The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (24 page)

Her best bet was probably the wooden bowl. It was already split in half, and maybe she could chip off a splinter big enough to work like a stake.

But just the thought of it, of pressing it into his chest deep enough to puncture his heart, made her sick.

Aidan sat down heavily, his back to the bloodstained wall. His lips were red. “I’m sorry,” he said miserably, and she couldn’t help wondering if he wasn’t just apologizing for what he’d done, but for what he would inevitably do. “I’m sorry, Tana.”

She nodded. “I know. Me, too.”

They sat like that, on opposite ends of the room, watching the river of light move across the floor as early morning stretched into afternoon. Aidan began to shiver, his gaze going again and again to the wall. Occasionally, he would turn to look at her with a wild light in his eyes and then turn away, breathing heavily as though he was in pain.

Think
, she told herself,
think
.

She got up, pacing the room, forcing herself to look at the trim of
door frames and baseboards, to consider what could be pried loose and used to kill him. Of course, there was another way.

If she took a little blood, his still-human blood or blood from the wall, so long as she was infected, she’d change, too.

Haven’t you ever thought about it—being a vampire?

It would be good-bye, Pearl; good-bye, Pauline; good-bye, dream of Los Angeles and palm trees and bright blue ocean. Good-bye, lying on a towel in the backyard under the summer sun, ants crawling across her foot, slippery cocoa butter gleaming on her skin. Good-bye, beating heart and burgers and having blue-gray eyes.

Kill Aidan or die herself. Die and rise.

We’ll never die, Tana.

She looked at the wall where the bowl had struck, considering the small hole halfway up the plaster, and had a sudden desperate thought.

Crossing the room, she kicked the blood-soaked wall, just above the baseboard. Even in her steel-tipped boots, her toes hurt, but she’d cracked the plaster. She kicked again, widening the hole. Maybe she didn’t have to make a terrible choice. Maybe she could put off being a monster for another day.

“What are you doing?” Aidan said, looking up at her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It might not work.”

She walked to where a sharp-looking piece of the bowl had fallen and picked it up. Then she closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and slammed it midway between the first hole and the dent.

Dust coated her skin and clothes.

Then, wedging her boot in the first hole, she reached up through
the second to the slats, gripped the wood, and started climbing. It was hard to balance, and harder, with her foot pressing down, making more plaster crumble, not to slip. And then, hardest of all, to slam the piece of bowl into the wall from that position so that she made another hole and kept climbing.

“Tana?” Aidan asked. She looked down, realizing he was standing beneath her. He had a hungry expression on his face. His mouth was slightly apart, his pink tongue pressing against one of his canines speculatively, as if testing it for sharpness.

“I think I can make it to the skylight,” she said.
Normal, normal, keep acting like everything’s normal. I’m climbing a wall as if I’m the lamest superhero in the world and you’re dying and everything’s normal.
“If the chandelier holds me and if I can actually jump on it.”

Tana was reminded of a similar exercise they did every year in gym class. Last time, she’d gotten halfway up the climbing wall before jumping off and landing on one of the mats in exhaustion. Pauline, who’d conned an ice pack out of the school nurse for her unhurt wrist so she could sit on the bleachers and avoid the whole thing, had called her a sucker for even trying that hard.

Now, she wished she’d tried a lot harder. She wished she’d practiced climbing that wall every day.

“You’re going to leave me here?” he asked her.

Tana shifted her weight, muscles straining. “When I get up onto the roof, I’ll see if I can find some way to get you out—”

He shook his head, his voice oddly flat. “It’s too late for that. I’m dying. I can feel it.”

There was nothing she could say. His skin was pale enough to be
nearly translucent, the flesh around his eyes blue as bruises. She wondered if he could feel his heart slowing, if the catch in his voice was because he was finding it harder to breathe.

“I’ll get you out tonight, then, once you’re changed,” Tana told him.

He didn’t answer, just watched her grunt as she pulled herself higher. She wished she was stronger, wished she hadn’t woken up exhausted. Sweat started at her brow and her thighs. Her arms burned. She ignored everything and concentrated on not falling.

