“Jason, stop sulking.”

“Remind me again why she’s here?”

Elizabeth Webber rolled her eyes and divided a can of soda equally between two glasses. “You know why she’s here,” she reminded her boyfriend of three years. “Luke and Robbie have run off to Guam, Lucky and Nikolas are both in Greece for the next week, and Wyndemere is under renovations while the Brownstone is being fumigated. Lulu needs a place to stay for two nights before Lesley makes it back from Martha’s Vineyard.”

The enforcer scowled as she dropped ice cubes into the glasses and twisted the top off his beer. “Yeah – but why is she here?”

The brunette couldn’t quite suppress her smirk. “Because Sonny promised Luke ten years ago that all of Laura’s children would forever be under his protection…and that means that you and I get to keep Lulu company for the next two days.” She smacked him lightly in the chest before picking up the glasses and retreating from the kitchen. “So suck it up, Morgan.”

Jason rolled his eyes and snatched up the bowl of popcorn she had left on the counter, following her past their pool table to the living room where their sixteen-year old houseguest was flicking through the channels so fast it was a wonder she hadn’t already dislocated her thumb.

“Hey, Lu,” Elizabeth grinned down at the blonde she had always thought of as a sister. “Eight o’clock yet?”

“Almost,” the girl replied, setting two coasters on the coffee table before hopping off the couch to retrieve some napkins. “Oh, man, I can’t wait – it’s going to be so amazing!” She skipped back from the kitchen, the cuffs of her khaki-colored cargo pants dragging on the clean hardwood. “Hey, Mister Jason, are you going to stay and watch with us?”

Jason’s mouth twitched at the familiar term of address. No matter how many times he told the girl that it was just Jason, she simply couldn’t help tagging the Mister on to it, and he had long since stopped trying to get her to change her ways. “…Yeah.”

Elizabeth grinned and settled down on the couch next to him, glancing at the clock and noting that there were only five minutes left before her and Lulu’s favorite primetime series, Prospect Avenue. She had watched since the series premiere and had immediately fallen in love with the character of Steven Jack Burton, a charismatic, devil-may-care actor. His next-door neighbor, a petite brunette by the name of Rebecca Liberty Herbst, was her and Lulu’s second favorite, and they were both ardent fans of the ‘Stecky’ pairing. Through practiced and deliberate nagging, Elizabeth had managed to get Jason to continuously watch the show with her every Thursday night, and though he’d usually grouse about it for twenty minutes afterward, she suspected that he was slowly becoming a fan.

“They’re supposed to kill someone tonight, I heard.”

Lulu nodded emphatically, squeezing past the coffee table and plopping down right between Jason and Elizabeth. The enforcer frowned but scooted over, taking a sullen pull of his beer as his girlfriend giggled. “Yeah, that’s what I read at Television Without Pity,” the youngest Spencer informed her old friend. “I’ve been looking everywhere to find out who dies, but it’s just not out there!”

“Where the hell would you look?” Jason mumbled, reaching for the account book for the coffee warehouse. If he would be forced to sit around for an hour, he might as well get some proof-reading done.

The blonde slid him a warning glare. “I’ll have you know, Mister Jason, that Prospect Avenue is a very popular show. There are literally hundreds of websites out there with detailed scoops and spoilers and pictures and-“

“Who has that kind of time to waste?” he replied gruffly, flipping open to where he had left off and running a pencil down the lines. “People should just shut up and watch the show whenever it comes on and stop obsessing over it.”

Lulu quirked a brow and looked at Elizabeth. “The other kids threw rocks at him when he was little, didn’t they?”

“Oh, I still do,” the brunette responded seriously, unable to contain a sly grin when Jason scowled at her.

“Ooh – it’s starting! Sh! Sh!”

Jason glanced at Lulu, who was hopping on the couch and had pulled her legs up under her as the theme song began to play. Lulu and Elizabeth were both intelligent women – he hadn’t seen that much exhibited from the youngest Spencer, but she still had time – and he couldn’t figure out why they were both so eager to turn their schedules upside down just to sit in front of the television for an hour.

“Omigosh! They put in a new opening!” Lulu was hugging her knees and Jason looked up to see a smirking young man with dark blonde spikes and sunglasses on the screen. “Oh, man, look at Steve! He cut his hair!”

