Companions of the Night

by Vivian Vande Velde

  "I thought there were only five of them to begin with," Ethan said, by which she took him to mean he didn't have any idea.

  She spotted Ian's bear, Footy, on the floor, half under a couch cushion, and all the courage and resolve ran out of her She knelt on the floor to pick him up and began to cry, rocking back and forth, unable to stop.

  Ethan gave her about fifteen seconds. "Kerry. Kerry, there's nothing here." He took the bear from her and set it back down. "If the police return, we don't want them to know somebody's been in here " He forced her to get up, walked her through the house to the back door But he gave her another few seconds to stop crying, so that her noise wouldn't attract the neighbors' attention.

  Back in his car once again, he handed her a handkerchief, and she asked, "Do you think they could have left a message at your house?"

  He hesitated. "No."

  "Well, we know they can't have left one at Regina's," she snapped, remembering all the gasoline and seeing again the dark smoke rising in the night sky.

  No answer.

  "You each had more than one house, didn't you?" she asked. "Different places bought under different names so that if you felt one was unsafe, you could go to another. Damn vampire caginess."

  Still no answer.

  "And you're afraid to let me in on your secrets."

  He didn't like her use of the word afraid, she could tell.

  "You're afraid that if somehow I get away from you, I know too much already, and I'll be a threat."

  He didn't deny it. He didn't even deny the implication that her getting away was the only way they'd part company.

  "Damn it"—she wasn't in the habit of swearing and realized she was doing more in his company than she ever had previously—"Marsala is missing, my family is missing, and all you're interested in is maintaining vampire secrets."

  "Do you want out?" he asked very, very softly, so that she could have no doubt exactly what he was asking.

  "I want to find my family." Her voice came as a frightened squeak.

  "And I want to find Marsala," he said. "Help me get to him, and we'll find your family."

  "Where do we look?" she repeated yet again.

  "Where would you go," he asked, "if you were a vampire hunter whose plans were going awry, whose companions had been killed, who knew there was a good chance the vampires knew who you were—where would you go at night?"

  "You make it sound like he isn't looking for us."

  "I don't think he is, not at this point. I think he's hiding."

  "Then we'll never find him!" she cried in dismay.

  "Depends. Vampires have a lot of experience hiding. This guy hasn't. He'll stay in Brockport rather than go to Rochester, where he'd have more options—"

  "Why?"

  "Why will he stay in Brockport, or why would he have more options in Rochester?"

  "Both."

  Ethan started the car, which she thought meant she'd asked one question too many and he wasn't going to answer any. But he just must have been getting nervous about hanging around her neighborhood too long and attracting the attention of someone who might recognize her.

  "He'll want to be with people. He'll figure, rightly, that a vampire wouldn't walk into a crowded room, grab hold of him, and kill him in front of witnesses. A vampire's main defense is the general public's lack of belief in vampires."

  "A vampire could shoot a person," she said, speaking in a general sort of way and trying very hard not to think of specific vampires hurting specific people, even if those specific people had hurt her family, "or run him over, or push him out a window, or kill him in some other nonvampire way so that witnesses—"

  "And get away and elude the police, also in some nonvampire way. It's possible. But, still, his best chance is going to be in a crowd."

  "All right," Kerry conceded.

  "The trouble is—for him, of course—that vampires are used to hunting in the night, and most humans live in the daylight. In a big city like Rochester, he could have his choice of well-populated nightspots."

  "But you don't think he's gone to Rochester."

  "One," Ethan said, "he knows Brockport better than he knows Rochester. Two, he has friends in Brockport They may not be good-enough friends to trust with his suspicions that there are vampires, but if we do come after him, he'll be more inclined to trust his life with people who know him than with strangers in a city, who might just turn their backs at the first sign of trouble. Three, if he's to have any chance at all to catch us, he knows you won't leave Brockport, because of your family. Four, I can't have been the only person to recognize him—"

  "More reason to lose himself in Rochester," Kerry interrupted.

  "He won't have run. Not if he ever expects to come back to Brockport. The police have already questioned him. He's pointed out that he has no motive at all to harm your family or the passengers on the school bus—and, in fact, he doesn't even know any of you; he's a respected member of the community, he wasn't anywhere near the school-bus crash Right?" he asked.

  She nodded.

  "But still, he looks remarkably like the man who did it. The police have questioned him, they've told him to stick around, so if he suddenly starts taking off for Rochester every night, they're going to get suspicious."

  Kerry sighed. "Does all of this bring us any closer to knowing where he is?"

  "Well, we've just eliminated Rochester."

  "Wonderful."

  "And the Brockport possibilities will reduce drastically as the night wears on: stores in the plazas will shut at nine, most restaurants around midnight, bars at two..."

  "Some restaurants are open twenty-four hours," Kerry said. "And both supermarkets."

  Ethan nodded. "The Student Union stops serving alcohol at two, but the cafeteria is open all night. The dorm lobbies always have somebody around."

  "The college clinic," she added. "Where do we start?"

