“Tabby will like it if the network tells her to,” Shoshona said. “This is what ABN wants.”

Meena was trying very hard not to grit her teeth. Her dentist had already chastised her for doing this in her sleep and prescribed her a mouth guard. Meena dreaded wearing it, because it wasn’t exactly the most romantic thing to show up wearing to bed. She looked like a hockey goalie.

But it was that, the dentist said, or a new, less stressful job.

And there were none of those to be found. At least not in television writing.

And since Meena was currently sleeping alone, she guessed it didn’t matter what she looked like anyway.

“Cheryl isn’t going to like it,” Meena warned them. Cheryl was the veteran actress who’d played Victoria Worthington Stone for the past thirty years. “You know she’s been hoping this is the year she’ll finally get that Emmy.”

Thirty years, ten marriages, four miscarriages, one abortion, two murders, six kidnappings, and an evil twin later, and Cheryl Trent still had never won a single Daytime Emmy.

It was a crime, in Meena’s opinion. Not just because Meena was one of Cheryl’s biggest fans and getting to write for her was the thrill of a lifetime, but because Cheryl was one of the nicest ladies Meena had ever met.

And part of Meena’s plan, in the story line she’d submitted to Sy-but which he’d just passed over for Shoshona’s vampire plot-had been for Victoria Worthington Stone to fall for Tabby’s new boyfriend’s father, a bitter police chief Victoria was going to help reunite with his wayward son…giving Cheryl a sure shot at that golden statuette for which she so longed.