Real Vampires Don't Sparkle (24 page)

“Smartass,” said Quin. “We have traditions for a reason, you know. Too many of our kind would wipe out humans. We need them to survive. The young ones turn too many and don’t train them properly. Then they kill unnecessarily and threaten exposure. The presentation used to be a way to keep our population down. If the newly turned was judged unworthy, he or she would be killed and the maker punished.”

“They’re going to judge me? How? What am I going to have to do?” he asked. He wished Quin had told him about the talent competition. Matheus barely grasped the whole killing people to survive issue. Now he had to twirl a baton to impress some antique lords? Why did the U.S. even have lords? History class gave Matheus the impression a war had been fought to avoid that very thing. So humans got to nix the aristocracy, but no such luck for the undead? And what did unworthy even mean? Did he have to run some kind of obstacle course? Provide financial records? Demonstrate some useful skill? Mimicry and jacking cars didn’t seem like especially extraordinary skills, not enough to justify immortality.

“Nothing. They won’t object,” Quin said, oblivious to the tornado of questions laying waste through the Kansas of Matheus’ mind.

“Why not?”

“Because ‘Quin’ might not strike fear into the hearts of the masses, but it does to Apollonia and Grigori.”

This was both less and more reassuring than Matheus had hoped.

“Not Zeb?” he asked, glancing down at the last letter.

“Oh, Zeb.” Quin slashed his hand back and forth. “He doesn’t care about anything but his work.”

Matheus pushed at the stack of letters with the tip of his index finger. “When is all this supposed to go down?” he asked. None of the letters contained a date.

“Three nights from now,” said Quin.

Matheus nodded. Three always popped up in the fairy tales he’d read as a child. “How will I contain my excitement?” he asked dryly.

“I’m sure you’ll manage.” Quin stood up, stretching his arms over his head. He crossed the room, then paused with one hand resting on the doorjamb. “Oh, Sunshine,” he said.

Matheus looked up.

“The tie’s in the fireplace,” Quin said, snaggletooth poking out. “Ruined by the ash, I expect. I’ll just add it to your tab. Since you’re so dead set on paying your own way.”

“I hope you die in a fire,” said Matheus.

His father’s study with its paneling and the stained glass windows that left patterns on the carpet when the sun was right and the smell of cigars lingering, sinking into his clothes and now his father was there, immense behind his desk, lecturing, always lecturing in the study because he was a screw-up and a failure and weak like his mother was weak her car going over and nothing, nothing was ever right and watching the patterns on the carpet and waiting until his father finished and he could break into the cabinet with its shiny new lock but that wasn’t a problem, never a problem, and the alcohol burned sweet and soothing and everything was okay and now his father was standing, but it wasn’t his father it was Quin and he didn’t want Quin to be his father, Quin wasn’t his father, no, something else and they were in his old room with the posters of soccer players and Quin was touching him and he liked it, he wanted more, more touching because Quin wasn’t his father and it was nice and exciting and—

Sunset.

“Oh, God,” moaned Matheus. He pulled the pillow over his face and attempted to smother himself. When that didn’t work, he got up and dressed.

The house felt empty. Matheus wandered out into the backyard. A faded fence encircled the small square of scrubby grass. Some neighborhoods in the city had meticulously maintained gardens despite the smog and lack of space. Not this one. The grass had a sickly yellow tinge. In a cartoon, each blade would have a tiny hot-water bottle, and a thermometer stuck into it. Matheus wondered if Quin even had a lawn mower or if he just came out and glared at it every night. He went back inside before he decided to hang himself right there.

Matheus found it odd that he woke up earlier than Quin did. He passed out earlier as well, for reasons Quin never explained. The only answer Matheus received was a shrug and the sentence, “People are different.”

Quin exhibited an annoying lack of curiosity at times. Unlike Matheus, who stood outside the closed door to Quin’s study. Technically, Quin never marked the room as off-limits, so technically, Matheus could go in. Matheus paid attention to loopholes. They almost always came in handy.

Quin’s study wasn’t like his father’s. Quin left books and papers everywhere. The only light came from a floor lamp, with a Damascene shade, tucked into one corner. Bookshelves ate up all available wall space, but their appearance would give any good librarian a heart attack. Cheap paperbacks rested on leather-bound first editions. Multiple books sat spread wide, spines cracked, with knickknacks thrown carelessly on top of them. A handwritten ledger hung open over one arm of the loveseat. Matheus picked it up and flipped through it. The entries were all in Latin, with the occasional foreign word thrown in. He put the ledger back and sat down on the loveseat.

Matheus watched the open door. When Quin failed to appear, the house still quiet, he drifted toward the desk. He found the maps in the top drawer. Matheus spread them over the desk, connecting the edges to form an overview of Kenderton and its suburbs. A series of red circles denoted various properties or blocks, but with no discernible pattern. The top side drawer yielded a plain manila envelope on top of a pile of junk. A jolt ran through Matheus at the sight of it. Quin had retrieved the envelope from under the seat of the hunters’ van. Matheus hadn’t been fit enough to ask that night, but now he wanted to know what was in it. He glanced at the door again. Still no Quin.

