TEAM HUMAN
Justine Larbalestier
and
Sarah Rees Brennan
Dedication
Without Team Vampire,
the writers whose vampires
have inspired and delighted us,
Team Human would never have been.
This book is dedicated with thanks to
John Ajvide Lindqvist, Heather Brewer,
Rachel Caine, Suzy McKee Charnas,
Caroline B. Cooney, Jewelle Gomez,
Claudia Gray, Barbara Hambly,
Charlaine Harris, Alyxandra Harvey,
Tanya Huff, Alaya Dawn Johnson,
Stephen King, Elizabeth Knox,
Tanith Lee, J. Sheridan Le Fanu,
Robin McKinley, Richelle Mead,
Stephenie Meyer, Anne Rice,
James Malcolm Rymer, L. J. Smith,
Bram Stoker, Scott Westerfeld
… and all the many other talented advocates
for the undead.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE: Two Girls and a Hazmat Suit
CHAPTER TWO: Vampire in High School
CHAPTER THREE: The Deadly Allure of the Vampire in the Lunchroom
CHAPTER FOUR: Of Vampires and Humans
CHAPTER FIVE: The Great Rat Disaster
CHAPTER SIX: Home on the Range
CHAPTER SEVEN: Books as Camouflage
CHAPTER EIGHT: The Great School After-Hours Escapade
CHAPTER NINE: Farewell to Francis
CHAPTER TEN: Cathy in Despair
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Cathy in the Shade
CHAPTER TWELVE: Kitchen of the Undead
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Lovers’ Meeting. Plus Tea
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Vampire Promenade
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Kit, Short for
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Caught in a Really Bad Romance
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: A Modest Proposal from Francis
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Francis Says
CHAPTER NINETEEN: My Enemy’s Enemy Is My Date
CHAPTER TWENTY: Double Date of the Damned
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Volleyball and Sex
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Fun with Zombies
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Of Vomit and Kisses
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Clues over Cantonese
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: The Center for Extended Life Counseling
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Hard Out There for a Vamp
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Kit at Kafeen Krank
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Jumping to Conclusions
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Desperately Scandalizing Francis
CHAPTER THIRTY: Interrogation with the Vampire
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Friends Don’t Let Friends Become Undead
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: The Craziness of Humans
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: What We Found in the Basement
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Human Crazy, Vampire Crazy
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: Eternal Youth and Endless Nodding
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: Whatever Happened to Lily Jane
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: Taking a Running Leap Down the Rabbit Hole
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: Principal Saunders’s Crime
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: The Temperature of Rooms
CHAPTER FORTY: Team Human
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: Crossing the Bridge
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: Prelude to a Win
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
About the Author
Praise
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER ONE
Two Girls and a Hazmat Suit
I wasn’t feeling very enthused about education the day the vampire came to school.
Usually, since we live in Maine, it’s cold. This September, the sun was invading the sky, bright and fierce, and my best friend, Cathy, and I were hauling our bags up one of the steep streets and sweating.
I was also not feeling very enthused about vampires. But I never am.
Cathy is a different matter.
If there was a box for “vampirologist” on one of our career goals questionnaires—and there isn’t; you can be a psychiatrist for vampires, or a donor to vampires, or an academic in vampire studies, but I just made up that word to mean “a big fan of the undead”—Cathy would check it every time.
Don’t get me wrong. Cathy’s not stupid. She’s really smart: Without her encouraging me, I wouldn’t be doing AP English and history. She’s a dreamer. You know the type: reads poetry by the bucket load—Keats! Plath! Chatterton!—gets so into books she walks into walls, gets so into telling me a story she walks right into traffic and I have to grab her and yank her back to safety. She likes history more than the news and likes books better than most people. Of course she thinks vampires—since many of them are older than dirt and thus basically history books with legs and fangs—are totally fascinating.
So naturally when we looked across the street and saw the figure in the bulky black suit and helmet, like a cross between Darth Vader and an astronaut, Cathy’s eyes lit right up, because broad daylight plus person in weird suit must equal vampire. This in spite of the fact that very few vampires seem inclined to go into the sun in a protective suit when a single pinprick to a sleeve would kill them. Let’s put it this way: I’m a born and bred New Whitby girl, and I’ve seen a vampire in a suit exactly once, and it was on the news.
