The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

CHAPTER 23

Death has made
His darkness beautiful with thee.
-Alfred Tennyson
The streets after dark were stolen by vampires. They strode along, their ruby eyes flashing and their coats flapping. Some had Mohawks and nose rings, making faces at everyone they passed; some ran through the streets, arm in arm, flowing white dresses fluttering behind them; some twirled ebony walking sticks, strutting in velvet jackets, with long, dandyish hair; some were surrounded by a crowd; and some strolled alone.
Tana stuck close to the buildings, ducking under awnings to stay out of their way. Her heart raced, and she couldn't tear her eyes from their unnatural pallor and easy grace, couldn't stop staring at their hellish eyes.
"You get used to them," Jameson said, but she noticed that if a vampire got too close, he'd crouch and his hand would twitch toward something in his boot.
Finally, Jameson stopped at a metal-barred window displaying earrings in the shape of scarabs, a purple raincoat with a matching umbrella, and several wigs in bright colors. A sign over the door crafted from glass beads and broken bits of mirror read: ODDMENTS & LOST THINGS.
The door had a metal speakeasy grille set into it. Jameson pulled a bell.
A few moments later, a girl opened the grille. The moment she spotted Jameson, she broke into a wide grin, although her smile dimmed slightly at the sight of Tana.
She flipped the locks on the door and opened it, letting them into the dimly lit building.
The girl was tall, with long, tawny hair, like a lion's mane, loose around her shoulders, and eyes the bright green of bottle glass. Gold was dusted over her cheeks and painted on her eyelids. She was wearing a kimono-style robe, looking as though she'd just gotten up.
"Hi," Jameson said, smiling shyly. He looked a little dazzled by her beauty.
"Hi," she said back. She seemed to be holding her breath, waiting for him to do or say something. Whatever it was, he didn't do it.
Gone was the breezily confident boy who'd taken Tana to breakfast and explained Coldtown politics. "You can get most anything here," he said to Tana. "Valentina's got a magical power to recall where an old box of the exact thing you're looking for was put a year ago."
The girl-Valentina-smiled. "I wasn't working here a year ago," she protested.
His lips curved, but he didn't look at her. "That's why it's magic."
Tana glanced at the racks of clothes against one wall, with open suitcases near them, each one overflowing with shirts and coats. A few mannequins had been arranged to look as though they were tied up, and those wore an assortment of sparkly dresses and hats. Oil lamps burned on several surfaces, making shadows dance.
A woman descended the stairs, her heeled shoes loud on the wood. At the sound of her arrival, Valentina pulled away from Jameson. The woman was the oldest person that Tana had seen so far inside the gates, with long, gray-streaked hair, fine enough to look like spiderwebs where it caught on her black gown. A heavy rose-gold medallion hung around her neck, and she wore bright blue earrings almost the exact color of her eyes.
"Well, don't just stand there, Valentina," she said to the girl. "Lock the doors behind our customers. We want everyone to have the safest possible shopping experience."
Valentina took a few steps toward the door, before Jameson caught the knob.
"So I'm going to go," he said, turning it and stepping out into the street. "Good luck, Tana. Bye, Valentina. Bye, Ms. Kurkin."
"Oh, stay," said Ms. Kurkin. "Have a cup of tea with us."
"I can't," Jameson said. "But Tana is new to town. She could probably use one."
Ms. Kurkin smiled. "Always with the strays."
Valentina turned the locks behind Jameson with a single glance out through the barred speakeasy window. Tana wondered at his quick departure, wondered if he hated being locked in as much as she did. But given that she was the one who'd been bitten about twenty-six hours ago, she was probably more of a danger to them than they were to her. She was just glad they didn't know it.
"Well," said Ms. Kurkin. "So what can I do for you? Something to sell, I'm supposing. Something you stole from your mother back home? A precious little locket your grandmother gave you when you were a baby? Family heirloom?"
