Peeps

Chapter 17

Chapter 17
TROUBLE IN BROOKLYN
On the way home, I bought bacon.
The gnawing in my stomach was reaching critical proportions, my body crying out for meat to keep the parasite happy. One thing about being a carrier. Saving the world from mutant felines is no excuse for missing meals.
I put a can of tuna in front of Cornelius, then headed straight for the stove and set it alight. Then I shut the gas off, sniffing the air.
Something was different about my apartment.
Then I realized what it was - the smell of Lace all around me. She'd slept here, filling the place like a slow infusion.
My parasite growled with hunger and lust, and I hurriedly relit the stove, working until my largest dinner plate was filled with a stack of crispy strips of bacon. I carried it to the table and sat down.
The first piece was halfway into my mouth when keys jingled in the door. Lace burst through, dropping her backpack to the floor.
"Excellent smell, dude," she said.
For a second, I forgot to eat, a piece of bacon hovering in midair. Her face was lit up with happiness, so different than it had been the night before. An almost orgasmic look of contentment came over her as she breathed in the scent of bacon.
"What?" she said, meeting my dorky stare with a raised eyebrow.
"Um, nothing. Want some?" I pushed the bacon into the center of the table, then remembered the vegetarian thing and pulled it back. "Oh, right. Sorry."
"Hey, no problem." She put down her backpack. "I'm not a vegan or anything."
"Um, Lace, this is bacon. That's not a judgment call on the plant-or-animal issue."
"Thanks for the biology lesson. But like I said, it smells good, and I'm going to enjoy it." She sat down across from me.
I smiled. On the excellent-smell front, Lace's scent was much more powerful in person. I let myself breathe it in, carefully sampling it in between bites. I had expected her staying in my apartment to be torture every minute, but maybe it was worth fighting my urges, just for this simple pleasure.
Still, I ate fast to keep the beast in check.
"So," I asked, "are you one of those fake vegetarians?"
"No, not fake. I haven't eaten meat in, like, a year?" She frowned at the plate of seared flesh and dumped a tub of potato salad and a brand-new toothbrush onto the table from a paper bag. "But the whole vampire thing has been very stressful, and that smell is comforting, like Mom cooking up a big breakfast. It takes me back."
"That's natural. When humans were evolving, the smelling part of our monkey brains got assigned to the task of remembering stuff. So our memories get all tangled up with smells."
"Huh," she said. "Is that why locker rooms make me think of high school?"
I nodded, recalling my descent under the exhaust towers, how powerfully the scent of the huge hidden thing had affected me. Maybe I'd never smelled anything like the beast before the day before, but some fears went deeper than memory. As deep as the parasite's traces hidden in my marrow.
Evolution is a wonderful thing. Somewhere back in prehistoric time, there were probably humans who actually liked the smell of lions, tigers, or bears. But those humans tended to get eaten, and so did their kids. You and I are descended from folks who ran like hell when they smelled predators.
Lace had opened her tub of potato salad and was digging in with a plastic deli fork. After a few bites, she said, "So, what's with the face?"
"Oh, this." I touched the bandage gingerly. "Remember how I warned you about cats?"
Lace nodded.
"Well, I went down into the Underworld through your swimming pool this afternoon. And I managed to catch... Um, what's wrong?"
Lace looked like she'd bitten down on a cockroach. She blinked, then shook her head. "Sorry, Cal. But are you wearing a Garth Brooks T-shirt?"
I glanced down at my chest. Through the muck and puckered claw marks, his smiling face looked back at me. I'd been too hungry coming in to take a shower or even change my shirt. "Uh, yes, it is."
"Ashlee Simpson, and now Garth Brooks?"
"It's not what you think. It's really more sort of... protection."
"From what? Getting laid?"
I coughed, bits of bacon lodging in my throat, but I managed to swallow them. "Well, it has to do with the parasite."
"Sure, it does, Cal. Everything's about the parasite."
"No, really. There's this thing that happens to peeps: They hate all the stuff they used to love."
She paused, a forkful of potato salad halfway to her mouth. "They do what?"
"Okay, let's say you're a peep. And before you got infected you loved chocolate - the parasite changes your brain chemistry so that you can't even stand to look at a Hershey's Kiss, the way movie vampires are afraid of crucifixes."
"What the hell is that all about?"
