“For now, we just wait,” Stevie Ray said. “The Scullens told me they’re planning to move on in a couple of years anyway—people will start to notice when they don’t age—and they won’t come back here until we’re all long dead.”
“They might be back in a generation or two, though,” Eileen said, her knitting needles clacking. “You don’t mind that? That they’ll seduce our great-granddaughters, like they have that pretty little Bonnie Grayduck?”
“I don’t know that it’s seduction exactly,” Stevie Ray said, “as far as I can tell it’s more like true love—”
“Demons cannot love!” Edsel boomed.
“Hard to believe,” Levitt drawled. “When us humans are all so loveable.”
“We wait,” Stevie Ray said again. “All right? No one do anything. No one talk to any of these people—or these things, yes, Father—until we have a reason to. The Scullens haven’t done anything that warrants… direct action.”
“But if some more of those traveling vampires come through,” Levitt said. “Those we can kill, right?”
“I guess… I guess, yeah,” Stevie Ray said. “If we can, we pretty much have to.”
“Long as we get to kill something,” Levitt said, and bid them all goodnight.
BIRTHDAY PARTY
FROM THE JOURNAL OF BONNIE GRAYDUCk
About a month after the Fall Formal, when the leaves had all dropped off the trees but the snow was only just starting to come down, Edwin came to pick me up for my birthday party. It was supposed to be a surprise party, but for a guy who has a bona-fide double life that must be protected from discovery at all costs, Edwin is pretty lousy at keeping secrets, and enough hints had dropped that I’d picked up on things—mostly when he said he had a “big surprise” for me on my birthday over and over again.
I was secretly hoping his present to me would be the dark kiss of vampirism, but I didn’t expect that. He was pretty stubborn about being unwilling to risk my life and my soul. Our sex life wasn’t progressing as much as I wanted, either. He kissed me pretty regularly and copped the occasional feel, but we hadn’t even graduated to dry humping, let alone wet humping. Edwin was still too concerned about killing me not-so-softly if he got too excited, and our make-out sessions often ended rather suddenly with him literally jumping out the window. He said he was gradually becoming used to my scent, though, and had hopes that someday we’d be able to consummate—after we got married.
Yes. That’s right. He dropped the A-bomb. The abstinence bomb. I think I just gaped at him, because he was so matter-of-fact about it—“Don’t worry, we’ll make love on our wedding night,” some crap like that.
I said, “So… wait… you don’t want to sleep together until we get married?”
“I think we’re both worth waiting for, don’t you?” he said, and I remembered he thought I was a blushing virgin. Edwin really was from another time, I had to remember that, and his dad was Argyle, who was so old he came from a time where they probably killed you with rocks if you had sex out of wedlock. Craaaaapppp.
Were Garnett and Rosemarie and Hermet and Pleasance married? Turns out, yes, they were, in ceremonies presided over by Argyle. Not a legal marriage—it’s tough to have one of those when all your identity papers are forgeries and you have to pretend to be your own children or whatever every few decades—but one the Scullens and Scales considered totally binding.
Mrs. Bonnie Grayduck-Scullen didn’t exactly trip off the tongue, but if that’s what it took to get some hot vampire loving, I’d go along.
So: not getting turned into a vampire, and not getting laid. But he was still smart, strong, funny, and so beautiful I was content to spend hours just staring at his eyelashes, and I had to remember, we had time. Patience isn’t my virtue, but Edwin was a hundred years old, so it made sense he didn’t want to rush into anything.
I put on a pretty dress for the party (with leggings, even though I hate leggings, because there’s no other way to wear a dress and not freeze in October in Lake Woebegotten. Though I heard October wasn’t so bad, and that it wouldn’t really start to get cold until November, when most days would barely get above freezing, and things would get steadily worse and stay mostly frozen until April or so, which I had trouble wrapping my head around. Too many years in Santa Cruz, and only hot muggy summers spent in Lake Woebegotten before that—I just wasn’t prepared. And while I had a boy to keep my bed warm, he didn’t actually come through on the warm part unless he’d drank down a whole deer recently. I’d have to sacrifice my thong-and-tank-top for long underwear and flannel pajamas soon, which would probably inhibit my nightly subtle attempts at seduction considerably.)
