The Vampire's Photograph (11 page)

Oliver headed directly through the jostling crowd, leading Emalie and Dean to the other side of the walkway, where they reached a stone railing that looked out on the full expanse of the Underground Center.

They were standing on a ring-shaped stone walkway, lined with shops, which encircled a huge, bottomless chasm. Looking down, they could see more ringed levels beneath them.

“How many floors are there?” Emalie whispered.

“Nine,” Oliver replied.

At first glance, the Center looked like a human shopping mall, arranged in the shape of a cylinder, with gleaming stores and throngs of shoppers—yet the shops were lit with torches and tubes and globes of molten magmalight. At regular intervals around the ringed levels, instead of escalators or elevators, there were only gaps. The crowds of well-dressed vampires simply walked off the edges, then levitated across, or up and down, from one level to the next. Children who had not yet mastered the forces scaled the walls like insects.

A young vampire man stepped up just beside Emalie. Without breaking stride, he hopped onto the stone railing and stepped off, levitating smoothly across the chasm to a different floor. There were other vampires out in the space, doing the same. In the center of the chasm, they veered to avoid an enormous torrent of falling water.

High above, countless sewer pipes shot out of the walls, near the high rock ceiling. The pipes crisscrossed the space, and had all been sliced open at the center. Their combined waters formed this huge cascade, which dropped down the chasm into unseen depths that were clouded by steam.

“What's down there?” Dean asked.

“The ninth level is the charion station,” Oliver explained as Emalie and Dean peered over his shoulders. It wasn't entirely dark below the ninth level. There was a faint glow of red light and heat amid the steam clouds. “Below that is the Yomi,” said Oliver. “That's the black market. I don't think anyone really knows how deep that goes.”

“Guh,” Dean muttered queasily, leaning away from the railing.

Oliver looked to Emalie, whose expression of wonder had finally returned. “I guess it's pretty amazing,” he offered. “It's really nothing compared to the Underworld cities.”

She nodded slightly, then looked around further, and suddenly her eyes narrowed. “Are those—” she whispered, “are those
Christmas trees
?”

Every level was dotted with festive trees, decorated with red lights, silver garlands, and glittering ornaments. Some ornaments were simply Skrit symbols fashioned from iron, while others were shaped like cages, with tiny lizards scurrying inside.

“We celebrate Longest Night,” said Oliver. “It's the biggest vampire holiday. Well, Festival of Waning Sun, in the fall, is almost as big, but—”

“But—how can vampires have
Christmas
trees?” For the first time, Oliver saw a look on Emalie's face that wasn't wonder or fear, but disappointment.

“Well,” Oliver said, feeling a bit defensive, “Longest Night coincides with the winter solstice. I mean—vampires have been celebrating celestial holidays for thousands of years. Besides, those aren't technically Christmas trees. There were these Germanic tribes and Wiccans, who decorated trees for the winter solstice way before people started using them for Christmas.” Oliver decided not to mention that those Germanic tribes sometimes decorated their trees with the bodies of their slaves.

Emalie gazed at him blankly. “What?”

Oliver couldn't tell whether she was intrigued or repulsed. “There's only been a Christmas for like, two thousand years,” he went on. “There's been a Longest Night for a lot longer than that.”

Emalie considered this, but then she shook her head. “Christmas is about giving and love. Demons can't—”

“We love,” Oliver said, and felt a surge of embarrassment. “And we give gifts, too, for Longest Night.” Oliver stopped himself. There was no need to get into
what
those gifts were. He thought about what to tell her next. There was one choice fact that Emalie might enjoy. “Do you really think,” said Oliver, “that the only reason the original Santa Claus snuck into human homes was to leave them presents?”

“Santa Claus is only a story,” Dean said, sounding like a sad child.

Oliver just shrugged.

“All right,” Emalie said finally, with an almost-smile. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it.” Oliver relaxed a bit, seeing that he was starting to win Emalie back over. “The presents, the legends, the costume. It's a small price to pay for being invited into thousands of human homes.”

