The Twilight of Lake Woebegotten (20 page)

“We certainly have enough monsters on the premises,” he agreed, and led me up the front steps.

The house was big and rambling on the inside, too. We went through a little foyer hung with lots of coats and scarves (all for show, of course, as the inhabitants weren’t troubled by the weather) into a big living room. The walls were decorated with a riot of artworks from all over the world: tribal masks, bright paintings, woven rugs, tapestries, odd bits of sculptures, framed photographs showing vistas of impossible beauty. I guess when you’re a vampire, you have time to go everywhere and see everything… and yet, somehow, they’d still ended up in Lake Woebegotten. Funny old world. The furniture was, indeed, mostly Danish modern, stark couches and armchairs and low tables. Fewer lamps than you’d have expected, but they could all see perfectly in the dark, after all.

The entire Scullen clan was there, looking like a Christmas card or a photograph from a catalog. Argyle sat in one chair, beside the woman I assumed was his wife, Ellen—she was dark-haired and looked to be in her late twenties, with mismatched eyes, one blue and one green, and her smile seemed as warm and genuine as her husband’s. Icy Rosemarie stood behind the couch, her arms crossed, openly scowling at me, and towering Hermet was beside her, though he leaned forward with his elbows planted on the back of the couch, chin in his hands, looking at me mostly like I was an
amuse bouche
. Pleasance was on the couch, holding hands with Garnett, and she looked delighted to see me, too, while Garnett seemed bored, and as fidgety as vampires ever got—which wasn’t very, but Edwin’s preternatural stillness had attuned me to tiny shifts and twitches.

“Welcome, Bonnie,” Ellen said formally, inclining her head slightly. “You are welcome here.”

I said, “Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me.” I looked around, trying not to dwell too long on the fact that these were a bunch of alcoholics in recovery and I was a jeroboam of champagne. “This is a lovely home.”

“Hello, Bonnie,” Pleasance said, bouncing off the couch and giving me a kiss on the cheek. The cold bitch who’d turned up her nose at me in the cafeteria a while back was gone—she was as warm as someone dead could be. Maybe she’d just been looking out for her adopted brother, then. That kind of protectiveness wasn’t entirely an impulse I could comprehend—I’ve certainly never felt moved to protect anyone that way—but I understood it in theory. And Edwin loved her. Maybe I could let revenge slide in her case. Everyone’s entitled to one mistake. She stepped back. “Wow, you
do
smell yummy, I never noticed before!”

Everyone was silent for a moment, the whole room uncomfortable (except maybe for Pleasance, who had a certain manic pixie dreamgirl quality to her, either natural or affected). I noticed Edwin leaning in, and Argyle whispering something in his ear. Secrets already?

I glanced around, pointing toward a weird device in one corner—sort of like a keyboard, but with lots of speakers attached, and vacuum tubes, and more wires than seemed necessary. “What’s that?” I said. Thinking: exotic torture device? One of Argyle’s medical machines from the old days when people thought electricity and magnets could cure anything?

“It’s an ondium Martenot,” Ellen said. “An early electronic music device, something like a theremin, but more versatile—”

“Wow,” I said. “Do you play?”

“I do not, but Edwin does.”

“Man of many talents,” I said, turning toward him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, yes,” he said dryly. “Nothing gets a pretty young girl more hot and bothered than hearing you play an obscure electric music instrument from the early 1900s.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I think that band Radiohead used one on an album, I forget which—it makes kind of weird spacey sounds, yeah? I’ve never seen one before. Play for me?”

“Oh, yes, you must,” Pleasance said, clapping her hands. He scowled, sighed, then allowed himself to be prodded toward the device by Pleasance.

I got the sense he was the sort of person who said, “Oh, no, you don’t want to hear
me
play,” while simultaneously strapping on a guitar and grabbing a pick. I didn’t mind: I had an impulse for the theatrical myself, and he was certainly a pleasure to watch in performance of any kind. He sat at an ordinary piano bench, put a weird, wide ring on his finger, and pulled out a little drawer full of controls on the left-hand side of the keyboard. He didn’t actually press any keys, but ran the ring on his finger along a strip in front of the keys while doing obscure things to the control panel with his left hand. Rich, lush, weirdly vibrating tones filled the space, emerging from three speakers—one rectangular, one like a stretched hexagon, one shaped like nothing so much as a fan of peacock feathers. It was the sort of music that would make you think deeply about the nature of space-time if you listened to it while tripping on acid; music to accompany the arrival of a time machine; psychedelic spaceman marching songs. I didn’t think pop music was in danger of being taken by storm, is what I’m saying, but it had a certain weird prettiness, I guess. He lifted his fingers away, and the last notes faded.

