Team Human (7 page)

I didn't much like the way Francis put that.
Parents
are always trying to make you do things for your own good. Not boyfriends. With boyfriends, the relationship is supposed to be equal. They're supposed to let you make your own decisions.

But I couldn't tell Cathy about Francis's undead love-weasel ways. Anyway, this was more proof that Francis really was too old for her.

It truly was for her own good.

Agreeing with Francis gave me a stomachache, so I sat there and made a face.

“You'll keep your promise?” Francis pursued. “Not a word to anyone? Especially not your principal.”

“I promise.”

He bowed again, walking away without making his own request, or leaving me with a message for Cathy. I wasn't feeling as happy as I'd thought I would.

I was also confused. Surely Principal Saunders knew about his book? It was right there in his school file.

CHAPTER TEN

Cathy in Despair

“H
ow about we go see a movie?”

Cathy shook her head wanly. “No thanks, Mel.”

“How about we go take a walk?”

A smile landed on Cathy's mouth before bouncing off, repelled by the force of her sadness. “No thanks, Mel.”

I had to get Cathy out of her house. Hell, I had to get her out of her
room
. She had been sitting in here for so long, I was afraid the fossilizing process would begin soon. It was time to bring out the big guns.

“How about,” I suggested, “we go get milkshakes—and it will be my treat?”

“No. But thank you anyway.” Cathy wasn't even tempted.

“You drive a hard bargain. Milkshakes with sprinkles it is.”

Cathy had not moved from her chair since I'd come in. She had not shifted from her piteous, curled-up position. She wasn't even looking at me. Her big dark eyes were fixed on the dirty windows, as if their grimy state was upsetting her.

Since Cathy and her mom have lived in the old Beauvier house all their lives, and it's always been falling down around their ears, I didn't think it was the windows upsetting her. I knew the house was the other really old thing that Cathy mysteriously loved. (Though I had to admit Francis was better preserved.)

In a way, Cathy's misery was all my fault.

“Oh, Cathy,” I said. “I know you're sad. Francis is a complete jackass.”

“Francis is not a jackass!”

“He left school without even sending you a text message saying ‘I hope you enjoy the beautiful scenery on your trip through Dumpslandia.'”

“Francis hates text messages,” Cathy said. “And voice mail. And the internet. He—he thinks that relying on soulless machines for communication is destroying the delicate interplay of social intercourse!”

Cathy said the words as if they carried real meaning for her. I barely managed to stop myself from sniggering at the idea of Francis saying
intercourse
.

“I'm sure he left for a good reason,” Cathy continued. “Or—or he realized that he no longer—felt anything for me, that he'd made a mistake.”

“Or consider again my theory: He's a jackass!”

“He's beautiful, and he's intelligent, and when he comes into a room, nobody can help but look at him,” Cathy said. “I'm ordinary. It's perfectly understandable—”

“You are
not
ordinary!”

“Compared to him—”

“He told me you were special,” I burst out.

Besides vampire, another career I should probably not go in for is spy.

Luckily for me, Cathy is a trusting soul.

Her eyes shone for a moment, and I thought she was pleased to hear what Francis had said. Until I saw that her eyes were bright with tears.

“With him, I felt special,” she whispered. “But I don't—I don't feel special anymore.”

“You still are!” I told her fiercely. “You're brilliant in school, and you're going to Oxford, and your friends all love you. You're awesome and your life is awesome. Your life without that vampire jackass is going to be more awesome.”

“It's just that nothing seems to matter much anymore,” Cathy said in that low, wounded voice. “I can't even write in my diary. Francis and I promised each other that we would both write in our journals every day, for years and years, and learn about each other by reading the entries.”

“Sounds like sexy good times,” I said. “When did you, uh, start this diary?”

“Last Tuesday,” Cathy told me. “But it's become really important to me in a short space of time. It was going to contain years of memories.”

I knelt down by Cathy's chair and took her hand.

“Everything else still matters,” I told her. “Except possibly the diary with its five minutes' worth of memory. Cathy, this was not your life. This was some guy.”

“Yes, I know,” said Cathy. She kept staring out the stupid window. “But he was a life-changing kind of guy.”

I hadn't known Cathy wanted her life to change so much.

“What if,” I asked tentatively, “what if Francis had to go because—because he'd done something wrong, and he couldn't face you? Maybe he, ah—cheated on his geography quiz.”

“Francis has traveled all over the world! He's been to countries I'd never even heard of. Abyssinia! Champa! Prussia! Sikkim! Zanzibar! When he was seventeen, he went on a Grand Tour of Europe. Why would he cheat on his geography quiz?”

