The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (48 page)

He winced, as though she suggested he stab himself in the foot. “I don’t really dance, and she was just
imprisoned
—maybe she’s not really up for dancing.”

Tana shrugged, sliding off the stool. “Let’s go ask her.”

“Absolutely not,” said Jameson.

“Oh, so you’re just going to sit here in the shadows, watching her like a crazy person,” Tana said. “Making sure she doesn’t get in any more trouble.”

“If she does, there’s not much I can do, is there?” He took another gulp from the mug in front of him. It had a blue band around it and a crack down one side, which appeared to have been glued hastily because there was still a line of hardened clear material like a badly healed scar.

“She thought your mom was your girlfriend,” Tana said. She made a gesture to Valentina, vague enough to mean anything and then pointed to Jameson. He looked alarmed. “And she wanted to save her, because it was something she could do for you. That’s how she wound up imprisoned at Lucien’s. I bet she didn’t tell you that.”

“What are you doing?” he asked, grabbing her arm hard enough to hurt.

“If you knew what kind of week I’ve had and what kind of week I’m about to have, then you’d know you better just go along with me.” With that, she dragged him up off the stool and out into the crowd.

He gave her a murderous look, but he let himself be pulled. Valentina saw them coming and looked, if anything, more terrified than he did. Pearl ran toward Tana, though, eager for more dancing, waving up at the cameras overhead as though she was waving to all her friends back home.

“This isn’t going to change anything,” he said, under his breath.

And then they were dancing together, all five of them, sweat slicking their limbs and the music buzzing in their heads. Even Jameson was smiling as Valentina spun around him, his fingers lingering a moment too long on her hips and his gaze slanting down, shyness coloring his cheeks. Aidan whirled Pearl in his arms, lifting her into the air and making her laugh.

Tana danced until the pain in her head faded away, until her bare feet hurt from being pounded against the floor, until her body was gloriously exhausted and with every move she knew she’d won the day because she’d survived it. Valentina somehow persuaded Jameson to stay on the dance floor. He had his hands circling her waist and her head was bent toward him like a flower bends toward the sun. And Tana finally understood how the wildness of the Eternal Ball was the wildness of grief, the intoxicating dance of carnival, where one leaves oneself at home and becomes something else for a night, hoping that the old skin will still fit when one comes back to it in the morning.

The way they arranged things was that Pauline agreed to take off from camp, drive to the gate, and pick up Pearl on the outside. Tana and Aidan walked Pearl there, through the winding streets and the refuse, past the bodies and the swarms of roaches. Dawn didn’t yet blaze on the horizon, but the air had already changed, the wind bringing the warm smells of day before the daylight itself.

Tana held Pearl’s hand in hers. Her sister was getting sleepy, stumbling a little, eyelids drooping as the excitement of the night wore off.

“It’s my fault that you’re going to be stuck here forever,” Pearl said her in a hushed voice. “I messed up everything.”

Tana took a deep breath and then shook her head. “I might not make it out of here, but that’s because I might not beat being Cold. And if that happens, then I got to say good-bye to you in person. And if I get better, then I’ll figure something out, okay?”

Pearl looked very skeptical, but she nodded. “Okay.”

“And you’re going to say good-bye to Pauline for me. Give her a big hug and make her believe that I’m doing fine.”

“She’s going to see clips from the feed,” Pearl said, in the tone of someone who felt honor-bound to point out the obvious.

“Well, then,” Tana said, realizing that her sister was right. “It’s going to be even more important that you convince her that I’m fine. Don’t I seem fine?”

“I
guess
,” Pearl said.

Tana shoved her shoulder, making her grin.

They walked awhile in silence. Then, as they passed the hand-drawn sign for A Shot of Depresso, Pearl looked up at Tana and blinked. “There was a vampire boy at the Eternal Ball who said he knew you.”

“What boy?” Tana asked.

Pearl shook her head, touching the garnet necklace. “He said, ‘It’s an honor and a delight to meet you and a tragedy you’re here’—he had a weird way of talking, but he seemed nice. He started giving me a message for you, but he changed his mind.”

