The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (38 page)

The woman looked at Tana and gestured toward the steps. They went to Elisabet’s room together, Tana walking beside Marisol obediently. Her skin felt tight and her teeth sore. “The bathroom is through there. Just leave your ruined dress on the floor. I’ll find something for you in her closet.” Marisol pointedly didn’t mention the ball missing from the brass headboard or the pool of saline on the floor. She smiled with a closed mouth, like she was trying not to frighten Tana.

Tana looked down at the length of the silk gown she wore—grass stains and blood, so much blood. She sighed and picked up her clutch from beside the bed as casually as she could, then she went into the attached bathroom.

The mirror above the sinks reflected her in horrific detail. Dark red gore soiled her face and stained her hands so that she seemed to be wearing smeary opera gloves. She choked back a sob. She didn’t look human—she looked like a creature lurching from a grave.

She thought of the three vampires she’d seen in Suicide Square and of Aidan sitting alone in the room on Wormwood Court, mourning what he’d done and afraid of what he might do. She wondered if this was what they saw reflected in the mirror, over and over, drunks after a bender swearing never to let themselves get so out of control again. Drunks who were still thirsty.

The memory of her hand driving the screwdriver into the vampire’s skin over and over rose up, making her stomach churn. She’d been lost in a haze of panic and then in a frenzy of hunger and now, remembering, it felt as if surely another person had been moving her hand. That couldn’t have been her squatting over the vampire’s body,
tearing his ruined throat with her teeth. That couldn’t be her reflected in the mirror, her haunted blue eyes in a mask of gore.

Turning on the taps in the shower, she let the water run as hot as she could get it. Then she went to the small covered window. The pane was the same gray glass that covered the ceiling in the ballroom, but when she pushed on it, the frame slid up, revealing a stretch of roof and letting a sliver of yellow light into the room. Tana set down on the sink counter the keys she’d taken from the vampire she’d killed, rested her solar charger out on the slate, and plugged the cord into her phone.

In the shower stall, she watched the brown water spiral around the drain. She scrubbed her skin with Elisabet’s lavender-scented soaps, even washed the soap over her tongue, hoping to get rid of the heady, dark flavor that remained in her mouth, reminding her that she would want it again.

When she got out and toweled off, she saw that the screen of her phone was alive. She had eighty texts. One from Pearl, some from Pauline or kids at her school, and lots from numbers she didn’t know.

From Pearl, with a picture of their dad asleep at the kitchen table:
Everything is weird and boring here. U better have fun fun fun and send pix so i can be jealous.

From a girl who’d graduated the year before:
This is your # right? Was my brother at the party? Is he with you? Did you see his body? No one will tell us anything.

From a number she didn’t know:
You shudda died w the rest.

From another:
We’re interested in exclusive interview with you and/or your friend aidan. 5k is on the table if you don’t talk to any other reporters.

Tana turned on the sink faucets to make some noise. First she called Jameson’s phone. It went to voice mail again, and she started to wonder if he’d lost it. Pressing her fingers against her eyes, she tried to think.

Then she pressed a few buttons and called Pauline. The sound of the familiar ring on the other end made her chest ache.

Please have your phone with you
, Tana mouthed.
Please.

Moments later, there was a clicking sound as someone picked up.

“I am going to kill you if you’re not already undead,” Pauline said, the sound of her voice making Tana grin despite everything. “Are you okay? Tell me you’re okay.”

“Sort of,” Tana said, keeping her voice low. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. A lot’s been going on, and I forgot to charge my phone.”

“
A lot’s been going on?
” Pauline repeated, yelling. “Yeah, I’ll say. I saw the video of you last night. With the vampire girl that bit you and—oh my god, Tana. Oh my god. I can’t believe you’re really calling me and I’m shouting at you.”

“I screwed up.” Tana looked at her shiny, clean face in the mirror. That was the problem with monsters. Sometimes they looked just like everybody else. But her skin felt wrong, tight like it got after a sunburn. “I really screwed up, and now I’m—”

“You did not screw up,” Pauline said. “Listen to me, you survived. You did whatever you had to do to survive. Just tell me—are you a vampire?”

“No,” Tana said, leaning against the marble counter of the vanity. “I mean, not yet.”

