The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (47 page)

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

—W. Somerset Maugham

T
ana walked out of the hall, pushing past
Corps des Ténèbres
guards and heading for the front door. She turned back once, to look at Gavriel standing in the center of the floor like a marble statue painted with red, but her head was pounding and her neck was sore and when she opened her mouth to speak, she found herself struck dumb. It was all too much. She had glutted herself on horror, and all she could do was stumble out of the house and fumble inside her leather dress for Jameson’s cell phone.

Cool air brushed over her skin.

Pearl.
She had to find her sister, but if her sister saw her now, she’d scream and scream and scream.

Blood was so sticky.

Gavriel hadn’t called out to her, hadn’t moved.

But then, she’d nearly ruined his revenge before she’d stolen it for herself; maybe he was glad she’d left.

She walked through the streets of Coldtown and felt nothing.
Come to the Eternal Ball
, Jameson’s phone said.
We got her.

It was easy to find, even as disoriented as she was. People didn’t mind giving directions, apparently not bothered that her face was spattered with blood, not minding that her hands were dark with it. Their casual demeanor was horrifying, but not as horrifying as how easy it had been to push a knife into a begging vampire’s heart.

She found the place, the domed church with stained glass windows painted black along the first few floors. Strobe lights lit the panes on the dome. The door, papered with pink-stenciled posters, was painted the same tarry black as the windows. Music thrummed from within, and a few people sat on the steps, smoking and talking. A girl with green hair in a dozen braids held up a video camera to interview an elderly woman with long white hair and gleaming red eyes. Tana recognized her with a dull pang of surprise as the old lady from the Last Stop.

The doorman pulled aside the velvet rope, waving Tana ahead of a small line of people waiting to pay the cover charge, not even bothering to take her pulse. Maybe the rules were different for people accessorizing their red dresses with a large quantity of bluish-red blood.

Then she was inside, among the dancing throng. Music pounded the air, and a carpet of people filled the hall, twirling and shaking to the music. Girls and boys danced in cages that rose and fell from the ceiling in sudden, heart-stopping, roller-coaster jerks, making everyone scream. And above it all, cameras like the ones she’d seen on Suicide Square, like the ones in Lucien Moreau’s house, watching everything with their pitiless eyes, broadcasting the whole thing live.

There was a bar all along one wall, which served alcohol from copper distilling vats. It spilled into mismatched mugs. On the outer edges, a few kids passed joints to one another, the heavy odor of hashish competing with a whiff of rot to spice the air.

In one corner sat the remainder of an old confessional; kids waiting in line to sit in it, draw their curtains, and tell their sins anonymously to a camera. A girl stood in line, tears running over her cheeks. Behind her, the dance floor was full of people thrashing and jumping and whirling. The cavernous Eternal Ball was oddly familiar; Tana had seen it before on the screens of friends’ computers and on posters in lockers. Now, moving with the crowd, it felt unreal, like being on the set of a movie.

She suspected that Pearl must love it.

A shiver went through her body, then a second one. She scanned the crowd, trying to pick out her sister. Her gaze snagged on a familiar figure, his back pressed against the staircase support beams. For a long moment, she studied his navy military jacket with the arms torn off, his garter belt with opaque white stockings and big black boots, his glittering blue eyeliner. He had something taped to his arm that looked like a shunt. It was Rufus, she realized, sweat tracing its way
down his neck as he danced. As far as she could tell, he was alone. A red-eyed boy and a blond girl knelt in front of him, taking turns drinking from the tubing attached to his arm. Tana’s stomach lurched, half with disgust and half with hunger.

She staggered to lean against the rail of corrugated metal stairs leading to a cordoned-off second floor, taking breath after breath until she was sure she wasn’t going to be sick or attack anyone. She had to find Pearl, had to keep herself together long enough to take her back to the gate.

And horribly, in that moment, she thought of Gavriel watching her leave the glass ballroom. Gavriel, who had seemed utterly mad but who’d known exactly what he was doing the whole time. Gavriel, who’d put aside revenge for a little while to go on an adventure with her.

She shook her head, which was a mistake. It made her head throb worse than ever.