I stared at the carpet, wondering if he'd made those countries up. “You know what I mean, Cathy. What if Francis wasn't the guy you thought he was?”

“Mel,” Cathy said, “Francis is gone. He can't defend himself. I really don't want to hear anything against him. I'm sure he left for a good reason. I just wish—I wish he could have told me what it was.”

But we'd both decided, me and Francis, that she didn't get to know.

For her own good.

“I feel like I should tell her the truth,” I told Kristin. “She's really upset. She hasn't left her room in three days. I'm not sure she's left her
chair
in three days. She can't sleep.”

“No wonder, if she's trying to sleep in a chair,” Kristin said, her voice echoing for a second.

I lay stretched out on my bed, in tracksuit bottoms and a holey T-shirt with a picture of a saber-toothed tiger that said
SABERS: BETTER THAN YOURS
that I'd bought at a fencing tournament a couple years back. I didn't feel like sleeping any more than Cathy did.

I hadn't realized that guilt caused insomnia. Mind you, I hadn't realized that pining for vampires did either.

I'd thought that I was sparing Cathy heartbreak: that sending Francis away before she could get really attached was the best thing for her. But apparently when it was fated eternal love, you only needed two weeks to get attached.

I thumped my head back against the pillow and considered getting NyQuil for both of us. Except, knowing my luck, Cathy would refuse to take it because Francis thought NyQuil was dangerously modern, like texting, television, and jokes that were actually funny.

“I can't believe that even when he's gone, Francis is tormenting us,” I said. “In very, very different ways. Cathy dreams longingly of being locked in his ardent below–room temperature embrace; I dream longingly of beating his head in with a deck chair.”

“
Ardent
's a good word,” Kristin observed. “Was it on your SATs?”

“I wish it had been,” I growled.

Damn you, Francis, get out of my head!

“You okay, Mel?” Kristin asked.

“I'm frustrated about Cathy. She's torturing herself over this guy, and he's not worth it. I should tell her the truth. I really should.”

“Doesn't sound like she'd listen,” Kristin said. “There are none so deaf as those listening to ‘All by Myself' over and over and over again.”

I thumped my head back against the pillows over and over and over again.

Kristin may have sensed she was being less than helpful. “You knew she was going to be upset, right?”

“I guess,” I said.

But I'd thought she would be upset in the same way I'd been upset when I'd broken up with Ryan. I'd been expecting Cathy to get angry, eat ice cream with me, and call him names. I'd expected to be able to comfort her.

I had not expected her to stop sleeping or eating. I hadn't expected that because it was crazy.

“It's only been a few days. Give it a few weeks before you start panicking. All Cathy needs is time.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “You're right. Thanks, Kris.”

I know that “all she needs is time” is a total cliché, but I hung up on Kris feeling slightly better. It was true—it hadn't been that long. Cathy hadn't even
known
Francis that long. She could sit in her chair and mope for a while, and then she'd be over it.

My phone rang. It was Cathy. An excellent sign!

“Hi,” I began, not knowing what to say. I didn't want to sound too happy. Should I ask if she was feeling better? Or if she'd changed her mind about milkshakes?

“Hi, Mel,” said the gentle, lilting voice of Cathy's mom.

Cathy's mom was calling me. She had never called me before. Not even once.

I sat bolt upright.

“May I talk to Cathy, please? She's not answering her cell phone.”

“Wh—” I began, and then cut off the “What are you talking about, Cathy's not here” before it was born.

Think, Mel, think.

Fact: If Cathy's mother thought Cathy was here, then Cathy must have told her she was here. Fact: Cathy hated lying, so Cathy must think she was doing something really important.

Fact: All Cathy thought was really important right now was an undead love weasel.

“Wh-wh-whhhy no,” I said. “Cathy can't come to the phone right now. Because! Because she's in the bathroom. That's where she is. And I can't go in there and give her the phone. Cathy and I are close, but we're not that close. Besides, you know Cathy! She's so shy. About peeing. And just generally.”

There was a long pause.

“I wondered if she was feeling better,” Ms. Beauvier said.

“She's having a great time!” I told her. “Well, not right now. Right now she's in the bathroom.”

“Mel,” Ms. Beauvier asked, “you girls haven't been drinking, have you?”

“Just high on life!” I said. “And chocolate ice cream. You know, the classic breakup dessert. Which, speaking of, it's melting, so I gotta go. I'll tell Cathy to charge her phone and that you called!”

I hung up.

Cathy's voice echoed in my head, the way it had been that afternoon, quiet and sad and with a hint of speculation that I hadn't caught.