  "None of them. It's not even seven-thirty. He isn't going to hang around just one place between sunset and dawn—that's more than twelve hours. That would raise too many questions. At this point, he could be anywhere. We'll start looking as it gets later."

  "What about my family?" she asked, then pointed out, "People would surely notice if he was dragging two prisoners around with him. He can't have them with him."

  Ethan briefly closed his eyes, as though weary of hearing about her family. "Obviously not," he agreed.

  And that was all he said.

  He thinks they're dead, she thought. She refused to believe it, as though her hope alone could prevent it from being so. "Well, then," she said calmly and evenly, so as not to rile him, "where will we go until it's time to start looking?"

  "My house." He gave her a sidelong glance. "The one you know. I might have been wrong: there might be a message there."

  She raised her eyebrows. First an apology for not telling her about Marsala, then an acknowledgment that he might be wrong, both in the same night. She went from pleasantly surprised to alarmed as the thought occurred to her that he might have given in for some reason she couldn't guess, some reason that would mean no good for her.

  THEY DROVE AROUND his block twice, to make sure no one was parked or hanging around nearby watching.

  "No heartbeats?" Kerry asked.

  "No heartbeats," Ethan acknowledged.

  Also no messages.

  At least, none in the living room, which was where Ethan led her and which, presumably, was the only part of the house he was willing to have Kerry see. It was the same room she'd been peeking into the night she'd first come here, the night this had all started. It was hard to believe that was Thursday and this was only Saturday.

  The decor was elegant—rich, but much more subdued than at Regina's. Old money was the phrase that came to Kerry's mind. She wondered if the house reflected Ethan's tastes or those of the previous owner. Was there an uncle, vampire or not? Or had Ethan himself owned the house all along, coming and going every generation or so, staying only
so long as it wouldn't be apparent that he wasn't aging? That would be a shorter time for him than it would have been for Regina, who could have passed—stretching just a bit—anywhere from late twenties to early forties. Ethan probably wouldn't be safe for more than five years in any one location, which had to be a serious inconvenience. She found herself wondering, not for the first time, whether he had somehow chosen to become a vampire, or had the choice thrust upon him by someone else.

  Either way, she thought, they should have waited. What was it like to pull up roots every five years, to have to get used to a new place, make new friends?

  She realized she was thinking like a human rather than a vampire His friends were all vampires, for whom he didn't have to pretend. The humans of his acquaintance would be nothing more to him than potential meals.

  Thinking of his meals made her uncomfortable, here, alone with him, as he sat on a chair across from her, watching her silently. Was that why he had brought her here?

  She stood, and his gaze followed her as she walked nervously around the room, stopping, eventually, at the piano. No dust, but no music on the rack, either. "Do you play?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  Her mother had taken her to Suzuki piano lessons from the time she was five till, worn out from fighting about practice, Mom had let her drop it at age eight. How much would it have hurt, Kerry asked herself, to practice fifteen minutes a day? Would Mom have run off to Florida if Kerry had been a better daughter? Kerry positioned her right hand over the keys and played the first thing she had learned and the only thing she remembered: "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," each note played six times to the beat of the phrase "Mississippi hot dog."

  "It'll be a long night if I'm in charge of entertainment," she said.

  Ethan came and sat on the piano stool. He played a classical piece, something very lively and complicated that sounded vaguely familiar, as though it had possibly been used as part of a movie's soundtrack.

  "Beethoven?" she asked, which was the only classical composer who came to mind.

  Ethan winced. "Mozart."

  She couldn't guess if he didn't like Beethoven or if he just thought she should have known the difference.

  "Was he from your time?" she asked.

  "Mozart's timeless." He began playing something different. "This is Beethoven."

  "How are vampires made?" she asked.

  Playing the piano wasn't enough distraction to let him be caught off guard. "There's absolutely no reason for you to know that."

  "Professor Marsala seems to think it's a process that takes place over time, that I can be part vampire and yet still human enough to ride by day on a school bus. Either that, or he thinks you're part of our family, and the message was meant for you all along, and not me."

  "Professor Marsala is wrong," Ethan said. "Either way. The process of becoming a vampire takes all of a few seconds." He switched midmelody to a hyperkinetic version of the already fast "Minute Waltz," then switched again, this time to the Righteous Brothers' slow and haunting "Unchained Melody."

  Kerry wondered if the length of time he'd played "The Minute Waltz" was the actual amount of time it took to change from human to vampire, or if he just couldn't keep up the pace.

  "Familiar with this?" Ethan asked. "The words were written by a human—as far as I know—but it sounds like a vampire song."

  She thought he might sing, but he didn't. "Do you choose?" Kerry asked. "To become a vampire? Or is it like an infection?"

  "Oh, there's a choice," Ethan said. "There's always a choice To one extent or another." He rested both arms on the keyboard, creating a discordant jumble of notes that was especially jarring in the middle of the soft melody he'd been playing. "Sometimes people become aware there are vampires in their midst, and they seek to become one. For the power. For the immortality. Believe me, you've seen the worst of it these last two days; it can be a seductively appealing life. Sometimes, after one of a pair of lovers becomes a vampire, the other may choose to become one also."