Tana tried to convince herself that Gavriel’s deciding not to pass along a message didn’t mean anything, but since he hadn’t spoken to her himself, that was hard to believe.

Aidan raised his eyebrows at Tana, but he kept his mouth shut.

Then it was time to lean down and hug Pearl again, to tell her that she loved her, to drink in the warmth of her skin and listen to the thunder of her heart, before letting her go at last.

Watching Pearl walk into one of the swinging iron cages alone
was the hardest thing Tana had ever done. But she did. And she made herself a promise.

She was the girl who went back to try to do the impossible thing. Outside Lance’s farmhouse when all she wanted to do was run, she’d forced herself to go back through that broken window. When she’d managed to escape from the room with the skylight, she’d still gone back for Aidan. She’d even gone back and killed Lucien Moreau. And if she could go and do all those crazy, impossible things, then maybe she could be crazy enough to save herself, too.

The next morning, Jameson locked her in the root cellar of an abandoned Victorian house, along with plastic milk jugs full of boiled water, some cans of food, a can opener, aspirin, a bunch of blankets, and whatever was left of the stuff she’d bought inside the walls. She’d attached a handcuff to one of her wrists and run the other through a chain she’d bolted to a pipe. When she handed over the key to the cuffs to Jameson, she was on the verge of telling him to forget the whole thing, to let her out, except that she was sure he’d break his promises and do it.

Eighty-eight days. Three locks on the door. Fifty-three links in the chain. One bare bulb swinging from the ceiling.

She slept for a while, fitfully, in her nest of blankets. Then she ate cold beans with a plastic spoon. Finally, she decided it was time she set up the camera before she wasn’t able to. Her hands were already shaking as she shoved the first of the battery packs into the back of Midnight’s old video camera. By the time she set it up on the tripod and plugged in the Livebox she’d bought off some kid Jameson knew,
she needed to cut the heel of her hand with the jagged edge of a can and suck a little of her blood to steady herself for what came next. Then she turned on the camera and sat down, cross-legged, on the ground.

Looking up into the shining black lens, she started. “Hi, I’m Tana Bach. I’m seventeen, and a few days ago there was a party and—no, never mind that, if you’re watching this then you’ve probably already heard about what happened there. Look, I just want to thank everybody for all the nice e-mails and wall posts and stuff. Thanks, too, mysterious and maybe even legit production company that wants to film me killing vampires, but this is what I’m going to be doing for twelve and a half weeks, so if you want to broadcast something, broadcast this.

“And, Dad, if you’re watching, don’t be too mad at Pearl, okay? It’s pretty glamorous to be a vampire. It makes sense that anyone would want that. So give her a break, okay? You’ve only got one daughter left. And Pauline, thanks for saving my sorry ass. Sorry I didn’t call you back sooner.

“And for everyone else, I thought I would show you something other than the glamour. This is what it’s like to sweat out an infection. I’ve got a bunch of water and some cans of creamed corn and I’m going to scream and beg and puke my guts up. The chains holding me are pretty good—”

Tana was drawing breath to say something else, when she heard the unmistakable sound of one of the bolts on the door turning.

“Hey,” she called. “Who’s there?”

The second bolt turned, echoing in the empty space.

“Jameson?”

Her heart thudded and she pulled against her chain, realizing the vulnerability of her position.

“Well,” she said to the camera. “Someone is coming to visit me in the secret room where I’m supposed to be holed up alone for everyone’s safety. Hopefully they’re not going to—”

The door opened and Gavriel stepped into the room. He looked around, taking in his surroundings. He was wearing black jeans and a black shirt, almost exactly what he was wearing when she met him. The only differences were that he wore heavy silver rings, shining with lapis and hematite, on his fingers and a leather bag slung across his body. He looked as strangely beautiful as ever, his features a touch too large for his face. Walking across the room, he switched off her video camera.

“Hi,” she said, unable to quite manage more than that.

He closed the door and sat in the dirt beside her. “I heard that you gave away your marker.”

She shrugged, trying to seem casual, as if she wasn’t chained to the wall of a room, as if he wasn’t the scariest guy in the city, as if she hadn’t killed his maker. “I figure that I have to be realistic about my chances. You know how many people make it through self-quarantine? The numbers are low. I might cut up my skin so bad to drink my own blood that the cuts go septic. Or I might forget to eat regular food and starve. Or I might spill my water while I’m having a fit. Better to give the marker to some little kid, right?”