“Tana,” someone said, and then Valentina was there, beside her, pressing a mug into her hand. She’d changed her clothes, pulled back her hair, and washed off all her makeup. “Oh holy hell, Tana, you’re okay. You came back.”

She drank automatically, the alcohol burning down her sore throat.

“Look who we found,” Valentina said, and Aidan swung into view, smiling his innocent, fanged smile. Pearl was sitting on his shoulders, as though she were much younger, her gangly twelve-year-old legs dangling over his chest. Around her throat was the heavy garnet locket. She grinned at Tana, her expression dimming when
she saw the blood staining her face and darkening the red of her dress.

“Hey, peanut,” Tana said softly, just as their mother used to.

“Don’t call me that,” Pearl said, dignity clearly offended. She was wearing a sparkly black shirt, jeans, and her favorite pair of blue cowboy boots. Her eyes were lined in black pencil.

Tana turned to Valentina, taking her hand and pressing it. “Thank you. I can’t thank you enough—”

The girl shook her head. “No, wait. It was Aidan who found her.”

“Aidan?” Tana looked up at him, disbelieving.

“I spotted her not far from the gates,” Aidan said. “She was pretty freaked out.”

Pearl gave him a look of deep betrayal. “I had a plan—”

“Aidan was the only one of us who knew what she looked like in person,” Valentina put in. “And the only one who wasn’t a stranger.”

Tana nodded, reaching for Pearl and staring at Aidan. “Thank you.”

“When Pauline called me, I figured I owed you one. Maybe more than one.” Aidan bent down, so Pearl could climb off his shoulders. She came into Tana’s arms, hugging her tight. Tana could hear the bird-wing beat of her heart and smell the sweetness of the blood under her skin, but if Aidan could bear it then so could she. She pressed her mouth to Pearl’s hair and drank in the scent of her, memorizing it.

“I just wanted to be here with you,” Pearl said. Her thin shoulders shook. “I wanted to help. I didn’t know—”

“It’s okay,” Tana whispered, hugging her even more tightly. “It’s going to be okay.”

“We saw you,” Aidan said, pointing to one of the screens suspended from metal girders. “I mean, not all of it, probably, but—with Lucien, at the end.”

She looked over at them. “You saw what happened?”

“Lucien Moreau’s dead,” said Valentina, over the music. “We saw
that
. We couldn’t hear everything, but it looked like he went crazy.”

“
You
looked awesome, though,” Aidan said, and for the first time, when he smiled, his red eyes and sharp teeth seemed like a normal part of him. “Nice dress.”

“I’m sorry, Tana,” Pearl said, her fingers digging into Tana’s arm. “I thought he—I really didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t.” Tana pulled her sister off to one side so she could talk to her with some privacy. “I didn’t know, either. And that’s why you have to leave Coldtown. I can get you out, but you have to promise never to come back. Never ever.”

“But no one leaves,” Pearl said wonderingly.

“Well, you’re going to,” Tana said. “Right now.”

Pearl gave her a long look. “Aidan promised we could have fun tonight. If I can leave, can I still leave in the morning?”

Tana flashed Aidan her most vicious look. He shrugged elaborately.

“What could I do?” he asked, as though he was something other than a fearsome vampire. “Anyway, don’t you think it’s a bit unfair for her to come all this way and not have a story to tell all her little friends? You know I’m a pushover for a cute girl with big, begging eyes.”

Pearl snickered.

Tana didn’t quite trust herself to speak. For a long moment, she looked at the swings where brightly painted girls and boys dangled above the crowd, at the flashing lights, and at the cracked dome far above them. It was beautiful, in its way.

“Fine,” Tana said. “But you go back to the gate just before dawn. Promise? We’ll walk you there.”

Pearl nodded. “Can I dance with Aidan some more? He’ll protect me from any other vampires.”

He smiled his charming smile. A face like a wicked cherub, that’s what she’d thought before he’d ever turned, and it was even more true now. He might be a monster, but he was Aidan, too, and Aidan wouldn’t hurt Pearl. “Sure,” she said. “Just don’t tire him out.”

“I am the undead,” he informed her. “I am indefatigable.”

Tana watched them spin off into the crowd, Pearl’s hair flying behind her like a dark banner.