Edwin picked me up in the Jeep, and his jaw dropped quite gratifyingly when he saw me. “You look good enough to—ah.” He chuckled.
“Good enough to eat? Don’t you dare. Besides, I’m eighteen years old today, no longer young and tender, but old and stringy and tough.”
“You still smell fairly fresh to me, my love, and happy birthday to you. You’re older than me now, you know—not in calendar time, but in body-time.”
I put my hand on his thigh as he drove, piloting the Jeep with his usual supreme and casual confidence. “My boy toy,” I teased. “We definitely have a May-December thing going on.” I tried to keep my tone light, but it was the one sore point between us, really—his reluctance to turn me.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “And talking to Argyle. And—don’t laugh—even praying. And, if you’re really sure, that you want to become one of us… Argyle thinks there’s a way to make the transition less dangerous.”
My heart started beating faster. “Really?”
“He’s been studying it, you see, the mortality rate, and he thinks it has to do with the period of transition from life to… unlife. The moment can be long or short, you see, and if it’s long, as it often is, the brain is starved of oxygen, and the… subject… dies. He’s noticed that the ones who turn successfully turn quickly, for whatever reason—metabolism, genetics, he isn’t sure—while the ones who turn more slowly never turn at all. He believes, with the right equipment, a breathing apparatus to keep oxygen flowing to your brain, and a more clinical approach—injecting my venom into your veins instead of letting me bite you, as is more traditional—that the chances of success would be much, much higher than otherwise.”
“I… that’s… wow, Edwin.” It wasn’t quite what I’d envisioned—him tearing my clothes off and sinking his teeth into my neck and ravishing me as I transformed—but I’d give up erotic romance for a hospital bed if it meant I got to live forever and have superpowers.
“Don’t get too excited,” he said. “He wants to study the problem more—he isn’t confident enough in his research to do it soon—and we both strongly believe you should go to college and think about the possible transition for a few more years. We can get married before you go to college, now that you’re of legal age, if you want to. But my father points out, rightly, that you and I are in the first throes of love, and while I do not expect my feelings for you to ever diminish, Argyle counsels caution. But if, in five years time, if you still love me, and you still want to become one of us… We can do that.”
“If you weren’t driving,” I said, “I would jump into your lap and kiss you so hard your fangs would poke holes in your lips.”
“I’m happy, too,” he said solemnly. “If it can be done safely, and if we take time to make sure it’s definitely what you want, I believe it could be good for us. To be together, always.”
“I’ll still be pretty hot at twenty-three,” I said thoughtfully.
“And that way there will still be time for us to have a child,” he said, casually, and at that, dear reader, my blood froze. Well, not literally—that would wait until I was a vampire and I went outside in Lake Woebegotten during January, I guessed—but very much figuratively.
“Ah,” I said.
“Four years of college,” he said, breezy as all hell. “Then, a
fter you graduate, we focus on getting you pregnant. The baby will be born, and then we’ll turn you. Unless you want to stay human long enough to nurse.”
“Um,” I said.
“Argyle says human-vampire offspring are incredibly rare, but not unheard of—it’s hard for a vampire to mate with a human without eating their partner, you see—and they tend to be like living people, but incredibly long-lived, with their rate of growth dramatically slowed in late adolescence. They’re generally granted some of the powers of their vampire parent without the need to feed exclusively on blood.
“You definitely want children then?”
He looked at me, surprised. “You don’t?”
We’d never discussed it. Because I was seventeen. But I could see by the surprise on his face that he’d just assumed we were absolutely simpatico on this issue, even though it had never once come up. He couldn’t know that I thought of pregnancy as a form of horrible parasitism. That having a human being come out of me was one of the most disgusting things I could imagine. That I wanted to be a beautiful perfect immortal vampire, not an immortal vampire with immortal stretch marks or an immortal c-section scar or an immortal stretched-out-vadge. Barf wretch shudder puke.
