The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (32 page)

A thin, mad giggle threatened to burst from Tana’s lips, but she clenched her fingers hard enough for her nails to dig into her palms and waited for the feeling to pass.

“You okay?” Valentina asked. She was looking up the stairs at the people there, holding mismatched Champagne coupes in their hands. A vampire in a tuxedo looked down from the landing, his pale hands gripping the wood railing. He smiled like a ferryman come to conduct her to the realm of the dead.

Tana nodded.
Calm down
, she told herself.
Just find Aidan, get the marker back, and get out.

When she left Coldtown, she decided, she and Pauline would go on a road trip. She wouldn’t go straight home, not with her thoughts full of blood and teeth and ruby eyes. They’d go on an adventure instead—a normal one, where nothing very adventurous happened. They could head south until the money ran out. She imagined driving through the day with the windows down, slushies melting in the cup holders, the radio turned up, and Pauline singing along in the passenger seat.

Tana forced herself to move, to walk into the first of a honeycomb of high-ceilinged rooms. It was purple-walled, with a boy spread out on a table that was covered in a white cloth. A few vampires gathered around, licking the thin lines of blood welling up from shallow slices on his arms and legs, his skin already glossy with spit. His eyes were closed, but sometimes they fluttered a little, as if in dreams.

“Do you see her anywhere?” Tana whispered.

Valentina shook her head. She was trying to seem blasé, but she couldn’t quite tear her gaze from the boy and the blood. Taking her arm, Tana steered her through to a second room. There, human girls and boys, painted with latex, metal gags covering their mouths, had been manacled directly to the walls, which were covered in a pattern
of steel plates to look like picture-frame molding. Tana watched in astonishment as a man walked up to one, grabbed the girl’s wrist, and sank his teeth directly into her skin.

“They’re infected,” said a vampire in a long dress of deep red satin, corseted over her stomach and sewn with pieces of jet. It showed off a long, jagged half moon of a scar at her shoulder. Her coffee brown hair was pulled back into a tight, sleek chignon and her lips were painted the same scarlet as her eyes. “It doesn’t matter if you bite them. They can’t get any
more
infected, can they?”

Tana smothered a gasp at the sight of the woman. She was famous; Tana knew her instantly from watching clips from Coldtown and from dozens of Tumblr gifs showing her sternest expression captioned with
OMGWTF?
or
I’M FREAKING
DEAD
SERIOUS
or
NOMNOMNOM
. She was Elisabet, Lucien’s lover, rumored to be far more callous and cruel than he was. She appeared young, barely older than Tana, but her eyes were ancient and cold as lead. And there was something else about her face….

“They’ll never get any less infected, either,” Valentina said, under her breath.

“You ran away with my prize.” Elisabet pressed a cool finger over Tana’s chin, making her flinch.

“Oh,” Tana said, dread shivering up her spine. She realized with a lurch of nausea that she’d seen Elisabet before, in Lance’s house, her face so bloated from feeding that until this moment, Tana hadn’t realized who she was. She thought of the gore-streaked walls, and there was a ringing in her ears, shock drowning out all other sound.

“Where is he?” Elisabet whispered against her ear, impatient, as though maybe she was repeating herself.

Tana had no idea what to say to that. Fear made her stupid.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Tana forced out, not bothering to disguise her terror.

“My mistake,” Elisabet said, lips cool against Tana’s skin. “Enjoy the party, sweet girl.”

And with that, the vampire spun away.

Still shaking, Tana closed her eyes and let the noise of the party wash over her—the music and the conversation and the moans. Let all her thoughts go, hoping that the fear would go with them.

“What the hell just happened?” Valentina asked.

“Please tell me
she
isn’t Jameson’s girlfriend,” Tana said, and, finally, sucking in a deep breath, opened her eyes.

“Of course not. Are you crazy?” Valentina didn’t look ready to calm down. “I thought Elisabet was going to kill you and eat you right in front of me. Let’s go.”

Tana shook her head vehemently, but she thought of sharks that bumped against their victim several times before they bit down. Maybe Valentina would be smart to get far away from her if Elisabet was just circling. “We both need to find a different person. How about we split up, take a quick sweep, and meet by the stairs? We’ll take ten minutes, tops. And if one of us doesn’t show, the other goes back to your shop and waits.”

