“You need a serial.”

Harried Writer flipped through a stack of papers in search of that plot thread that kept disappearing. “Do I have to pick just one? I’m equally fond of Reese’s Puffs and that cinnamon-pecan Special K.”

Zara tied her hair back with a ratty old string she’d found on the floor. “Not cereal. SERIAL. Note the spelling. Everybody’s doing it.”

“If everybody was jumping off a bridge—”

“You’re such a mom.”

“Thanks. By the way, for Mother’s Day, if you hook me up with some djinn housecleaning action, you’ll be my favorite.”

“No I won’t. Angelic Daughter’s your favorite, and then you’re too soft on Gabe and Xain and Keran. And Rinc. And that vampire thief. And…”

“Okay, you’ll be my favorite six-year-old.”

“Hmph. I haven’t forgotten the subject, by the way.”

A nerve in Harried Writer’s eyelid twitched. “Those who do serials have a story. I don’t have anything short enough or finished enough to offer.”

“Make something up. I’ll help. It can be all about…” Zara tapped her chin while contemplating riveting subjects. After 0.03 seconds of deep contemplation, she announced the winning idea with a flourish. “Me!”

“Here’s the thing, kiddo. I write grownup stories. With violence and bad language and, uh, kissing. And stuff. Not kid stories. The Amazing Adventures of Zara and Her Bratz might give people the wrong idea.”

“Gabe’s old, and he likes Bratz.”

Harried Writer muttered something involving perv and prostitots and some degree of not surprised.

“Besides, I’m cute.”

“Uh-huh, but a lot of readers don’t want to see a kid in a romance novel, ever, no matter how cute she is. And precocious is another coffin nail. I’m trying to hide you as much as possible, actually.”

“But I’m important! I’m crucial to the story. I’m the main bone of contention. I’m the… the… impediment to happiness!” Zara’s eyes widened. “Omigosh, I’m the impediment to happiness? THE IMPEDIMENT TO HAPPINESS!” She began to cry—loudly, but not with sufficient volume to account for the shaking of the house.

Harried Writer crawled under the desk, pulling the chair in after her, and covered her head with her arms. “I didn’t do it. Not my fault. And I’m 90 percent sure she’s faking.”

The shaking stopped. “Oh, she’s with the writer.”

Male grumbling was vaguely audible through Zara’s wailing.

“Yeah, she’s made me cry a couple times too. Remember when she threatened to kill me and give my woman to a vampire? I can handle this.” There was a brief atmospheric disturbance, and then the protection of the chair was withdrawn from Harried Writer. “The cavalry’s been called off. You can come out now.”

“I’m perfectly happy right where I am, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” Ryder straddled the chair and directed his attention toward Zara. “What’s the problem, Z?”

“I’m the IMPEDIMENT TO HAPPINESS!”

He nodded. “I can see how that might be upsetting.”

Harried Writer choked on the buildup of melodrama at low altitude. “She just wants more attention.”

“Would it kill you to give her some?”

Harried Writer scowled at Ryder. He always took Zara’s side. “It might kill you.”

“We’ve been through this before. You’re not going to kill me. You’re intrigued. There’s too much about me you don’t know.”

“I know one thing you don’t know.”

“Is finding out going to make me cry?”

As currently outlined, no, but outlines could change. “Like a little girl with a dead bunny.”

“Wow. You are seriously morbid.”

Zara sniffled, momentarily distracted from her own woes. “Is it about his sugar bowl*?”

Actually, the history of the Big Bad Sugar Bowl was one of those things Harried Writer didn’t know yet, and she suspected it was one of those things she would regret introducing round about the time explaining it became necessary. “No comment.”

Ryder, familiar with Harried Writer’s sadistic tendencies but not yet the victim of same, began to look a little queasy. “I can hardly wait.”

Zara sniffled again, but it was kind of a dry sniffle. Crocodile tears were a snap, but crocodile snot was trickier to master. “Yeah, that’s great and all, but we haven’t resolved my problem.”

Harried Writer banged her head against the desk in time with the twitching of her eyelid. “How about you finish that interview where you torture the reporter with cute and precocious, and I slap it up somewhere?”

“That’ll do!”

Zara did her happy dance. On her third twirl around the room, Ryder reached out and pulled the string from her hair, offering it to Harried Writer with an I’m too adorable to torture smile.

