Insatiable
From the best-selling author of PRINCESS DIARIES comes this supernatural romance with real bite…Sick of hearing about vampires? So is Meena Harper.Meena Harper is familiar with the supernatural. After all, she knows how you're going to die (Not that you're going to believe her. No one ever does.)But not even Meena's precognition can prepare her for Lucien Antonescu—who she meets and then makes the mistake of falling in love with—a modern-day prince with a bit of a dark side for which an ancient society of vampire hunters would prefer to see him dead.The problem is Lucien's already dead. Maybe that's why he's the first guy Meena's ever met with whom she could imagine herself having a future. See, while Meena's always been able to see everyone else's destiny, she's never been able look into her own. Lucien seems to be everything Meena has ever dreamed of in a boyfriend, though he might turn out to be more of a nightmare.So now would be a good time for Meena to start learning to predict her own future . . . if she has one.
Читать Insatiable онлайн беплатно
INSATIABLE
MEG CABOT
Table of Contents
Chapter One
9:15 A.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13
Downtown 6 platform
East Seventy-seventh Street and Lexington Avenue
New York, New York
It was a miracle.
Meena hurried onto the subway car and grabbed hold of one of the gleaming silver poles, hardly daring to believe her good fortune.
It was morning rush hour, and she was running late.
She’d expected to have to cram herself into a car packed with hundreds of other commuters who were also running late.
But here she was, still panting a little from having run all the way to the station, stepping into a car that was practically empty.
Maybe, she thought, things are going to go my way for a change.
Meena didn’t look around. She kept her gaze fastened on the ad above her head, which declared that she could have beautiful, clear skin if she called a certain Dr. Zizmor right away.
Don’t look, Meena told herself. Whatever you do, don’t look, don’t look, don’t look. …
With luck, she thought, she might make it all the way to her stop at Fifty-first Street without making eye contact or having any interaction at all with another human being. …
It was the butterflies—life-size—that caught Meena’s attention at first. No city girl would wear white pumps with huge plastic insects on the toes. The romance novel (Meena assumed it was a romance, based on the helpless-looking, doe-eyed young woman on the cover) the girl was reading had Cyrillic writing on it. The giant roller suitcase parked in front of her was an additional clue that the girl was from out of town.
Though none of that—including the fact that she’d pinned her long blond braids onto the top of her head, Sound of Music style, and had paired her cheap yellow polyester dress with purple leggings—was as dead a giveaway to her new-in-town status as what the girl did next.
“Oh, I sorry,” she said, looking up at Meena with a smile that changed her whole face and made her go from merely pretty to almost beautiful. “Please, you want sit?”
The girl moved her purse, which she’d left on the seat next to her, so that Meena could sit down beside her. No New Yorker would ever have done such a thing. Not when there were a dozen other empty seats on the train.
Meena’s heart sank.
Because now she knew two things with absolute certainty:
One was that, despite the miracle of the nearly empty subway car, things definitely weren’t going to go her way that day.
The other was that the girl with the plastic butterflies on her shoes was going to be dead before the end of the week.
Chapter Two
9:30 A.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13
6 train
New York, New York
Meena hoped she was wrong about Miss Butterfly.
Except that Meena was never wrong. Not about death.
Giving in to the inevitable, Meena let go of the gleaming metal pole and slid into the seat the girl had offered.
“So, is this your first time visiting the city?” Meena asked Miss Butterfly, even though she already knew the answer.
The girl, still smiling, cocked her head.
“Yes. New York City!” she cried enthusiastically.
Great. Her English was basically nonexistent.
Miss Butterfly had pulled out a cell phone and was scrolling through some photos on it. She stopped on one and held it up for Meena to see.
“See?” Miss Butterfly said proudly. “Boyfriend. My American boyfriend, Gerald.”
Meena looked at the grainy picture. Oh, brother, she thought.
Why? Meena asked herself. Why today, of all days? She didn’t have time for this. She had a meeting. And a story to pitch. There was that head writing position, vacant now that Ned had had that very public nervous breakdown in the network dining room during spring sweeps.
Head writer was really where the money was on a show like Insatiable.
Meena needed money. And she was sure the pressure wouldn’t cause her to have a nervous breakdown. She hadn’t had one so far, and she had plenty of things to worry about besides Insatiable’s ratings.
A woman’s voice came over the subway car’s loudspeakers to warn that the doors were closing. The next stop, she announced, would be Forty-second Street, Grand Central Station.