“Oh, he’s gorgeous,” Elizabeth agreed, a little too quickly and too enthusiastically for Jason’s liking. “His hair looks darker now, doesn’t it? And I love that he went back to the same spikes he had first season, but…I’m kind of going to miss the long hair. It made him look so rugged and sexy. Like he’d just throw you up against a wall and-“

“He definitely looked like a total animal,” Lulu agreed. “Yow! He’s just the most perfect specimen alive – totally ruined me on men for the rest of my life.”

“Oh, I know what you mean,” the brunette laughed. “He’s too drool-worthy for words.”

Lulu was grinning at the television, but noticed Jason shift in the corner of her eye. Turning toward him, she saw that he was looking less than amused, and the young girl patted his arm affectionately. “Oh, don’t worry, Mister Jason – you’re still the first man in our hearts. Kisses!”

Jason squirmed when she pretended to peck his cheek, but fortunately the show began at that moment with Mister Too Drool-worthy For Words sauntering around a Sportsman’s lodge with a couple of the other male characters on the show, and Elizabeth and Lulu were gone.

For the next ten minutes until the first commercial break, he had to put up with remarks about leather jackets, great hands, packed biceps, sexy smirks, and something called twinklage. What the fuck was twinklage?! It better not have been what he thought it was.

Lulu and Elizabeth both let out a sigh of relief and anticipation as the show broke for commercials. “So? Who do you think it’ll be?”

Jason watched as his girlfriend bit her lip, thinking. “Well, the whole bit about Tyler and the cypress trees had to be foreshadowing – cypress trees are a symbol of death, you know. Coffins are often made from that wood, too. Yeah, I think that Tyler’s gonna be the one that bites it.”

“No!” Lulu cried, shaking her fist at the television. “He can’t die yet! He has to get back with Natalia! I want my Natyler baby, dammit! No, Liz, I can’t accept it – it’s gotta be someone else. What about that Monaco chick? I say she’s the one that meets her Maker.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Lu, they’re not going to kill off a character just because you hate her.”

The blonde folded her arms across her chest, putting her feet up on Jason’s coffee table. “They shouldn’t kill her because I hate her,” she snipped at her older sister. “They should kill her because she’s a dirty, crab-infested tramp.”

Jason quirked a brow at the young girl’s language but said nothing as Elizabeth laughed. “Lu, hon, the only person that hates Kelly more than you is me – and even I know that they’re not going to kill her. They’ve obviously got this huge arc going for her – she just found out that she was Nancy’s daughter – and they’re going to see that through. Then they’re going to have her do something retarded and get Steve to toss her ass out on the curb like he should have done, like, forever ago and then I’ll be happy.”

“And then Becky will pick up the pieces!” Lulu cheered happily. “Okay, I can deal with Kelly Mona-ho being disgraced forever if not killed. What about…Rick?”

“Rick Hearst?” Jason asked, fiddling with his pencil. “They’re not gonna kill that guy – Lansing’s the best actor on the show. The character’s going to stay.”

“But why?” Lulu whined, nudging him roughly with her knee. “Rick’s a total nutcase.”

“I kinda like him,” Elizabeth disagreed, picking at her polished nails. “Tall, dark, handsome…oh, and that grin! What’s not to like?”

Both Lulu and Jason gaped at her – but for different reasons. “Hell-o?” the young girl exclaimed. “Am I the only one that remembers how he tried to kill Becky…twice?!”

“Bygones,” the brunette argued. “He’s happy with Nancy and he’s finally starting to one-up his brother Maurice. Rick is a great hero and villain rolled into one – he can flip on a dime and be convincing as both. And Ric Lansing, who plays him, is a damn fine actor. They’re going to keep him.”

“But he’s so boring now,” Lulu sighed. “He’s freaking Ward Cleaver.”

“Would you like him better if he was ‘freaking Humbert Humbert’?” Jason asked, unable to believe that he was actually having this conversation.

“Huh?”

“Nabokov, Lu,” Elizabeth explained, squinting at her boyfriend. “What are you trying to say, Jason?”

The enforcer shrugged, watching as Becky, Natalia and Kimberly shared drinks at one of the show’s popular bars. “Remember last week, when Rick was watching Kelly when she stood on the porch in her nightgown?”