"It's an evolutionary strategy, so that peeps hide themselves. That's why they live underground, to escape signs of humanity, and the sun too. A lot of them really do have cruciphobia - I mean, are afraid of crosses - because they used to be religious."
"Okay, Cal." She nodded slowly. "Now this is the part where you explain what this has to do with Garth Brooks."
I grabbed a piece of bacon, which was starting to glisten as it cooled, and chewed quickly. "Records, the department that helps us with investigations, found out that some of the folks who lived on your floor were Garth Brooks fans. So they gave me this shirt in case there was an encounter underground. Which there was."
Her eyes widened. "Dude! A peep did that to your face?"
"Yeah, this scratch here was a peep. But this one here was a cat - Morgan's cat, probably - that sort of put up a fight."
"Sort of? Looks like you lost."
"Hey, I made it home tonight. The cat didn't."
Her expression froze. "Cal, you didn't kill it, did you?"
"Of course not." My hands went up in surrender. "I don't kill when I can capture. No vampires were harmed in the making of this film, okay? Jeez, vegetarians." I grabbed another strip from the plate.
"So this infected cat is where?" Lace glanced at the closet where PNS had spent the previous night.
"Elsewhere," I said, chewing. "I left it with the experts; they're testing to see if it can spread the disease to other cats or not. And the good news is that a Night Watch team is already cleaning up the rats under your building. It may take a few days to seal off that swimming pool, but then you can go home."
"Really?"
"Yes. They're professionals, since 1653."
"So you found Morgan?"
"Well, not her. But you don't have to worry about Morgan. She disappeared."
Lace crossed her arms. "Sure, she did."
I shrugged. "We can't find her, okay?"
"And it's really safe in my apartment? You're not just saying that to get rid of me?"
"Of course not." I paused. "I mean, of course it'll be safe. And of course not on the getting-rid-of-you part, which I wouldn't do. I mean, you can stay here as long as you want... which you won't need to, of course, because it's safe at home and everything." I managed to shut up.
"That's great." Lace reached across the table and took my hand. The contact, the first since I'd pulled her over the balcony, sent an electric shock through me. She smiled at my expression. "Not that it's been totally horrible, dude. Except for not having any of my stuff, commuting all the way from Brooklyn, and having your heavy-ass cat lie on me all night. Other than that, it's been kind of ... nice. So thanks."
She let go of me, and I managed to smile back at her while scraping up the last shards of bacon from the plate. I could still feel where she'd touched me, like the flush of a sunburn coming up. "You're welcome."
Lace looked down at her potato salad unhappily. She dropped her fork. "You know what? This stuff sucks, and I'm still hungry."
"Me too. Starving."
"You want to go somewhere?"
"Absolutely."
Lace waited for me to shower and change, then took me over to Boerum Hill, one of the original Brooklyn neighborhoods. The elegant old mansions had been split up into apartments, and the sidewalks were cracked by ancient tree roots pushing up beneath our feet, but there were still old-school touches. Instead of numbers, the streets had Dutch family names - Wyckoff and Bergen and Boerum.
"My sister lives pretty close," Lace said. "I remember a couple of good places around here."
She followed the street signs hesitantly, letting memories fall into place, but I didn't mind wandering along beside her. Moonlight lanced through the dense cover of ancient trees, and the cold air was filled with the smell of leaves rotting on the earth. Lace and I walked close, the shoulders of our jackets touching sometimes, like animals sharing warmth. Out here in the open air it wasn't so intense, being close to her.
We wound up at an Italian place, with white tablecloths and waiters wearing ties and aprons, candles on the tables. It smelled gorgeously of flesh, smoked and seared and hanging from the ceiling. Meat all over.
It was so much like a date, it was weird. Even before the parasite switched off my romantic life, taking women to fancy restaurants hadn't been my thing. I found myself thinking about the fact that everyone who saw us would assume we were dating. I pretended for a while in my head that they were right, pushing the awful truth to the back of my mind.
When the waiter came around, I ordered a pile of spicy sausage, the perfect dish to beat my parasite into overfed submission. The night before it had taken forever, but I'd finally reached a deep sleep. Maybe tonight it would be easier.
"So, dude, aren't you worried about that?" She was looking at my wounded cheek again. Dr. Rat's bandage had slipped off in the shower, and I hadn't bothered to replace it. The scar gave me a rakish doesn't-know-how-to-shave look.