Harried Writer tucked the thread back into Chapter Eight and remained steadfastly heartless. “I don’t care how helpful you are. I have to torture you. It wouldn’t be fair to everyone else if I let you off easy.”

“I know. All I ask is that the sugar bowl turns out to be something badass to compensate for all the flak I have to put up with because of it.”

An ill-formed idea flickered deep within a dark cavern of Harried Writer’s mind, too weak to be viable but providing a hint that might revive it at some point in the future. She scanned the bookshelves for The Complete Noob’s Guide to Freaky Old Pottery. “Oh, it’ll be badass. It’ll be so badass, djinn from here to Rigas will be jealous.”

“You don’t have a frickin’ clue, do you?”

“Shut up before I change it to a chamber pot.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* It’s not really a sugar bowl, it just looks kind of like a sugar bowl. It’s actually Ryder’s “lamp,” and there’s some terribly dark reason** his soul got stuck in such a weird container.

** Pantserspeak for “I haven’t got a frickin’ clue, but it’ll be awesome when I figure it out.”

Harried Writer blamed the loss of her train of thought on the sudden appearance of the scruffy 13-year-old boy crouched gargoyle-style on the arm of her sofa, although the station had been deserted for hours, even days, before his arrival. “Thanks for coming.”

“It will cost you.”

“Yeah, I know. Once a mercenary, always a mercenary.”

“If you even suggest killing me off, you and I are going to have words.”

“I can’t kill you off. You’re a legendary figure in my fictional universe. Besides, I just wrote the most amazing prologue for you and Edan. I have a question for you.”

“That will cost you extra.”

She would protest, but there was no doubt a fee for that, as well. “I’m writing an essay about djinn so I can keep my facts straight.”

“You’re procrastinating.”

She jacked up her chin a haughty notch in defiance of that load of utter… truth. “I am taking a breather from the manuscript in order to gain a fresh perspective, and this little project is actually important. Do you want me to be reviled for my crappy world building and get dropped by my publisher before I get to your book?”

“You don’t have a publisher.”

Obnoxious little brat.

“I heard that.”

“Bite me.”

He grinned, revealing one slightly askew eyetooth. “That you can have for free.”

“No thanks. Prison orange isn’t my color.”

“I’m six thousand years old.”

“Yes, but you look like pedophile bait at the moment. Can we get back to our mutually dependent futures, please?”

“Do I get the girl?”

“It’s a romance novel. Of course you get the girl.”

“Forgive my skepticism. My faith in your generous nature is a bit thin after you’ve made me wait a few thousand years.”

“It’s not my fault she doesn’t like you. Read the prologue. You were a monster.”

His eyes narrowed on the pages she waved in his face. “Ryder had a good idea with that shredder. I demand a rewrite.”

“Sure thing, sweetie.” She poised her pen. “How do you spell ‘impotence’?”

“T-w-e-l-v-e  i-n-c… Oh, quit banging your head on the desk before you ruin the finish. I won’t even charge you for that ridiculous question. What do you want to know?”

“This thing about the king being all djinn. How do you do that?”

All trace of humor left him. “You don’t want me to tell you.”

“Yes, I do, and that doesn’t count as an answer. I figure there has to be some kind of transference of power from old king to new, but I can’t figure out how it’s done. Vampires can learn things from sucking blood.”

“Let that be your last comparison to those parasites.”

She continued as if he hadn’t confirmed he was a judgmental, racist asshole. “Zombies eat brains, but it doesn’t seem to make them any smarter. Is it like acquiring your anir, you have to consume its soul, and how do you do that, anyway?”

His response was a flinty stare.

“That was one question, note the single question mark. To take the place of the one you didn’t answer.”

More staring.

“Is this one of those ‘don’t tell the ebil humans or they’ll destroy the universe’ things?”

“You’re all right, for a human. It would pain me to see you die for possessing knowledge you’re not meant to have.”

“Now you’re being melodramatic.”

“No. I would be pained, but I would kill you.”

He didn’t bluff. She knew because she’d written him that way. She felt an urgent need to pee. “What do I put in my essay, then?”

“Make something up. That’s what you do.”

“It’ll be something gross if you leave it up to me. Cannibalism. Necrophilia. Both.”

“Better than the truth.”

“What’s worse than cannecrophibilism?”

“Most of my interpersonal relations for the past six milennia. I’m a monster, remember?”