“Wow,” I said. “That…” I fell back on one of my dad’s stock phrases. “That sure is something.”

Edwin beamed. “It’s a forgotten instrument, mostly, which is a shame—” He broke off. “I certainly know how to clear a room, hmm?”

I turned around, and the Scullens and Scales had all vanished. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they were fleeing because they don’t like me, not your music.”

He patted the bench, and I sat beside him. “They like you,” he said seriously. “Pleasance, very much so. And Garnett, well, he likes anyone Pleasance likes, if he knows what’s good for him.”

“Your mom didn’t seem to hate me,” I mused.

“My parents both think well of you. Ellen especially, because… Well, it’s not as if she has hopes for grandchildren, we’re
vampires
, but like any mother, she wants her children to be happy, and I have, I confess, been very lonely. Never loving, never loved—admired, certainly, but… Nothing like this. Pleasance and Garnett have been paired off for decades, and Rosemarie and Hermet even longer—”

“Now those two,” I said. “They’re not about to be charter members of the Bonnie Grayduck fan club, are they?”

“Ah,” he said. “They… have reservations. Rosemarie, mostly. Hermet thinks I’m quite mad—he says one of us dating a human is, ah, like a wolf dating a hamster, which I believe is rather overstating the case, especially since you’re not even remotely hamsterish—but he doesn’t like or dislike you, I don’t think, and he’s doing his best to make Rosemarie see reason.”

“So what does she have against me? I’m certainly not
prettier
than she is.” I’d never felt anything but waves of hostility radiating off her, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. I didn’t mind being an object of hatred, but I usually had something to do with
causing
the emotion.

“She didn’t want to become one of us. She was turned against her will, and abandoned by her maker. In you, she sees all the possibilities that have been taken from her—a normal life, you understand?”

I shook my head. “That’s dumb. She’s immortal, supernaturally hot, and, I assume, has various magical powers. Whereas me? I’m cute enough, and pretty smart, but I don’t compare—”

“You can have children,” he said. “You have a soul.”

Never planning on squirting out a brat
, I thought,
and I hope there aren’t souls, because I’ve got no interest in being judged in the afterlife.
“Oh,” I said. “I guess that makes sense.” Maybe I could manipulate her jealousy? Get her to turn me into a vampire so I wouldn’t get to be a lucky real human girl anymore? Risky, since she might just kill me, but I’d keep the possibility in mind.

I said, “So what did Argyle whisper in your ear? Or is it a special vampire secret?”

He blinked. “You noticed that. Of course you did. He, ah… There are outsiders in town. Outside town, technically, out in the woods.”

“Ooh. Wild vampires?”

“Presumably they belong to a group less civilized than our own, yes. I might as well tell you—I’m going to be watching you all the time until they’re gone. You might not always see me, but I’ll never be more than a second away from you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You think I’m in danger? Me, particularly?”

“Vampires are sons-of-bitches,” he said. “If they find out I’m close with a human, they might think it the height of hilarity to kill you. And we know they’re… interested in us. They’ve snooped around the perimeter of the house—we’re some of the only stationary vampires in the world, so we’re a novelty. They can smell us, or perhaps they have abilities that allow them to spy on us. We think there are three of them, a small pack, fortunately. Ideally, they’ll never know you exist, or even stray within the limits of Lake Woebegotten, but having finally
found
someone I love, I’m not about to risk losing you.”

“It’s a good thing this isn’t a movie,” I said, “because that sure sounds a lot like foreshadowing.”

“If we were in a movie, it would be a love story, don’t you think?”

“Or a horror movie. Or one of those weird mishmashes that can’t decide if it’s action or paranormal or heartstring-tugging, and tries to be everything, and isn’t very good at being any of them.”
Or a serial killer movie
, I thought.
Even if I haven’t killed anyone around here.
“But you’re probably still impressed by movies that are
talkies
, aren’t you, old man?”