"Mostly I need to buy stuff," Tana said, guessing that Hedda Kurkin didn't much care for the kids that trooped through her store. But then Tana thought of the garnet necklace with the empty locket that Gavriel had given her, the one rattling around in the bottom of her purse, the one that made her shudder when she considered where it must have come from. She reached into her bag and pulled it out, setting it down on a glass counter that held various sparkling items, from earrings dripping with rhinestones to diamond rings. The garnets shone dully, like dozens of punctures welling with blood. "I do have one thing to sell, actually. The clasp is broken, though."
"Hmmmm," Hedda said, walking behind the counter and pulling out a jeweler's loupe, holding it in front of her left eye.
"These are Bohemian garnets-from the Latin granatum, for pomegranate, because of their resemblance to the seeds. Probably from the Czech Republic, although the setting is Russian. You can see the symbol for gold." She picked the necklace up, weighing it in her hand. "Quite lovely. Old. Sturdy. I could give you six hundred dollars for it-half cash, half credit-although it'd be worth four times that to the right buyer."
Tana sucked in her breath abruptly enough that it made a sound.
"Unfortunately," Hedda continued. "You're not likely to find the right buyer inside Coldtown."
An antique necklace from Russia. How likely was it that the Thorn of Istra had pulled that off the throat of someone in a parking lot and had it-totally coincidentally-come from the country where he was born? But if he hadn't stolen it, then it had been something that belonged to him, something he'd brought with him all the way from Paris, something he'd owned long before that.
And he'd given it to her.
The woman gave Tana an odd look. "Or for thirty dollars, I could fix the clasp while you shop and you could wear it out on the town tonight. It's a beautiful piece. You don't have to sell your soul right away."
Nodding mutely, Tana reached into her purse and handed the woman behind the counter two twenties from the odd assortment of stained bills Gavriel had given her. And like a normal shopkeeper at a normal shop, the woman tapped a few keys on the register and counted out ten dollars in change.
"I'll start on it now," the woman said. "Valentina will show you the rest of the store while you wait."
Valentina smiled at Hedda's tone of imperious command and then shrugged at Tana. She waved her toward the steps and the second floor, where more clothes were to be found, piled up on worn wooden tables and hanging in mirrored armoires. True to Jameson's word, Valentina did seem to have a crazy ability to understand the pattern of the mess and fish out beautiful things from unlikely places.
"So where did all this come from?" Tana asked, pulling on a pair of black stretchy, skinny jeans that were only a little too tight. They were marked five dollars. "It's a lot of stuff."
"Hedda started this place after the quarantine as a place for people to come and swap what they didn't need for what they did. Soon after, scavengers started bringing her things they found in abandoned houses, hoping for cash. And then others came, looking for baubles and gowns. A lot of people come to the city and not that many leave. It's a pretty good business." Valentina pulled a leather jacket, the elbows a little worn, down from a hook and held it out to Tana. "This looks about your size."
Tana shrugged it on, liking the weight. Wearing it felt like being armored. "It's perfect."
Valentina smiled at her. "This is a city with a very particular dress code."
Tana laughed, bending to look through a pile. She found a T-shirt with a fanged happy face, another shirt that said DESPERATELY SEEKING DEATH, cutoff shorts, pajama bottoms covered in a pattern of steaming teacups, and a filmy blouse of palest ivory with a high collar and little, faux pearl buttons fastening it up the back and at the cuffs. "So how about you? How did you wind up here?"
Valentina's expression changed subtly, as though she was trying to determine what Tana was really asking. Then she sighed and flopped into one of the overstuffed chairs, ignoring the clothing she was sitting on. She had a long, lean body, like a model's, with large expressive hands. Her nails were painted the same gold that dusted her eyelids. "Jameson brought me to Hedda, told her that I was worth trusting to help her with the store. Her last employee disappeared-which happens around here-so she needed to find someone new. I can't decide if Jameson was trying to be incredibly nice or just getting rid of me. Maybe both."
"Have you known him long?"