"It's not bleeding, is it?" I dabbed the spot with a napkin.
"No, it doesn't look bad. But what if it got ... infected or something?"
"Oh, right," I said. Lace, of course, didn't know that I didn't have to worry about the parasite, having already been there and done that. I shrugged. "You can't get the disease from scratches. Only bites." This was more or less true.
"But what if it was licking its paws?" she said, quite sensibly.
I shrugged again. "I've had worse."
Lace didn't look convinced. "I just don't want you turning all vampire on me in the middle of the night... Okay, that sounded weird." She looked down, her fingers realigning the silverware on the crisp white linen.
I laughed. "Don't worry about that. It takes at least a few weeks to go killing-and-eating-people crazy. Most strains take a lot longer."
She looked up again, narrowing her eyes. "You've seen it happen, haven't you?"
I paused for a moment.
"Dude, no lying to me. Remember?"
"All right, Lace. Yes, I've seen someone change."
"A friend?"
I nodded.
A satisfied expression crept onto Lace's face. "That's how you got into this Night Watch business, isn't it?"
"Yeah. That's right." I looked at the other tables to see if anyone was listening, hoping that Lace didn't go much further with this line of questioning. I could hardly tell her that my first peep experience had been with a lover; she knew the parasite was sexually transmitted. "A friend of mine got the disease. I saw her change."
Oops. Should I have said her?
"So, it's like you said when you were pretending to be a health guy - you're following a chain of infection. You're tracking down all the people who caught the disease from that friend of yours. Morgan was someone who slept with someone who slept with your friend who turned, right?"
Now I was playing with my own silverware. "More or less."
"Makes sense," she said softly. "Today I was thinking that some people must find out about the disease on their own, just by accident, like I did. So the Night Watch has to recruit them to keep the whole thing a secret. And that must be where you guys get new staff. It's not like you can advertise in Help Wanted, after all."
"No shit, Sherlock." I tried to chuckle. "You're not looking for a job, are you?"
She was silent for a moment, not answering my little jest, which made me extremely nervous. The waiter arrived with two steaming plates, uncovering them with a flourish. He hovered over us, grinding pepper onto Lace's pasta and pouring me more water. The smell of sausage rose up from my plate, switching my still-hungry body into a higher gear. I dug in the moment the waiter left, the taste of cooked flesh and spices making me shudder with bliss.
Hopefully, the uncomfortable questions were done with. I watched as Lace wound a big gob of spaghetti onto her fork, a process that seemed to absorb all her concentration, and as the silence stretched out and the calories entered my bloodstream, I told myself to chill.
It wasn't so surprising that Lace had spent a whole day thinking about my revelations of the night before. It was crazy to get all jumpy about a few obvious questions. As the sausage suffused my system, placating the parasite, I began to relax.
Then Lace spoke up again. "I mean, I wouldn't want your job. Mucking around in tunnels and stuff. No way."
I coughed into my fist. "Um, Lace..."
"But you've got those guys who gave you the building plans, right? Records, you called them? And you have to research the history of the sewers and subways and stuff. I was thinking about that today. That's why I went into journalism, you know."
"For the sewer research?"
"No, dude. To find out what's really going on, to get behind the scenes. I mean, there's this whole other world that no one knows about. How cool is that?"
I put my fork and knife down firmly. "Listen, Lace. I don't know if you're serious, but it's out of the question. The people who work in Records come from old families; they grew up with this secret history. They can speak Middle English and Dutch and identify clerks who lived centuries ago by their handwriting. They've all known one another for generations. You can't just show up and ask for a job."
"That's all very impressive," she said, then smirked. "But they suck at finding people."
"Pardon me?"
Lace's grin grew wider as she wound another spindle of spaghetti onto her fork, then put it into her mouth, chewing slowly. Finally, she swallowed.
"I said they suck at finding people."
"What do you mean?"
"Let me show you something, dude." She pulled out a few folded photocopies from her inside jacket pocket and handed them to me. I pushed my empty plate aside and unfolded them on the white tablecloth.
They were the floor plans to a house, a big one. The labels were written by hand in a flowing script, and the photocopies had that gray tinge that meant the originals had been on old, yellowing paper.
