The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (30 page)

“Because you don’t trust me,” he said.

“You’re not used to what you are yet,” she told him. “That’s all. Friends don’t blackmail each other.”

“You can’t leave me here, Tana,” he said. “Promise me that you won’t leave me.”

After a long moment, she said, “I’ll be here for eighty-eight days at least. I’m infected, remember? That’s a lot of time.” She wasn’t sure she
was
infected, not anymore, but she figured that it’d be safer if he thought her being Cold was certain.

Safer, because if there was any way to, she was leaving him. She was going home, home to hide under covers that smelled like bleach and violets and to sleep until she forgot the last three days. She wanted to take a shower so hot that it gave her a sunburn. She wanted to cry until she didn’t have any tears left, until the salt of them dried on her cheeks and blew away.

“We could find him again—
Gavriel
,” Aidan said, making the name into a taunt, but not a mean one. He sounded like Pauline did sometimes when she was teasing Tana about a boy, the way she’d once sounded when she was teasing Tana about Aidan. “I bet we could find him if we looked, and I know you’d like to see him again, even if you won’t say so.”

Tana let herself smile with relief that Aidan had moved on to a subject that didn’t involve dying. He might let her out of the room without a fight, might let her out with the marker. “Okay, sure. Let’s look for him.”

“I bet he wants to see you, too.” With a sigh, Aidan reached into his jeans and took out the manila envelope, then put it in her hand. “We’ll start tomorrow. You trust me now, right?”

She wanted to open it up and look, but she didn’t want to take her gaze off Aidan. She could feel the weight of the marker, could trace her finger around the outline of it through the paper. That would have to do. She slipped it into one of the zip pockets of her jacket while he watched.

“I trust you,” she said, and stepped into the hallway.

The dim slashes of sunlight through the painted windows were little comfort. As soon as she’d walked a few steps, she started to run down the stairs. She was tired through and through, tired from adrenaline, exhausted from being drugged the morning before, and worn down from fear so deep it seemed to live in her bones. She forced herself to walk out the front, down the street, and seven blocks in a random direction before she let out her breath. Then she looked for a house with boarded up windows. Using the bolt cutter to force her way inside, she searched it as thoroughly as she could in her exhausted state, climbing her way to the topmost room. There, she pushed a dresser against the door, made a nest of the dusty curtains and curled up in their center, happy for the warmth of the sun on her face, happy for it to burn away everything about the night before.

It was full, black night when Tana woke. She came out of sleep like a thunderclap—waking from dreams so deep and dark that she couldn’t remember anything but dirt and hands pulling her down
into graves with cities inside them. She was covered in sweat, as though she’d slept through a fever.

Outside her window, the lights of Coldtown were glowing like luminous jellyfish floating on a vast sea—candles in some windows and electric lights in others, generators pumping and wind turbines whirring. Tana’s clothes were stiff and rusty with dried blood. She stripped them off and wrapped herself in the poncho like a robe.

It had been two days ago, around sunset, when the vampire had scraped the back of her knee with his tooth. Which meant that forty-eight hours had passed since then, had passed while she was asleep. That was Sunday night and it was Tuesday night now. Which mean that her body must have shaken off the infection. If her symptoms hadn’t gotten worse yet, then, against all odds, she’d beaten it.

She wanted to scream and jump up and down. She settled for spinning around the room, not caring that she was wearing only a weird poncho, not caring about anything except that she was going to stay human. She was going to be fine.

It felt almost dangerous, that something so good had happened. But if she got ready fast, she could be out past the gate and on the road before dawn.

The upstairs of the house had several bedrooms, most of which had been stripped of furniture. She found the bathroom at the end of the hall, and when she turned the taps on in the bathtub, water flowed. It was dark at first and stank of iron, but after she let it run a little while, it became clear. She showered under the icy spray—the water heater having probably stopped functioning years back—
finding an ancient cracked lump of soap and rubbing her skin with it until she got the blood off her knees and out from underneath her fingernails. Then, with nothing else to wear, she put her jeans back on along with her new underclothes and shirt.

Back in her room, she tugged on her jacket, slipping one hand into the pocket.