The envelope contained three sheets of paper. A list of names covered the first one. The second was a letter with the kind of cramped handwriting sometimes seen in letters written before the mass production of paper. Matheus set it aside to look at later. The last sheet held another list in the same cramped handwriting.

Andrew Strange -
ashes, hunt

Geraldine Parks -
Rio, thirty years

Amarantha -
missing

Dmitri Kozlov -
ashes, walked into the sun

Jean Favreau -
missing

Basil Aldebron -
missing

Morrigan Fraser -
South Africa, ten years

Miyuki -
ashes, hunt

The list went on, more than forty names in all, almost half of them listed as missing. Matheus frowned. What the hell Quin was involved in? He reached for the letter, freezing when the staircase squeaked. Quickly, he shoved the papers into the envelope. He fought with the maps for a second, then used brute force to fold them into the appearance of order. He slammed the top drawer shut and ran over the loveseat, picking up the ledger just as Quin walked in.

“Good evening,” Matheus said.

Quin lifted the ledger out of his hands and set it on the desk. “What are you doing in here?” he asked.

“Snooping through your things and filling your desk drawers with puddings,” Matheus said.

“Cute,” said Quin. He dropped onto the loveseat, curving an arm over his eyes. Matheus nudged him with a toe.

“I’m going to buy shoes,” he said. “Now that I have money again.”

“Okay.”

“You can come with me.” Matheus felt magnanimous in his victory.

“No thanks,” said Quin, slumping lower.

“Are you sure? What if I get the wrong ones?” Maybe more vindictive than magnanimous.

Quin groaned, sliding downwards until three-quarters of his body sprawled off the loveseat. “Just go,” he said, flapping a hand at Matheus. “And don’t get into any trouble.”

“Should I wear a jumper? It might get chilly.”

“I get it, Sunshine,” Quin said. “You’re not a child. You know everything about everything. Congratulations. Now go away and leave me alone in my misery.”

“Grump,” said Matheus.

Matheus stood in front the mirror, smoothing his hands over the slick fabric. The suit was a charcoal gray pinstripe and fit as if it had been tailored to his body. Unsurprising, since it had been. Quin had thrust the clothing bag at Matheus, pointing at the bathroom. Matheus didn’t argue. He decided to pick his battles. Besides, he didn’t know the criteria on which he’d be judged. Maybe snappy dressing counted for more than he thought. He’d asked Quin a dozen times over the past two days what to expect, but Quin only told him not to worry about it.

I look like my father,
Matheus thought, running the red and gold tie through his fingers. The same pale hair, square jaw, and high forehead. The shape of the eyes matched, but his father had blue eyes, not grey. The grey came from his paternal grandmother, his nose from his grandfather. From his mother, Matheus got her mouth and nothing else. At least, he thought he did; he only needed one hand to count the number of times he’d seen a picture of her.

“Are you ready?” Quin asked.

Matheus didn’t bother to respond, since Quin was going to walk in anyway. A half-second later, Quin proved him right.

“You look good,” said Quin. He adjusted Matheus’ tie and brushed a piece of lint off his shoulder.

“I feel like an idiot,” Matheus said, tugging on the bottom of his jacket.

“Stop that.”

“It doesn’t feel right.”

“That’s because it’s not polyester.”

“Fuck off,” said Matheus.

Quin smiled. “Ready to go?”

“No,” Matheus said.

“You can drive.”

Matheus raised his eyebrows. “You have a car?”

“I do now,” said Quin.

The car gleamed sleek and supernatural on the run-down street.

Matheus stopped on the porch, mixed traces of lust and fury rising up his throat. He found his legs moving on his own, taking him down the steps to the dark blue highlighted with the flickering orange of the streetlamp.

“You…you…bastard,” he said.

“What now?” asked Quin.

“That is a Mercedes-Benz SLS-AMG.”

“Yeah.” Quin stood next to Matheus, surveying the car. He held up the keys, shaking them slightly.

Matheus glared at him. “That’s my car!”

“No,” said Quin. “That’s my car. But you may borrow it.” He waved the keys some more.

“This is a dirty trick,” Matheus said.

One of the squatters emerged from the house next door. He walked out into the street, stopped, and did a double take at the car. The chain hanging off his pants jingled as he loped over, then silenced as Quin slowly shook his head at him. Head down, the squatter hurried away.

“You said not to buy you things, so I didn’t,” said Quin, turning back to Matheus. “I bought it for myself.”

“Then you drive it.” Matheus’ fingers strayed toward the hood; he snatched his hand back just as he brushed the cool paint.

“I never got the hang of driving,” said Quin.

Matheus whirled toward him. “I know what you’re doing,” he said.

“What am I doing?”

“Exploiting a loophole to get what you want.”

Quin smiled at him.

Matheus wanted to grab the keys and hurl them at his face, to watch that smug look explode. But the car lured him, all smooth angles and sharp curves. German engineering and a desire to go fast, so fast the world could never catch him. He yearned, a desperate feeling that overrode any moral objections, the id suffocating the superego in a mindless expression of
want
.