“And if one of us
never
shows?” Valentina asked, looking at Tana as if she knew exactly what she’d been thinking.

“Then I guess the other one can feel pretty lucky,” Tana said with a halfhearted shrug.

“Be careful,” said Valentina.

“You, too.” Tana took a deep breath and kept moving through the rooms, only looking back once. She wanted to turn around and tell Valentina that she’d changed her mind. She didn’t want to be alone. But it was safer this way.

Find Aidan
, she told herself.
Then go, go, go.

She came to a huge ballroom next, with a ceiling of windows like a massive gazebo, all tinted black. The panes glittered and flashed like prisms with the reflected light of three brass chandeliers, each arm in the shape of a dragon. During the day, the ceiling must flood the room with strange gray light. Tana still hadn’t seen Aidan or Midnight, but the crowd was bigger here, so she carefully picked her way through, looking for them.

From behind her, she heard a rasping voice, as brittle as dried leaves.

“
He’s here
,” it said.

She froze, transported to Lance’s party, hearing the echo of the vampires on the other side of the door. She was sure it was one of them speaking—the others were here, too, not just Elisabet. Maybe the one that had scraped her. She had to lean against one of the walls for a long moment, trying not to hyperventilate. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the vampire who’d spoken. He had white hair and long, jagged fingernails. The other one appeared younger; he was brown-haired, with a pointed chin and freckles that stood out against the pallor of his skin. Both wore matching black suits with mandarin collars.

A visceral, full-body shudder passed through her. She reminded herself that she wasn’t the one they were looking for. They were hunting
Gavriel. To bring the Thorn of Istra back to the Spider and to his prison, to pay for letting Caspar Morales go. To make sure Gavriel stayed there, mad as ever, as though the world hadn’t changed and the ancient vampires were still in charge, even if nowadays they ruled over what they barely understood. And if Elisabet had been with them, then maybe Lucien was helping the Spider—sending out his own people to make sure Gavriel wound up right back in a cell.

He’s here
, they’d said.

And it was Gavriel they were looking for, so did that mean he was at the party? She craned her neck, trying to spot him in the crowd.

What she saw instead was Lucien Moreau walking into the room, unmistakable and oddly magnetic. People turned toward him automatically, as flowers align themselves toward the sun. Elisabet was on his arm, looking as remote as she did on the Coldtown feeds.

If her beauty was dark, Lucien’s was bright. He was all careless elegance, with tousled blond hair that shone like gold and an ivory suit with the top two buttons of his white shirt undone. The bones of his face were arranged in a way that was both handsome and austere. He had an aquiline nose, finely drawn lips, and a certain gauntness to his cheeks that spoke of greater age or infirmity than the rest of him showed.

Looking past Lucien and Elisabet, Tana finally saw Aidan. He was underdressed, slouching against a wall in a black silk shirt over black jeans. Tana wondered if Midnight had picked out those clothes for him and then wondered if they’d been borrowed from Rufus.

Steeling herself, she walked over to him, giving a wide berth to any other vampire she saw.

“Tana!” Aidan said, looking incredibly pleased to see her right up to the moment when she punched him in the face.

He staggered back, and several people glanced over, tittering. Elisabet was looking her way again, which unnerved her, but not enough that she regretted hitting Aidan. She didn’t regret it a bit.

“Ow,” he said. “I think one of my fangs knocked into my cheek. That really hurt.”

She put her hands on her hips and just stared at him. She knew that he was stronger than her and about a million times more deadly, but he was still Aidan and he still hated it when someone was mad at him.

He rubbed his chin, where her fist had struck. “Come on, Tana. I wasn’t going to keep it. I just wanted you to stay a little longer. You know how I hate going places alone.”

“You are such a jerk,” Tana said. “Seriously. A huge, unbelievable jerk.”

“I know,” he said, looking both repentant and impish at once. “But you got all dressed up and came to a party, so don’t you want to have a good time? I mean, you’re already here.”

“You’ve got Midnight to party with.” Tana stuck out her hand, palm up. “Hand it over. Now.”

