Almost Final Curtain (24 page)

“Run?”

“Sometimes we gather into packs and run as far and as fast as we can. The deeper into the woods and farther from the city, the better.”

Remembering the pure joy I experienced the day I’d run home, I could easily imagine joining one of the vampire runs. Like with the dance at Lilydale, bodies would surround me, urging me to quicken my pace, until it was like we were soaring across the landscape.

“That sounds awesome.”

Even in the dark, I could sense Elias’s smile in his tone. “It is exactly so, full of awe.”

I drifted to sleep imagining the ground racing beneath my feet, the stars standing still above, and Elias beside me.

 

 

I would have slept the day away, except my bladder woke me up sometime after noon. The sun filled my bedroom, setting dust motes dancing. Oversleeping made me hot and cranky. I pulled myself stiffly from the bed and padded to the bathroom.

A splash of cold water on my face inspired me to take a full bath and wash all of last night’s underground adventure from my hair. A lot of soap and a half hour later, I emerged feeling halfway human.

Which I guessed was just about right.

Back in my room, I opened up my armoire and picked out a sturdy pair of jeans and a utilitarian black T-shirt. But the white bandage was too obvious, so I tossed it on the floor and reached for a long-sleeve button-up, also black.

I glanced around for a message from Elias. Finding none, I grabbed my phone from the charger and went in search of something to eat.

The brownies were still on the kitchen table. I ate three while I poured myself a glass of milk. I peered out the pantry window to see if Mom was puttering in the garden. A skinny tabby dashed along the fence line, but otherwise the backyard was empty. I found the note she left on the answering machine.

“Council meeting. Don’t worry.”

Don’t worry? I crumpled the note in my fist. Of course I was worried. They were meeting to talk about the talisman, I was sure. What if they decided to use it while the vampires slept?

My fingers punched in Bea’s number. She answered on the second ring. “Hey, Ana-chan. What’s up?”

“Where is everyone meeting? I know your dad is an Elder. Tell me. I have to know.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

Everything was so complicated. I hardly knew where to start. “Can you come over? I’ve got brownies.”

 

 

As I sat on the front porch swing with the rapidly disappearing pan of brownies in my lap, I wondered whether I could really trust Bea. She’d been such a bitch about Nikolai, and she clearly had no love for witch-blood-sucking vampires, as she’d called them. But whom else did I have, really? True Witchcraft was a secret. Though, before my failed Initiation, I knew a few of the other witches my age, Bea was the only one who went to my school. We were kind of stuck with each other.

I nibbled on the corner of my sixth brownie and watched the neighbor across the street mow his lawn in perfect rows. Bees hummed in the carpet of deep purple creeping Charlie flowers of our yard, and anxiously buzzed the unopened flowers of the stand of bleeding hearts along the fence.

Yesterday’s clouds had dissipated to mere wisps.

I hoped Elias had found a safe place in the basement away from all this sunshine.

Bea’s Buick pulled up to the curb. She very carefully cranked up the windows and locked the car before giving me a broad wave.

I scooted over to make room on the swing. Soon the brownies were gone, and she asked, “Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Why do you need to see the Elders?”

Despite having all the time that it took for Bea to arrive to consider what to say, I still hadn’t quite figured out how to broach the subject. “Do you know about the talisman?”

“Is that the thing that was stolen from the History Center that Mom and Dad have been whispering about?”

I listened very carefully to Bea’s words, trying to judge if she was using those formidable acting skills of hers or not. She seemed sincere, so I said, “Yeah. Do you know what it can do?”

She looked me over and concluded, “I’m going to go out on a limb here, but since you’re all in a tizzy about it, it has something to do with vampires.”

“Tizzy” seemed a bit unfair, but I let it go. “The talisman has the power to turn vampires into slaves.”

“Cool,” she breathed.

I scowled.

Coughing theatrically into her hand, she said, “I mean, sucks to be you.”

Okay, that was not helpful. “I’m serious about this. The Elders have the talisman and I heard Nikolai’s dad say that he wants to use it to kill all the vampires. All the vampires, Bea. That means me too.”

