Jane Jones (15 page)

I was here because I needed to get some answers, and the only way that was going to happen was if I confronted Ms. Smithburg, aka Charlotte Smithburg, covert undead
sneak, vampire to vampire. The questions of where exactly and when exactly and how exactly I would find her kept pounding in my ears as I mounted the stairs. I needed to get to my locker and unload some things from my heavy backpack while I gathered my thoughts.

“And where are you headed?” a deep voice intoned behind me. I turned on the bottom stair to see a male teacher whose stern face I recognized from the halls but didn’t know by name.

“To my locker,” I said, controlling the quaver in my voice.

“And why are you not at the pep assembly where you’re supposed to be?” he asked, lowering his chin and raising his eyebrow at me. A pep assembly? That explained why this place was such a ghost town. As if on cue, I heard a dull roar coming from the gym. Probably cheering in response to a stirring speech delivered by one of the coaches of some sport or other, if I remembered correctly from the thousands of rallies I’d been forced to sit and roll my eyes through. I breathed a miniature, undetectable sigh of relief as the teacher approached me, giving me a look that was more menacing than was absolutely necessary, in my opinion.

“And?” This guy liked to say “And” a lot. I could tell he was relishing our encounter so far, and I was surprised when he stopped short of delivering a sinister chuckle and
rubbing his hands together. Just a few days ago, this fella would have had me squirming, but today, I saw him for what he was: a sad figure who’d studied and gone to college and worked his way up through the school system so he could fulfill his dreams of nabbing wayward students in corridors. He obviously got some cheap thrill from it, and I pitied him. But not that much.

“Oh,” I said, digging into my backpack and groping for just the right thing. “I have a pass.” Inside my bag, I tore a pink hall pass from the pad that I’d liberated from the secretary’s desk and held it out. It was blank, but I knew that wouldn’t be a problem.

“Let me see it,” said Mr. Intimidating Eyebrow, reaching for the paper in my hand. As he grabbed it, I made sure that my fingers brushed the back of his hairy hand. Ew. The little snap of electricity that passed between us caused him to look up at my face and then I cocked my eyebrow right back at him.

“I’m excused,” I told Mr. IE, “for the rest of the day.”

He stared at me with glamoured-glassy eyes and a slack mouth. “You
are
excused,” he said, as if he’d just remembered something he should have known all along. I could have just left it at that, but there was something else I wanted to say. I tried to think of words so eloquent and poignant that they would echo through this man’s
subconscious long after I walked away from him and the memory of our exchange was forever lost.

“Don’t be a jerk to kids,” I said. It wasn’t poetic, but it would do the job. Mr. Intimidating Eyebrow didn’t look so intimidating anymore as he nodded and turned away from me. I smiled with satisfaction as he lumbered back from whence he came, never to bother another pep-assembly avoider again.

The second floor was as empty as the first, silent except for the faint chanting and fight-song singing I could hear drifting up through the vents from the gymnasium. I stepped softly and arrived at my locker, dialing the combination and lifting the latch as quietly as I could, opening the metal door slowly and without making a sound. I was all set to dump some junk, then impulsively rush into my next rash decision, when I saw two rectangles of folded notebook paper alone at the bottom of my otherwise neat locker. I’d seen plenty of notes passed and pocketed in my many years of high school, but I’d never, ever been the recipient of one. In fact, I’d recently noticed that texting had all but replaced the paper notes that kids used to exchange. Not that anyone ever texted me either, but still, I’d felt a little nostalgic pang of loss for what I thought was the passing of the passing of those old-fashioned notes. Now here it looked like I’d gotten two.

I picked up the little paper bundles and unfolded the first. It was written in a spidery, ornate hand that was almost too ostentatious to be believable. It read:

Well, obviously Timothy hadn’t received many notes either, otherwise he probably just would have gone with,
Do you like me? Circle “Yes” or “No.”
I refolded his letter and slipped it into the front pocket of my jeans.

I unfolded the second sheet, expecting more of Timothy’s calligraphy saying something along the lines of,
Dearest Jane, I am still awaiting your answer. Please remit forthwith. Ceaselessy, Timothy.
Instead, the writing was kind of inky and blocky and smeary. It said simply:

I smiled at his signoff. I wondered for a moment what it was that he had to tell me, but his mention of our history project reminded me of our history teacher, and that what I really needed to do was focus on why I’d come here. I couldn’t put it off any longer. I emptied most of
my bag onto the bottom of my locker, leaving it untidy for the first time since I’d enrolled. I closed the door and twirled the lock. Maybe I’d straighten it later. Maybe I’d never get around to straightening it before … before I still didn’t know
what
, just yet.

I approached my American history classroom and let myself in. While I expected most teachers to be with the student body in the gym, the Ms. Smithburg I was now getting to know didn’t strike me as the type to have a tremendous amount of school spirit. Though the chairs were empty and the lights were off, it didn’t mean that she wasn’t there. I walked past the blackboard and pull-down map to turn the knob to the little anteroom that served as her office. There, leaning back in the chair, with her patent pumps up on the little worn desk, was the vampire lady of the hour.

“Well,” she said, in mock surprise, “if it isn’t Jane Jones! I marked you as absent today when you weren’t in class.” She placed her feet on the floor and leaned forward on her elbows, boring into me with eyes that I once found friendly but now considered hard and cold.

