The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (12 page)

Death is the king of this world: ’Tis his park

Where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

—George Eliot

T
he inside of the Dead Last Rest Stop was huge, bigger than most malls, but with services malls would never have any reason to provide—showers for a dollar; canned goods; a boutique with sepulchral dresses and coats in black and purple and silver; a pharmacy; an interfaith chapel; five restaurants; three bars; a dance club; and even a bag check so that kids arriving by bus could pay two dollars to dump their luggage for a couple of hours while they shopped or slept in rentable coffin-shaped pods. Loud Eurotrance remixes of funereal music pumped out of speakers all along the walls, and every store
window announced the same thing, whether in big blinking letters or hand-lettered signs:
OPEN 24 HOURS
.

Tana felt dazed. It was surreal to be inside of a brightly lit space, safe, when she’d been in mortal danger for the last twelve hours.

The central area was a hexagonal room with polished black floors, ebonized benches, and a central sculpture of what looked like a large red crystal heart with a stake driven through it. Televisions along the walls broadcast popular feeds from inside Springfield’s Coldtown. On one, golden-haired Lucien Moreau was teaching a human girl how to waltz; on another, a ginger-haired vampire girl was talking to the camera, describing how her night had gone while a human boy cuddled up to her pale skin, offering her a piece of tubing taped to the needle in his wrist.

Tourists stopped to stare at the feeds. They took pictures of one another in front of the crystal heart, arms thrown over one another’s shoulders and too-wide smiles on their mouths.

A tired-looking middle-aged woman stood off to one side, handing out pink flyers to anyone who passed her. “Have you seen my daughter?” she asked, over and over. “She’s only twelve. Please, I know she came through here. Have you seen her?”

At first, people under the age of sixteen weren’t allowed to go through the gates of the Coldtowns, but then a nine-year-old was turned away because the guards thought she was lying about being bitten. She wasn’t. People died. There were tests for infection, but the tests were expensive, making self-reporting critical to keeping the quarantine. Since that incident with the child, anyone was allowed to enter any Coldtown at any age without proving anything.

Tana looked at the woman, at her tired face and at the smiling little girl on the flyer. She thought of Pearl and wondered what that girl imagined was waiting for her behind the gates.

Midnight walked past the woman without even seeming to notice her and collapsed on one of the benches. Both her hands pressed the velvet cloth of her shirt over the scratches to stop the bleeding.

“I’ll get bandages and stuff,” said Winter. “You stay right here. And
you
stay with her.” He scowled at Tana.

Tana nodded and Winter walked toward the pharmacy, looking back twice. His big boots clopped like hooves on the shiny granite tile floor.

A few passing kids wearing backpacks stopped to stare at Tana in her bloody clothes and at Midnight, with her smeared mascara and the way she was clutching her shoulder.

“What are you looking at?” Tana told the kids, snarling the way Pauline would have, and they hurried off.

Midnight smiled at her lopsidedly.

“I’m so incredibly sorry,” Tana said. “About what happened. I’m sorry you got hurt.”

“How did you—how did you wind up with them? With Aidan and the other one?” Midnight asked. Her lips looked chapped and bluish under the fluorescent lights.

“There was a party and everyone died,” Tana said. She didn’t expect it to come out quite like that, quite so plain and awful.

Midnight nodded and closed her eyes, as if the scratches stung. “How bad? It wasn’t that thing that was on the news up north—?”

The news?
For a moment, Tana was confused. It felt like something too private for the news, but of course that didn’t make sense. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“It was! Oh my god, I saw all the tweets and the pictures someone leaked of the crime scene. You were really there?”

Tana nodded, not sure what else to say. She had no words for it that were big enough.

“Wow,” Midnight said. “And you got away. That’s major.”

“More or less, we got away,” said Tana.

“Hey, do me a favor, okay?” Midnight reached into her pocket with one hand and took out her phone, the face of it scratched from the pavement. “Hold this while I talk. My tripod is in my luggage, but I don’t want to bother getting it. This is the real stuff—the stuff I promised to tell everyone. Just try and hold it steady.”

