eyes clouded, as if she was remembering. "I knew that something special was happening. I've been writing since I was a child, but the writing process of the Otherworld books was like nothing I'd known. Normally I would spend hours dabbling with different scenarios, plots, characters. But when I got the idea for Otherworld, it took off immediately. It was like the story was already there, and I just had to write it down." Her face paled. "This must mean ... I'm a fraud. To think that I won the Los Angeles Times Book Award last year. If I'm not really creating Otherworld, maybe I should give it back."