“You okay?” Valentina asked.

Tana shook her head, trying to smile to take the sting out of it, but the smile felt as if it came out a bit sickly. It was odd for everything to be over and to be both the same as before and utterly changed.

It was odd to think that, like it or not, this was her new home.

“I’m going to go to the bar,” Tana said. “See if I can wipe off my face with a wet napkin or something. That’ll make me feel a little more human.”

Valentina nodded, and Tana pushed her way through the crowd. Twice, someone stopped her to give her a high-five or to offer a round of drinks in her honor. Once, someone stopped her to offer a drink
from their shunt. She pushed away from them dizzily. She supposed that Lucien wasn’t nearly as popular in Coldtown as he’d been on television.

Spotting Jameson sitting at one end of the bar, she headed in his direction. He saluted her with his cup when she got close enough to lean against the concrete top.

“Congratulations,” he said, signaling to the bartender. A moment later, Tana had another mug set in front of her, handed over by a woman with candy-apple-red dreads who clearly didn’t care about ID.

Tana hopped up on a stool.

He clinked his glass against hers and announced, “You’re famous. You know that, right? And you’re going to be even more famous after tonight.”

She downed most of the contents of the cup, wincing. Then she poured the rest over her face. It stung, but she figured that meant the alcohol was disinfecting as it was supposed to. “You have any kind of tissue?” she asked.

He reached into his pockets and came up with an old-fashioned folded-up men’s handkerchief. She took it and wiped her face, turning it a very dark red. “Sorry about ruining this thing.”

“That’s what it’s for. Look, I’m serious about you being famous. One of only two survivors of what they’re calling the Sundown Tragedy,” he said, not sounding very sober. “The girl who drove an infected friend and a vampire all the way to Coldtown and turned them in. The girl who killed a vampire on camera. Oh, yeah, video of you has been all over the news and the blogs—the footage of you wrestling around in the dirt next to the garbage cans with that girl,
Midnight, is particularly popular. And now—you killed Lucien Moreau. You should charge for interviews.”

“I was worried Pearl was going to be mad,” Tana said. “She loved Lucien’s show.”

Jameson laughed.

“You’ve got to lock me up,” she said.
Lock me up and throw away the key.

“What about your sister?” he asked.

“She’s going home, and if I ever want to see her again, I know what I’ve got to do.”

He gave her an appraising look that reminded her alarmingly of his mother. “I know a place. We can go in the morning.” Then he hesitated. “Are you sure about this? You sure you don’t want to be a vampire? You’re here in a sea of people who’ll give you their blood. Hell, I’ll give you mine if you want to turn.”

“You think I should?” she asked, resting her head on the bar top. The air was hot with the heat of pumping hearts and racing blood, rising up off human skin. Just inhaling made her feel dizzy. It was tempting. Give in. Give up.

“It’s hard not to want that around here. They’re the top of the food chain. Apex predators.”

“So why don’t you turn? Get your mom to bring you over?”

“I’m contrary,” he said with a snort, looking out onto the dance floor. She followed his gaze and saw that he was watching Valentina as she talked with a boy in a long leather coat. Aidan and Pearl were still spinning in mad circles. “Sometimes I don’t know what I want.”

Tana liked the feeling of the cool concrete under her cheek. It
was rough and smooth at the same time, like the way she imagined a dragon’s scales might feel. “She’s pretty.”

He sighed. “Yeah.”

“She told me how great you were—saving her and her friend and all.”

Now he grinned a rueful grin and shook his head. “Oh, now I see where you’re going with this. Save your breath.”

“You don’t like her?” Tana asked and then wished she hadn’t, because if he said something awful about Valentina, she was going to hate him.

“Of course I like her,” he said, as though it was hard for him to imagine how anyone wouldn’t. “And if you tell her, I am going to make you very sorry you opened your mouth. Look, Valentina is… it’s hard to explain. She’s here for one reason and one reason only, the same reason most people give up their safe normal lives to come here—to be vampires. She isn’t looking for somebody like me. She might bring home a regular guy sometimes, if she’s lonely, but she’s not serious about any of them. She’s looking for someone like your friend out there.”

Boys were so stupid, Tana thought. “You should dance with her.”