Page 12 of Coven

There was one email. Kana opened it and sighed. “We have a meeting in a half hour about yesterday,” he told Beth.

“You’re joking. Don’t they realize some of us need a bit more time than that to recover from yesterday?”

“Well, they did decide to still go through with the interview even after I told them it was dangerous,” Kana answered. “Hopefully the meeting is to apologize?”

Beth lifted one of her elbows so she could side-eye him. “Have you met Stephen? He doesn’t apologize. This is probably a meeting for how to spin this so he comes out looking good.”

Kana rolled his eyes. “You’re probably right. Think I can get the notes for the Kreller Op-Ed done before the meeting?”

Beth snorted and dropped her elbow back into place. Kana left her to it and got to work.

*

EVERYONE IN TODAY’S meeting had also been present in the previous one. Kana and Beth took the same seats at the far end of the table and settled in to wait until Stephen was ready to start.

Five minutes later, Stephen strolled into the room. He took the chair at the head of the table and waved his hand to get everyone’s attention. Once everyone’s eyes were on him, he leaned forward.

“For anyone who wasn’t present at the interview yesterday, we had a bit of excitement.”

“Understatement of the year,” Beth muttered under her breath. Kana elbowed her to get her to shut up.

Stephen luckily hadn’t heard because he was still talking. “We had what appeared to be a solid interview, but in reality, the vampires were working their wiles to placate us. The second they believed the cameras were stopped, I was viciously attacked. Thankfully for us, we always keep the cameras rolling until after our subjects have left the room.” He beamed at the room as if waiting for someone to drop accolades on him. Since that was company policy rather than Stephen’s brilliant idea, no one said anything. “I, and our editing team,” he added belatedly with a nod to two men sitting in a corner, “have pieced together a video that I’m proposing we use when we air this segment.”

Stephen tapped the audio/visual controls on the touchscreen panel sitting in front of his seat. The lights dimmed and the overhead projector turned on.

Master Octavius and Mistress Penelope sitting together on the couch in the sitting room came into focus. Octavius was giving the creepy closed mouth smile that kept his fangs hidden.

“Yes, we drink blood, but we have grown practiced at surrounding ourselves with willing donors, so the general populace need not fear our presence here,” Octavius said.

“You will not touch any humans in this city to feed from?” Stephen’s voice asked through the speakers, although he didn’t appear on camera.

Octavius shook his head. “As I said, we have no need to touch the unwilling. No human need fear us.”

The video paused and the lights came up. “Here seems like a good spot to add some commentary,” Stephen said. “I was thinking we could say something along the lines of how we believed them, and they seemed genuine, then start adding some foreshadowing.”

“Drama hooks viewers,” Marilyn added. “Maybe say something like: we should have listened to our history books instead.”

Stephen frowned at her for interrupting but jumped right back in when she was done speaking. “We don’t want to overdo the foreshadowing, of course, but I think adding a warning that the content might not be suitable for all viewers here would be good.”

Stephen hit the play button and the lights dimmed again.

This time, the camera angle wasn’t perfect. Kana could make out Stephen’s back because of his hair color, and Penelope because of the size of her wide skirts. However, Stephen was still wearing his mike clipped to his lapel.

“Do you want a tour of the house?” Penelope asked, her voice completely clear. In the video, Kana could see her lean toward Stephen. The camera zoomed in, which made it go a bit blurry, but Kana could definitely see her mouth open wide as she bent toward Stephen’s neck.

And then a flash of bright yellow light obscured the scene, and a screech filled the air. The camera cleared just in time to catch a glimpse of Stephen’s shocked face as he said, “She tried to bite me.”

The video ended, and the lights came back up.

“What do you think?” Stephen asked the room.

“We need to fill in some of the details,” Amanda, Kana and Beth’s boss said. “You had assurances before the interview that you would be safe? We don’t want anyone thinking we provoked the vampires into attacking.”

“We didn’t provoke them! We were invited,” Stephen replied.

Kana couldn’t help wondering whether Stephen had forgotten all of Kana’s warnings, or if he just didn’t care.

Amanda shook her head. “That doesn’t answer my question, but if we stick with the story about being invited we should be fine. What about the flash of light at the end? Did you add some sort of special effect?”

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