Rachel Caine & Kristin Cast & Claudia Gray & Nancy Holder & Tanith Lee & Richelle Mead & Cynthia Leitich Smith & P. C. Cast (20 page)

Just like the vampires, she slept during the day, in the brightest sunlight she could find, her black coat covering her like a shroud. Even though she had never been a Catholic, she prayed to the God of the crucifix, because crucifixes could hold the vampires at bay. She wanted to pray in St. Patrick's Cathedral but it was too dark and enclosed; she could almost hear the vampires hissing in the chapels lining the sanctuary. Her lips were cracked and chapped. She was filthy. But maybe God would help her anyway.

High rises burned down to ash; cars exploded, and the vampires capered on stacks of the dead. And Jilly staggered through it like the last victim of the Apocalypse. No one hooked up with her and she didn't make any effort to take on a sidekick or become one. She had to get to Eli; at least she could die with him.

So she kept skirting the crazily burning buildings in her tattered bad-fairy gear, the indigo in her hair bleached by the sun and coated with dirt. She showed people the photograph of him she always carried in her coat pocket.
No, Jilly, no, Jilly, no, Jilly, no Jilly, no Jilly, no no no sorry, loser.

She kept waiting for the fires to burn down, burn out. The smoke took a toll on her; the air smelled like someone barbecuing rotten hot dogs; she felt it congealing in her lungs and coating her skin. Five days after her birthday, she was so tired she could hardly breathe anyway, which was a sort of blessing because maybe she would die and then she could stop everything. Escaping the bad was also one of her habits. She was empty, outside and in, just a husk. If a vampire tried to suck her blood, it would probably find nothing but red powder.

She really thought that the time had come for her to die. She thought about her parents, and her friends, but mostly she thought about Eli Stein. He had been her first and only love, before he had realized he was gay. She still loved him; she would always love him, no matter what form his love for her would take.
Brainbrain, go away, obsess again some other day. . . .

He was crazy-mad for Sean instead and she hoped. . . .

No, she couldn't even think that. If she went anywhere near praying for something to happen to Sean. . . .

Beneath her coat, she fell asleep and dreamed of Eli, and Sean; because in the summer after tenth grade that was who they were, Eliandsean, like one person, like the person she had hoped to become with him. Once Eli had found his other half, they had come to her house almost every day, because they could hold hands there.

They could brag about their slammin' skillz on their skateboards and video games like any other teenage boys, and they could flirt with each other and sit on the couch with their arms around each other while Jilly's mom brought them sodas and grilled cheese sandwiches. They were amazed and delighted by the acceptance in Jilly's house. Tolerance, in her house, came after a hard struggle, won by determined parents who never let go of Jilly, even after she ran away with a biker, shaved her head, and told her shrink there were no bones in her hands.

It was all crazy in a new way; taggers wrote VAMPIRES SUCK over every surface there was, and people tried to share whatever information they'd learned about them: They were mindless, they were super smart; they had a leader, it was all random. They lured you in with dark sexuality. They attacked you like animals without a plan. It had something to do with global warming; they were terrorists. They were a plague created by the government.

She saw plenty of them. White-faced and leering, they darted down streets and stared out of windows, like terrible Will Smith CGI effects. She didn't know how she hadn't been
killed yet, with all the near misses. One thing she did know, they were more like people than beasts. Just very evil people. Their birds were mindless attackers, but the vampires themselves listened to music and went joyriding on motorcycles and kept the subway people alive so they could go on rides;
it's a dead world after all
.

After another near miss—a vampire turned a corner just ahead of her, and she turned on her heel and ran, hard—she broke down weeping, her thin stomach contracting; and then God must have taken the hint, or felt guilty, or whatever, but He/She/It/They did something miraculous:

It began to rain. Hard. Buckets poured down from heaven like old lady angels washing their doorstoops; gallons and rivers tumbled onto rooftops and treetops like all the tears of all the New Yorkers, like all the blood that had gushed out of the necks of the dead.

