The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (44 page)

Tana went after, Valentina right behind her.

Jameson grabbed Valentina by the shoulder as soon as she was away from the fence, gripping her tightly and looking at her with a devouring gaze. “I would have gone for you,” he said, not quite making sense. “You should have told me and I would have done it instead, whatever it was.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Valentina said, clearly not sure what he thought had happened.

For a moment, Tana thought that Jameson would kiss Valentina, but he dropped his hand, turning toward his mother as she ducked between the bars and swinging the flamethrower off his shoulder.

“Thanks,” he said. “So, let me guess, you’re going straight back to Lucien?”

“Not tonight,” said his mother, glancing back at the house. It glowed with dark light. “Tonight I’m sticking with you, kid.”

Over their heads, the white crow was circling.

Tana thought of Pearl, on the lawn one late summer day, her pale hair tangled because she’d cry if anyone tried to brush it, spinning around and around until she got so dizzy she fell in a pile of bare feet and dandelions and sundress.

Pearl, who was probably coming straight to the place Tana was running from. If Tana went out, scouring the streets, calling Pearl’s name while Pearl went straight to Lucien, if something bad happened, Tana would hate herself forever.

She remembered a late-night episode of one of those shows on the
History channel with a bunch of professors talking about monsters. It was one of those memories that came with the feeling of the scratchy afghan over Tana’s legs as she sat on the couch; the smell of microwave popcorn; and Pearl stretched out on the old rug, stacking up LEGOs.
The monster is bigger than human, it represents abundance—overabundance
, the white-haired man had said, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose.
It has lots of eyes, extra arms, too many teeth. Everything about it is too many and too much.

That was how she felt, right then. As if there was too much of her, as if her skin was tight with muchness. She felt ripe to bursting.

And she remembered what Gavriel had said when she’d woken up handcuffed to a bed.
Being infected, being a vampire, it’s always you. Maybe it’s more you than ever before. It’s you as you always were, deep down inside.

Maybe this was who she always was. Always shoving all that muchness down deep inside her where no one had to see.

And once she’d found Pearl, how long before she became the monster her mother was? How long before the infection sank so deep down into her blood that all she could think of was how to get warm again? How long before Pearl was just soft skin and a beating heart? She might be herself still, but she’d be herself hungry, a self she didn’t know yet. Herself with the brake lines cut. A self she didn’t trust to do anything but kill.

“Give me the crossbow,” Tana said as calmly as she could. “I’m going back inside.”

“What?” Valentina spun toward her. “No!”

“I have to.” Tana pulled out her phone, opening her photographs
and flipping to one of her little sister a year before, hair in pigtails. “Pearl’s on her way here; this is what she looks like. I need you guys to do me one last favor. Please, find her.”

Marisol started to object, but Jameson just nodded. “Yeah, of course. Your friend Pauline says that Pearl couldn’t have made it inside before today. She might not even be through the gate yet. We’ve got this. Finding strays is my specialty.”

Tana handed him the phone. “Please, please keep her safe.”

He nodded, looking sidelong at his mother. Then he took his own cell from his back pocket, handing it to Tana. “Here, I’ll call as soon as we know something.”

She tucked it into her bra, overwhelmed with gratitude.

Valentina looked back at the house. “Just don’t take any chances in there,” she said. “The ancient, insane vampire doesn’t need your help.”

But what if he did?

Never again
, Tana had promised herself.
No matter what, she was never going to let anyone get the better of her ever again. No more mistakes.

“I’m through believing things will work out on their own. I’m going to kill Lucien Moreau myself,” Tana said, taking the crossbow with the wooden bolts from Marisol’s hands and setting it down on the ground, so that she could unclasp Gavriel’s garnet necklace from around her throat, the token for leaving Coldtown safely inside. “When you find my sister, give her this for me.”

Valentina took the necklace and promised that she would.

Tana hefted the crossbow, tracing her thumb over the smooth
wood and cold metal as she watched them leave, Marisol gliding into the shadows as though made of shadow herself.

I’m going to kill Lucien Moreau myself
, Tana repeated and this time she allowed herself to finish the thought.
I’m going to kill Lucien Moreau myself or die trying
.

CHAPTER 36

Dead men bite not.

—Theodotus

W
hen Pearl got off the bus, she took a cab, and when the taxi let her off—past a checkpoint with an obnoxious guard—the driver took a long look at her.

“How about I drive you back, kid?” the woman asked, leaning out the window. She had big hair, dark and braided in a way that made it appear as if she wore a crown. “No charge. Now that you’ve seen it, you don’t need to stick around a place like that. They’ll eat a little thing like you and still be hungry.”

“No thanks,” Pearl said, and went inside the building. She’d already ignored a bunch of calls from home, so she wasn’t going to let a stranger rattle her.