"What is this?"
"That's Morgan Ryder's house."
I blinked. "Her what?"
"Her family's, actually, but she's staying there now."
"No way."
"Way, dude."
I shook my head. "Records would have found her already."
Lace shrugged, her fork twirling, the last strands of spaghetti on her plate trailing like a satellite picture of a hurricane. "It wasn't even that hard. All I had to do was go through the phonebook, calling all the Ryders, asking for Morgan. The first dozen said there was nobody there by that name. Then one of them got all paranoid and asked me who the hell I was." She laughed. "I got nervous and hung up."
"That doesn't prove anything."
Lace pointed at the papers in my hand. "That's the place, according to the address in the phone book. It's even in the historical register - belonged to the Ryders since it was built."
I stared at the plans, shaking my head. There was no way this could have gotten past Records; the Mayor's office would have checked with her family directly. "But she's not there. She's missing, like I said."
"You said pale? Dark hair and kind of gothy?"
I opened my mouth, but it took a while for sound to come out. "You went there?"
Lace nodded, beginning to wind another spindle of pasta. "Of course, I didn't knock on the door. I'm more into investigation than confrontation. But the house has these big bay windows. And the weirdest thing is, Morgan doesn't look crazy at all. Just bored, sitting at the window and reading. Do peeps read, dude?"
I remembered the photos Chip had given me and pulled them from my jacket. Lace took one glance at Morgan's and nodded. "That's the girl."
"It can't be." My head was swimming. The Night Watch couldn't have screwed up like this. If Morgan was sitting around in plain view, someone would have spotted her. "Maybe she has a sister," I muttered, but darker thoughts were already coursing through my mind. The Ryders were an old family. Maybe they were pulling strings, using their connections to keep her hidden. Or maybe Records was afraid to go after the Mayor's old friends.
Or maybe I'd filled out the wrong damn form.
Whatever had happened, I felt like an idiot. Everyone always joked about how we hunters were too lazy to do our own research, waiting for Records or the Health and Mental moles to tell us where the peeps were. I'd never even thought to open a phone book and look for Morgan Ryder myself.
"Don't look so bummed, dude," Lace said. "Morgan might not be infected, after all. I mean, she looked all normal. I thought you said peeps were maniacs."
Still dazed, I shook my head and answered, "Well, she could be a carrier."
Too late, I bit my tongue.
"A carrier?" Lace asked.
"Um, yes. Carries the disease, but without the symptoms."
She paused, spaghetti dangling from her fork. "You mean, like Typhoid Mary? Spreading typhus all over the place but never coming down with it?" Lace laughed at my expression. "Don't look so surprised, dude. I've been reading about diseases all day."
"Lace, you have to stop doing this!"
"What? Acting like I have a brain? Puh-lease." She took a bite. "So there are people who just carry the parasite? Infected but not crazy?"
"Yes," I said, swallowing. "But it's very rare."
"Huh. Well, there's one way to find out. We should go over there."
"We?"
"Yeah, we're practically there already." She hooked her thumb toward the door, another satisfied grin spreading across her face. "It's right at the end of this street."
Ryder House filled an entire corner lot, a three-story mansion with all the trimmings: bay windows, tall corner turrets, widow's watches peering down at us with arched eyebrows. In the moonlight, the house had an intimidating look - a little too well maintained to play the part of the haunted manor, but a good headquarters for the bad guys.
I reached into my jacket pocket to heft the cold metal of my knockout injector. I'd reloaded it after taking down Patricia Moore and had decided not to hand it over to the transport squad when I'd turned in my duffel bag. However much Chip complained, sloppy equipment-keeping sometimes had its advantages.
"And you're sure it was her?"
"Totally, dude." Lace pointed at a bay of three windows bulging out from the second floor. "Right up there, sitting and reading. So what do we do? Knock on the door?"
"We don't do anything!" I said harshly. "You go back to my apartment and wait."
"I can wait here."
"No way. She might see you."
"Dude, it's too dark."
"Peeps can see in the dark!" I hissed.
Lace's eyes narrowed. "But she's like Typhoid Mary, right? No symptoms."
I groaned. "Okay, with typhus, that's true. But peep carriers do have some symptoms. Like night vision and good hearing."
"And they're really strong too, aren't they?"