Valentina shook her head. "I came to Coldtown with a friend about a year ago. We were both from the same small town. We didn't fit in, and we thought we were going to run away to a place where everyone was like us and we'd be transformed and-"
Valentina paused as if at a loss for the next word. Tana nodded, urging her on. It was nice to talk. There was nothing she could do for the next couple of hours, while Aidan was newly turned and desperately thirsty. Her best bet was to go back and get the marker closer to dawn, after they'd fed him. Until then, she might as well enjoy the clothes and the company.
"Turns out, we were idiots. My friend almost got killed by the first vampires we met. He went off alone with these three red-eyed girls and, I mean, he didn't even like girls. Next thing I know I find him in an alley with the vampires crowded around him, slicing his skin. They licked the blood off him like it was candy, and they were so careful never to bite him, the bitches. He would have died if Jameson hadn't come along then."
Valentina had a faraway look in her eye as she went on. "He had this huge, honking flamethrower, the same kind the guards use. There aren't a lot of rules in Coldtown, but one thing vampires get really cranky about is when someone appears to be hunting them."
"Was he?" Tana asked.
Valentina shrugged. "I don't know, but he crisped all three of them and took us home like we were feral cats or something." She sighed. "He brought us to a squat, up in the eaves of a church, where some other kids were living, some of them really little and some of them older. The place is empty now, but we lived there awhile. Jameson is a little bit of a folk hero around here."
Tana thought of the clothes in piles and asked, "Where are the other kids who lived there?"
"Two of them became Rotter hangers-on, including my friend," Valentina said. "It's a vampire gang, basically anarchists, and they'll turn people who prove they're psychotic enough to impress them. My friend's still human, but hopeful. One of the little kids got turned by a vampire and lives with her now. Another one went out one day and never came back. Jameson looked and looked, but sometimes people just disappear in the city."
Tana spotted a nice-looking knife, long and sharp, resting in a jar with a few feathers and a fountain pen. "Jameson must have a complicated relationship with vampires."
"Jameson? Yeah, I guess. His girlfriend's one."
Tana looked up at Valentina in surprise. "Oh, right," she said after a moment, remembering what he'd told her at breakfast. "She must be the friend he was talking about. The one from Lucien Moreau's."
"Don't say anything if you see him, okay? He's never told me about her, but it's a small town. I hear things. And I saw them once, up near Velvet Road, arguing. She was gorgeous. And I definitely don't want him to think I care. He knows what I used to be, so it might be awkward for him."
"What you used to be?" Tana echoed, frowning in confusion.
"I wasn't born a girl," Valentina said, shifting her long, elegant limbs to stand. "At least not on the outside. He knows I came here because I couldn't afford surgery. If I was turned, I figured at least I could keep looking like I do now. At least my face wouldn't change. But things haven't exactly worked out."
For a moment, in her mind, Valentina's features took on a masculine cast. But then Tana blinked and saw only the girl in front of her.
It was a reason that Tana had never even considered for wanting to be young forever.
"I won't say anything," she promised. "I barely know him anyway."
Valentina smiled, a little wryly. "Coldtown's a small place, and it's getting smaller all the time. You'll know everybody soon enough."
Tana wound up buying the long dagger, the jeans and leather jacket, three T-shirts, four pairs of underwear that Valentina promised had been bleached and then washed. She figured she'd need the clothes since although forty-eight hours were almost up, even if she didn't go Cold, she'd have to wear something on her way out. She got the knife because she'd been wishing for one for a while. She also bought a big, ugly, rust-colored poncho that looked warm and would be easier to carry than a blanket; bolt cutters; a screwdriver; nylon rope; a solar cell phone charger; and a backpack to put it all in.
All of it together cost her $132. She still had money left-at least another hundred and maybe more-but she didn't want to count it right then, in the shop.
Valentina looked down at the knife as she rang up Tana. "You know how to use one of these?"
"I'm hoping that it will look scary enough that if I wave it around, people will back off."
Valentina raised her eyebrows wordlessly.