But fuck it. I could pretend to be baby-crazy for a few years, and take steps to make sure I didn’t catch pregnant when the time came.
We made it to the Scullen house, where Edwin did his super-speed thing and opened the door for me and helped me down. I’d been over a few times since the day Gretchen interrupted the game (though, fortunately, they hadn’t played any more hockey). I liked going over to their place, but there were drawbacks, like the fact that they never turned on the heat (being vampires and immune to the cold), and never had anything to eat or even drink except their weird-tasting well water from the tap. Rosemarie was always a total bitch, but she usually disappeared into her room within two minutes of me getting there and didn’t try to murder me again (that I noticed), so that was fine.
But, in true birthday party fashion, when I walked inside, they were all waiting, even Bitchmarie, and they shouted “Surprise!” A big banner with my name on it hung over the ondium Martenot. They even had a chocolate cake with buttercream frosting (just a small one, since no one else would be eating it—as Edwin said, “Vampires can eat human food, but then, you could eat used kitty litter, but why would you want to?” To which I replied, “You’re right, for me, it’s unused kitty litter exclusively, because I have standards.”
After they sang to me, which was weird, because vampires have eerie beautiful singing voices so it was like a choir of heavenly or possibly fallen angels singing “Happy birthday,” Ellen presented me with a knife. Not a cake knife, because why would they have one of those? but a big old butcher knife with a blade that almost twinkled with its sharpness. Edwin had told me once how they strung up deer and pigs and drained their blood to keep on ice and drink later, and I guessed this knife had sliced its share of animal arteries, but it was clean enough now. “Go ahead and cut the cake,” Ellen said.
I pressed the blade into the table, and they were all standing around me talking and laughing and teasing me about my age… and then someone bumped into me.
I didn’t know until later that it was Rosemarie, but yeah, it was Rosemarie. The knife slipped and sliced into the meaty part of my other hand, the one I was using to hold the cake plate steady. It was a fairly deep cut, and a bright gush of blood welled up. I hissed at the pain, and said, “Ouch, be careful,” snatching up a napkin to press against the wound.
I realized they’d all gone totally silent. I looked up, and all of them except for Argyle were staring fixedly at my rather profusely bleeding hand, and they’d all popped their fangs and started drooling.
“Everyone be calm!” Argyle shouted. “Resist, resist!”
But Garnett made a long low growl in his throat and launched himself at me.
Now, Edwin had gone all vampy too at the sight of my blood, but he had more self-control than his pseudo-brother, and he shouted and threw himself between us, knocking Garnett aside so hard he hit the ground and bounced. Argyle—grown immune to the call of blood through his years as a doctor, I guess—actually picked up a couch, threw it on top of Garnett, then jumped on the couch to hold it down. Meanwhile, Edwin grabbed me in his arms and carried me out of the house, running faster than I’d ever experienced before while I clutched my wounded hand.
He ran me all the way back to my house in minutes—my dress was ruined by the high-speed run—putting me down in the woods out back and then stepping ten feet away from me. He was pale, shaking, and looked terrified.
“Are you okay?” I said. The napkin was all crusted against the wound by drying blood, which stanched the flow, at least.
“Am I okay? Are you?”
“It’s only a flesh wound,” I said, trying to joke, but he didn’t seem to find it funny. “I can’t believe they reacted that way.”
“The blood,” he said. “The smell of it… you don’t understand… the whiff of good scotch to a bunch of alcoholics… a pile of white cocaine to a recovering addict…” He shook his head.
“Well, okay, but I mean… I’ve been over to your house when I was on my period before and nobody tried to eat me.”