"Listen, just get out of here. If she - " My voice dropped off. From the darkness beneath the Ryders' bushes, a pair of eyes had just blinked at us, glinting in the moonlight. "Crap."
"What is it, Cal?"
My eyes scanned the shadowed street. In the bushes, under cars, from a high window in the mansion, at least seven cats were watching us.
"Cats," I whispered.
"Oh, yeah," Lace said, her voice also dropping. "I noticed that this afternoon. The whole neighborhood's crawling with them. Is that bad?"
I took a slow, deep breath, trying to channel Dr. Rat's quiet confidence. It would take generations for the parasite to adapt to new hosts, to find a path from cat to cat. The creatures watching us could be just normal felines, the brood of a crazy cat-lady, not a vampire. Maybe.
Then one of the cats' eyes caught the light of a passing car, flashing red for a fraction of a second. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was dry.
Most predators have a reflective layer behind their eyes that helps them see in the dark. But cats' eyes reflect green or blue or yellow, not red. It's human eyes that give off red reflections, as we've all noticed in bad photographs.
These cats were ... special.
"Okay, Lace, I'm going to sneak in there. But you have to go back to my place. I'll come home and tell you everything I see."
Lace paused for a moment, thoughts racing across her face. "But what if you get caught? You said Morgan can hear really well."
"Yeah, maybe. But this is my job, okay?" I felt the reassuring weight of the injector in my pocket. "I know how to deal with peeps."
"Sure, dude, but how about this: While I'm walking home, I could lean on a few parked cars, get some alarms going for you. Maybe that'll cover up your noise."
"Good idea." I took her shoulder. "But don't stick around. It isn't safe here."
"I'm not sticking around. Do I look stupid?"
I shook my head and smiled. "Actually, you're pretty damn smart."
She smiled back. "You have no idea, dude."
Around the corner and out of Lace's sight, I chose a four-story brownstone to climb. The outthrust stone sill of a second-floor window was an easy jump, and its chimney was pocked with missing bricks and old slapdash repairs - perfect handholds. It took about ten seconds for me to reach the top, so fast that anyone watching from a nearby window wouldn't have believed their eyes.
From the roof, I had a good view of the back side of Ryder House. As Lace's plans had indicated, a balcony jutted out from the highest floor, its wrought-iron doors closed over darkened glass. All I had to do was get to the building next door to the Ryders' and climb down.
I dropped to the next roof, leaped an eight-foot alleyway, then scaled the next building, winding up perched a few yards above the Ryders' balcony, where I took off my boots. Even after Lace got some car alarms started, I'd have to step carefully. Three-century-old houses have a way of being creaky.
The cold began to numb my feet, but my peep metabolism fought back, churning from nervousness and all that meat in my stomach. I waited, rubbing my feet to keep them warm.
A few minutes later, the first car alarm began to wail, then more, building like a chorus of demons. I shook my head as the cacophony spread, getting the distinct impression that Lace was enjoying herself.
That girl was trouble.
I dropped onto the balcony softly, its cold metal slats sending a shiver up my spine. The lock on the wrought-iron door was easy to pick.
Inside was a bedroom, the big four-poster covered with a white lace spread. It didn't smell of peep at all, just clean laundry and mothballs. I crossed the wooden floor carefully, testing every step to avoid any squeaky boards.
A strip of light showed under the door, but when I pressed my ear to it, I heard nothing except the wailing alarms down on the street. According to the plans Lace had copied, the next room had been a small servants' kitchen back in the olden days.
The door opened without creaking, and I slipped through. So far, the house looked very normal - the kitchen counters were crowded with the usual pots and pans. There wasn't anything weird, like sides of raw beef hung up and dripping blood into the sink.
But then my nose caught the scents wafting from the floor.
Fourteen mismatched bowls stood in a row, licked clean but smelling of canned cat food - salmon and chicken and beef tallow, malted barley flour and brewer's rice, the tang of phosphoric acid.
Fourteen - one peep cat was a hopeful monster; fourteen were an epidemic.
Voices filtered up through the shrieking alarms, and the house creaked as people walked across one of the floors below me. I crossed the kitchen carefully, taking advantage of the car alarms while I still could. One by one, they were being switched off, replaced by a chorus of dogs barking in retaliation. Soon enough, the neighborhood would return to peace and quiet.