“Where are you getting all this intel? Who says the Elders have this artifact thing? I heard my dad say a vampire stole it.”

A vampire. Elias had said he’d arrived too late. Had he lied to me? Did he actually steal it, and then manage to lose it to a witch again? He was pretty determined to get the talisman, but I would think if he’d fumbled the ball—again!—he’d be completely racked with guilt. “I kind of doubt that.”

“Why?”

“Any vampire loyal to my dad would have presented the court with the talisman immediately.”

“What about the disloyal ones?”

Of course, Elias had just gotten into a boatload of trouble for being disobedient. But he never denied his treason. I couldn’t see him concealing something this major. It wasn’t in his nature. “I don’t know. I still think that if any vampire had the talisman, there wouldn’t be all this panic in the underground, you know?”

Bea shook her head. “I don’t know anything about your weird little underground, but I’ll take your word for it.”

“Thanks,” I muttered sarcastically.

The brownie pan sat empty in my lap. Bea twirled a dark curl of her hair around her finger. “You know, I don’t think the Elders have the talisman,” Bea said. She chewed her bottom lip, as if trying to decide what to say next. She sighed. “Before I came over, Mom told me Dad wanted me to ask you about the talisman, see what I could find out.”

Bea was such a better actor than I could ever hope to be. And a better spy. “I thought you didn’t know anything about the talisman.”

“I don’t! Not really. I just know that everybody wants to know where it is. And nobody seems to have it.”

“Yeah, that’s true enough,” I admitted, my fingers absently combing the corners of the pan for chocolaty crumbs. “I thought Mom had it and Mr. Kirov was guarding it, but that turned out to be way wrong. Did you know Nik’s dad broke into my house last night?”

“No way! Seriously?”

I recounted the whole story for Bea, especially the parts where I was brave and stood up to him. Okay, so there weren’t very many of those, but I also pointed out how scary he was with the Sparkly Scimitar of Doom.

“Wow,” she said when I was finished. The sun had come around the house to shine in our eyes. We retreated inside for the shade and a couple of Cokes. I found the bag of potato chips Mom had hidden behind the cartons of whole wheat crackers, and brought out some chip dip from the fridge.

We sat in the kitchen to devour our feast. Bea’s laughter filled the room when I told her about Mom’s latest diet fad, and after regarding her for a moment I said, “I miss hanging out like this with you.”

“Yeah, things have been kind of strained since you went over to the dark side.”

“I’m not on the dark side. Besides, you’re the one who was all jealous of Nik.”

“Listen, sister, I had my sights on him long before you snagged everyone’s attention at Initiation Fail,” she said, wagging her finger and shimmying her shoulders at me.

This conversation gambit could only lead to a fight I didn’t want to have, so I didn’t argue. I just chewed another salty chip. I missed Nik more than I wanted to admit, so I didn’t look her in the eye when I asked, “Are you talking to him?”

“I wish,” she said. “I don’t know where he’s been. In a creative funk, I suppose, thanks to all that heartbreak.”

“When he gets a number one hit, he can thank me,” I said.

“I’m sure he will.” Bea was starting to sound seriously miffed.

Okay, cross Nik off the subjects to bring up around Bea. “Um, hey, I’ve got a vampire friend that wants to meet you.”

“Eat me? I’m sure.”

“No, not eat you; meet you,” I repeated impatiently. “His name is Elias, and he’s hiding out in the basement right now.”

“You have a vampire in the basement? A boy vampire? What does your mom think of that?” I didn’t have to say anything. The color in my cheek did. Bea squealed with mischievous delight. “She doesn’t know, does she?”

“Do you want to meet him or not?”

“Sure.” Bea sat back. Digging her chip into the container, she scooped out the last of the dip. She munched it noisily, and then asked, “Is this why you and Nik broke up? A boy vampire stashed in your basement?”

“Partially,” I admitted.

“Then I definitely want to meet him.”

We discussed arrangements and settled on a time and place for the introduction. Finding ourselves out of munchies and at loose ends on a Sunday afternoon, we decided to go hang out at the Mall of America.