“I’ll show you an old man.” He wrapped his arms around me, and kissed me. I bit gently on his lower lip, and he laughed into my mouth, which was actually kind of unpleasant.

He pulled away. “Come on. The others are probably waiting for us in the back yard. I promised to show you how the Scullens and Scales amuse themselves. Come and join our vampire games?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said.

I’m not sure what I expected. Paintball, only played with live ammo instead of paint? Bow-hunting one another? Mixed martial arts battles, with takedowns faster than the eye could follow? Capture the flag? War games? Any of those seemed possible: they owned a lot of land, had a lot of woods to call their own, and could have staged all sorts of impressive amusements.

Instead…

“You’re going to play hockey?” I said incredulously, standing on the edge of a frozen pond, with my scarf wrapped around and around and around my throat.

“What else?” he said. “We lived for years in Canada, and now we’re in Minnesota. I can’t imagine why you’d be surprised.” The others were already on the ice, gliding around on skates. “This, frankly, is a bit boring,” Edwin said. “When we can find a sufficiently large frozen body of water, we prefer to play
inverted
hockey.”

“What, where you guys are the pucks or something?”

“Oh, no. We break a hole in the ice. We climb into the frozen water with our sticks and swim out under the ice sheet. We use a hollow puck, so it floats to the top, and ‘rests’ on the underside of the ice. Then… we play hockey. Underwater. Swimming, in near-freezing water, slamming the puck along the bottom of the ice.”

I pondered that. “You people are insane.”

He laughed. “No, what’s insane are the
humans
who do it—there are perfectly mortal free divers who play the same game. If I had to breathe, or was troubled by the cold, I certainly wouldn’t play inverted hockey. Go to your precious internet and search around, you can find video of people playing underwater ice hockey.” He shook his head. “For us, it’s a welcome challenge to enliven the occasionally humdrum nature of eternity. But for mortals to do it… The living baffle me. But inverted hockey isn’t very interesting for spectators, and we don’t have a big enough frozen lake anyway, so: conventional hockey it is. Enjoy the show.”

Something occurred to me. “It’s only about 40 degrees,” I said. “So how is this water even
frozen
?”

We were in the backyard, which was more or less a featureless flat expanse of grass about the size of two football fields laid side by side, surrounded on all sides by a dense growth of trees. A pond in the center of the space was the wrong size and shape for a hockey rink, but big enough for a game, and so cold it steamed in the somewhat-warmer air.

“You know how I said some of us had special powers?” Edwin said. He nodded toward Rosemarie, who skated around elegantly with a big stick in her hands. “She has the power to manipulate the weather, temperature, pressure, precipitation, things like that. So whenever we want to ice-skate, she flash-freezes the pond. It’s hard on the fish, but fun for us.”

“Wow.” I remembered him saying their powers seemed to be enhancements of qualities they’d had when they were alive, so this made sense—I was pretty sure Rosemarie had always been an ice-cold bitch.

“Here.” He handed me a pair of binoculars. “You should probably watch from the gazebo there.” He pointed to a little wooden octagon not far from the house. “Keep behind the plexiglass. We, ah… play hard.”

I raised an eyebrow at him, but obligingly plodded over to the gazebo, which was indeed enclosed in plexiglass. I had a feeling the Scullens had installed the protective material strictly for my benefit, since there was also a little electric space heater there to keep me warm, and neither one would be of much use to them. I sat on the bench and looked through the binoculars, which were high-quality, and gave me a great view of the action on the ice.

It seemed to be boys against girls, with Argyle standing aside as the referee or scorekeeper or whatever. Ellen and Garnett were goalies, standing in homemade-looking goals of bent metal and cargo netting. I couldn’t imagine how Pleasance and Rosemarie could possibly stand up against Hermet’s unstoppable bulk and Edwin’s grace, but I underestimated them. Hermet was ginormous, yes, but that made him just
slightly
slower than the others. I think the simple physics of ice and skates limited how fast they could move, but even so, they were mostly just blurs, whipping around the ice, sticks flying, puck smashing toward the goals, where the goalies more often than not blocked with their bare hands. Oh, to have that kind of strength, speed,
power
… I sure as hell wouldn’t waste it on stupid games like hockey.