I'm sure he left for a good reason. I just wish—I wish he could have told me what it was.

That was how much good all this “for her own good” stuff had done. Now Cathy was off to get the answers Francis and I had kept from her.

She'd gone after Francis.

She'd gone into the Shade.

No matter how much I blamed myself for not telling Cathy the whole truth, there was one thing I was congratulating myself on right now. I was so glad I'd read Francis's file.

His address had been on it.

Presuming that Francis had told Cathy where he lived, and she hadn't—oh please no, but surely, surely Cathy could never be that dumb—gone off to comb the whole Shade for Francis, which would be like looking for one particularly snotty piece of hay in a haystack, I knew where she was going.

Who says crime doesn't pay?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Cathy in the Shade

I
'd been in the Shade before. You know how it is: Relatives come from out of town, you do the tourist thing, hop on a bus with them, and endure the withering contempt of the vampire tour guide who hates tourists for invading her neighborhood and gawking at her and her home and hates herself for making a living as a tour guide. Though your relatives don't realize it's contempt. They think the tour guide is scary, and that they're being superdaring being on a bus with a vampire who could EAT THEM ALL! They shudder with delight and point at all the scary vampire houses and ooh and aah over the lack of lighting in the Shade and at how fast the locals move.

And every single time some tourist on the bus will shout, “Oh my, did you see that bat!” At which point the bored tour guide will inform the tourists—as they have informed every busload of tourists that has ever gone into the Shade—that there is no relationship between vampires and bats or any other animal for that matter. Which is when the astute tourists will peer out the window again and notice that there aren't any animals. Animals don't like vampires, and the feeling is mutual. But the tourists will assume that there are no animals because the vampires ate them all. They will shudder again. Your tourist uncle will glance at you and notice you're not shuddering, so you pretend to be scared as well. It's sad. And when you've done it more than once, it's also deadly dull.

Being in the Shade alone was different. It's one thing when one or two of the vampires are mingling with humans but another thing entirely when there's one of you and many of them. Everything about the Shade says No Humans Wanted (Except as a Snack).

There are no apartment blocks or office blocks or malls. No buildings that had to be slapped up in a hurry because the neighborhood needed a day-care center or a supermarket. Vampires are never in a hurry, they don't eat food or have children, and they have strong views on aesthetics.

Plus they mostly like really old stuff. The couple of times someone has gotten planning permission in the Shade, the vampires have either bribed, terrorized, or once, according to rumor, killed the offending person.

Mind you, that developer had wanted to build a McDonald's for the tourists.

I rode in on my bicycle, figuring that if a vampire did go rogue and attack, the bike gave me a slightly better chance of escape. I was grateful the moon was almost full. Even so, my eyes had to adjust to the lack of lighting.

The Georgian, Gothic revival, and art deco buildings, and others whose styles I couldn't identify (neofederalist-Transylvanian–Gone with the Wind–Greek-Explosionist?), loomed like monsters' castles against a backdrop of darkness. At every huge, black window I thought I saw someone watching.

There were no tricycles in any of the driveways, no dogs barking, no raccoons getting into the trash or cats fighting. There were no children. No laughter or crying or yelling emanating from the houses. All I heard was the occasional noise from a television and, of course, the street traffic. Vampires like to promenade.

The Shade was a dark other world, with pale-faced creatures walking a little faster and more fluidly than they would have outside the Shade. I felt like every single one of them looked me over and calculated their odds of draining me without getting caught. Every time a vampire police patrol (always in pairs like human cops) strode by in their distinctive shiny uniforms—much cooler than human cop uniforms—I had a strong urge to hug them.

The Shade was colder and darker and smelled different than human neighborhoods. It made my skin crawl. Thinking about Cathy out here in the dark somewhere, equally alone, made me pedal faster.

If something happened to her, I was never going to forgive myself.

And I really was going to beat Francis's head in with a deck chair.

It was almost anticlimactic when I turned the corner on Francis's street and saw Cathy standing uncertainly in front of his house.

Her long hair was blowing in the breeze, her face tilted up to gaze at the windows, not with suspicion like me, but with longing. The house was a pointy-turreted affair with columns on the porch. Together, Cathy and the house looked like the cover of a romance novel.

Until I barreled forward, dropped my bike, grabbed Cathy, and shook her by the shoulders.

“Are you totally crazy?”

Cathy gave a startled yip. “Mel! What are you doing here?”

“I— What are
you
doing here?” I demanded. “As if I didn't know. What
I'm
doing here is bringing you back home. Your mom called. She was looking for you, so I said you were at my place. By the way, you're welcome. Let's go back to my place.”