The envelope was still there. With trembling fingers, she opened the flap and took out a folded up page ripped from the Dylan Thomas book.
My hero bares his nerves along my wrist.
Over the poem, Aidan had written in red marker:
I’m not ready to let you leave me.
Tipping up the envelope, a quarter slid out into the middle of her palm.

The weight had been right and the shape—it was just the object that was wrong.

He must have written those words as she carried bodies through the streets, knowing what he’d say when she got back. Knowing the whole time that he was going to con her. Tana punched the wall, not caring that her knuckles split. She hit it again, punching it over and over until blood smeared the wallboard.

Never again
, she promised herself.
No matter what, she was never going to let anyone get the better of her ever again. No more mistakes.

Rufus looked more somber than she’d seen him, when he opened the door. He blinked in surprise at the sight of her. He was wearing plain jeans and a T-shirt instead of his usual finery. His eyes were bloodshot.

“Aidan and Midnight cleared out about an hour ago,” he said, leaning against the door frame. “With Winter’s body.” Behind him,
she heard Christobel calling down sleepily, asking who was at the door. He ignored her, but a little bit of snark bled back into his voice when he spoke again, one brow raised. “I guess they don’t need us anymore. Zara’s dead and it was all for nothing. But Midnight, she was wearing her best, most tattered finery, planning on presenting herself to Lucien Moreau.”

Tana slammed her hand into the wall again. “Damn it!” she shouted up at the sky. The stars winked down at her as if they were laughing at how silly she’d been. “Well, I guess that’s where I’m headed.”

“You can’t go to Lucien’s dressed like that.” Rufus sounded apologetic. “If you’re not a vampire, the only way to get in is to dress as deliciously as possible—like a raw, quivering, little pork chop—and stand around with all the other humans, hoping you look good enough to get picked. Unless you know somebody who can get you on the very exclusive list.”

Tana didn’t know anyone who could get her into a fancy vampire party. But she could think of a person who might be on the list, one boy with a vampire girlfriend, who must visit her sometimes, maybe even without climbing across a rooftop.

Tana kept looking up as she walked through the streets, hoping to spot Jameson’s white crow or some sign that he was around. The chance of her actually lucking into finding him was low, but since she didn’t have any other way to contact him, she figured she’d go past places he’d taken her, eat at the cart they’d eaten at before, and ask Valentina at Oddments & Lost Things if he’d brought any other strays past.

She bought coffee at A Shot of Depresso, where crushed beans were stirred into boiling water in massive copper vats, and the proprietor stood on a stool to ladle some into a cup. For fifty cents extra, you could get a squirt of fresh goat milk from a sleepy goat chewing on a patch of clover near a stall filled with bright green bottles marked
laudanum
.

Standing in line, she noticed that very few of the people in front of her paid in cash. Some seemed to be racking up a tab, giving their name and getting a note put down on a ledger. Others bartered tomatoes, a skinned rabbit, a bundle of weed tied with string, and even a handful of aspirin for their serving.

In addition to the coffee, Tana bought a giant glass of cold mint tea and two squirrel-meat burritos, which were surprisingly good. The
queso
was fresh made, and the red sauce was spicy and delicious, coating the stringy and kind of gamy meat. She sat in the moonlight at the edge of a clearing where a mismatched group of tables and chairs rested and ate until she felt full and was pretty sure Jameson wasn’t coming. Kids bundled in layers of clothes shared cigarettes back and forth and scrounged in their pockets for stuff to trade. An old man with white hair and red eyes sat beside a chessboard, inviting anyone with a shunt in their arm to play him for the price of dinner.

When she was done, she wiped her hands on her jeans and stood, telling herself she was going to remember to eat more than one meal today.

Then Tana made her way over to Oddments & Lost Things, knocking on the door and peering in through the grate. She heard
the metal shift of the locks and then Valentina was there, ushering her inside.

“Tana, right?” she said, smiling. Today she wore a peacock blue slip dress with green flats, her hair pulled back in a high ponytail.