 

 

The Mall of America really was quite big, but not at all very impressive from the outside. I always thought it should rise up out of the prairie of Bloomington like a monolith to consumerism and yet, every time we went there, I found myself disappointed by how squat and square it really was.

Once inside, however, it was like the Tardis—it seemed to stretch in every direction, forever. In fact, I got a little nervous when we strayed from the east side, which was the section I knew best, because I had no bread crumbs to scatter to help me find my way back to Bea’s car. Luckily, we’d agreed to meet up with Lane and Taylor at the Starbucks near the entrance to the Nickelodeon amusement park. When I’d texted around to see who of our theater gang might be available, it turned out that they were already here, riding the roller coasters.

“Do you think it’s a date?” I asked Bea as we made our way through the curved cobblestone paths of the park. I had to shout to be heard over the splashing of the log ride. Palm trees grew toward the giant atrium’s ceiling, surrounded by figs and other tropical plants. “Do you think Lane has a thing for Taylor?”

Bea rolled her eyes. “If you didn’t have your head buried in vampire crap all the time, you’d have figured the two of them out long ago.”

Possibly becoming a slave hardly constituted “crap,” but I didn’t correct her so much as make a face.

“When I found out that Lane does that Dungeons and Dragons thing, I knew it was a match made in heaven,” Bea said. “He just had to get over his slight crush on you.”

Me? I was incredulous. “Lane? But he’s always making stupid jokes at my expense.”

Bea gave me a look that made me feel like the saddest, most incompetent female on the planet. “Yes, dear, that’s one of the signs of geek love. Next is quoting entire skits from Monty Python or
Black Adder
for you.”

“Maybe I dodged a bullet,” I said with a laugh as we passed by booths of brightly colored plastic trinkets and gaudy stuffed animals.

“Maybe you did, but Taylor is crazy for him.”

 

 

Now that I knew, it was easy to see that Lane and Taylor were a couple. With beaming smiles and constant attention, she encouraged his long-winded rants about politics and science fiction shows that he loved-slash-hated. He performed all for her, and carried her drinks and did all sorts of other little kind gestures.

It would have made me gag, except it reminded me how much I missed Nikolai.

At least they didn’t seem to mind that Bea and I crashed their date. I felt like a third wheel, but not because they didn’t make an effort to include me. I kept thinking about Elias and wondering if he was right. What if, right now, while I sat in the corner booth with my friends, one of the Elders activated the talisman?

What would it be like to suddenly lose my will? Once, Mom had put me under a zombie spell and I’d wandered around for almost an entire day at school unable to work up enthusiasm for anything. The enchantment had made me pliant and stupid, which was something like not being able to do what I wanted—though it was really more like not being able to think for myself.

And what if the bloodline I belonged to was Bea’s? She was my friend, but she’d also seemed pretty excited by the idea of getting to order a vampire around. As a bonus, she could boss me around night
and
day.

The thought, or maybe the fact that I’d had no real food yet today, made my stomach flip.

“I didn’t get much sleep last night,” I said, interrupting Lane’s reenactment of some great moment in
Buckaroo Banzai
. “I think I’m going to head home.” Bea started to get up, but I waved her back to her seat. “I can take the light rail. It goes to a bus stop that will take me home. You should stay. See you later tonight.”

“You sure?”

I really wanted time alone to think. And maybe talk to Nik. “Yeah, I’m good.”

 

 

I sat in the back of the train, listening to the lulling sound of the rails and deleting every message I started to Nik. Thing was, I didn’t want to sound desperate. A simple “Thinking of you” was beginning to look like the best option, even though I’d trashed it six or seven times already.

But everything else I wrote ended up sounding needy. Even saying that I missed him felt kind of heavy and intense, and maybe even accusatory, like he should feel the same way and why hadn’t he written—did he ever really care or was that all just an act?

See, this was where I always ended up. I needed to stay simple, uncomplicated. I rekeyed “thinking of you” and hesitated so long over Send that I nearly missed my stop.