Eighth Grade Bites (9 page)

But Meredith wasn't laughing anymore.

Vlad straightened his shoulders and gave a sly smile to Tom. “Not a dime. I just offered her tickets to your next ballet recital.”

The crowd went silent. Music poured from the DJ's speakers—a heavy bass line that echoed into the gym. Vlad looked at Henry, whose jaw had almost literally hit the floor. Tom's face had turned purple, and Vlad could count the number of veins popping out of his forehead.

Three.

Probably the same number of seconds Vlad had to live once Tom got hold of him.

It was Mike Brennan who broke the silence. He howled with laughter and stepped away from Tom to pat Vlad on the back. Vlad managed a smile but kept his eyes on Tom. It's hard to celebrate when your face is about to be mashed to a pulp.

Henry's laughter followed Mike's, and soon the entire room was howling—all but Tom, Bill, and Meredith. Carrie rushed into Vlad's arms and planted an unexpected, enthusiastic kiss on his lips. Over her shoulder, Vlad watched as Tom pleaded with Meredith to stay. His begging had apparently fallen on deaf ears, as Meredith yanked her hand away and disappeared out the gym door.

Vlad pulled away from Carrie and took two steps toward the door, but it was too late. Meredith was gone.

 

Vlad waited until the next day to tell Henry all about his experience with the book and his theories about the strange note left by his father. “What if somebody killed him and Mom and the answers are somewhere in my old house?”

Henry was less than enthusiastic. “Vlad, your parents died three years ago. It was an accident. A horrible, awful accident. Do you really think your dad would've had the foresight to leave you cryptic notes? He probably wrote that for someone else.” He was sitting on the edge of Vlad's bed, glancing carefully toward the closed door.

Vlad ran his thumb over the cover of the book. The glyph flickered in response.

“I'm not saying we shouldn't check it out,” Henry went on. “Who knows? We might find something. But the odds of your dad knowing he was going to die and that you'd be alive and in possession of his book . . .” Henry's eyes dropped to the tome in question. “Well, they're not good.”

Vlad placed his palm against the glyph. The locks clicked and opened. “I'm going to my old house to look around. Are you coming or not?”

Henry was watching him with a look of unease. “Whoa . . . how'd you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Your eyes . . .”

Vlad tilted his head, wondering exactly what Henry was talking about. He was about to ask when Henry said, “Just now, when you touched the book, your eyes changed color. They were . . . kind of . . . purple.”

Vlad laughed, but stopped when he saw the flicker of fear in Henry's eyes. “Seriously?”

At Henry's nod, Vlad carried the book into the bathroom. He placed his hand on the glyph and watched his reflection. His irises seemed to shift and ripple, like the surface of a pond when broken by a tossed stone. The rippling slowed, then ceased. Vlad's eyes flashed a shade of lavender.

Vlad almost dropped the book. “Whoa!”

Henry was standing behind him. He winced when he saw Vlad's eyes change again. “That's freaky.” Henry looked over Vlad's shoulder at the open book. “I thought you promised Nelly you'd stay away from your old house.”

“I owe it to my dad to break that promise, Henry. I have to look around at least. What if my dad really did know that he was going to die?” Vlad read his father's note over again and shut the book. He was going to his old house, with or without Henry.

D'Ablo pulled off his leather gloves and tossed them onto the charred floor of Tomas's bedroom. “It's not possible.” He looked around the room. It smelled like ashes; it smelled like death.

D'Ablo clucked his tongue and closed his eyes. “Where are you, Tomas? You can't possibly be dead.” When he opened his eyes, he noticed a small panel beside the charred bed. He knelt and brushed away the soot with his fingers.

The glyph glowed a cool blue.

A wicked smile crossed D'Ablo's face. “What's this?” He pressed his palm against the glyph, and it glowed brighter before the panel opened inward.

Inside the small compartment were cobwebs, three dead spiders, and a photograph of a boy with black hair. D'Ablo clutched the picture in his hand and frowned. “Well, well. Vladimir Tod. And no sign of your father's beloved journal.”

He slid the photo into his pocket and moved to the board-covered window. It would soon be getting light. It was time to leave.

D'Ablo let himself quietly out of the house. His stomach rumbled with hunger, but he ignored it. There was no time to eat, and sleepiness was beginning to overtake him.

When the sun fell once again, he would feed.

Vlad's old house was at the opposite end of town—in a place neither Vlad nor Henry had been in the three years since the accident. Nelly had put the property up for sale twice in that time, but both times Vlad had talked her out of selling it to add to his college fund. Someday, he'd told her, someday he'd have the strength to let the house go. But not yet.

Kind as she was, Nelly had continued to pay the property taxes, kept Bathory's town council pacified, and allowed Vlad time to heal.

He hadn't yet done so.

Vlad paused on the corner and looked down Lugosi Trail. His house was still standing, remaining structurally unharmed, despite the fire. No one could tell Vlad how the fire had started or even how it had been extinguished. Only one room had burned—his parents' bedroom. The fire marshal had brought in several inspectors, but the only conclusion they'd reached was that there had been a brief flash in that room, burning everything and everyone who'd been in it to a crisp, while it had merely smoked and singed the rest of the home's interior.

