SNAP: The World Unfolds

CHAPTER TEN

A demon?  I was being driven around L.A. by a demon?  Sure, I‘d heard the rumors about urban vampires when I was at UCLA, everybody did.  But they were just rumors.  At least I’d thought so.

Now I wasn’t so sure.

What had Carlos said?  The guy who attacked me was from the Huszar family.  And they were enemies of the Kandeskys.  Did that mean the Baron was a vampire, too?

The attack left me woozy and I wasn’t thinking straight.  Just because the Huszars were vampires and enemies of the Baron’s family, didn’t mean he was one, too. I knew he came from Eastern Europe—whether Hungary or one of the Balkan countries I wasn’t sure—but lots of people were from there and they weren’t all vampires.

Carlos had swabbed something on my neck and stuck on a bandage so I started for my office.   I had a lot to think about and a residue of fear.  Whoever or whatever attacked me, had me spooked.  I can stand up for myself in a business situation, but I’d never even been mugged, so my physical courage was untested.  Judging from this morning, I didn’t have much to test.

I dropped my briefcase and Blackberry on the desk before heading to the restroom, fixed my smudged makeup, shook my hair forward to cover the bandage and struck a nonchalant pose back behind my desk.

“Some people...” Jazz muttered as she brought my coffee and the mail.  She slid her eyes to my neck and I watched her struggle to keep the questions to herself. Beyond the bandage, I had no other signs of my weird morning in the garage and definitely needed the coffee.

“What now?”

“The rumor is that some people got invited to the Baron’s castle for a week.”  Her eyebrows were reaching for her hairline.

“Where do you hear these rumors?” I asked as I opened my email and gasped. “Oh, shit, you’re right.”

The email wasn’t so much an invitation as a command appearance at the Baron’s castle in Hungary.  And on the top of the pile of mail was a heavy cream envelop addressed in calligraphy.

The invitations said that a company limo would pick me up at 8 that night and informed me that I should pack at least three formal dresses as well as casual and business clothes for a week.  And shoes to match.

I had to get in gear and hit some shops, fast.  LA wasn’t the place for formal clothes unless you were on the red carpet circuit and I for sure wasn’t.  I looked at Jazz.  She saw my stricken face and whirled out of my office.  In a few minutes she was back with a piece of paper.

“I called the personal shoppers at both Saks and Neiman.  You have appointments beginning in an hour.  I told them you’d need a minimum of dresses, shoes, accessories and three business outfits.  You better make an appointment for your hair this afternoon.”

Whatever Jazz was paid, it wasn’t enough.  I’d have to make sure she got a raise as soon as I came back.  That resolution jarred my memory and I said, “By the way, I came in through a different hall the other day and found a room I’d never seen before.  It was medical looking.   Is it the company nurse’s office?”

She gave me a very odd look and said, “You’ve never seen it before?”

“No, I usually take a different elevator.  I drove that day and was on the third floor.”

“There’s no nurse’s office,” and she was off again.

My internal phone line gurgled and another driver announced he was waiting in the garage to take me to my shopping appointments. 

“Where’s Carlos?  He drove me in this morning.”

“He’s on another assignment,” the driver said.  “I’ve been told to stay with you until you get on the plane for the Baron’s.”

I’d never had a personal shopper and the afternoon was a crash course in how our celebrity subjects lived.  I had it a little easier because I got the treatment without the hordes of gawkers but I felt a little like Marie Antoinette waking up to find the French court waiting to watch her get dressed.  At the end, though, I had three day dresses with Jimmy Choos and Charles Jourdans, one pair of casual silk slacks with contrasting silk shirt and blazer, and three stunning floor-length evening dresses with Stewart Weisman strappy sandals.  My hair guy did magic with highlights and a gonzo cut and by 7 I was home, sorting underwear and packing bags. 

The driver had waited in my living room and on the dot of 8, asked if I had my passport (I was carrying it all the time now), picked up my bags and headed for the airport.  We took the usual ramp off the Harbor freeway but instead of taking the lane for departing flights, we looped around, came into a side entrance and drove into a hangar that housed a full-sized plane with the SNAP logo.

“Why are we here?” I asked. 

“You’re taking the corporate plane,” he said. “Didn’t anybody tell you?”

This was only the first surprise.  The second was coming into the 737’s cabin.  It was an apartment.  A living area had leather couches, armchairs and tables with a large flat-screen TV taking up part of one wall.  Further back was an office and in the rear were two bedrooms.

“Let me take your bag,” a young woman said. “I’m Chrissy and I’ll be your flight attendant.  We have two passengers this trip so we have the two-bedroom configuration.  Do you have a preference?”

Chrissy looked like an SNAP girl.  She was blond, sleek and trim.  Her hair was pulled back and twisted up on her head, her eyes were ringed in kohl and her black skirt and red blazer were set off with her Russian Red lipstick.  Where did SNAP, or the Baron, find these clones?

“I’ll take the one on the right,” I said with as much panache as I could muster given that my chin kept hitting my chest.  It was a small room and it looked as though a much larger sleeping area had been partitioned into two.

The third surprise was when I turned to go back to the living room and saw my traveling companion.

Jean-Louis smiled.  “You look like you weren’t expecting me.”