“Hey, yeah,” Lulu murmured, wrinkling her nose. “Creepiest scene ever. And who the hell wears high heels with nightgowns?”

“Porn stars,” Elizabeth replied quickly, frowning at Jason. “So, you’re saying…”

“I think they’re going to have Rick, um…” Jason glanced at Lulu and quickly scrapped what he was about to say next. “You know…”

“They’re gonna have him bang her,” the blonde murmured slowly, a large grin blossoming on her face as Kelly pranced around on the porch dressed in a pair of hot shorts and a low-cut tank top. “Oh, Mister Jason, you are le’genius!”

“Hey – didn’t Sarah sleep with her mother’s husband, Brad?” Elizabeth asked, her wide eyes following her favorite characters on the screen. “Isn’t that what Jackie said to Genie in that one episode back in the first season? Do you think they’re going there again – only this time with Kelly, Nancy and Rick?”

“I think it would be way awesome,” Lulu retorted, burrowing back happily into the couch cushions. “Almost as awesome as if Kelly discovered that Nancy slept with Stuart twenty-six years ago, making her Steve’s half-sister.”

Jason grimaced. “That would be disgusting and unnecessary.”

“It would be amusing and I would laugh,” Lulu corrected him witheringly.

“How the hell can anyone buy the fact that Kelly’s only twenty-six?” Elizabeth mused, frowning at the commercials that were playing once again. “I mean, I’m twenty-six, and I don’t look like…like…”

“…Like you’ve been ridden hard and put away wet?” Lulu guessed, squealing when the brunette hit her with a pillow. “Hey! Stop that!”

“Where the hell did you learn to talk like that, Lu?” Elizabeth demanded, doing her best not to laugh. “That’s all Lucky, isn’t it? Oy, that dipshit.”

“You love him, admit it,” Lulu teased, elbowing her lightly. “Ooh, it’s back on!”

The girls settled in for ten more minutes of silence, and Jason managed to catch a few minute errors in the books and was writing in a corrected figure when two sharp squeals made him almost break his pencil.

“Did you see that?!”

“Oh, my God, Julie rocks! She totally stole all of Tony’s money!”

“Did you see the look on Ignacio’s face?” Lulu was grinning from ear to ear. “He couldn’t believe that he was being robbed by a girl! You know…I think they’d be kind of hot together.”

Elizabeth gasped, all signs of amusement gone. “Bite your tongue! They have to bring on a new hottie for Jules – none of the other guys are going to do.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s the daughter of Tony Geary,” Elizabeth reminded her. “She’s got the blood of a legend in her veins! She can’t just be put with any guy. They have to bring someone special on just for her.”

Lulu was nodding slowly when her eyes suddenly widened. “Oh, no! They’re not going to kill Julie, are they?”

“Julie’s too popular,” Jason replied blandly, flipping to the next page. “She and Becky have the largest following on the show, it looks like, so neither of them are going anywhere.”

“Yeah, they’re the ones that are on all the ads and in all the promos,” Elizabeth agreed. “They’re safe, I think.”

“But what if they decide that they need to shake things up and kill off a main character?” Lulu worried. “I don’t think I’d be able to keep on watching if they axed Julie or the Beckster.”

“They’re not going to kill off a main character.”

The blonde whirled on Jason immediately. “How do you know? You’re not Wizard! I only trust Wizard!”

Certain that he had no idea what she was talking about, Jason just shrugged. “Why would they kill off one of their biggest names? This isn’t even a sweeps period.”

“That makes sense, Lu,” Elizabeth agreed, reassuring the young girl. “I’m pretty sure that Rick, Nancy, Steve, Becky, Julie, and Kelly are all safe. Oh, and Natalia, too.”

“Do you think they’ll kill off Derk or Drew? They wouldn’t, right? I mean…they’ve kind of got bit parts.”

Jason was nodding along as Maurice and Rick faced off for the thirtieth time since the show began a few years ago. “They’re doing a good job of bringing both those guys to the front and letting Max and Milo do their thing, but that’s only been going on since this season started. The audience isn’t invested enough yet in either of those characters to care too much if Drew or Derk – or both – get killed.”

“Sure sounds like someone’s invested, though,” Lulu grinned at Elizabeth as she elbowed Jason lightly. “You should watch all the episodes with us, Mister Jason. Oh, I know – I’ve got the first few seasons on DVD. I’ll bring them over sometime and we can have a marathon!”