High up the wall, she looked out at the chandelier. What had seemed a short distance to jump from the floor now looked impossible.

Beneath her, Aidan paced the floor like some kind of large, hungry cat. If she fell, if she twisted her ankle or broke her leg, she would look a lot like prey.

Jump
, she told herself.
Jump.

But she was too scared. Looking down, she felt off-balance, all her limbs shaking. She didn’t think she could do it.

Taking a deep breath, she gave herself a little pep talk:
Get over your fear of this or get over your fear of murdering in cold blood someone you care about, because those are your choices.

It was, admittedly, a pretty crappy pep talk. But it worked.

She jumped.

Her legs hit the brass arms of the chandelier, hands grabbing for the central column. She barely made it, one leg hooked over, the other dangling down, fingers flailing for a grip. Her purse strap pulled against her throat.

Plaster fell from the ceiling, dusting her in a rain of white. The
chain slipped a little, and she slipped, too, one of her hands sliding from the chandelier. Her head banged against one of the lightbulbs as the whole thing swung dizzily.

It’s going to pull free from the ceiling
, she thought.
I’m going to fall.

Straining with her remaining arm and leg, she tried to heave herself back up. She felt a sharp tug, and the strap of her purse pulled against her throat tight enough to choke. Then there was a snapping sound and the leather slid free.

Looking down, she realized that Aidan had her purse in one hand, holding it out as if he was proud of himself. He’d bitten the strap.

“Give that back!” she yelled. “Why did you—”

“Be careful,” he told her, a smile in his voice. “You don’t want to fall.”

He had the marker.
But if she let go now, with the chandelier half ripped free from the ceiling, there was no way it would hold her a second time, from a second jump.

She had to focus on getting up and getting to that skylight, even if what she wanted to do was cry.

Hands shaking and head ringing, she pushed herself back to a more secure position on the chandelier. Every time it hitched lower, she was sure she was going to fall. Every time it swung, she was even more sure she was going to fall. But she managed to get herself into an upright position, one foot balancing on an arm of the chandelier while she stood.

Reaching up, shaking and sweaty, she grabbed hold of the lever. The window pivoted inward. A drizzle of dirty water rained down, along with a few leaves.

“Now what?” Aidan called up. Then he started to cough.

She was going to have to pull herself up. It was going to be all arm strength and desperation that got her out, if anything got her out at all.

She extended her hands as far as she could and grabbed hold of the sill. Then she launched off the chandelier, scrabbling to get her chest over the edge of the skylight. That moment, when her feet had only air underneath them and she was breathing in gasps, trying to haul herself up, pure terror sparking like acid in her veins, was awful. And when she made it, upper body resting on the tiles of the roof, she stayed that way for a long moment, afraid she was too tired to even pull up her legs.

Finally, dragging herself forward, she looked back down at Aidan. The chandelier hung between them, on an angle, electrical cords ripped loose from the ceiling.

He was grinning. “Wow. That was amazing.”

Panting, exhausted, she said, “Please, please give me my purse back. I don’t know why you took it and I don’t care. Just give it back.”

“Sorry, Tana,” he said, unzipping it and rooting around inside, pulling out the small envelope. With pale, unsteady fingers, he took out the small silver disk with the computer-chip center and held it up in the growing light. “I wanted to make sure you
had
to come back. I’m scared.”

“I won’t leave you here,” Tana said, low, looking directly into his eyes, so he could see that she meant what she was promising. “You don’t need any proof of that. You know me. I’m crazy—crazy enough to come back, marker or no marker.”

“Then it doesn’t matter, right?” And he flashed her one of his exasperating puppy-dog looks. “I’ll give you the rest of the bag, just let me keep the marker. It’s my dying wish.”

Please, Tana. Please.

“No,” she said.

“Too bad.” Aidan closed her bag and threw it to her. She snatched it out of the air, angry and even angrier that he was giving her something to be grateful for.

“You better not lose that marker,” Tana said, stomach churning, resigning herself. “You better not give it to some hot kid you want to impress. It’s still mine.”

“I won’t,” he said, bringing it to his mouth and kissing it with his dried-blood-stained lips. “Come for me after it’s dark.”