I crept into the hallway and leaned over the banister, trying to distinguish words amid the chatter downstairs. Then recognition shivered through me... I heard Morgan's voice. Lace had been right. My progenitor was really here.
My hands tightened on the banister, and I shut my eyes, all my certainties falling away. Had Records really screwed up, or was someone in the Night Watch helping Morgan hide?
The last car alarms had been silenced, so I decided to crawl down the stairs on my stomach. I crept forward in inches, moving only during bursts of laughter or loud conversation below.
There were at least three other voices besides Morgan's - another woman and two men. The four of them were laughing and telling stories, flirting and drinking, the clink of ice rattling in their glasses. I could smell an open bottle of rum, the alcohol molecules wafting up the stairs. One of the men began to sweat nervously as he told a long joke. They all laughed too hard at the punch line, with the anxious sound of people who've just met one another.
I couldn't smell Morgan, which hopefully meant she couldn't smell me. In any case, I'd just showered, and although my jacket still carried a whiff of the Italian place, the rum and aftershave of the two men downstairs would drown it out.
The last car alarm choked off into silence outside.
I inched forward on my belly, oozing down the steps like a big slug, and soon I could see their shadows moving on the floor. Just one more step down and I would be able to peer into the parlor.
Through the slats of the banister, I finally saw her - Morgan Ryder, dressed in coal black against pale skin, swirling a drink in her hand. Her eyes glittered, her whole attention focused on the man sitting next to her. The four of them had broken into two conversations, two couples.
Then I realized who the other woman was: Angela Dreyfus, the final missing person from the seventh floor. Her eyes were wide with perpetual surprise, set in a face as thin as a Vogue model's. And her voice sounded dry and harsh, even though she kept sipping from her drink. She had to be parasite-positive. And yet Angela Dreyfus was sane, cogent, flirting coolly with the man sitting beside her on the overstuffed couch.
Another carrier.
My head spun. That made three of us: Morgan, Angela, and me, out of the people who'd been infected in Lace's building. But only one percent of humans has natural immunity, so it should take a population of hundreds to make three carriers. But here we had three out of five.
That was one hell of a statistical fluke.
Then I remembered Patricia Moore talking to me almost coherently after the knockout drugs had hit her, just as Sarah had. And how Joseph Moore had braved the sunlight, hunting with such determination. None of them had been your standard wild-eyed vampire.
Cats, carriers, and non-crazy peeps. My strain of the parasite was more than just a hopeful monster; this was a pattern of adaptations.
But what did they all add up to?
Something stirred the air behind me, and my muscles stiffened. Soft footsteps fell on the stairs above, so light that the centuries-old boards didn't complain. A sleek flank brushed against my legs, and tiny clawed feet strode across my back.
A cat was walking over me.
It stepped from my shoulders, then sat on the step below my head, looking directly into my eyes, perhaps a bit puzzled as to why I was snaking down the stairs. I blew on it to make it go away. It blinked its eyes in annoyance but didn't budge.
I stole a glance at Morgan, but she was still focused on her man, touching his shoulder softly as he made them all more drinks. At the sight, a surge of random jealousy moved through me, and my heart began to beat faster.
Morgan and Angela were seducing these men, I realized, just as Morgan had seduced me; they were spreading the strain.
Did they know what they were doing?
The cat licked my nose. I suppressed a curse and tried to give the creature a shove down the stairs. It just rubbed its head against my fingers, demanding to be scratched.
Giving up, I began to stroke its scalp, sniffing its dander. Just like the cat beneath Lace's building, it had no particular smell. But I watched its eyes, until they glimmered in the light from below. Bloodred.
I lay there, unable to move, still nervously petting the peep cat as Angela and Morgan flirted and joked and drank, readying the unknowing men to be infected. Or eaten? Were they pretty enough? The cat purred beneath my fingers, unconcerned.
How many more peep cats were out there? And how had this all happened here in Brooklyn, right under the nose of the Night Watch?
After an interminable time, the peep cat stretched and padded the rest of the way downstairs. I started to think about slinking back up to the servants' kitchen and escaping. But as the cat crossed the floor toward Morgan, my heart rose into my throat.
It jumped into her lap, and she began to stroke its head.
No, I mouthed silently.
A troubled look crossed Morgan's face. She fell silent, bringing her hand up and sniffing it. A look of recognition crossed her face.
