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vampires?”
    Meena took a deep breath. “Did I tell you Shoshona got the gig as head writer? Why don’t you just twist the knife?”
    “Oh, my God.” Leisha sounded apologetic. “I’m so, so sorry, Meen. What are you going to do?”
    “What can I do?” Meena asked. “Wait it out. She’s going to screw up eventually. Hopefully when she does, the show and I will both still be here, and I can step in and save the day.”
    “Got it,” Leisha said. “Hero complex.”
    Meena knit her brows. “ What? ”
    “Vampires are monster misogynists,” Leisha said. “And you have a hero complex. You always have. Of course you think you’re going to save the show. And probably the world, while you’re at it.”
    Meena snorted. “Right. Enough about me. How’s Adam?”
    “Hasn’t gotten off the couch in three days,” Leisha replied.
    Meena nodded, forgetting that Leisha couldn’t see her. “That’s normal for the first month after a layoff.”
    “He just lies there in front of CNN, like a zombie. He’s starting to freak out about this serial killer thing.”
    “What serial killer thing?” Then Meena remembered what Shoshona had been talking about in her meeting with Sy. “Oh, that thing with the dead girls, in the parks?”
    “Exactly. You know, he actually grunted at me the other day when I asked him if he’d picked up the mail from the box downstairs.”
    Meena sighed. “Jon was the same way after he lost his job and had to move in with me. At least he does laundry now. Only because I have a washer-dryer unit in the apartment and you can’t help tripping over the piles on the way to it.”
    “I asked Adam when he was going to get started with the baby’sroom,” Leisha said. “Or the baby’s alcove, I guess I should call it, since that room is so small, it’s practically a closet. Still, he has to put a door on it, and the drywall, and paint it and everything. You know what he said? It’s still too early and that there’s plenty of time. Thomas is coming in two months! Sometimes I don’t know if we’re going to make it. I really don’t.”
    “Yes, you will,” Meena said soothingly. “We’ll get through all of this. Really, we will.”
    Meena didn’t believe this, of course. It had been months since her brother, Jon, had been laid off from the investment company where he’d worked as a systems analyst, and he was no closer to finding a job than he’d been the day of his firing…same as Leisha’s husband, Adam, who’d been Jon’s college roommate before Jon had introduced him to Leisha. The few jobs that were out there in their fields had hundreds, maybe thousands, of equally qualified applicants vying for them.
    “Is that a prediction?” Leisha asked.
    “It is,” Meena said firmly.
    “I’m holding you to that,” Leisha said. “Well, good luck with the prince. I’d wear black. Black is always appropriate. Even for meeting royalty.” She hung up.
    Meena set the receiver down, chewing her lower lip. She hated lying to Leisha.
    Because things weren’t going to be fine.
    Something was wrong. Leisha kept telling Meena that her due date was two months away.
    And maybe that’s what her doctor had said.
    But the doctor was wrong. Every time Leisha said it—“Thomas is coming in two months”—Meena felt an uncomfortable twinge.
    The baby—Meena was positive—was coming next month. Possibly even sooner than that.
    And Thomas! Leisha and Adam wanted to name their baby Thomas Weinberg !
    That kid was going to be a pretty funny-looking Thomas, considering that it was a girl and not a boy.
    But how did you tell an expectant mother that everything herdoctor was saying was wrong…when it was all just based on a feeling ? Especially when all of your previous predictions had been about death, not a new life?
    Easy. You didn’t tell her at all. You kept your mouth zipped up tight.
    Turning back to her computer monitor, Meena was confronted again with Mary Lou’s e-mail. Sometimes she