Cathy shook her head.

“Come on, Cathy. You don't even know if he's here. That's a vampire house. You're not going to knock on the door and ask a stranger—a strange vampire—if Francis can come out and play, are you?”

It was wrong to use Cathy's shyness against her. I knew that. As soon as I had Cathy home safe, I was planning on feeling very guilty indeed.

“No,” Cathy said, looking even paler.

I felt a small glow of triumph, which disappeared instantly when Cathy said, “I'll go around the back,” and headed determinedly around the building.

I charged after her. Right through some vampire's carefully tended bed of petunias, but I'd worry about undead gardeners coming after me later.

To my horror, I found Cathy prying up what seemed to be a trap door. She was trying to break into the
vampires' house
.

“Cathy,” I said, in a very quiet, calm voice, “what do you think you're doing?”

“I know which room is Francis's,” Cathy announced. “He described it in his journal. All I need to do is get in and make my way up to him.”

I wondered if I had seemed this insane to Anna when we were breaking into the school. If so, then it was no wonder she'd been alarmed.

I was still trying to articulate my many, many objections to Cathy's plan when she gave a final heave to the trapdoor and disappeared inside.

“Cathy!” I called, scrambling after her, falling a little way until my shoes hit packed earth, and I stood around blinking in the moonlight that streamed in, revealing crates and barrels of …

“A vampire wine cellar? I thought they didn't drink … wine.”

Cathy smiled at me faintly, so I knew that the real Cathy was still there somewhere under the piles and piles of crazy that love for Francis had spontaneously generated.

As far as I could tell from the limited light, the vampires' cellar was on the small side. I could make out a big wooden staircase leading up to the rest of the house. Below it, the moonlight illuminated a spiderweb. When the spiderweb trembled, so did I.

“Cathy,” I said, “we have to get out of here. We're going to get caught. This is not safe.”

Cathy hesitated.

“Cathy, please,” I begged. “This is all my fault, I'll explain everything, but we have to get out of here. Now!”

The silver strands of the web shivered once more.

That was all the warning we got.

A blur moving with lethal intent came down those tall wooden stairs and over the railing. It coalesced into a woman, black hair flying, leaping right at us with her fangs bared.

I seized Cathy and pulled her behind me, my fists clenched. Not that I had a chance against that speed and those teeth.

“Mom!” someone shouted. “Mom,
chill
!”

The vampire stopped like a bird hitting a window. Her lip stayed curled. Her fangs glittered at me.

“What are you doing in my home?” she whispered, and the harmonics of her voice made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

Behind me, I felt Cathy shiver.

“Cathy, don't you dare move,” I said in a low voice.

“Cathy?” the vampire asked, with less threat of grisly death and more surprise in her voice.

She had a faint French accent, and I finally noticed what she was wearing. (Fear for my life makes my fashion sense fly right out of my head.) Collar open at her throat, badge glinting—she was wearing the dark uniform of the vampire division of the police force.

We had broken into a vampire cop's house. We were so smart.

“Cathy?” echoed a guy around my age, who was standing on the stairs peering down at us. A perfectly ordinary guy, with a mop of curly hair and a rock band T-shirt on. He moved down the stairs at an ordinary human pace. “Cathy of the sonnets? Cathy of the love ballad?”

A visible shudder went through the vampire cop. As if that old story about vampires fearing crosses was true, and she was shying away from one.

“Please do not speak of the love ballad,” she begged.

The guy sat down on the bottom step and propped his chin up on one fist. “Cathy,” he said. “Great.”

Since the human guy and the vampire cop had linked up something as incredibly dumb as love ballads with Cathy, I did have an idea who might have written them: Francis.

At least we'd definitely got the right house.

“So, yeah,” I said, knowing Cathy wouldn't open her mouth in a million years. “This is Cathy.”

“This is a most unorthodox method of paying us a visit,” the vampire observed, and sounded more French than ever. “You did not notice the front door? But I suppose you had better come upstairs. We have a kitchen and a wide variety of food suitable for humans,” she added with what seemed to be pride. “Kit goes grocery shopping every week. Though I could wish he bought more vegetables.”

“Nag, nag, nag,” grumbled the guy, as if his presence in their shade was not completely weird and inexplicable. He got to his feet.

“This way,” said the vampire.

Her tone brooked no argument. Not to mention that we had, um, broken into her home and thus put ourselves in the wrong.

With Cathy holding my elbow in a death grip, we followed the vampire up the wooden stairs and into the heart of Francis's shade.