She peered at the stairs, and I saw her eyes find me through the banister.
"Cal?" she called. "Is that you?"
We carriers never forget a scent.
I scrambled to get upright, dizzy from the blood gathered in my head.
"Cal from Texas?" Morgan had crossed to the bottom of the stairs, her drink still in her hand.
"There's someone up there?" one of the men asked, rising to his feet.
As I stumbled backward up the stairs, Angela Dreyfus joined Morgan at the bottom. My knockout injector only carried one load, and these women weren't wild-eyed peeps; they were not only as strong and fast as me, they were as smart.
"Wait a second, Cal," Morgan said. She put one foot on the bottom step.
I turned and bolted up the stairs, racing through the kitchen and the bedroom. Footsteps followed, floorboards creaking indignantly, the old house exploding with the sounds of a chase.
Bursting out onto the balcony I leaped up and grabbed the edge of the next roof, pulling myself over and snatching up my boots. Still in my socks, I took the one-story drop that followed, sending a stunning jolt up my spine. I stumbled and fell, rolling onto my back as I yanked my boots back on.
Springing to my feet, I jumped across the eight-foot alleyway and scrambled up onto the roof of the brownstone. I paused for a moment, looking back at Ryder House.
Morgan stood on the balcony, shaking her head in disappointment.
"Cal," she called, her voice not too loud - perfectly pitched for my peep hearing. "You don't know what's going on."
"Damn right I don't!" I said.
"Wait there." She slipped off her high-heeled shoes.
A door slammed somewhere below me, and I took a step back toward the front edge of the brownstone, glancing over my shoulder. A flicker of movement on the street caught my eye. Angela Dreyfus was moving through the shadows, a squad of small, black forms slinking along beside her.
They had me surrounded.
"Crap," I said, and ran. I leaped to the next building and raced across it, meeting a dead end: an alley fifteen feet across. If I didn't make the jump, I'd be sliding down a windowless brick wall to the asphalt, four stories below.
A fire escape snaked down the back of the building, where a high fence surrounded a small yard. I pounded down the metal stairs, taking each flight with two quick jumps, my thudding footsteps making the whole fire escape ring. Once on the ground I scrambled across the grass and over the fence into another yard.
I kept moving, jumping fences, stumbling over stored bicycles and tarp-covered barbecue sets. At the opposite corner from Ryder House, a narrow alley full of garbage bags led out to the street - only a ten-foot-high iron fence and a spiral of razor wire between me and freedom.
I tossed my jacket over the wire, then climbed the wet plastic bags, sending rats scurrying in all directions. The mountain of garbage swaying beneath me, I jumped, rolling over the fence, feeling the razor wire compress like giant springs through the jacket.
Then the street rushed up to meet me like an asphalt fist.
Bruised and gasping for breath, I rolled over, listening for the sounds of Morgan following me. There was nothing except the footsteps of the still-scattering rats. I scanned the streets, but Angela was nowhere to be seen.
A single cat was watching me, however, peering out from underneath a parked car. Its eyes flashed red.
Scrambling to my feet, I tried to pull my jacket off the razor wire, but it stayed caught. Abandoning it, I started limping hurriedly in the opposite direction from Ryder House, the wind cutting through my T-shirt, my right elbow bleeding from the fall.
One block later, a cab stopped for my raised hand and I jumped in, shivering like a wet dog.
An epidemic was loose in Brooklyn.
My apartment was dark. I flipped the light switch but nothing happened.
I stood there shivering for a moment, my eyes adjusting to the gloom.
"Hello?" I called.
In the glow of the DVD-player clock, I saw a human form sitting at the kitchen table. The smell of jasmine was in the air.
"Lace? Why are the lights - ?"
Something zoomed through the air at me.
My hands shot up and caught the missile, plastic and soft. I looked at it, dumbfounded - my spatula, generally used for flipping pancakes.
"Um, Lace? What are you doing?"
"You can see in the dark," she said.
"I... oh."
She hissed out a breath. "You dumb-ass. Did you think I'd forgotten about when you swung me across to Freddie's balcony?"
"Well - "
"Or that I didn't notice when you sniffed that thing on my wall? Or that you eat nothing but meat?" "I had some bread tonight."