She didn’t feel nervous until she was sitting on a rough concrete bench, signing forms that had words like
waive all rights
and
national threat
. Once she’d said that she was infected, they’d hustled her right through the building as if she were a bomb about to go off. No one tried to convince her this was a bad decision. No one even looked at the marks she’d made on her inner arm in preparation.

But it wasn’t until she was hanging above the city in an iron cage that she began to think that maybe she’d made a mistake.

Coldtown didn’t look the way Pearl expected. In all the videos, it seemed as if it would be an endless party, full of beautiful and well-dressed people, but the streets were mostly empty and lined with garbage. And it was big, really big, with buildings stretching out toward the far walls. Pearl started to wonder if maybe it wasn’t going to be as easy to find her way as she’d figured.

After Pearl had seen Tana’s fight with the blue-haired girl at Lucien Moreau’s, after she’d watched the girl sink her fangs into Tana’s neck, Pearl had gone straight onto the fan message boards. There were lots of gross boys being perverts, chatting back and forth about how much they liked watching the girls wrestle. She ignored them and wrote her own post, asking if her sister was okay. For a tense hour, she didn’t hear anything.

As she sat on her bed refreshing her browser, she kept thinking about what her Grandma and Grandpa had said, about how it was her job to look after Tana. She couldn’t do that if they didn’t live in the same place. If she’d gone to Coldtown with Tana, they could have stayed in one of the old warehouses by the water. They’d have hung out with Aidan and gone to parties instead of school, and what happened to Tana would never have happened, because Pearl would have told her that girl was bad news. But maybe now it was too late to do anything.

Then, finally, one of the board moderators private-messaged her. His name was Nicholas, and he said her sister was doing okay, but if she came to Coldtown, Lucien was interested in meeting her.
Don’t tell anyone
, he wrote her.
Think of how surprised your sister will be
.

And that was what she thought of the whole ride there. All she had to do was find her way to Lucien Moreau’s house. She’d imagined that would be easy; she figured she’d just ask people and they’d show her the way.

As she walked through the streets, though, no one looked safe enough to approach. A group of thin and dirty strangers stood around a burning trash can, cooking something on long shaved sticks that looked a lot like bugs. They seemed more likely to steal her stuff than help her.

She’d seen lots of feeds from Lucien’s, though, and some of them had exterior shots. All she had to do was find the part of Springfield where the big old mansions were. She was sure she’d know the house when she saw it. Invigorated by this idea, Pearl started marching toward the area of the city with the brightest lights.

“Hey,” a voice said, and she spun around. A girl with curly blond hair and a tatty sundress was leaned against a brick wall, bag slung over her shoulder, smoking a cigarette that stank of some spice. “You need a place to stay?”

“Not exactly,” Pearl said, feeling shy. “I’m looking for my sister and—”

“I’ve got a friend who knows a lot of people,” she said, peeling herself off the wall. “It’s not safe on the streets around here. We all travel in a big group. Runaways, just like you, right? You should come with me.”

Pearl hadn’t really thought of herself as a runaway. After all, it wasn’t like she didn’t know where she was going. It wasn’t like she was going to be by herself. And there was something scary about the girl, something not right about the way she spoke, as though all the words were rehearsed.

“Thanks,” Pearl said, “but I’ve got to find my sister.”

“My friend would really like you,” said the girl, smiling a smile that seemed a little too wide to be real. “Come have dinner with us. You’ve got to be hungry, right?”

“No, I—” Pearl started when the blond girl caught hold of her arm, fingers digging in.

“Okay, enough with being nice.” The girl started dragging her toward an alley. “You’re coming with me.”

Pearl tried to jerk free, scrabbling at the girl’s fingers. The girl reached into her bag and came up with a knife in her other hand, the kind that chopped vegetables, that was normally in kitchens. “I
said
I wasn’t going to be nice.”

Pearl screamed.

The people by the trash can glanced up briefly, but none of them moved.

The girl pointed her knife at Pearl’s chest, making her go abruptly quiet.

“Come on,” the girl said. “Don’t be such a baby.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” Pearl asked quietly, her voice shaking.

The blond girl didn’t answer. She was looking past Pearl, her eyes widening. Suddenly, she dropped Pearl’s arm and started to run.

Pearl hadn’t thought it was possible to be more scared, but anything that had terrified that girl had to be really, really bad. She felt light-headed with fear, as though she was going to pass out if she turned around.

She pressed her eyes shut. Then, taking a deep breath, she whirled and opened them, poised to scream, her throat hoarse from all the screaming she’d done already.

Aidan was smiling at her, his floppy brown hair falling over his ruby eyes, his sharp teeth evident, as he crossed the patchy asphalt.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said.

Behind him, from the shadows, came a second vampire.

CHAPTER 37