Tana inhaled the perfumed dust of the store and looked around with fresh eyes. She hadn’t realized how tired she’d been the day before, waking from being drugged and then exhausting herself with terror. Now, she felt angry and wide awake and a whole lot better.

“Yeah,” Tana said, pushing the stray hairs that had come out of her braid behind her ear. “You wouldn’t know where to find Jameson, would you?”

Valentina shook her head. “Sometimes he just shows up out of the blue with something he found—a sack of decent coffee beans or, once, a girl’s ring he thought might fit me—but it’s not like he comes by a lot or anything. He has a cell phone, or at least he did. He gave me the number, but I’ve never called it.”

“Can we try?” Tana asked.

Valentina opened the worn wooden drawers of the desk, sifting through the detritus. She pulled out a cell phone, the face of it cracked and the plastic scratched. When she pressed a button, though, the screen came to life. She tapped a few more keys, and Tana heard the faint sound of ringing on the other end. Valentina brought it to her ear. After a moment, she shook her head and hung up. “Voice mail.”

Tana sighed and took the phone from her, copying the number down. “He has that girlfriend at Lucien Moreau’s, so I was hoping he
could help me get into the party. But if I can’t find him, at least you can help me find a really hot dress, right?”

Valentina gestured to the wall, where dozens of gowns hung, overlapping one another, silk and chiffon, beaded and spangled. “Absolutely. I hear Lucien likes bright colors that show up well on television. But are you sure you want to go
tonight
?”

Tana shook her head. “It has to be tonight. Why?”

“New vampires. A bunch of them.” Valentina went to a garment rack in the back and returned with three dresses on hangers—one white, one gold, and one red.

“What do you mean?” For a moment, Tana thought of Aidan and Midnight. But surely two new vampires weren’t enough to draw any notice.

Valentina dumped the clothes over a chair and pulled a heavy laptop from behind the counter. It was covered in stickers and hooked up to a weird-looking device with strips of metal. “You really didn’t see? Oh, you probably didn’t bring a laptop.”

“I didn’t bring much of anything,” Tana said, moving around the counter to watch. Valentina’s background screen came on—a picture of a bunch of friends in graduation robes. Tana looked for Valentina among them, but before she could pick her out, Valentina opened her browser.

“Here, look, this is a site that compiles the best links from all Coldtowns—and this is the page for ours.” She clicked through, bending over the screen, her ponytail spiraling over one cheek. “Springfield.”

She clicked on a link and a screen sprang to life. It was inside a theater,
but someone had taken out most of the seats and there was a party going on. People got up on stage, declaiming poems and swigging from bottles, lace dripping from the cuffs of their billowing poet shirts.

Valentina hit the fast-forward button, speeding through two more performers, before a boy in black climbed onto the stage. She tapped the key to return it to normal speed, and Tana saw Gavriel grinning out at the audience, garnet eyes shining, black curls wild around his face, looking as mad as he’d been caged beneath a Paris cemetery.

He took an extravagant bow, one arm flung out with a flourish. Then turning, he dragged a single chair onto the stage. The stuffing had been ripped out of it, the brocade hanging down in tatters. “I have a performance to offer you tonight. It is not a unique talent that I have, but we marvel not over the man who eats a single meal or who does one meager shot of liquor. We marvel over excess. That is what I would give you.

“Come, let me bite you. Have you ever wanted to be as I am? To be immortal? I will turn you. Any of you. All of you, if you like. Tonight. Come to me.” He threw his arms wide. “I am thirsty. Let me drink. Let me gorge.”

For a long moment, he waited. The crowd had gone hushed. Then a single dark-skinned woman broke from the ranks and started toward the stairs. She walked up the steps slowly, looking back at her friends. She had on a silver-and-black harlequin dress and had painted one of her eyes with a black diamond. Tana could see the fear on her face as she walked slowly to the chair and sat down. Tears glittered in her eyes as she stretched out her long, elegant neck.

Valentina stopped it, freezing the screen as Gavriel bent toward
her. “He does it, too. Bites all of them, drinks a ton of blood, and then staggers out. Leaves them alive, every one. They’re saying that’s the Thorn of Istra.”

“He is,” said Tana softly.