“Sure,” Tana said, somewhat taken aback. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t taken video of anyone before—of Pauline so she could see how her auditions looked or of friends acting stupid and goofing around—but she’d never filmed anyone who’d just been attacked and was still bleeding.

“And you could say something, too. You
should
. Everyone wants to know what it’s like to be you right now.”

Tana shook her head quickly; the idea of talking about what had happened brought back every awful image. The staring dead eyes. The whispering voices through the door. Her back slammed against the ground of the gas station with Aidan towering over her. “I don’t know, myself.”

“Later maybe,” said Midnight, handing the phone to Tana. “How do I look?”

Tana had no idea how to answer that. Midnight looked pale and beautiful, streaked and bloodied. “You look fine,” Tana said, as neutrally as possible.

“I guess that’s going to have to do.” Midnight winced as she pulled on the ripped neck of her velvet shirt, exposing her collarbone so Tana could get a good shot of the gouges. They were grisly, wet with blood, and swollen at the edges. “You know how to use this thing?”

Tana touched her fingers to the phone, hitting the small picture of the video on the bottom corner. “I think so. Aren’t you worried your parents are going to see this? Let the cops know where you are. I mean, you’re underage runaways.”

Midnight snorted. “Our parents don’t get what we do online. They’re not smart enough. They’re
nothing
like us. Trust me, by the time they figure out what happened, we’ll be long gone.”

“Okay,” Tana said, holding up the camera and clicking the button to begin filming. “Ready.”

“Hi,” Midnight said, an odd intensity coming over her as she gazed into the lens. “It’s me, faithful servant of the night, adventurer, poet, and madwoman. And what an adventure I’ve been on! Lots has happened since I posted last. Winter and I made it to the rest stop outside of Coldtown, so we’re just hours from being inside. It’s exactly like what we always believed—when you’re following your deepest, truest, darkest destiny, the universe clears you a path. We met some people who are going to give us a ride. In fact, you might recognize them from the news—but I’ll get to that later. First, I have to tell you about what happened to me.”

Then Winter returned with a bag of medical supplies. Midnight asked Tana to keep the phone recording as Winter bound up her shoulder, spraying the wounds with antiseptic and taping down gauze bandages. She narrated all the while, eyes on the camera, even when it obviously hurt. When that was done, Midnight gulped down some aspirin and said she wanted to edit and upload the video to her blog before she did anything else.

Listening to her, Tana had to admire the way Midnight was able to turn what happened into a madcap story, into part of The Legend of Midnight. Even the not-so-good stuff was spun on its head to be enviable. Tana could imagine herself watching the video and wishing she was as brave and lucky as the girl in it. But standing in front of Midnight, knowing what actually happened, Tana could see that Midnight wasn’t just telling a story to other people, she was telling a story to herself. She was smoothing over all the frightening parts until she wasn’t scared. But she should be, Tana thought. She should be scared.

“There’s free Wi-Fi throughout the building—I’m just going to plug into the outlet over there.” Midnight pointed toward the food court. Taking the phone out of Tana’s hand, grinning, she aimed the camera part at her. The corner light flashed. “Meet me when you’re done with whatever. You don’t mind, right? You didn’t have to say anything.”

Tana was sure she looked awful, but a bad picture online was the least of her worries. She felt worn out, cold, and brittle. She could smell Midnight’s blood, a metallic scent, and wondered if that meant the infection had finally kicked in. Or maybe it was nothing. Maybe she should stop worrying.

“No, I guess I don’t mind.” Tana glanced over at a display of logo shirts. “I’m going to pay to take a shower.”

Winter gave her an almost friendly smile, the first since Aidan had attacked his sister. “That’s a good idea. Who knows how much hot running water we’re going to get inside.”

Tana wanted to say that she was still making up her mind about Coldtown, but she hesitated too long and then felt foolish. She waved an awkward good-bye instead.

The gift store was kitschy, full of shot glasses, bumper stickers, and T-shirts—baby tees with
CORPSEBAIT
across the front, big black sleep shirts with dripping letters:
UP ALL NIGHT AT THE DEAD LAST REST STOP, I BITE ON THE FIRST DATE, DEADEST GENERATION, NOTHING IS THE NEW EVERYTHING
, and
I’LL TAKE MY COFFEE WITH YOUR BLOOD IN IT
. There were mirrors with cartoonish rivulets of blood running from two puncture wounds silk-screened onto them, so that when you looked in the mirror, it seemed as if you’d been bitten. And there were necklaces, spelling out the word “cold” in looping cursive letters.