“So, you’re Cold? You sound okay.”

“For now. I’m trapped in a fancy bathroom in Lucien Moreau’s house and I need to get out of here. Which is why I called. I need you to get a message to someone.”

“What?” Pauline sounded completely confused.

“This guy, Jameson. He has a girlfriend who’s a vampire and she lives at Lucien’s. I don’t know her name, but I could really use her help—and his. I’m going to give you a number. Can you please just call it until you get him? He’s got to pick up eventually. Tell him they got Valentina and she’s locked up—”

“Hold on,” Pauline said. “I’ve got to find a pen.”

Tana held her breath, listening to the rustling sounds from the other end of the line. It was so normal, so totally normal to call Pauline to get her to do some dumb thing, to call a boy or give her a pep talk, or get advice, that Tana couldn’t help feeling that the familiarity was what made it seem surreal now.

She looked at her reflection, but this time she seemed to see herself through a fun house mirror, distorting her face and making the shape of it waver. It took her a moment to realize that was because she was looking through the tears in her eyes.

“I found a pen,” Pauline said. “Go.”

Tana read Jameson’s number off her own phone. “That’s
Jameson
. Tell him Valentina is locked up in the basement of Lucien’s and I am going to try to get her out tonight, just after dark. If, during the day, he could possibly take some bolt cutters to the side fence at Lucien’s so we can slip through there, that would be amazing. And if he can’t, tell him not to worry. We’ll figure it out.”

“Tell him not to worry?” Pauline repeated back.

From the other side of the wall, Marisol called, “Lucien’s waiting. Time to get dressed.”

“I’ve got to go,” Tana said. “Tell Pearl I love her.”

“
I
love
you
,” said Pauline. “So stay safe, okay?”

“Hey, so what’s the status of you and David?” Tana asked.

“Oh, shut up.” Pauline laughed and then her voice wobbled. “Don’t die and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

Smiling, Tana hit the End button on her phone and put it back on the sill. Then she glanced at herself in the mirror. To her horror, her front teeth were scarlet. She ran her tongue over her gums, tasting the salt of her own blood.

Maybe she’d bitten her tongue?

Leaning over the sink and cupping her shaking hands, she scooped up water from the faucet, took a mouthful, swished it around, and spat red. Then she snarled at the mirror. And with the blood gone, she could see that her gums were bleeding because her canines had grown longer. They weren’t as thin or sharp as vampire teeth, but they were no longer quite human teeth, either.

“Marisol,” she called in a high, scared voice she didn’t even recognize as her own.

Aidan had drank Gavriel’s blood and nothing had happened to him. What was happening to her?

A moment later, the vampire came into the room, her nostrils flaring at the smell of blood. Her red eyes studied Tana’s reflection in the mirror. “What now?”

“Look at my teeth,” Tana said in a quavering voice, pulling the towel around herself more tightly.

The vampire grabbed her head, tilting it back and then reaching into her mouth to press her finger against the points of Tana’s teeth. Marisol stepped back and shook her head. “Someone gave you a bellyful of vampire blood, I’ll wager. You’re going to be fine. It’s the way vampires used to be turned, before the world fell. They’d be fed on vampire blood until they were ready. Sometimes it would take weeks to get to the stage you’re at—you must have drank quite a lot.”

She had.

“But what does it mean?” Tana asked, her fingers going to her teeth unconsciously. “Am I going to die? Am I going to turn?”

“No,” Marisol said. “It just means that you’re
ready
to die. You’ll be stronger once you’re turned.”

Tana nodded, trying to calm herself. Nothing was wrong. She wasn’t going to wake up a vampire. Not today, anyway. It was just a symptom of infection. A symptom she’d never heard of before, admittedly, but a symptom all the same.
More toxins
, she remembered, from the speaker at school.
An accumulation of toxins.

“Okay,” Tana said, taking a deep breath and walking past Marisol into the bedroom. She couldn’t let herself seem weak. “Forget about it. I’m fine. Let’s go show off my new teeth to Lucien Moreau.”

