ReVamped (9 page)

Weak. She’s lost a lot of blood. I’ve called 911 from the cell phone of one of the downed guys. If my mojo’s back in working order, I’ll give everyone memories that don’t include us. Take the car to the gas station down the street. I’ll meet you there as soon as the EMTs arrive. I want to watch over everyone until then in case that vampire guy comes back.

Made sense. That way, if the cops came with the EMTs we wouldn’t be caught up in the questioning. Plus, Hailee wouldn’t remember her hero-worship of
my
honey. It was a win-win.

Do you think you can track him
? I asked.
I mean, does your magic have an ap for that?

Somehow he managed to convey humor through the mind-link.
I don’t think so
.

Well darn.

I moved the car and called Agent Stuffed … Sid,
Sid
. How long was it going to take me to get that and make it stick? I reported in.

He was silent for a second. Then, “So now we’ve got flaring ley lines, missing kids, and
vampires
?”

“Oh my,” I agreed.

9

I couldn’t believe we had to go to stupid school when there were leads to chase down, vampires to vanquish, and all that crap. But here I was, sitting in homeroom, paying tribute to the all-important attendance.

“Geneva Belfry,” Mr. Richardson called.

“Yo,” I answered.

He looked like he wanted to say that “Here” would be much more appropriate, but I’d worn him down already and he moved on, leaving me to my thoughts.

The story of the weird attack at the DQ last night was the talk of the school. Kids speculated, like the reporters on the morning news, about what connection the trouble might have with the missing twosome. No one had any answers.

Attendance didn’t take long this morning since the school was practically a ghost town now. Parents were keeping their kids home because of all the trouble, or maybe it was just another symptom of the insanity. Stick and Stuffed had mentioned falling attendance and sleepwalking through school. I could easily believe it. Even Mr. Richardson was so low-key today he didn’t even
try
to keep us from talking through the announcements.

I dragged my feet on the way to my locker until I saw that Ulric was waiting for me. If he proposed another skip day, I was so there. Math and science and all that jazz just weren’t going to cut it today.

But his face didn’t hold any mischief. It kind of looked like a Johnny Depp face in a Tim Burton film. You know the one—serious, maybe a little unhinged.

“Hear you had a date last night,” he said in greeting. “That why you ditched us?”

I halted, honestly baffled for a second. “Oh,
that
,” I answered when the light bulb went on in my head. “That wasn’t a date.”

As secretive as we’d tried to be, someone must have seen Bobby and me at the Dairy Queen. But Ulric wasn’t owed any explanation, and the kinda-flattering attention he’d been paying me so far was going to wear thin if he started getting all territorial.

“Reeaally?”

“Yup,” I answered, twisting in my locker code and ignoring him as best I could.

“I heard you were out with some geek. Same place as the trouble last night. Weird, huh?”

I shoved half the books in my backpack into the locker and slammed it shut with extreme prejudice before I whirled on him. “What exactly are you accusing me of? Eating in a public place? Oh, the horror. Newsflash, I plan to do it again this afternoon. Fifth period, in fact. High school cafeteria. Imagine the scandal.”

I started to walk away, thinking it was a pretty good exit line, but Ulric grabbed me by the shoulder. I looked at his hand like I could wither it, which, of course, I couldn’t.

“Wait, I’m … sorry.” He sounded as surprised as I felt.

“You should be,” I told him.

“I don’t know what got into me. I just … Here, let me make it up to you. Tonight. Battle of the Bands. Bella’s performing and we’re all going to root her on. It’ll be my treat.”

“Did you really just use your stalker-boy come-on to ask me out on a date?”

He actually had the good grace to look embarrassed. “If I say yes, do I get points for honesty?”

I didn’t have to think hard about the answer to that one, but I couldn’t exactly say what was on my mind. Spy stuff was sneaky that way.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said instead. “I’ll go. You can pay for my ticket as an apology. But it’s not a date.”

A grin started twitching his lips upward. And here I’d thought goths were supposed to be all eternal gloom and doom. I wasn’t sure he’d quite gotten the memo.

“Sure. Not a date. I’ll pick you up at six thirty.”

Before I could protest about my own wheels or his lack of my address, he was gone, disappeared as if he never was. And in the half-empty hallway, that was a pretty good feat. Damn him. I might just have to move him from the mental file of “obnoxious but good for the ego” to “intense and potentially stalkerific.”

• • •

When 6:35 rolled around with no sign of stalkerboy, I was tempted to take off in my own car. I was debating whether or not to leave a note when Ulric pulled up in a black Sebring ragtop. There was someone with him.

Two
guys unfurled themselves from the front seats, then Byron started to let himself into the back.

“Where’s the hearse?” I asked.

“Blew a gasket,” Byron answered, all morose.

“Sure you don’t mean blew a casket?” I asked.

They both stared at me. “Okay, I admit it. That was lame.”

“Really lame,” Byron agreed. “I’m surprised Ulric didn’t think of it first.”

Ulric punched him in the arm and came around the passenger side to hold the door open for me.

“Not a date,” I reminded him as I got in.

“My apology for being late,” he said. “Of course, that was really Byron’s fault. If he hadn’t needed a ride … ”

“Fine,” Byron said, “it’s all my fault. Can we get going?”

I rolled my eyes and tucked myself into the car. I’d been careful not to wear a skirt tonight, lest Ulric take it for a come-on, but I couldn’t resist the cool jeans I’d found among the other basic-black denim in my wardrobe. These had mesh where the side-seams should be and were kind of sexy without being actually slutty. Not that I minded slutty particularly, but Ulric totally didn’t need the encouragement. I’d paired it with a black mesh shirt over a red tank top. My long dark hair was twisted into two buns on top of my head, held there with chopsticks. I figured that if the vamp from the DQ came calling, I’d have ready-made stakes at my disposal this time. Plus, I was the ultimate in goth chic … as long as I didn’t trip and impale myself.