“You’re supposed to reform in the name of true love.”

“Right. Good luck with that. I’ll send you a bill for the personal appearance and six questions.” He didn’t trouble himself with anything so mundane as departure through the door. He was there, then he wasn’t.

Her bladder distress left with him (mostly), surpassed by an overwhelming urge to apologize to Edan for sticking her with His Royal Inflexibleness.

Right on cue, a hand slapped down on top of the jumbled reams of notes blanketing the desk. “The prologue stays,” Edan announced in a tone chill enough to shrivel Jack Frost’s balls, “but if you even suggest I’m to care for that barbarian, you and I are going to have significantly worse than words.”

Harried Writer decided the WIP was looking better and better all the time. Gabe was perfectly happy with his story.

A feverish hand settled over the nape of her neck, turning her spine to melted mozarella. “Actually, cupcake, I do have some issues…”

“Don’t sit. This won’t take that long. Ryder, I’m sorry but… I have to kill you.”

“What? Why?”

Didn’t he know soulful puppydog eyes had no effect upon heartless bitches? “You’re a Boy Scout. There’s no badness in you. No darkness. My diseased mind could only have created you for the purpose of cannon fodder. You’re the expendable good guy. You’re Ensign DiSposable on the away team. You have to die.”

“But you had plans for my future. How will my heroine live happily ever after if I’m dead?”

“I’ll take good care of her. A vampire boyfriend will generate some juicy family conflict. I had that scheduled for someone else, but there’s plenty of time to find her a different problem.”

“A vampire.”

“Don’t give me that look. You’re the supporter of vampire civil rights. Don’t be a hypocrite just because your coulda-been girlfriend is the one getting sucked on.”

“Of course not. Hypocrisy would be bad, and there’s no badness in me.”

“Exactly. You’re a nice guy. You know what they say about nice guys?”

“They finish last.”

“No, they get stompled by the bad guys and abused by wicked women. See, you have no idea what’s in store for you. I’ll be doing you a favor if I kill you now. It’ll be a mercy killing.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

“Besides, you see this chapter here? It’s sweet that you’re concerned about Jasmine’s safety, but your presence is fucking up the bad guy’s only opportunity to do his bad-guy thing. The whole rest of the book is ruined because you couldn’t have been hung over or watching internet porn that morning.”

“That’s where you want to kill me, and why? Um… I could totally be watching porn there.”

“You do not watch porn.”

“I’ve been celibate for a number of years. Trust me, porn and I are good friends. Furthermore, I find my stance on vampire right-to-life has shifted polarity in the face of personal threat.” He backed her against the wall, planted his hands on either side of her, and leaned down to whisper in her ear, “And I ate Gabe’s cupcakes.”

She gasped. “No.”

“Every. Last. One. They were delicious.”

Soulful puppydog eyes had been replaced with ravenous wolf eyes when she wasn’t paying attention. She gulped. “All that’s completely out of character.”

“My character isn’t carved in stone. I can be anything you need me to be. If I can best serve the story by jerking off to barely legal Asian lesbians gone wild* while the bad guy brutalizes people I care about, by all means, give me an internet connection and a squirt of lube, and I’ll amuse myself for however long you need me out of the way.” His fingertip teased the sensitive spot on her neck. “Say, there wouldn’t happen to be any naughty vid of you floating around, would there?”

“Glah.”

“So, what do you say? Let me live?”

“Okay. Sure. I can do that.”

His triumphant grin wasn’t one she recognized from his repertoire of stock facial expressions. “Just one more thing, carebear. Let’s keep this our little secret. I have my squeaky clean image to maintain.”

He fed the offending chapter to the shredder before taking his leave, solving one of her problems but creating a host of new ones, not the least of which was a craving for cupcakes and nice boys with hidden kinks.

He was gone only a few seconds when he poked his head back in the door of her office. “Oh, I almost forgot.  Tell anybody who sticks a fang in my woman, I got pliers with his name all over them. I’ll start with his teeth and work my way down. Good luck with that new chapter.”

“You manipulative little bastard,” she grumbled after his second exit. “Don’t forget who’s in charge here. Just you wait until your book. I’ll make you wish I had killed you.”

__________

* Let’s see how much spam that attracts…

Months later: Much to my surprise, this is NOT one of the 4 posts that is perpetually spammed.  <o,O>