"Or that I wouldn't bother to follow you for half a block, and watch you climb up a fucking building?"
Her voice cracked at the last word, and I smelled her anger in the room. Even Cornelius had been quieted by its force.
"We had a deal, Cal. You weren't supposed to lie to me."
"I didn't lie," I said firmly.
"That is such crap!" she shouted. "You're a carrier, and you didn't even tell me there was such a thing until tonight!"
"But - "
"And what did you say to me? 'A friend of mine slept with Morgan.' I can't believe I didn't see through that. A friend, my ass. You got it from her, didn't you?"
I sighed. "Yeah, I did. But I never lied to you. I just didn't bring it up."
"Listen, Cal, there are certain things you're supposed to mention without being asked. Being infected with vampirism is one."
"No, Lace," I said. "It's one of those things I have to hide every day of my life. From everyone."
She was silent for a moment, and we sat in the darkness, glaring at each other.
"When were you going to tell me?" she finally asked.
"Never," I said. "Don't you get it? Having this disease means never telling anyone."
"But what if..." she started, then shook her head slowly, her voice dropping to a whisper. "What if you want to sleep with someone, Cal? You'd have to tell them."
"I can't sleep with anyone," I said.
"Jesus, Cal, even people with HIV have sex. They just wear a condom."
My heart was pounding as I repeated the bleak dogma of Peeps 101. "The parasite's spores are viable even in saliva, and they're small enough to penetrate latex. Any kind of sex is dangerous, Lace."
"But you..." She trailed off.
"In other words, Lace, it just can't happen. I can't even kiss anyone!" I spat these last words at her, furious that I was having to say this all out loud, making it real and inescapable again. I remembered my pathetic little fantasy at the restaurant, hoping someone might mistake us for a couple, confusing me for a normal human being.
She shook her head again. "And you didn't think this would be important to me?"
My pounding head reverberated with this question for a while, remembering the sound of her breath filling the room the night before. "Important to you?"
"Yeah." She stood and dragged her chair under the overhead light, climbed up onto it, and screwed the bulb back in. It flickered once in her hand, then stayed on.
I squinted against the glare. "I guess everything's important to you. Do you want to read my diary now? Go through my closet? I told you practically everything!"
Lace stepped down from the chair and crossed to the door. Her backpack lay there, already full. She was leaving.
"Practically everything wasn't enough, Cal," she said. "You should have told me. You should have known I'd want to know." She took a step closer, placed a folded piece of paper on the table, and kissed me on the forehead. "I'm really sorry you're sick, Cal. I'll be at my sister's."
My mind was racing, trapped in one of those nightmarish hamster wheels when you know it really matters what you say next, but you can't even get your mouth open.
Finally, a flicker of will broke through the chaos. "Why? Why do you care if I'm sick?"
"Christ, Cal! Because I thought we had something." She shrugged. "The way you keep looking at me. From the first time we saw each other in that elevator."
"That's because ... I do like you." I felt my throat swelling, my eyes stinging, but I was not going to cry. "But there's nothing I can do about it."
"You could have told me. It's like you were playing a game with me."
I opened my mouth to protest but realized that she was right. Except I'd been mostly playing the game with myself, not admitting how much I liked her, trying to forget the fact that it was bound to come to this - her feeling disappointed and betrayed, me caught in my deception, sputtering hopelessly.
But I didn't know how to say all that, so I didn't say anything at all.
Lace opened the door and left.
I sat there for a while, trying not to cry, clinging to that minuscule place inside me that somehow managed to be quietly pleased: Lace had liked me too. Yay.
Some time later I fed Cornelius and got ready for a long night awake in the throes of optimum virulence. I unhid my spore-ridden toothbrush and got out all the Night Watch books I'd secreted away, returning the apartment to how it had been before Lace had arrived. I even sprayed the couch with window cleaner, trying to erase her scent.
But before I went to sleep I looked at the folded piece of paper she'd left behind. It was a cell-phone number.
So I could call and tell her when her building was safe? Or when I was ready to send a replacement spaghetti strainer? Or was it an invitation to a really frustrating friendship?
I lay down on the futon and let Cornelius sit on my chest, comforting me with all his fourteen pounds, and getting ready to relish these questions and others as they danced behind my eyelids for the next eight hours.
Wait, did I say eight hours?
I meant four hundred years.