The auditorium parking lot, way down the long arm of the L, was full when we got there, so we had to park out in the boondocks by the center of the school. The guys didn’t know how lucky they were to have a hot, kick-butt vampire chick to watch their backs. Of course, Ulric would have preferred to watch mine and tried that “after you” trick, but I told him I’d rather keep him in my sights.

Byron made a choking sound that I thought was probably a laugh.

“Wow, tough crowd,” Ulric groused.

“You have no idea,” I told him.

Inside, the place was swarming. The bands hadn’t started yet, so even though the auditorium doors were wide open for people to take their seats, folks were still milling around in the lobby. Some were in line for tickets at the small box office—no more than a closet, really, with a roll-up window. Most were making a run on the bake sale table.

I spotted Lily right away, holding up a wall as she kept an eye on the new arrivals. It was pretty hard to miss her, actually, in her sheath dress of toxic-waste green with black-and-white-striped stockings and matching gloves. Her baby-fine hair was pulled into a ponytail that was practically on top of her head and teased to within an inch of its life.

I left the guys immediately to hang with her, but, of course, they followed.

“Hey, you dressed up,” I said.

She shrugged. “I wanted Bella to see me cheering.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem.”

Lily looked behind me to my escorts. “Where’s Gavin?”

“It wasn’t my day to watch him,” Ulric said.

Lily looked disappointed. “Well, shall we?” she asked, cocking her head toward the open auditorium doors off to her left.

“Just a minute, we have to get our tick—”

I didn’t even get to finish my sentence before Ulric was flashing two tickets at me. “I stopped at lunch. Figured it would save time.”

They started flashing the lights in the lobby to let us know it was time to take our seats inside. We went in and were lucky enough to find seats all together, two-thirds of the way back in the auditorium. It wasn’t completely full, but there was a pretty respectable audience.

“Bella’s band is up fourth,” Lily whispered. “Just before the break.”

But first we had to get through a really, really awful punk band that made Rage Against the Latrine seem like musical genius, a girl who didn’t quite understand the concept of “band” and accompanied herself on guitar as she sang—not too badly, actually—and a group that played Latin music. It wasn’t really my thing, but the singer’s eyes were smoldering and he had a pretty fair idea of how to shake those hips … Ulric bumped my knee at a certain point, though I knew I hadn’t been drooling. Like he had any moral high ground here anyway, after he’d brought a third wheel on our non-date.

Bella’s band appeared before she did, three guys dressed in abstract-patterned T-shirts of gray and black over jeans. One keyboardist and two guitarists—one probably a bassist (I could never tell the diff). It was only after they’d fussed with their equipment that Bella practically floated out, which made sense, because she couldn’t weigh more than a feather. The stage lights made her silver slip dress glow and sparked off her dark flowing hair. They washed out her ever-pale face until it was just an impression of big, kohl-lined eyes and red lips. Her bruise from the jerky boys at Red Rock was nowhere to be seen, probably buried under a gallon of concealer. She grabbed the microphone in one hand, half shut her eyes as if tuning us out, and retreated behind her lids. She started to sing even before her musical accompaniment began.

The sound was high, pure, and haunting, like Evanescence. She sang like some supernatural being—an angel or a siren or something unearthly. The instruments, when they joined in, were just distracting at first, but took on more of a duet role as they went on, weaving in and out of her sound rather than merging with it.

I realized I’d actually forgotten to breathe for at least a few beats. I hoped no one noticed, but looking left and right, I didn’t have to worry. No one was paying
me
any attention at all.

When Bella’s last note died, the audience erupted in a fit of clapping and wolf calls. Lily not only stood up, she jumped up on her chair and waved her arms, screaming her enthusiasm. I saw Bella give a small smile as she spotted Lily. Then she was gone, and I gave Lily a hand down.

“Wow,” I said. “That was incredible.”

“I
know
! Let’s go tell her.”

We shooed the guys out of the row, but not before the rest of the crowd had poured into the aisles for intermission. It took us a while to make our way to the hallway leading backstage, which had been blocked off with sawhorses. There was a straightlaced guy manning them who was explaining to those who’d gotten there before us that he couldn’t let anyone back there except the bands.

“What, paparazzi a problem?” I asked, a little too loudly.

He zeroed in on me over the heads of the others. “No, theft. A lot of equipment back here. It’s an insurance thing.”

“Darn, ’cause I sure could use me a snare drum.” Not that I had any clue how to tell a snare drum from any other.

Lily gave me a
look
, and as the other students reared back to stare at me she used the path created to sidle up to the enforcer.

“Can you just get a message to our friend?” she asked, batting her lashes up at him.

“Can’t leave my post, but if you tell me her name, I can try to get someone to call her for you and you can tell her yourself.”

“Belladonna. She was the last to play.”

Rule Guy’s lips twisted. “Like I even had to ask. Anyway, you missed her. She left. Said she’d be back soon.”

Lily shot me a despairing look over her shoulder, and I wondered if poor Bella ever got to use the facilities without people thinking the worst.

“Split up,” she said.

“You want to hunt her down?” I asked.

“Did you see her swaying on stage? I doubt she ate anything before going on tonight. Maybe we should swing by the bake sale table and pick something up for her.”

And here I’d thought all that swaying was musically inspired.

I nodded, and we took off at a speedwalk. Goths didn’t run, I figured.

“She prone to passing out?” I asked.

“Once or twice.” We still had our tail. “Byron, Ulric, make yourselves useful,” Lily snapped. “Start looking. Call me if you find her.”

They peeled off without protest. Good to know Ulric could take orders. Maybe he wasn’t a total loss.