A few minutes later, not having liked anything Marisol picked out, Tana dressed in the least formal thing she managed to find—a dark red, sleeveless leather dress—and followed Marisol through the halls. Not a single one of Elisabet’s shoes fit even a little, for which she was obscurely glad. It was creepy enough that her clothing fit so well. The leather dress hugged her skin, stretching tight across her hips. Tana’s
black hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, and Gavriel’s necklace still sparkled on her collarbone. As she walked, her tongue traced the points of her longer canines.

Marisol turned the knob of a lacquered black door and indicated Tana should enter, but she didn’t move to follow. The door closed behind her as she padded across the floor as lightly as she could in bare feet. Heavy drapes covered the windows. Lucien walked toward her as though he saw perfectly, even through the gloom. In the room were two big black leather chairs and a desk carved with griffins at each of the four corners. Tana spotted a key ring of carved bone, scrimshawed with an image she couldn’t make out, resting atop it. Three keys hung from the ring.

She’d gotten only two keys from the vampire she killed; she hoped they were the right two.

“You clean up nicely,” Lucien said. “But you’re younger than I thought. How old
are
you exactly?”

Tana wasn’t sure if she should thank him or not. She decided not. “Seventeen.”

“I didn’t believe you at first,” he went on. “When you told me Gavriel had given you the garnets. I was baffled as to why would he have given them to a mortal girl. Did he tell you about it—the necklace?”

“He said it belonged to his sister,” said Tana. She walked over to one of the chairs but didn’t sit. Lucien frightened her and fascinated her, too. She was a guest in his house, but she was also a prisoner.

Lucien snorted. “Yes, it certainly did. But that’s when I knew—when I saw the necklace around your throat. He came here to die. He must have. That’s the only reason I could think of that he would give
it away, to anyone, even to someone for whom he has such an inexplicable fondness. Did you know his sister was wearing it the night she decided her brother was dead? She believed Gavriel to be some kind of demon, a fetch who’d stolen his face. She tried to run away from him and he grabbed for her, but all he caught was the necklace. It broke and he never saw his sister again.”

“That’s sad,” Tana said.

“It was a little bit funny, actually,” said Lucien. “I mean, they were shouting at each other like they were idiot children, and then a man came to defend her honor. I think he was a cabbie, but he had several friends right behind him. Imagine, a vampire giving up in the face of a few dirty men on a street. It was as if Gavriel had entirely forgotten what he was.”

Tana had no idea what to say to that. “And he never tried to find her?” she asked, finally.

Lucien smiled, all teeth. “I found her first, you see. It’s an old story, but you might as well hear it. I thought I could make things right between them, that once she’d turned, Gavriel would be entirely happy. Katya was clever and capable—she’d made it out of Russia all on her own. So, anyway, I brought over one of my footmen. Six foot and fair of face, perfect for a lady. I sent up my card and she agreed to see me. She had one of those older, destitute spinsters who hired themselves out as chaperones. I killed her immediately.”

Tana took a breath and let it out slowly, trying to find some way to accept that he’d cheerfully announced murdering an innocent woman a hundred years ago. Dizzily, she sat down in one of the chairs, deciding that she no longer cared about manners.

Lucien grinned down at her. He appeared to be enjoying himself, as though this was a favorite story that he seldom got to tell.

“Katya was upset, of course, and even more upset when I grabbed her and sank my teeth into her throat. When I let her go, she started more of her babbling about demons, but whatever she thought was going to happen, I’ll wager she never imagined the hunger that would overtake her half a day later. She never guessed how she would take a letter opener to my poor, ruined footman’s throat. And do you know what she did after that? The idiot girl walked right out into the sun as soon as she rose from the dead.”

“She killed herself?” Gavriel had smiled when he’d talked about Katya in Paris. Surely he wouldn’t have happily reminisced about circumstances that led to her death, if he’d known. But if Gavriel didn’t know, why would Lucien tell Tana?

“Gavriel was quite put out by it when he found out, even though I had arranged the whole thing for him—it was going to be a nice surprise, a family reunion.” Lucien shook his head regretfully. “She really was a pistol, his sister. Stubborn like him and just as melodramatic.”

“He’s not…” Tana began, but she let the sentence trail off. He
was
melodramatic sometimes, and it wasn’t as if Lucien hadn’t known him for a very long while, certainly long enough to make statements like that.