Then Ms. Kurkin came back with the locket necklace and its new clasp. Tana hid it away in her bag and went over to one of the large antique mirrors against the wall, braiding her hair tight to her head and tying it with a piece of string. She looked at herself in the wavy glass, trying to convince herself that she was tough enough to face whatever else was in the little room where Aidan waited. Then she said good-bye to Valentina and Ms. Kurkin and headed out onto the street, retracing her steps all the way back into danger.
Climbing up onto the roof was easy, but once Tana got up there, it was an unfamiliar landscape, especially in the dark. She went slowly, making sure to place each foot carefully on the asphalt shingles. Following Jameson, she'd been too preoccupied to notice, but now that she was alone above the city, she realized that someone had recently constructed much of what she was using to cross between buildings. Ladders and boards, soldered in place or nailed down, bridged the gaps, making a maze high above the streets.
It took her a while to find the skylight in the dark. As she searched, she was sorely tempted to stop looking and find a place to hole up for the rest of the night. Sleep a little more. Maybe that would give Aidan a chance to get used to his new self. Maybe by the time she showed up, a day or two later, he'd be able to control his hunger and eager to show off his new red eyes.
Of course, maybe he would have sold the marker by then, too. Maybe she'd have gone Cold.
Or maybe he'd be dead. The story of an infected kid in the Midwest had been all over the news a couple of months back. He'd confessed to his girlfriend who he'd been bitten and wanted her to lock him in an old shed on her family's property to get through the infection. She'd promised she would, but instead she got together a bunch of friends from school to tie the boy up, carve him open, and drink his blood-not understanding that infection couldn't be passed on like that, that because he wasn't yet a vampire, his blood couldn't make her and her friends go Cold.
But Midnight was smart enough to wait until Aidan was a vampire if she wanted to carve him up. She'd know she could bottle that stuff and sell it to the highest bidder.
Tana shuddered, wishing that she was like Jameson with his flamethrower, wishing that she had something better than a big knife, a pair of bolt cutters, and a tough-looking leather jacket. She wished she were a local legend.
Finally, by moonlight, she was able to make out the skylight she'd come through. It was still open, the chandelier as messed up as she'd left it.
A few bright green leaves spiraled down into the dark room.
The door was ajar, letting in light from the hallway. Light that showed the room was empty.
"Aidan," she whispered, but there was no one to hear her.
Looking around, she saw a chimney nearby and wrapped one end of the rope around it, wishing that she'd gone to Girl Scouts. Didn't they learn how to tie knots?
She climbed down into the room. Down was easy, except that it was hard to go slow, when her rope was just rope, with no interval knots to brace her feet against. Halfway down, Tana slipped and fell onto the floorboards, making a sound that everyone inside must have heard.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. She braced for the sound of running feet, but the only thing she heard was a low moan from somewhere deep in the house.
Tana crept into the hallway.
A man in a bowling shirt, jeans, and sandals sat against the wall, his head tipped back and his eyes open. He had short hair the brown of rabbit fur and wore a pair of large, round silver-rimmed glasses, the lens of one mottled with bloody fingerprints. His arms were outstretched and his wrist had been ripped open, a mess of torn skin and pink insides. The floor was washed in a sticky pool of red that the rug had begun to soak up, blackening it along one edge. Much too much blood and more still bubbled lazily from his veins.
The other wrist was marked with two small puncture holes.
One of his legs twitched spasmodically. He looked at her with his glazed-over brown eyes. The smell of blood rose up, breaking over her like a wave, rich and hot. Her tongue pressed against her teeth eagerly. Bile rose in the back of her throat.
"Ru-un," he said between rapid, heaving breaths and then just stopped, like a toy that had been switched off. A rattling sound came from deep inside his rib cage.
Tana's heart was thudding in her chest, beating like punches from a fist.
In that moment, she realized she'd seen him before-a picture of him anyway. He must be the neighbor they'd talked about. Bill Story, the one who'd been chronicling life inside the walls, the one who'd refused to leave even after his friends sent him a way out. She was sure that however he imagined dying, it wasn't like this.