“Your sister,” he said.

Tana nodded. “My sister.”

Gavriel closed his eyes, sooty lashes brushing his cheek. “I’ll stay with you.”

“What? No,” she said automatically. “No! That’s crazy.”

“I’m crazy,” he reminded her.

He’d said it perfectly matter-of-factly, and it almost startled a laugh out of her. She took a deep breath to cover the impulse. “Look, do you get what I’m going to be like? I’m going to be puking and probably pissing my pants, not to mention screaming.” Her hands started to shake again, but she pressed them together between her knees, hoping to hide just how sick she was. “I don’t want you seeing me like that.”

“Tana, when you left last night, I thought that I had no right to go after you, no right to even beg your forgiveness. And I still think it—so I am not here to ask to be forgiven for my arrogance or for what happened because of it, although I will ever be profoundly repentant. But let me sit with you through the long night. Here is a thing I can do.” He reached into the bag and drew out an odd array of manga, ripped paperbacks of books both classic and modern, and a small stack of crumpled magazines. “See, I even brought some things to read aloud. I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so there’s a bit of everything.”

“
Why?
” she demanded, because of all the things he could be doing, it made no sense that he would come here, to do this. Lucien was dead, and she was halfway sure that for some vampires, there were ways in and out of Coldtown. Gavriel could be on his way to a chateau in the Alps and drinking from girls half drowned in red wine. “I thought you were probably pissed off. I mean, you came a long way to kill Lucien and because of me, you didn’t get to.”

“No, Tana. Truly, though it must grieve you to have done it, your striking that blow certainly didn’t grieve me.” He paused, seeming to steel himself and then began to speak very quickly. “I love you, you see—and I fear I have no way to say or show it that isn’t terrible, except coming here. I would kill everyone in the world for you, if you wanted.” He seemed to notice the look that passed over her face, before rushing on. “Or not, obviously. But I thought you might rather have me read aloud—” He picked up an old issue of
Rolling Stone
from the stack, lifting it vaguely. “—and sit with you. Like a normal person who loved you might, if you had a normal illness. And since you don’t, I’m just right for what you do have.”

She started to giggle, unable to help herself. He never said anything she expected, ever, and this was no different. Clearing her throat, she tried to find the right words. “I’d rather you didn’t kill everyone in the world, yes, that’s true. And I have feelings for you, too. Big, weird, crazy feelings. It’s a rare enough thing to find someone who can see me the way I am, no less to peer down into dark parts of my heart, the parts of me even I don’t want to look at. You did that and you laughed at my jokes, too. So I’m scared, because you’re not just not
human
, you’re not like
anyone
—there’s nobody like you in all the world and it’s you I want. I want you and I hate wanting things and I especially hate admitting I want them.”

His mouth curved into a happy, hopeful smile. “So I can stay?”

Panic filled her. “No, no, no, you can’t stay. If you stay, you’ll let me out. I’ll beg and beg and you’ll let me out.”

“I won’t,” he said, shifting closer to her. “You didn’t ask me to let you out of Elisabet’s room, when you were cuffed to her bed. You
broke out yourself instead of simply asking me. Remember that? You didn’t think I would free you then.”

“This is different. Besides, I was probably wrong.”

“Hush, Tana,” he said, petting her hair. “Oh, my sweet Tana. Remember that I’m still a monster. I can listen to you scream and cry and beg and I still won’t let you out.”

His voice made her shiver with a delicious combination of nerves and calm. She remembered the footage she’d seen of him long before they’d met, imprisoned and insane underneath a cemetery in Paris, drenched in blood and cut in a thousand places. If anyone knew what it was like to be alone and in pain, it was him. For the first time since he walked into the room, she began to believe she might not have to go through all this alone. “You can’t let me drink your blood. You can’t bite me. Even if I beg you, even if I plead and threaten and lie. You have to promise. It’s the only way I’m going to get better.”

“I swear it.” His red eyes held hers. “Solemnly, do I swear.”