Real Vampires Don't Sparkle (36 page)

“My hair hurts,” Matheus said. “Sadist.”

“It’s only been a few days. What are you going to do when we get to the hard stuff?”

“That was the easy stuff?” Matheus yelled. He flopped forward into the ancient carpet. “Mother of God, just kill me already.”

“You’re pathetic.” A hand wrapped around Matheus’ ankle, remaining firm even as Matheus kicked.

The carpet scoured Matheus’ face. He propped his chin up onto folded arms and watched the staircase shrink. His foot hit the floor with a bang.

“There,” said Quin. “Your room. Do you think you can make it from here or do I have to tuck you in as well?”

Matheus rolled over. “This is your plan, isn’t it?” he asked. “You’re going to make me so exhausted I won’t go looking for Milo.”

“You’ve seen through my evil scheme,” said Quin dryly. “Get into bed. It’s almost sunrise.”

“It won’t work.” Matheus raised a finger in the air. “I will be victorious.”

“Go to bed, Matheus.”

Matheus paused outside Quin’s room. Slowly, he turned the doorknob, holding the latch back as he pushed open the door.

Quin lay on his side in the center of his bed, half of his face mashed into a pillow, arms pulled in tight to his chest.

“Quin,” whispered Matheus. No response. Matheus tried again, a little louder. Quin continued his lack of acknowledgement. “I’m going to go look for Milo. If that’s okay with you, keep being dead.” He waited a second. “Right, still dead.”

Matheus shut the door.

He sprinted up to the third floor, poking his head into each room. A soft whir came from the master bedroom. Matheus opened the door. A blast of cold air stung his cheeks. A pane had been removed from the window. A bank of computers sat against the wall, triple monitors glowing grey.

Matheus walked in, stepping over the bands of wires crisscrossing the floor. The middle monitor asked for a password, but the stack of files next to the keyboard did not. Matheus opened the top file and skimmed down the first sheet of paper. It looked like a building permit for a facility not far from there. The next page had the same form, photocopied from the original, but in a different handwriting. Matheus rifled through the papers. Building permits, all submitted by different people, for various locations. He pushed aside the first file and opened the second: real estate listings. Some papers had only the specs of the building, but others had what looked like financial records stapled onto them. Matheus’ eyes widened. Credit card numbers, bank accounts, social security numbers, mother’s maiden names, all in plain black ink. An identity thief’s wet dream.

“Does Quin know you’re up here?”

Matheus slapped the file closed and spun around. “Quin doesn’t tell me what to do,” he said. “I mean, he does, but I don’t listen.”

Milo nodded. He sidestepped the wires and took a seat in front of the monitors. Typing with one hand, he moved the files to the far side of the desk with his other. All three monitors flashed to life. The one on the right held a spreadsheet full of data; a mapping program filled the left one; and lines of regimented gibberish took up the screen in the middle.

Matheus tried to peer over Milo’s shoulder without being obvious. He recognized some of the words, but the way Milo used them violated every rule of English grammar Matheus knew. He’d never seen so many parentheses in one place before.

“What is that?” Matheus asked. He glanced toward the door, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

“Code,” said Milo. He scrolled through the gibberish, then opened a new window with even more gibberish. He began to type, keys clicking with a steady clatter.

“You’re a cryptologist?”

The clicking faltered, then resumed. Milo gave a small headshake, but didn’t look at Matheus. “Computer code,” he said. “I’m writing a program.”

“For what?” Matheus asked. Was that the house settling, or the basement stairs creaking?

“Don’t you have something to do?” Milo asked.

“Not really. Someone might try to kill me soon, though. That seems to be the direction my life is taking. Why is it so cold in here?”

“For the computers. So they don’t overheat.”

“Why so many?”

Milo’s hands stilled. He turned in his chair, looking up at Matheus. The monitors’ light glinted off his glasses.

“I like electronics,” he said, enunciating each word the way people did when speaking to foreigners. “Is there something you wanted?”

Matheus stepped back, falling into his standard pose: crossed arms, tight mouth, eyebrows looking as though they wanted to leap off his face and start biting people. At least, that was how Bianca described that particular expression to him.

“Yeah. Why did Quin hire you, what is he hiding, what does stealing people’s real estate information have do with anything, and how the hell do you stand it in here? It’s freezing.”

Milo’s lips moved in a way that indicated he might, sometime in the future, consider smiling. “Quin said to stay away from you,” he said.

“Quin says lots of things, most of them idiotic,” said Matheus. He nudged the cable running next to his foot. He didn’t trust cables. They lurked, waiting to trip him at the moment most prime for embarrassment.

“That’s dangerous,” said Milo.

Matheus jerked his foot away. “Would I get electrocuted or something?” he asked.

“It’s insulated. I meant insulting Quin.”

“Oh, that.” Matheus shrugged. “It isn’t a big deal.”

“Not a big deal,” repeated Milo. His glasses had slid to the end of his nose. He pushed them up with his pinkie finger, then tugged on an earlobe.