“What if we hang out for a while first? I’ve got stuff to tell you that you’re going to want to hear.”

“Please.”
Her anger was draining away, turning to fear. He could keep her in Coldtown forever. She couldn’t make him give back the marker. She couldn’t make him do anything.

He sighed, watching her expression change, then reached into his
back pocket and, keeping his hand cupped over it, put the marker into her hand. “You better be careful not to let anyone see it.”

She let out a breath, surprised and indescribably relieved. Despite his red eyes, despite everything, she supposed he was still Aidan, still her ex-boyfriend, still her friend, still a person. The same boy she’d met in art class, the same boy with the floppy hair who was always in love and always sincere, even when he was joking. She shoved the disk into her lion’s head purse, but not before sneaking a look to make sure it really was the marker. “Thank you.”

“The only reason I took it is because I wanted a chance to talk to you again, when things were less awful. To get you to forgive me for everything I’ve done.”

She didn’t bother pointing out that making her even madder in the service of getting forgiveness didn’t make a lot of sense. It didn’t matter now. “It wasn’t your fault. Well, some of it wasn’t your fault.”

He smiled. “Did you know Gavriel’s at this party? That’s what I was going to tell you. I saw him before, but I don’t think he saw me.”

Tana turned her head without really meaning to, but all the faces belonged to strangers. She saw the terrifying vampires in the black suits talking to Lucien and Elisabet, and despite her stupid, hopeless desire to see Gavriel one more time, she hoped that Aidan was wrong. Those vampires were hunting for him. She remembered their whispered voices through the door. She remembered the sting of their teeth against the back of her leg and the dead staring eyes of her classmates. No matter what Gavriel was capable of, she didn’t want him to have to face them.

Aidan nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I was going to say hi and all, but when I got closer, he was gone. I didn’t see where he went.”

Tana did not want to consider what Aidan might have said to Gavriel about her.

“We should go,” she told him. “Is Midnight with you? Because I think this party is going to get very unsafe in a minute.”

“She’s here looking for a new place for us to squat. She wants to find us a family of vampires. Nestmates or some crap like that, she calls them.”

“What about Rufus and Christobel?” Tana asked.

He shook his head. “What about them? She’s going to keep killing humans. She says that when their hearts stop, their souls drag you halfway to eternity as they die and for a moment you’re like some dark god staring down at the world. She scares the hell out of me, Tana. I don’t want her to be the only friend I have here.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t fair that Aidan had become a vampire. He wasn’t like Lucien Moreau or the kids who came here hoping to be turned. He shouldn’t have had to fight his impulses. No one at the farmhouse should have had to die. Whole pieces of cities shouldn’t be walled off like prisons ruled by their inmates. Children shouldn’t have to grow up trapped inside, with no way out. None of it was fair, and she couldn’t think of a way to fix any of it; and the helplessness was worse than anything else.

“Aidan, you’ve got to—” Tana started to say.

From one end of the room, from behind Elisabet and Lucien, a silvery knife came flying through the air.

The crowd parted, gasping in a single voice. The freckled vampire from the farmhouse shrieked, the curved dagger stuck deep in
his chest. He clawed at it, then began to shrink into himself, like a balloon with all the air rushing out, his skin turning desiccated, dark, and papery.

His white-haired companion stretched a long-fingered hand as if he could possibly help. As if it wasn’t already too late.

The suited vampire was curling up, fingers clenching into dried out claws. He fell to the floor, pieces of him cracking off as if he were made from the fibers of a hornet’s nest, a liquid spilling out that looked more like amber than blood.

Every head was turned to watch the spectacle, including Tana’s. She’d never seen anything like this, not on YouTube or in documentaries or in Suicide Square. She’d never seen an ancient vampire withering away to his mortal remains before her eyes. They were careful and clever and almost never died, certainly not like this. She was so stunned that she almost didn’t catch the whisper-soft sound of an impossibly fleet footstep.

She was able to register Gavriel just before he reached the white-haired vampire. Gavriel had two more knives, one glittering in each hand. Short, cruel, curved blades. He threw his arms around the vampire from behind, pulling him close in what looked like an embrace—before he jerked his arms to the sides, uncrossing the blades, and scissoring off the vampire’s head.