And the rain toned down the fires just enough that she soaked her coat and then raced through the fire line, arriving on the other side into some kind of hellish otherworld; everything was covered with gray and white-bone ash: trees, buildings, abandoned cars, rubble. She shuffled through layers of powdery death.

And there it was.
There it was.

Eli's row house. With the formerly turquoise paint and the American flags and some kid's ash-colored tricycle overturned in a pile of ash like strange granular leaves. Then she thought she saw a shadow move across the window, and she stared at it for a long time, because she had actually made it, and in her heart she'd expected there to be no signs of life.
There were no more shadows and she wondered if she had gone crazy or died and imagined the whole thing. By then, Jilly was certain the dead could be as crazy as the living. She staggered up the stoop stairs, kicking up layers of death that made her gag and choke.

She knocked on the door, but no one answered, and she pushed it open.

Eli and his father faced each other in the living room with the old tapestry of the Jews at Masada hanging over the upright piano. Eli looked taller and thinner, his dark hair long as ever, and he had a semi-beard. He looked like a leftist rabbi in the NYU sweatshirt she had given him. Mr. Stein was still Mr. Stein, in a navy blue sweater and dark trousers.

Mr. Stein was shouting. “You stupid faggot, you're going to die out there.”

“Just shut up!” Eli shrieked. “Stop calling me that!”

“Eli,” she whispered from the doorway. “Eli, it's me.”

They both turned.

“Jilly!”

Eli whooped, gathered her up, and hugged her against himself. She felt as light as a desiccated leaf, unbelievably dizzy, and reeling with happiness. Eli was alive. He was safe. And he was still here, in his old house, living indoors, with his parents.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” he asked; and then, before she could answer, he said, “Have you seen Sean?”

“No,” she said, and he deflated. She saw the misery on his face, felt it in the way he nearly crushed her.

In the kitchen, his gaunt, black-haired witchmother was
cooking
, as if nothing had changed. They had electricity, and gas, and as Jilly smelled the hot food—onions, meat—her mouth began to salivate. She burst into tears and he held her tightly, swaddling her in himself. He smelled so good. So clean. Almost virginal.

His father's eyes bulged like an insect's and he stared at Jilly, as if she were an intruder.

“I've been trying to get here,” she said. “Everything was on fire. And then the rain came.”

“The rain,” Mr. Stein said reverently, glancing at the tapestry.

“Now we can look for Sean,” Eli said.

“Don't speak that name,” Mr. Stein snapped.

For God's sake, what do you care about that now?
she wanted to snap back at him. But she took Eli's hand and folded it under her chin. She saw the layer of ash-mud on her hands and wondered what she looked like. A zombie, probably.

“I was just about to leave, to search for him,” he said, bringing her knuckles to his mouth. He kissed them, then laid her hand against his cheek. His tears dampened her skin, like more rain. “He called just before it happened, from midtown. I don't know what he was doing there. We had a fight. I was lying down.”

Eli searched Jilly's face with his fingers and she felt each brush of his fingertips close a wound the long days and nights had cut into her soul. There was no one she loved more. She would go to her grave loving Eli Stein.

“Of course you're not leaving now. Look at her. She looks like she's dead.” Mr. Stein had never liked her. Not only was she formerly a mad slut, she wasn't Jewish, and her family had given Eli and Sean safe harbor to commit their carnal atrocities.

“You need to fix the door,” Jilly said. “Or at least to lock it.”

“I thought it was locked,” Mr. Stein said. He looked at Eli. “Did you unlock it?” He walked to the door to check it, passing close by Jilly so that she had to take a step out of his way. He grabbed the door; she heard a click, and then he turned the knob.

“It's broken.” He glared at Eli. “Did you break it?”

“Dad, why would I do that?” Eli asked.

“Maybe vampires tried to get in last night,” Jilly ventured. “You need to put up some crucifixes. They really do work.”

Mr. Stein crossed his arms over his chest. “Not normal,” he muttered.