She carefully removed Bill's glasses. Then she pressed her fingers to his eyelids, closing his eyes and hoping they'd stay closed. Then she crossed his hands over his chest, the way that dead pharaohs posed on their sarcophagi.
No matter what warning he'd whispered with his final breath, she couldn't run. She couldn't go anywhere without the marker. Carefully, she slid the long knife out of her boot.
Edging along further, she turned a corner and saw Christobel standing by a window with a can of paint and a brush. She was blackening the panes and crying at the same time, her thin shoulders shaking and her eyes red-rimmed. She looked at Tana and started to cry harder.
"What are you doing?" Tana whispered.
"Getting everything ready for tomorrow." Her makeup streaked her blotchy cheeks in tracks of glittering gray and silver. Her voice sounded vague and dreamy, almost singsong. "We're going to be vampires, and the house has to be ready for us. It wasn't supposed to be like this. You shouldn't have left. Why did you leave?"
Since Tana had been their prisoner, she'd assumed that if she was spotted sneaking back into their fortress with a big knife, it would be cause for alarm. But Christobel was looking at her as if she had gone out for groceries and taken too long getting back and now their whole dinner party was ruined.
There was another low moan from behind a door down the hall and the sound of frantic hushed voices. Christobel looked nervously in that direction and then back at Tana.
"After you left, we thought-when we didn't hear you anymore, it seemed like Aidan had fed on you. So we thought it was safe. We were sad, but-"
Tana nodded and gestured for her to go on, to speed past that part. She knew why she'd been locked in the room with him, even if not everyone on the other side of the door was willing to admit to it.
"Midnight and Zara fought over who would go first. Zara said it was her house and so she'd go, so she went and he-he drained her."
"Oh," Tana said, thinking of the human Aidan she'd known. Aidan, who was silly and selfish, but who could never have been a murderer.
"I know he didn't mean to." Christobel started crying even harder, dropping the paint can and kicking it with her foot. The black paint spattered the wall and ran in rivulets, like rotten blood. "He was so upset after. But it was supposed to be you who died, not Zara. It's not fair. We did everything right. We gave him you to eat, as the sacrifice for the newly risen vampire. It was supposed to be you."
"Where is he now?" Tana asked, trying to keep from slapping the girl. "Down there?" She'd pointed toward the room where the sounds came from, and the girl nodded.
Is it safe? she wanted to ask, but she didn't think that Christobel was going to give her an honest answer. With Bill Story and Zara dead, it was hard to imagine that Aidan was still hungry, but what did she know about newborn vampires? At the farmhouse, those creatures had fed until they were swollen like ticks.
Tana walked farther down the hall, her footsteps tracking more black paint as she went. When she glanced over her shoulder, Christobel was looking out the window, even though she'd painted it so thickly that there was nothing to see.
It was supposed to be you.
In that moment, with her hand on the doorknob, Tana wished that life were like a recording where you could fast-forward past all the scary parts where everything got turned upside down to whatever came next, no matter how bad. Taking a deep, ragged breath, she pushed the door open. Then the tableau revealed itself and there was no more wishing.
Aidan crouched on the floor with inhuman stillness. That and the unnatural pallor of his skin made it clear that he was changed, even before he looked up at her with his new scarlet-tinted eyes. Beside him rocked Midnight, back and forth, holding her brother's body.
Winter's blue bangs hung in his face, and his mouth looked chalky and chapped, the way Pearl's mouth sometimes did when she'd brushed her teeth and hadn't wiped all the toothpaste away. Two bright pinpricks marred his throat, one leaking a thin line of blood. Winter's eyes were closed, but Midnight's eyes were open and red as coals in the heart of a fire. At the sight of Tana, she made a horrible keening sound and clutched her brother closer.
Rufus hunched in a corner of the room, wearing only pajama pants. A tiny video phone rested next to him as though he'd dropped it and forgotten it was there. The blinking light showed that it was still recording.