Nice hands
, Matheus thought. Milo’s fingers were long, with knobby knuckles and broad, flat nails. No signs of biting. Matheus curled his own fingers under. He wondered if he should be worried about admiring another man’s hands, but decided hands were asexual. Admiring hands meant nothing. He hoped.

“Well,” said Matheus. “He might rip your head off.”

“I like my head attached,” said Milo.

Matheus snorted. Another creak filtered through the layers of the house. “Do you want me to leave?” he asked.

Milo leaned over and switched off the monitors. The room fell dark.

Matheus blinked rapidly. Despite, or perhaps because of, his enhanced night vision, adjusting from light to dark took longer than it had when he was alive. Milo’s chair scraped over the floor; a light pressure landed on Matheus’ shoulder.

“Let’s take a walk,” said Milo.

Milo walked with his head bent, hints of a frown on his face. Occasionally, he raised his head enough to push his glasses up, before looking down again. His stride matched Matheus’, but he tended to veer to one side or the other. He bumped into Matheus more than once, each time giving him a look as though Matheus were the one stuck on diagonal. After a few steps, Matheus realized Milo had started a wide circle around Quin’s house. Fifteen minutes passed in silence.

Matheus tried a few topics, but when Milo didn’t respond, he gave up. He didn’t mind silence. His worldview would be massively improved if 99.9 percent of the human race developed sudden paralysis of the tongue. But the scritching in the back of his mind kept going. Matheus doubted Milo had the urge for fresh air.

“So, Mattias, are you enjoying America?”

The world skipped. Matheus clenched his fists in his pockets. The panic swept downward like a river after a dam broke. His legs shook with the influx of endorphins.
Run, run
, pounded in his brain, echoed down to his feet,
run-
step-
run
-step.

“My name is Matheus,” said Matheus evenly.

Milo bumped into his arm. Matheus moved away, putting more than a yard of space between them. He walked faster, then slowed, forcing himself to count between each stride.

Milo caught up, and together they took the corner onto Hillview.

“It’s your name now,” Milo said.

Matheus stopped. The glowing arches of one of the city’s fifteen McDonald’s bathed Milo in yellow light, giving him the appearance of a fever patient. He watched Matheus with the same direct eye contact as when they had met. Inside the restaurant, a teenager in a polyester shirt wiped down tables with a dingy rag.

“Who are you?” Matheus asked.

The odds on Milo smiling increased a fraction. “Lovelace,” he said.

“Bullshit.”

“Ten years ago you paid a quarter of a million dollars into an overseas bank account. In return, you received Matheus Taylor.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Matheus.

“I’m not going to tell Quin,” said Milo. “Unless I have to.”

A car pulled up to the curb, stopping a few feet in front of Matheus. The driver’s side window rolled down and a man in his twenties stuck his head out.

“Hey, are you guys open?” he asked.

“What?” asked Matheus.

“Open,” said the man. He squeezed an arm out the window, pointing at the sign. “You know, hamburgers and shit.”

“We don’t work here,” said Matheus. “Are you an idiot?”

“Whatever.” The man ducked into his car and revved the engine. The front tire banged against the curb as the man pulled into a U-turn, flipping off Matheus and Milo as he drove past.

“Charming,” said Milo. “His parents must be very proud.”

Matheus choked on a laugh. He walked over to the low rock wall that protected the pathetic attempt at landscaping and sat down. Milo continued to watch him. Raising his fingers to his mouth, Matheus chewed on one nail, then another.

“Hypothetically, if you weren’t a delusional maniac, what would show up on a background check?” he asked.

“If I wasn’t a delusional maniac?” said Milo. “A detailed report on Matheus John Taylor, birthday June 2, 1984, parents dead, no other family. Foster care records, medical history, school reports, all the things that prove a person is a person.”

“Good,” said Matheus.

“I don’t leave holes.”

Matheus sighed. He rested his elbows on his knees, catching his head in his hands. He rubbed his fingertips over his scalp. Someone had left an empty soda cup on the ground, and a swarm of ants gathered around the lid. The teenager had given up on the tables, moving onto spritzing the nightmare-inducing Ronald McDonald statue by the window.

“You knew who I—who Mattias was and you helped him anyway?” Matheus asked without looking up.

“I knew who his father was,” said Milo. “Word gets around.”

“Then—”

“I work for whoever can pay.”

Matheus raised his head. “You’re an Internet mercenary?”

“You could say that.” Milo pushed up his glasses, then pulled a smartphone out of his pocket. Matheus watched him fiddle with it for a minute or two.

“Why did you tell me?” Matheus asked finally.

Milo glanced up. “Hmm?”

Matheus repeated his question.

“Oh.” Milo shrugged and pocketed his phone. “So you know that I know.”

“Are you blackmailing me?”

“No.”

“It seems like you’re blackmailing me.”

“Insurance,” said Milo.

“And you want me to do what, exactly?”

“As I said, I like my head attached.”

“Great.” Matheus kicked the empty soda cup. It skittered across the sidewalk, landing in a storm drain. “How am I supposed to protect you from Quin when I can’t protect myself?”