An elderly lady with short gray hair was paying for a packet of water-purifying pills and tins of food when Tana passed her at the checkout counter. The lady wore a Chanel-esque black suit and carried a gold-tipped cane with mother-of-pearl roses along the length. Her back was bent, making her seem hunched like a vulture.

“What?” the woman accused the clerk, her rheumy blue eyes steady. “You think dying is just for the young?”

Tana left before she could hear the clerk’s reply.

In the next store, the boutique, she thumbed through lacy satin gowns with names like Innocence Shattered and Ruined Blossom
and Sliced-Open Apple of Sin. She found a pretty blue dress that she liked and which would have probably fit her, but at a hundred and twelve dollars, it was way too expensive. Tana had the same forty that she’d had at the gas station. She’d left the bag of bills where she’d knocked it, on the ground next to her car. She hoped it was still there. If she was going to hole up someplace and wait out the next forty-eight hours to see if she was infected, she’d need more money, no matter its provenance. And she’d need the money even more if she went to Coldtown with the rest of them.

At least there was a sale rack in the back with marked-down clothes. She managed to find a wrinkled gray slip dress about a size too big for her priced at twenty-five bucks. She got that and the cheapest pair of underwear in the store—crimson with ridiculous black lace trim and a silly bow—for an additional ten.

The bored-looking clerk, a man with huge silver studs through his ears and a tattoo of a snake wrapped around his neck like a noose, rang her up and took her money with clear disdain.

She knew she was going to look kind of overly fancy and also a little bit naked in the slip dress, but she wasn’t willing to face an actual vampire while wearing a hilarious slogan nightshirt. And all she wanted to do with her current clothes was set them on fire.

She took her purchases in their glossy black boutique bag with purple tissue paper wrapped around each garment and went to the showers. There, she was able to pay a dollar for fifteen minutes in an individual stall and three dollars for packets of body wash and shampoo, a tiny toothbrush kit, and a towel only slightly larger than a washcloth that had to be returned.

A large mirror hung in the hallway outside the stalls, where women and girls sat on benches, lacing up Chucks and rolling on deodorant. Seeing herself, she stopped to stare at her reflection as though the girl in the glass was someone else, someone unknown and unknowable. Her black hair looked wild, with bits of twigs and leaves stuck in it. The skin around her eyes was dark as a bruise, probably half from sleeplessness and half from smeared mascara that she made worse when she’d splashed her face with water. Even her blue eyes looked gray under the harsh overhead lights. Her once white dress was as bad as she’d guessed, brown at the hem where the root beer had soaked into it, striped with dark streaks of blood and dirt. There were at least two visible rips in the fabric, and her high boots were spattered with grime and mud.

But the worst part was her expression. She made herself try to smile, but it came out wrong. She’d once seen a bunch of vintage mug shots in a magazine and there’d been one she’d stared at for a long time. There’d been something off about the girl in it. Now Tana saw that strangeness in herself.

She wasn’t okay. She really, really didn’t look like someone who was okay.

Going into the stall, Tana hung her pocketbook, towel, and bag of clothes on the hook farthest from the nozzle, unlaced her boots and tied them together, so they could hang with her other things. Then she pulled off her mother’s baby doll dress, her bra, and underwear and tossed them into a corner. Her muscles felt stiff and sore, her hands fumbling over the most basic tasks.

When the hot water hit her shoulders, it felt so good she groaned out loud.

She washed her hair twice and combed it through with her fingers to get all the twigs out. She scrubbed her skin with her fingernails, not caring if it abraded, caring only that she was clean. The water cut off after her fifteen minutes were up and she leaned back against the tiles. Her heartbeat hammered against her chest in alarm, but nothing was wrong. It was just leftover terror.

She didn’t feel chilled through anymore. She didn’t want to attack the woman in the next shower stall. She felt exhausted and scared and scraped up, but other than that, she felt pretty much the way she always had. She felt fine.