Vlad could feel Henry's eyes on him, as if waiting for Vlad to burst into tears. Vlad wouldn't. He'd resolved to stop crying in front of people, dealing with his grief on his own in the shadows of his secret space in the belfry of Bathory High. Vlad kept his eyes on the house as they approached. It looked exactly as it had the last time he'd seen it.

The house was an odd, irregular shape—two stories with a three-story tower attached. His bedroom had been at the bottom of the tower. On top of it was his parents' room and on top of that was his dad's study. The exterior of the house was painted gray except for the black gingerbread, which matched the roof's peaks. Atop his father's study was a wrought-iron widow's walk.

Vlad used to play in the backyard at night, only to glance up and spy his parents swaying slowly together to music he couldn't hear from the ground. There might not have been music to dance to at all, but his parents danced anyway. He rubbed the threat of a tear away and reached for the key ring in his pocket.

The door opened easily, and as it swung to the side, Vlad half expected to see his mother behind it, greeting him with a kiss on the forehead and questions about his day. She wasn't there, of course, but her favorite jacket was hanging on the coat tree next to the door. Like everything else in the house, it had been darkened by smoke, but the color showed through the gray.

Henry squeezed his shoulder from behind. “You okay?”

Vlad shook him away and stepped into the house. An acrid smell invaded his nostrils. “We should start in my dad's study.”

“Any idea what we're looking for?” Henry stood beside the couch and looked around, a pained expression in his eyes.

“I don't know for sure. In my dad's note, he wrote that the answers were there.” Vlad moved through the house, not allowing his eyes to linger on anything for more than a second. Every piece of furniture, every book, every rug, was exactly as it had been the last time he'd seen them. In three years, nothing had been moved. With a heavy heart, Vlad stepped into the passageway that led to the tower and ascended the spiral staircase all the way to the third floor.

Henry followed behind, mumbling under his breath. “Did he mention what the questions were?”

The mahogany door at the end of the hall was locked, but Vlad quickly remedied that with a skeleton key. He stepped in first, with Henry not far behind him, and held his breath as he looked about the small room. His father's enormous desk sat at the center. Framed certificates and artwork lined the walls. A big leather chair was behind the desk, and behind that was his father's suit closet. Vlad sank into the still-soft leather and spun slowly. A small window made of colored glass cast a red glow in the room, painting Henry pink. “My dad loved this chair.” Vlad fought, but the tears came anyway. Three years hadn't been long enough to quench them.

Henry squeezed his shoulder. “Come on, Vlad. Let's get this over with.”

They searched each drawer, tore through every file, examined the contents of every box, and even combed the desk for secret compartments. By the time they had rummaged through the bottom of the closet, the sun had set and they'd run out of places in Tomas's study to look. If Vlad's father had left the answers here, someone else had already found them. Vlad kicked a box across the room and ran his hand through his hair. “It has to be here somewhere.”

“What were you hoping to find, Vlad? The name of your parents' killer scribbled down on a notepad? Typed-out details of who killed them, how, and why? The arsonist's fingerprints documented along with a signed confession? Nothing's here.” Henry dropped the file he'd been looking through on the desktop, causing a cloud of dust to rise into the air between them. He took a deep breath and flashed an apologetic glance at Vlad. “All I'm saying is maybe you should leave well enough alone. What if digging through this stuff, nosing around, does nothing but drive you crazy?”

Vlad shook his head. Henry couldn't possibly understand. Vlad thought of replying, but nothing that came to mind could make Henry get how he was feeling. He walked out and made his way downstairs, careful not to even glance at his parents' bedroom door. As he opened the door to his old bedroom, he heard Henry's footfalls behind him. Without looking at him, Vlad said, “You didn't have to come.”

Vlad's room was littered with smoke-stained toys that had been important to him at some point in time, though he strained to remember when. On his bed lay an old pair of jeans and, next to it, a crumpled shirt. At the foot of his bed was a lime-green beanbag, and behind it his walk-in closet, where clothes still hung. Everything had been abandoned in the wake of the fire. Vlad reached for the light and chastised himself for forgetting the lack of power. He pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and flipped it on, stepping into the closet. When he reached the back wall, he knelt and loosened the panel there. Inside the wall was a box, which he withdrew and carried to the bed. Henry was watching with guilty interest. “What's that?”

Vlad pulled the lid off and set it next to the box. “It used to be my secret box, where I kept everything that was important to me.” He looked inside at the various ticket stubs, photographs, and trinkets, a sad smile finding its way onto his lips.

Henry pulled out a photo of Tomas and looked from Vlad to his father's image and back. “You're just like your dad.”

Vlad blinked and looked at Henry with wide eyes. “What did you say?”

He didn't want an answer. In fact, just as “You're ju—” left Henry's mouth again, Vlad bolted out the door and ran as fast as he could back to his father's study. Henry followed close behind. “Where are you going?”

Vlad yanked open the study door and rushed inside. Henry caught the door before it could hit him in the face. “But we already looked here, Vlad.”

Vlad opened the closet door and pushed his father's favorite jacket aside. Behind him, Henry was sighing in exasperation. “What are you doing in the closet?”