The Sound of Broken Ribs(39)
Fear and happiness warred within Lei. She blinked tears from her eyes. Warm and heavy, they rolled down her cheeks. She tried to smile with her broken and wired jaw. The pain was shocking in its intensity. She flushed in the dark, cheeks filling with hot blood. But, unlike the pain, this heat was bearable, like that of sitting in a sauna.
The twin yellow stars loomed above her. A cold hand lay itself upon her forearm. No, not just cold—freezing; a cold so intense, Lei expected her skin to crack under its touch.
I am here.
Help me.
I will.
Thank you, she was sobbing now, her body quaking with wave after wave of agony.
The eyes above came closer and closer and closer until their diffused light was all she could see. Two lights became one all-encompassing light. Her nerves exploded and screamed and smoldered.
You said you would take the pain away! Make it stop!
Silly girl, I said no such thing.
Her mind ran her words together, spat them out, Yesyoudid!
No. I said nothing about easing your pain. I said I would help you.
PLEASE!
I cannot take away your pain, child. The thing chuckled. I am pain.
PART
TWO
“How long’s it been since the accident?” Gail Haas asked over her second martini. Two in the afternoon and the publicist was already red in the cheeks. The chunky social media guru flipped her platinum-blonde hair out of her face with a snap of her neck. Lei thought Gail was pretty for such an inwardly ugly person. This lady gave not a shit about Lei’s accident, but Lei would play nice all the same. Playing nice sold books, and she was all about selling books.
The two women sat at a glass-topped table with a white umbrella jutting from its middle. Lei drank iced tea and enjoyed the cacophony of Manhattan. The table was located outside, parallel to the restaurant’s storefront, and people shuffled along on their way to parts unknown. One or two stopped to stare and snap photos with their cell phones. A bike messenger rolled by, his tires humming like a swarm of bees. The hustle and bustle of major-city life was the antithesis of her rural roots. It was nice to get away from the peace and quiet of country living and dive headfirst into a little chaos every now and again.
In the past year, Lei had become a bigger deal than she could have ever hoped, or wanted, for that matter. Her face had graced the cover of literary publications and tabloids alike, the former being far more generous with page time than the latter. But that was okay with her. There was no such thing as bad publicity.
Lei smiled. “Two years, five months, one week, and five days.”
Gail’s eyes popped wide and her mouth dropped open in exaggerated shock. “Jesus. You really keeping count like that?” The woman’s valley-girl dialect was both out of place in New York and all around nerve-wrecking. Lei had to remind herself that she had signed up for this.
“Sure. It keeps me focused.”
“All right. We’re going to use that. We’ve already covered your recovery. It’s in all the major journals, and the ones it’s not showcased in will be published soon enough. You’re the new Stephen King, baby. Getting run over’s the best thing that could’ve ever happened to you.” The fact that Gail could say this with such enthusiasm made Lei sick to her stomach.
“I have something for you,” Gail said with a mischievous grin. If Lei didn’t know any better, she would’ve thought the big lady was about to flash her tits. Instead of baring the girls, Gail pulled an advance review copy of Lei’s newest book from her massive Gucci over-the-shoulder purse. “Check out the dedication page.”
Lei flipped to the fourth page in, where she’d put “To Harry. My lighthouse.” in the top center of the page. Under that, written in blue ink, was this:
THE EBONY ONE scared stains into my shorts. You should have big fun with this one.
~Stephen King
“He actually wrote this?”
Gail nodded and smiled, her eyes wide. She looked as if she were being electrocuted. “He did, he did. Isn’t that amazing? When he blurbed Nick Cutter’s debut—Nick’s name is really Craig—Craig’s book sales went through the roof. Same with Scott Smith’s The Ruins. Sure they sold fine without King, but after King was a definite improvement.
“Wow,” Lei said. She didn’t care much for the aged scare-monger, but she had to admit that readers listened to him. A blurb from him definitely couldn’t hurt.
“We’ve got copies to Anne Rice, too.”
“Anne Rice? Isn’t she writing Christian fiction these days?”
“Kinda sorta but not really. She’s got that Young Christ bio-pic coming out, but she’s back to writing about gay vampires. You know, when she’s not pissing off fans by calling them incompetent.”
“I think I heard about that.”
“Yeah. Don’t do that. Her last Lestat book sold like a gajillion copies, but you’ll also find it on the clearance rack at the brick-and-mortars.”
“That has a lot to do with online sales, I would imagine.” Lei sipped her tea.
“Probably. Anyway, enough about has-beens. Let’s talk about the currently-ares. Do you have anything I can use to help promote the brand of Lei Duncan? Any tidbits I can put out into the Twitter-verse? Pics for Instagram? I can even post whatever you’re reading to your Goodreads profile. They love seeing that authors read. I think that sells better than, like, anything.”