  Regina? Kerry wondered. "Sometimes...," she urged him to continue.

  Ethan gave a tight smile. "Are you aware that you can't kill yourself by holding your breath? Your body needs the oxygen and unless you're holding something in front of your face that blocks your mouth and nose so that it's suffocation instead of breath holding—unless you're doing that, eventually your body takes over for your mind and takes that breath. Sometimes the choice is like that."

  "To die, or to become a vampire," Kerry said. Some choice.

  "The vampire who made me," Ethan said, "drank my blood to the point where I was dying. I hadn't known before then that he was a vampire."

  "He? You mean it wasn't Regina?"

  "I thought we discounted that story ages ago." Ethan sounded surprised she'd believed any of it. "I knew, as I lay there with my heart straining to continue pumping what little blood remained, what he was. And I knew, when he bit his own wrist and held it out to me, what he was offering. Not the details, of course. But I knew And I chose." He held his arms out in an and-here-we-are gesture "Not everybody makes the same choice, of course. But there's no way a vampire could force enough of his blood down a victim's throat against the victim's will. So there is a choice."

  He put his fingers back on the keyboard and began playing ragtime.

  Which seemed a deliberate effort to change the mood. Which Kerry thought was a very good idea. "Is this from your time?" she asked.

  "Joplin? No."

  "Good," she said. "Now we're getting somewhere. Was he born before or after you? And if you choose to answer that, could you also tell me when was Joplin born?"

  Ethan laughed.

  "Is there any way to stop being a vampire?"

  "Certainly."

  Kerry considered, then asked, "Any way that doesn't involve killing the vampire?"

  Again the laugh, more genuinely amused this time. "That does make it more difficult." But then, after a moment, he added, "Yes. So, you see, there are choices after choices."

  "Something finally occurred to me," Kerry said, "during one of our long, silent rides."

  He was good enough to be able to watch her without missing a beat of the complicated syncopated rhythm.

  "I thought Regina was French because she called you mon cher, but that was absolutely all she ever said in French. You, however, swore in French when you were so upset you forgot yourself."

  He continued playing, continued watching her, not looking at all upset at the mention of Regina. Did he periodically throw fits and tantrums just to keep her off balance? she wondered.

  "So," she said, "I figure you're French, or were originally."

  In the middle of the ragtime piece, he played the opening measures of "La Marseillaise," the French national anthem, giving it, too, a ragtime beat before switching back to the original tune.

  "But you've been here long enough to lose any trace of an accent."

  "Does this speculation eventually lead somewhere?" he asked.

  "I was just wondering, which is older, you or America?"

  "Ah," Ethan said, "are you referring to Columbus's discovery of America or Leif Eriksson's?"

  The question left her breathless, to think that Ethan was somewhere between 350 and 1,000 years old.

  "Joke," he said, seeing her face.

  But she wasn't sure that it was.

  And, in any case, he never did answer her question.

  Chapter Fifteen

  IT WAS PAST midnight when Kerry couldn't take the waiting any longer. "You don't have to say it," she said. "I know I'm not going to like it—but what's the plan?"

  Ethan paused the tape to which he was listening and lifted the headphones from his ears. "What?"

  He was learning, he had said, conversational Japanese, though he wasn't practicing out loud. No doubt he was too arrogant to risk stumbling over pronunciations in front of a witness, even a witness who wouldn't have any idea how far off he was. She figured this was final proof, if she n
eeded more, that he was incredibly old. She knew she'd have to be incredibly old before she'd spend her time teaching herself Japanese.

  Kerry suspected that he'd intentionally plunked her down in front of the TV on a night with no good shows so that she'd be bored enough to fall asleep while he pursued his own quiet activities. She'd had enough sleep during the day, she told herself, her eyes were getting droopy simply out of force of habit, because it was past midnight. I will not give him any opportunities, she told herself. Even fighting would be better than the risk of sleeping while he was awake.

  "The plan," Kerry repeated. "Is there one?"

  Ethan glanced at his watch, then put the headphones down and turned off the tape recorder completely. "I was planning," he said, with just the slightest emphasis on the word planning, "to throw you to the wolves."

  "Could you be more specific?" Kerry asked with what she considered admirable calm.

  "You said, when you first agreed to help me, that you could go places I couldn't. This is one of those occasions. If we walk into whatever place Marsala has barricaded himself, he's likely to do something foolish."

  "Like?" She had a scene in mind straight out of Saturday-morning cartoons, with the professor sitting on boxes labeled TNT and DYNAMITE, holding the detonator on his lap.

  Ethan shrugged. "Something loud and attention getting. He might accuse us of being the ones who caused the accident with the school bus, or admit that he was the one but claim that it was in an attempt to capture us—for whatever reason he might think up to accuse us—and he'll demand that the police be summoned. Or he might start shouting that he has proof that we killed Regina—or at the very least burned down her house I don't know; he might claim that I picked his pocket or you propositioned him, or he saw us trying to steal money from a cash register. Whatever. Something to cause a scene, to focus attention on us. And to keep the attention on us till sunrise."