“Dinner is almost ready,” Mrs. Stein announced from the kitchen, smiling weakly. Jilly wondered where on Earth she had found a brisket. In the still-working refrigerator of their house, she supposed.

Eli gave her a look that said,
My parents have lost their minds, obviously.
He had some experience with mental illness, since he was her best friend.

She didn't smile, even though, as usual, they were thinking the same thing. It wasn't funny. She didn't know who was crazy and who wasn't.

“You could take a shower, Jilly,” Mrs. Stein continued.

Jilly was too weak and exhausted to take a shower. But Mrs. Stein gave her some mashed potatoes and a piece of cheese and they energized her enough to stagger into the bathroom. For the first time in weeks, she was a few degrees less afraid to be enclosed in a small room; to take off her clothes; to stand vulnerable underneath water . . .

. . . and then Eli was in the bathroom, taking off his clothes too. He climbed into the shower and wrapped his arms around her, sobbing. She started to cry, too, naked with her best friend who did not want her the way she wanted him; they clung to each other and mourned.

“He's out there,” he said. “I know he is.”

She turned around and leaned her back against his chest. It was so unreal that she was here. To just walk through their door. . . .

“Your parents are probably out there having a fit,” she said, her eyes closed as she savored the pleasure of mist, and warmth, and Eli.

“Are you crazy? They're probably dancing in circles. ‘He's in there with a girl! He's not gay! He's not a faggot!'” He mimicked his father's voice perfectly. Then he added softly, “What about your parents?”

She raised her chin so the water would sluice over her face. Her silence was all he needed.

“Oh, Jilly. Jilly, God, what happened?”

“I can't talk about it. Don't say anything. I'll never stop crying.”

He laid his hand over her forehead. “I'll only say that
they were so good to me. And in Judaism, goodness is a living thing,” he whispered.

“Thanks.” She licked her stinging lips again.

Head dipped, he turned off the water. Then he toweled her off and retrieved some neatly folded clothes set out by his mother in the hall. A pair of sweat pants swam on her and belled around her ankles. There was a black sweater, no bra. Not that it mattered.

He put back on his clothes, laced his fingers with hers, and took her into his room. There were pictures of her everywhere—at school, at their first Broadway play, holding hands in Central Park. The ones of Sean outnumbered them, though. First there were a lot of pictures of just the two of them, Eli and Sean, the brand-new boyfriends; and then, of Eli, Sean,
and
Jilly, as Eli brought the two “together”—mugging for the camera, practicing for a drama skit, their very silly trip to a book signing at Forbidden Planet. Sean looked pissed off in any picture she was in. Didn't Eli notice?

She stretched out on the blue velour bedspread, feeling as if she had just set down a heavy load of books. It was incredible to her that he had been sleeping on this wonderful bed, in his own room. She didn't even know if her building was still standing. She could go back, get more clothes, get her valuables and money.

Eli would go with her. They could look for Sean on the way.

She dozed. Eli spooned her, holding her; each time she inhaled, he exhaled. It had been that way in the early days, for them. When Sean came along, he added something
new; he was a literal breath of fresh air. Even Jilly had been charmed by the surfer dude who had lived in L.A. and knew movie people who might be able to help her. He talked about working as a stand-in. He hung around stunt men. His uncle had rented out his surf shop as a movie set.

But once he was sure of Eli's love, he changed. She saw it happen. Eli didn't. Maybe changed was the wrong word; around her, he became chilly and disinterested, and she knew he was never going to introduce her to anyone in the industry. But Eli didn't see it.

Sean had actually been a kind of vampire. He sucked up anything he wanted; he drained Eli's friends and class-mates by using them to advance up the social ladder, then blindsided them with his snotty I-am-mean-and-because-I-deserve-to-be-you-must-permit-it attitude. She could almost predict when he'd show his other face. Jilly's mom used to say they should give Sean the benefit of the doubt because he had been through a lot. Any guy who was gay had suffered. So they had to be nice to him, even though he was a jerk. She knew what her mom was not saying:
We put up with your bad behavior. Welcome to the real world—the one that does not revolve around you.