“You're saying that he's not human,” said Emalie. Oliver raised his eyebrows. “Okay, we get it.” She glared at him, but the spark had returned to her eyes. “Where is Dead Désirée's?”

Oliver nodded. “Third floor, come on.”

Emalie took hold of Oliver's sweatshirt again as he merged back into the crowd. They passed the windows of clothing stores, where vampire models were dressed in fashionable outfits of leather and Gore-Tex; a luggage store featuring coffin trunks; several candy and cake confectioners; a skin and tooth care store where a white-coated man was bending over a customer, demonstrating the latest nano-diamond stiletto tooth file; an oil portrait studio…

Every now and then, Emalie's or Dean's gaze would cause them to stray from the line behind Oliver, and they would be jostled by passing vampires. “Heads down,” Oliver hissed. His nerves were fraying, but luckily, the vampires were busy, and zombies, as a rule, weren't worth noticing.

Oliver kept his gaze ahead, yet every now and then he was drawn to passing faces. Some looked down with disdain at his smelly companions, scowling at Oliver for being in such company. Yet others seemed to only look at Oliver. One woman's face lit with recognition, but Oliver didn't think he'd ever seen her before. Once, a man tugged his friend's jacket and pointed in Oliver's direction as they passed. He didn't know why anyone would recognize him and he didn't think this had ever happened before. Then again, he'd never been watching nervously to see if people noticed him. It was possible that they thought he was wealthy, and the zombies were his servants, though not
really
wealthy, because zombies, as a rule, weren't very reliable. But there had been that old man at the doctor's office who recognized him as well….

These moments of attention were making him too nervous. Emalie and Dean really had no idea what Oliver had gotten them into. Since they entered the center, he'd been trying to figure out how he would get them out if they were discovered. He had yet to come up with a solution.

They passed through a wide space in the crowd by the food court. Emalie strayed hard as she eyed the restaurants: There were fast-food stops, like Berthold's, which served many varieties of insects and small creatures in suspension; Xanadu's, with its thirty-seven different animal flavors of blood sorbet; a trendy shish kebab place called All Things Rodent; and the smoky, torch-lit booths of
L'organo Sanguinante
, where families and couples sat for fine dining. Oliver sped up, and as he did so, he heard a strange clicking sound in the din. It distracted him momentarily, as he tried to place the sound.

Now they reached the first gap in the floors. Oliver quickly pulled Emalie and Dean to the wall. Kids spidered around them, climbing up and down. “Grab my shoulders,” he said, placing his hands against the rock wall, “and don't let go.”

“This is so not good,” Dean said, shaking.

“Just grab him,” Emalie ordered. She locked her elbow around Oliver's upper arm. Oliver stepped up onto the wall. His foot slipped, and he wobbled for a moment. This was a lot of weight, a lot of concentration.

“Dude, dude, dude,” Dean whispered nervously.

“Tsss!” Oliver hissed icily. Dean managed to stop speaking, but his heavy breathing was relentless in Oliver's ear.

He stepped to the right, then slowly scaled down the wall. The shoulders and bags of passing vampires brushed Emalie and Dean. Their grips tightened. Oliver focused only on his hands and the wall, until he felt the floor of the third level against his feet.

They rejoined the crowds and walked another minute, until they reached their destination. A sign in understated neon script read:

Dead Désirée's Drug & Alchemy Emporium

Oliver quickly led them inside.

Chapter 9

Dead Désirée

AS OLIVER AND HIS ZOMBIE
imposters stepped through a revolving glass door, they found themselves in a stark, brightly lit store. Neat rows of orderly shelves stretched away from them. As the door slid shut, it extinguished all the hustling, bustling sounds of the center, leaving them in near silence. Tinny music drifted distantly from speakers in the ceiling. It sounded human: a mellow bossa nova. The store was very still. A pale, almost color-less magmalight gleamed from long tubes in the ceiling. The entire store seemed washed in white so bright that it made Oliver squint, and yet, a dark, grimy green lingered in the corners and shadows. The air was humid and tinged with a strong smell of ammonia, like the floors had just been cleaned.