He made a face. He was surprisingly squeamish about stuff like that—mortal bodily functions, I mean—but then, he didn’t even poop anymore, so it kind of made sense. “That’s not… pure blood. I mean, let’s say you like wine—that doesn’t mean you’d like wine liberally mixed with bits of shed uterine lining. But after you cut your hand, the blood that poured forth—that was pure, and the sight of it, combined with the smell, and you must remember, you smell good…” He sat down on a rock and held his face in his hands. “You could have died. Garnett could have killed you. Any of them could have.”
“But they didn’t,” I said. “Everything was fine.” I sat beside him and put my hand on his arm but he jerked away and stood up.
“What about next time, Bonnie? What if you fall down the stairs and split your lip? Any wound, however trivial, if it bleeds, it could…” He stood up. “This was a bad idea. I knew it from the first, but I wanted you so much, I tried to will it into being a good idea. But you’re human, Bonnie, and we are monsters, and I can’t protect you, certainly not for a few years until you’re absolutely sure you’re ready to be a vampire—”
“But I am sure! I’m sure now! Do it now, and I’ll have nothing to fear!”
“Bonnie,” he said, his voice full of anguish, “You’re so young.” He took a step back, even farther away from me. “This has to end. I’d rather have you live without me than die with me, Bonnie. And I’d rather go back to my hollow sham of a life than be responsible, even indirectly, for the end of yours.”
I stared. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“I’m sorry.” He reached into his pocket, took out some small object, set it on the rock, sighed, looked at me longingly, and then—poof. He ran, departing so quickly I almost didn’t see him leave.
“Edwin!” I shouted, and I know he could hear me, his hearing was amazing, but he didn’t come back. I felt dizzy, and short of breath, and like the world had turned upside down and been shaken very, very hard. That morning I’d been looking forward to marriage and vampire-dom in a few years, and now… now I was vampire dumped.
I looked at what he’d left on the rock. A little black box, square. I opened the lid.
A golden ring, set with the biggest diamond I’d ever seen in real life, sat nestled in the velvet folds.
“Son of a bitch!” I shouted. He’d been planning to propose. At my birthday party. The “big surprise” he’d mentioned hadn’t been the surprise party at all. Shit, shit, shit.
I ran to Marmon and drove to the Scullen house. The chains blocking the roads here and there were padlocked, and I didn’t have the key, but Marmon can roll through chains like I’d walk through spiderwebs, and before long, I was in their driveway.
But
no one else was. All the cars were gone. They’d locked the door, but the locks in Lake Woebegotten in general are a joke, and I blew through the back door, which didn’t even have a deadbolt. Inside, the furniture was covered in dropcloths, and the closets were empty. They’d cleared out and fast. I found my birthday banner and the remains of my bloody cake inside a neatly tied-off garbage bag on the back porch.
I prowled all through the place, hoping for some hint of where they’d gone, but there was nothing… except a note, block-printed and unsigned, in Rosemarie’s room. It read, “Shame about you cutting your hand like that, you clumsy little skank. Someone as accident-prone as you shouldn’t be allowed around people like us. This is for your own good.” I crumpled the paper in my fist. I knew it was from Rosemarie. She’d planned this, known Edwin was going to propose to me, and rather than try to simply kill me again—probably because Edwin was onto that, after the hockey puck incident—she’d bumped into me, made me cut myself, knowing it would freak Edwin out. She’d probably been planting seeds in his mind about my vulnerability for weeks.
I sat on her unmade bed. They were gone, in the wind, and there was no way I’d find them again. I felt a wave of black ennui and despair wash over me, and in that cloud, I trudged out of the house.
I didn’t even have the energy to burn their house down in a fit of pique before I drove back home.
MOPED
FROM THE JOURNAL OF BONNIE GRAYDUCK
I was in a bad way for about three hours. Harry, who’d planned to have a special birthday dinner with me, instead found me sitting inside playing his zombie killing game, brutally mowing down hordes of the undead with a chainsaw. I wish it had been a vampire-killing game instead.
The Twilight of Lake Woebegotten Page 21