Jason’s eyes widened and he turned to Elizabeth for help, but the brunette just winked at him, letting him know that he should just keep quiet because chances were that Lulu would just forget about the idea in about ten minutes or so.

“Okay, so honestly, Mister Jason,” the young woman began again, resting her head on the enforcer’s shoulder and not noticing his surprise or slight discomfort. “Who do you think is going to be sleeping with the fishes tonight? I mean – in your professional opinion.”

Elizabeth had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing aloud at the alarmed look on Jason’s face, but when he recognized that quip as one of Lulu’s standard forms of bait, he relaxed.

“It’s not going to be Steve, Rick, Tyler, Nancy, Maurice, Becky, Julie, Natalia, or Kelly,” he replied, glancing at the clock and noticing that there were only fifteen minutes left to tonight’s episode. “They’re all too big and too popular with the fans for the writers to waste their death or departure on a non-sweeps period. It’s not going to be Drew, Derk, or Kirsten because they’re pretty new on the canvas and need some more time to develop before the audience really cares about them.”

“What about Kim and Patrick?”

“They finally got Kim back after her run in the first season,” Jason reminded her, shifting slightly as she yawned. “They’re not going to kick her off because they’ve been wanting her to come back for too long. Patrick’s a new guy, and they wrote such a great opening for him when they brought him on this season that you know he’s going to be one of their main players.”

“Okay, so that narrows down who it’s not,” Lulu replied, playing with her ice as she watched Nancy and Tyler on screen. “So who’s it going to be?”

Jason shrugged “I don’t know.”

“Mister Jason! You’re supposed to know everything!”

“Look, it’s going to be someone that the audience doesn’t care too much about,” he explained, ticking the qualifications off on his finger. “The character isn’t going to be as inconsequential as the bit parts. It’ll be a character with a bigger name, but one who’s not directly connected to anyone on the canvas except maybe one or two people.”

Lulu nodded, understanding what he meant. After all, it often seemed like everybody on Prospect Avenue was either related by blood or through marriage. If it hadn’t been set in Los Angeles, the only other believable location would be Appalachia. “Okay…”

“It’s going to be a character that doesn’t get a whole lot of screentime, but is very important to at least one or two other characters. It’s going to be a character that the audience might even forget has died – except for the fact that we’ll see the reverberations of that character’s death through at least one or two people on the show…in a real direct, blatant way.”

Greg was shooting up with crystal meth when the shrill ring of the telephone interrupted their conversation. Slightly relieved, Jason set his book aside and got up off the couch. “I’ll be right back.”

Elizabeth and Lulu’s eyes were glued to the set as he reached for the telephone, each girl anxiously waiting to see who would die. Jason listened to the speaker on the other end before putting his hand on the receiver and calling out to his girlfriend. “Elizabeth – it’s Robert.”

The brunette huffed and reluctantly got off the couch, scurrying over to the phone and thinking that the sooner she talked to the WSB agent, the sooner she could hang up on him. “What is it, Robbie? Did you have to call during Prospect Avenue?…What do you mean, you worry about my sanity?…It’s not abnormal! I just happen to like it!…That’s because I’m an English freak! I majored in it back in college…You take that back! Steve Burton does NOT look like a bird!…I hate you this much, Robbie. What did you really call here for, besides making me die a little inside?”

Jason watched as his girlfriend’s brows furrowed, and then she was covering up the receiver with her hand and whispering to him. “Robbie says that they’re still looking for that chimpanzee, and he got in touch with another one of his colleagues and wants me to tell you and Sonny that you’ll want to stay out of Vegas this weekend. If you’ve got operations going on there right now, pull them….What, Robbie?…No, I’m not telling him that!…Fine, give it to him…Hi, Luke…Yes, she’s fine. We’re watching Prospect Avenue…STOP MAKING BIRDMAN JOKES!…Yeah, I told him…He knows…Are you hitting on me, Luke?”

The enforcer snickered and reached for the phone. “Let me talk to Luke – we’re managing his interests in Vegas, too.” He had just held up the phone to his ear when Lulu’s enraged yell met his ears, and both Jason and Elizabeth spun around abruptly to stare at the young woman.

“Lu – what’s wrong?”

“Oh, my God, they killed Kenny! You bastards!!”