Oliver led them down the center aisle. The floor looked tiled, but their footsteps made no sound. They passed among rows of black glass bottles and small wooden boxes. Everything was marked in white Skrit labels, what they contained a mystery for the most part, even to Oliver.

“This place doesn't seem very vampirelike,” Dean whispered.

“Désirée's not a vampire,” said Oliver over his shoulder.

“Then what is she?”

“Something more dangerous.”

“W…well can you be more specific?”

Oliver shrugged. “Nobody really knows what she is.”

“But—”

“Tsss.”

They'd reached the end of the aisle, and found themselves at a high counter. A narrow woman in a pristine white lab coat stood with her back to them. Her crimson hair was tied back in a bun. “Just a moment,” she said before Oliver had a chance to speak. She stood perfectly still, gazing into a diamond-shaped mirror with a frame made of jade. Oliver was too low to see any reflection of her in it, seeing instead only the glowing white ceiling lights.

He took the opportunity to turn quickly to Emalie and Dean. He tried to show them in a single glance that here there was even more danger than in the crowd they'd just left. He should have given them more of a warning about Désirée, but it was too late now.

“Now then, how can I help you, Oliver?”

Oliver turned back to find Désirée looking down at him pleasantly. Her face was plaster white. She wore thin glasses. On first glance, she looked delicate and pretty. Oliver was surprised that she knew his name, but then reminded himself that he shouldn't have been. Désirée was known to have
sight
. There was much debate as to what Désirée actually was, but no one questioned it too much, mostly because it was rumored that Désirée didn't appreciate such questions, and as nearly everyone needed something from her, no one wanted to upset her.

Now she looked over Oliver's hooded companions. When her eyes moved back to Oliver, they seemed to gleam with understanding. Still, all she did was smile. “A photo experiment, is it?”

Oliver found that his throat was tight. “That's right.”

“I thought your parents told you not to play with cameras?” Her smile broadened and, as it did, Oliver noticed something odd about Désirée's face. It seemed like when she moved, it took her skin a second to catch up. In fact, it was almost as if her
real
face was
beneath
this white plaster front, moving on its own, and that the face they could see was only a mask that could barely keep up. Oliver felt like behind Désirée's pleasant smile, there was a wider grin, with darker teeth. Like behind her mild lavender eyes, there was perhaps a different set of eyes entirely.

“Yes, they told me that,” Oliver answered. He figured it was no use lying to her.

“And yet you want to develop this photo anyway? Interesting,” Désirée purred. “Curious about what remains out of focus, aren't you?”

“I…I just want to see it.”

“Is that all?” Désirée's head swiveled slightly, and lumps seemed to move beneath her mask, as if whatever was below was rolling about, enjoying the lies. “Wouldn't you say that you're looking for a bit more than that?”

Oliver shrugged. “Sure. I…I guess.”

“Well, good.” Désirée nodded. “I, for one, think it would have been best for you to know long before now.”

“Know what?” Oliver asked.

Désirée's face slowly lost its smile. “What you want to find out.” Before Oliver could reply, she spun around and stalked off into the shelves of medicines. “I have just the thing, of course.”

“She's not normal,” Dean muttered.

“Tsss,” Oliver hissed. Suddenly, he heard that muted clicking sound again, and here in the quiet of Désirée's, he recognized what it was. He turned, and out of the corner of his eye, saw Emalie holding open her jacket ever-so-slightly—

Oliver spun and caught her hand before she could snap another photo with her camera, which she had hanging around her neck.

“Don't,” Oliver said icily. “No more.”

Emalie's face drained. “I—”

“You'll get yourself killed.”

Emalie slid her jacket closed, face pale. “I wouldn't have gotten caught,” she muttered stubbornly.

“Now then…”

Oliver turned to find Désirée emerging from the shelves. Her smile took a moment to stretch back to life. She placed a black bottle on the table, labeled with a white rune. This Skrit had an odd-angled, diamond border. It indicated another world, yet Oliver wasn't sure which. He was pretty sure that diamonds meant higher worlds, yet the angles and lengths of sides were unique to each one, and his class hadn't studied those yet.