“I was doing some research,” I said.

“Oh, research? How very straight-A-student of you,” she said in the same mocking tone. “Was it for your history project?”

I gritted my teeth and glared at her. “I know what you are,” I said. If Charlotte Smithburg had been surprised by my big announcement, you never would have known it. She merely sat back in her chair, folding her ivory hands over the crisp waistband of her wool skirt and sniffed.

“Do you?” she said. “Well, you were bound to find out sooner or later. Frankly, I’m surprised it took you as long as it did. Your intellect may be sharp, but your instincts as a vampire? Woefully inadequate. But, of course, that could be because you’re so sickly.…” That was kind of a cheap shot, but I decided to take one of my own.

“My instincts are working just fine, thanks. They led me to Fairhaven and the old church and the priest you’ve been glamouring so you can live in his bedroom while he sleeps on the floor like a dog.”

This time, I noticed a little flash of alarm register in her eyes.

“Why not just get a house like any normal, responsible vampire with a job?” I asked. “Is it because of that dusty, rotting, half vampire, half corpse you’re hiding down there?”

This time, she had the involuntary gasp of someone who is at least slightly surprised. Then she narrowed her eyes at me.

“That rotting half vampire, half corpse is my
husband
,”
she hissed. Whoa, now
that
was something I hadn’t seen coming. Well, whatever. I wasn’t here to talk about relationships.

“I don’t care who he is,” I said. “What I want to know is why you went from being someone I thought was a decent teacher to someone who’s kind of a stalking psycho.”

My words seemed to really hit home with Ms. Smithburg. Her fists unclenched and her pinched glare relaxed. “Jane,” she said, her voice softening. She stood and walked around to the front of the desk and leaned against it, making a steeple of her hands beneath her chin. “I have been looking for you for a very, very long time. The reason I’m here—the reason I took this job—was because I needed to find you.”

I wasn’t understanding this at all. I’d lived my life pretty anonymously up until now. At least I thought I had. Why would anyone be looking for me?

“Why?” I said. “There are plenty of others like us in this world, if you needed some vampire bonding. And unlike myself, most of them aren’t even defective. So why’d you come after me? To screw with me about my past?” I felt myself getting emotional. Stupid trace amounts of teenage hormones.

“I am truly sorry that I had to put you through that,” she said. “With all of the aliases you’ve used and all the
places you’ve lived over the years, it was difficult to be a hundred percent sure that you were even the right girl. I’d been down so many dead ends.” Was she making a pun? Because it didn’t really seem like a great time for puns to me.

“Then I mentioned the Dust Bowl to you and the look on your face told me everything I needed to know. I couldn’t believe it was really you.” She reached out her hand to touch my face, but I backed away.

“Well, it’s really me. Congratulations. So, what exactly is it that you want?” I said. I’d seen movies where one person searched for years for another person, but somehow I doubted she was about to give me the keys to a castle I’d just inherited in Transylvania.

“It’s not what I want. It’s what I need. Actually, what my husband needs. From your family,” she said. Again she moved to touch my arm, and again I stepped back.

“My family? What are you even talking about? My family barely has anything. What could you possibly need from us? How did you even know about us and where we came from and … and—” Slowly, somewhere in my mind an idea began to form about just exactly
whom
I was speaking with, but I was nowhere near ready to accept it.

“Jane … ,” she said, “I know this must be very difficult for you to hear, but my husband and I were there that
day. The day that your family—well, you know, was made.…”

“Became vampires?” I fired back. “You were there?”

“Your father invited us in. And your mother looked so worried. If we had done nothing, they all would have died. We were doing them a favor,” she explained, circling back behind the desk and sitting primly. Something about the way she was putting things didn’t sound exactly right to me, and it nagged at the back of my mind as she continued. “Now we need a favor from your family in return. My husband is sick.”

This was an understatement. The guy looked like he was at undeath’s door. And as far as I was concerned, he could stay there. The rage I felt for what this woman and her putrefying husband had done to my family was sharper and icier than any feeling I’d ever had in all of my eternal life. I balled my fists to keep my hands from shaking as Ms. Smithburg continued telling me things I didn’t want to know.

“Many years ago, in the 1970s, my dear husband mistakenly fed from a human with contaminated blood. Hepatitis, we believe. He became ill and weak, and we were told by elders in the community that the only chance for him to become well would be to feed from one that he’d created,” she said.

“So you spent years looking for me so that I could let your husband suck
my
blood as a thank-you to you both for making my life a freaking hell? Well, that is really too bad because, guess what? Never. Gonna. Happen.” I seethed.

Ms. Smithburg sighed impatiently, as if I were a thick kid failing to grasp a simple historical fact she was trying to teach me in class.

“Jane. Josephine, actually, isn’t it?” she said. “I spent years looking for you so that you would lead me to your family. Understandably, if one of them recognized me, they’d be … upset. But you never saw me, because on that day you were so sick. I remember you bundled up and dirty on a straw mattress, apparently delirious with fever and hunger. To tell you the truth, we thought you were dead already, or else we might not have left you alone. But we
did
,” she pronounced, “leave you alone.”

My mind reeled as certain things became clear while other things spun out of focus. When I’d seen Ms. Smithburg bolting from the school on Tuesday it was because she was terrified that my parents would see her and identify her. But if what she was claiming was true and she and her husband never bit me, then …