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now until we can give you a bit of a makeover.”
    She left Alex on her own
with a fresh pack of cigarettes and a fully stocked liquor cabinet, which Alex
took advantage of immediately.   She
poured a couple of fingers of bourbon neat and hit the power button on the TV
remote.   Her plan was to let the TV
be her company while she thought about what Lucy had told her.   She was looking on the small
bookshelf.   The books would come in
handy if she chose to believe Lucy’s story and stay.
    A modern annotated copy of Dracula and a first edition, signed by
both Stoker and Van Helsing, sat side-by-side on the shelf. She opened the
first edition, breathing in the mustiness of the pages. Just as she traced Van
Helsing’s signature with her finger, she realized they were talking about her
on the mid-day news.
    “. . .the brutal murder of a
young graduate student, Alexandria James.   Josh Peters reports.”
    “Thanks, Joan. Last night,
police were called to a house in the Marigny after a call regarding the slaying
of Alexandria James.   Police arrived
on the scene to find one Wren Anderson and the deceased James. The other
residents of the house, James Kirby and Elizabeth Camp, detained Anderson. Anderson
has been taken into custody and is being held without bond. Police are not
releasing much information at this time, but they do say the deceased knew
Anderson and had a prior relationship with her.   There is also talk that Anderson may be
responsible for some other recent murders.”
    She couldn’t watch more; she
clicked off the television. Alex downed the bourbon and filled the rocks glass
to the rim.   She put the first
edition back on the shelf and grabbed the annotated modern version.   She suspected she’d get bourbon and
ashes from her cigarettes on the book and she didn’t want to ruin a keepsake.
    She spent the next few hours
re-reading the novel and taking notes and writing down questions for Lucy.   Shortly before five, she turned the TV
on again in hopes of catching any updates, but the five o’clock news had little
more information.   She realized,
too, that she had mainly wanted to see if they would say it again—that
she was dead—or if it had just been her imagination.
    She took a break from the
novel and considered what Lucy told her earlier. She’d mentioned Olivia
Holmwood. Alex remembered feeling strangely drawn to Olivia, but she’d not
given much thought beyond it being a normal student-teacher crush.   Olivia was so unlike the other
professors in the department. Alex had simply attributed her fascination to
Olivia’s attractiveness and uniqueness.   While Alex respected the faculty in her program, they didn’t really turn
her on as most of them were middle-aged white guys who were way too into their
own research to pay attention to graduate students.   Tim Clark had been different, and there
were some exceptions among adjunct faculty like Mike Courtland, but most of the
professors in the graduate program could definitely be described as stodgy or
at the very least as self-absorbed.
    Not Olivia, though.   She came to UNO from some other school
after Tim Clark died during Mardi Gras. Alex took her Reading the Vampire course mainly because she was signed up for Tim’s class and decided to stay
with the schedule she had.   Besides,
she reasoned the course would be a fun one.
    She’d been surprised at how
much she enjoyed it.   The course
evolved into a research interest for her, once Olivia--Dr. Holmwood--hired her
to do research into film representations of female vampires.   Her research led to her arranging movie
nights at The Ruby, the lesbian bar where her girlfriend Liz tended bar.   The movies were a big hit with the
patrons and showings led to more business for the bar.
    When they’d read Dracula in class, Alex paid close
attention to the few mentions of the “weird sisters.”   Stoker spent little time on them. They
were only briefly mentioned as temptation for Harker