Tana rolled onto her back, lying on the roof and looking into the faded blue of the sky. She was exhausted, her mind supplying only the words
I’m tired, I’m tired, I’m tired
over and over, a chant that felt more true every time she thought it.

She blinked and a shadow fell over her. She sat up to see a Latino boy walking toward her across the peak of the roof. She yelped in surprise.

He was the same boy she’d seen that morning. He had short, cropped jet hair, multicolored tattoos snaking up the dark skin of his arms, and bright gold hoops in both his ears, but no bird this time. “You okay?” he asked.

She nodded.

He walked over to the skylight and looked down into it. “They locked you in there with that boy? What’s wrong with him?”

She nodded. “Aidan’s infected. They fed him blood. He’s going to turn.”

The boy shook his head. He seemed piratical enough to fit in with Rufus and Zara and Christobel, and he’d known they were a
they
, but he hadn’t called out to them that morning from the rooftop. She really, really hoped they weren’t friends.

He stuck out his hand. She took it, letting herself be hauled onto her feet. The gentle slope of the roof made her steps unsteady, but she didn’t think she was in any danger of falling unless she tried to go fast.

“I saw you,” she said. “With the bird.”

“I live around here,” he told her. “Lived here since before the quarantine. It’s safer higher up. My name’s Jameson.”

Tana looked around at the sea of rooftops, some connected and some not. “If you show me the way to the street, I’ll buy you dinner.”

“The sun’s going down,” he said. “They call that meal breakfast around here.”

She looked up at the clouds, painted with the scarlet and gold of dusk. “Breakfast, huh?”

Jameson shrugged, walking toward the peak of the roof. “Welcome to Coldtown. Breakfast at dusk. Lunch at midnight. Dinner at dawn. And don’t expect everybody to be as nice as me. C’mon.”

Hesitating, Tana glanced back at the skylight. “He’s dying down there. By himself.”

“Everybody dies alone,” Jameson said, and kept going. “Not everybody wakes up right after. Come on.”

After a moment, not knowing what else to do, she followed him. He led her from rooftop to rooftop, until they came to a fire escape, which they clanked down noisily.

Coldtown was a city running upside down, where day was night and night was day. As they got closer to the town center, the streets filled with shopkeepers and street vendors setting up for the coming night. Kids on torn blankets selling dented canned goods for a quarter apiece called out to her as she passed. There were other makeshift stalls, one full of small generators that ran on solar power and operated by hand crank; another with an array of dresses and coats on racks; and a third with chickens and rabbits in cages. A woman stoked a fire underneath two enormous soup pots while a man on a stool stirred them furiously; a sign behind the couple promised a ladle-full of vegetable broth at half price if you brought your own bowl. A man in a top hat and red suspenders called out gleefully from behind a smoking barbecue grill, “rat on a stick, better get ’em quick, crispy and sweet, meat for a treat!”

Tana’s stomach growled, but she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to eat. She wondered if it was the infection, if it was finally going to steal her hunger for anything other than blood. At that thought, her stomach churned worse than ever.

By the time she got to High Street, her head was spinning.

“Go grab a seat,” Jameson said, gesturing to a place with small grubby plastic tables and mismatched chairs. “I’ll get us something. You can pay me back.”

She wondered what his game was, but since they were in a public place and running off might land her in a weirder or worse situation,
Tana sat. He returned a few minutes later with two plates filled with what looked like scrambled eggs with chives, a couple of warm tortillas, and two mugs of black coffee with a film of grounds on top.

“Okay,” Jameson said. “I helped you out
and
I bought you food. Now maybe you could tell me a little about the Thorn of Istra.”

Tana just stared at him. “How come you think I—”

He took out his phone, thumbed a few buttons, and pushed it across the table toward her. She didn’t understand what she was looking at for a moment. It was a blog post with a blurry photograph that Tana recognized as the one Midnight had taken with her camera phone. She must have messed around with it in Photoshop before posting, though, because the picture was brighter. Tana’s and Gavriel’s faces were recognizable, tipped toward each other in a moment before their mouths touched. His eyes were closed.