Walking through the book room, where vendors had many of the participating writers’ books for sale, she couldn’t get over the thrill of being around so many people who loved to read. She never saw anyone reading in school. At least not for fun. And the few times she’d sat in the common area by herself with a book, she’d been bullied and mocked. The downside was that most of the people here were as old as her grandfather and many of them looked just as mean.

She took a table in a café downstairs and studied the schedule of events once more, looking for two panels to attend in the afternoon, though nothing caught her interest. Things didn’t really get interesting until the star of the whole show arrived: the thriller/horror writer, Andrew Z. Thomas, was going to be interviewed in the main ballroom tomorrow at 11:00 a.m., with a signing to follow. She’d brought every one of his books with her to be autographed.

She sat in the lobby all afternoon, her attention divided between Mark’s book, which she was really enjoying, and wanting to be with Mark in the shower again, and watching for Andrew Thomas, figuring if he was here, he’d have to walk past her at some point.

After the last panel of the day let out, the hotel emptied for an hour, and then slowly refilled again, everyone dressed to the nines now, lots of sports jackets and evening dresses, the book bags exchanged for stylish handbags.

She’d been sitting in the same chair for almost four hours, and her legs felt wobbly and faint when she finally stood.

The hotel bar was packed. All the writers seemed to be there.

She strolled over and wandered through the bar which was becoming more crowded by the minute, searching the faces for Andrew Thomas, but he wasn’t there.

Back upstairs, she ordered room service. Stayed in watching television and eating a lavish meal on Darling’s tab. A few minutes past midnight, she climbed out of bed and dressed and wandered down to the lobby.

The bar was even more crowded than before, and she scanned the faces in the smoky lowlight, eyes passing over countless groups that constantly shifted and changed, the occasional loner who spoke to no one, the softer, restrained groups huddled on the perimeter.

At the furthest corner of the bar, she finally spotted the man she’d come to meet, and her stomach fluttered.

He sat on a stool, surrounded by a dozen attentive, smiling faces, all listening as he told some story whose words she couldn’t begin to pick out from the impressive noise of all those conversations.

She stumbled forward into the outskirts of the crowd, then elbowed and squeezed her way through the heart of it, until she stood just outside the group of people orbiting Andrew Thomas.

His face was fuller than the author photograph on his latest book jacket, and he had a few days’ stubble shadowing his face, but he was undeniably…Andrew.

She’d never heard his voice, and it didn’t sound anything like she imagined. He was more soft-spoken, and he had an accent. A southern accent. He was talking to a man seated to the right of him, but there were countless people eavesdropping.

“…so they show me the mock-up for the book cover, and I say, ‘Guys, I know you’ve been really working on this thing, and I appreciate that, but you’ve just put a penis on the cover of my book.”

The hovering crowd broke into laughter.

“They said, ‘It’s not a penis, Andy, it’s a minaret.’ I said, ‘It’s flesh colored, it has a shaft, and a bulbous head that appears to be ejaculating the title of my book! Could I please have a new fucking cover without a cock on it?”

While everyone laughed, Andrew tossed back a shot of something.

The man standing behind him said, “Another shot, Andrew?”

“I buy you shots, Billy. Everyone in for a shot of tequila? Bartender! We need…” Andy counted the people around him. “…thirteen shots of Patron Silver.”

Lucy stood watching him, mesmerized, trying to wrap her brain around the idea that the man whose words and stories she’d fallen in love with at twelve was sitting ten feet away from her, under the same roof, breathing the same air. She’d suspected it before, but last night with Mark Darling confirmed it: Andrew could read her thoughts. She knew he must have killed before because the way he described what it felt like for the killers in his books had been her experience exactly. She wanted to be closer to him, but his crowd had effectively cloistered him off from the rest of the bar.

Something was coming apart inside of her, this dark, mad need to connect with him, and for a moment the sound of the crowd dropped away. She stared at him, willing his eyes to meet hers, willing them to give her just a single slash of attention as the bartender lined up thirteen shotglasses and began to fill them from two bottles of Patron.

Andrew never looked at her. She watched the bartender bring the tray of shots, watched Andrew pass them around, heard the shotglasses clinking, heard the “cheers.”

And she was crying, invisible again.

She pushed her way back through the crowd into the lobby, moving quickly toward the elevators at the other end and telling herself there was still tomorrow. Andrew’s book signing. Anything could happen.

When she walked into her hotel room, she stopped, lingering for a moment in the doorway, wondering if by some chance her room service food could have spoiled so quickly. No. It wasn’t that. Of course.

She opened the bathroom and the waft hit her. Mark did not smell so pretty anymore.

She grabbed a towel off the rack and closed the door and tucked it against the crack between the door and the carpet. Lucy walked to the bed, kicked off her Chuck T’s, and crawled under the covers. She hit the light. Closed her eyes. Opened them. The stink was still there. Potent and getting stronger every second. She turned on the light and sat up against the headboard. This was bad. First of all, because she couldn’t sleep with the smell, and it would only get worse. But more importantly, when she brought Andrew Thomas up here tomorrow, the smell would totally gross him out, make a bad impression.

She hopped out of bed and walked into the bathroom. Opened one of the mini-bottles of shampoo and squirted the entire thing over Mark, who now looked purple and swollen. She cranked up the shower. As the hot water beat down on the corpse, she saw that it was leaking, and the heat only made the smell more intense.

She turned off the shower, grabbed the trashbag out of the waste basket beside the sink, and headed for the door.

Her bare feet tracked down the carpet toward the alcove where the vending machines hummed. Down in the lobby, a hundred and fifty feet below, she could hear Irish drinking songs lilting up out of the bar.

She held the plastic bag open while cubes of ice rattled down out of the ice machine. Carried it back to 1428 and into the bathroom, where she plugged the shower drain and dumped the ice over Mark Darling. Her heart sank. The bag of ice had barely covered him. She was going to need a lot more.

After five trips, the ice was beginning to look substantial piled on top of the dead writer’s chest.

After ten, she stepped into the shower and spread them around, felt a glimmer of relief as they nearly covered him. One more trip, maybe two, and she’d be done.

Lucy reached down and grabbed the bag off the floor.

As she started toward the bathroom door, it swung open.

She froze.

A man stood in the threshold, and for a fleeting second, she thought it was Andrew Thomas, but he was wearing different clothes—a white tee-shirt and blue jeans. And his hair was messy, eyes still squinting like he’d just woken up.

He was staring at the blood spatters on the bathroom floor, and at the trash bag in Lucy’s hand, and now at Lucy.