“Maybe he’s a vampire,” she said, inclining her head. Cathy’s too much of a lady to point at people.
I’m not much of a lady, personally, so I stared pretty openly. I wasn’t the only one.
“Or maybe there’s been a chemical explosion and that’s the member of the hazmat team who drew the short straw,” I said.
We both looked ahead at the school. Craunston High stood there like always, red brick and very solid. No flames billowing from the bay windows.
“Alternate theory,” I said as we crossed the road and headed in, a little ahead of the mystery suit. “He’s the keenest scuba diver in the world.”
Cathy returned her gaze to the possible scuba diver and took a little wistful breath: not quite a sigh, but sort of bracing herself for her latest daydream not to be true.
“He could be a vampire.”
“Yeah, I can see it,” I said. “He moves with the predatory grace of a penguin.”
Cathy bit back a smile so she wouldn’t hurt the scuba diver’s feelings. Too nice for her own good, that girl. She even held open the door so he could penguin-shuffle his hazmat butt into the school.
He inclined his big black helmet to her as he passed by and advanced into the dark hall.
Then he slid off the helmet, and I saw he was graceful after all: The movement was the way you’d imagine a knight in a fairy tale would remove his helm.
He had the kind of looks that made normal sensible thoughts turn into stupid poetry: hair like sunlight trapped in shadows and eyes that were an insane cornflower blue. A face like a sculpture on a tomb, all clean white perfect lines.
A dead person’s face.
The vampire turned those eyes on Cathy, who stood rooted to the spot, and squinted.
“Could you possibly shut the door?” he asked in a low, cool voice. “It is rather bright.”
You probably have the wrong idea about where I live.
New Whitby. The vampire city.
It’s really not as weird as people think. It’s like Las Vegas. I’m sure people who actually live in Las Vegas hardly ever play slot machines or have Elvis impersonators perform their weddings.
Lots of other places were founded by people escaping persecution because of their religion. New Whitby was founded by people escaping persecution becaus
e they were the blood-drinking undead.
We’re not all vampires. And we don’t all want to be vampires.
When our career guidance teacher asked us to make lists of professions we were interested in, vampire was not on mine.
I know vampire isn’t technically a profession. But, seriously, you should see the ones around here.
They’re pros at it. Being a vampire is their job. Vampires have long-term investments, of course. And modeling careers. The camera loves Ludmilla von Doesn’t Need Airbrushing.
That’s part of what I think makes vampires so boring. Once you’re a vampire, you don’t ever need to be anything else.
New Whitby is not only a vampire city. It never was. Plenty of humans came too. People who had vampires in the family, and people who didn’t, people who just arrived here and stayed. My mom’s family came over from China to America because of the railroads, moved across America selling stuff to the gold miners, and settled here. You wind up where you wind up, and no place in the world is perfect. There’s always something to cope with: too hot, too cold, no night life. In our city’s case, it’s way too much night life. With fangs.
But like I said, it’s not such a big deal. There are blood banks and donors these days. You’re more likely to be killed in a plane crash than drained by a vampire, even if you live in New Whitby.
There are a ton of restrictions on making vampires now, too, so most people living here don’t have vampires in the family. Except for a few vampire ancestors some people inherited, like antique chairs or the family silver, or my biology partner Laura’s crazy Aya or my friend Ty’s Aunt Sabine, who only comes over to his house on the holidays.
She gives truly excellent presents.
So sure, at night you’ll pass a vampire here and there. Occasionally you’ll find yourself sitting next to one at the movies. You’ll see vampire cops walking their beats. There’s an all-vampire division, since human cops faced with vampire criminals are at a bit of a disadvantage.
As you may have noticed, I’m not crazy about vampires. I always thought they were a bit creepy. On top of the whole blood-drinking thing, they don’t have human feelings. And after what happened to my friend Anna this summer, I’m even less keen on them.
But vampires tend to keep to the Shade quarter, and the tourists have to go there to goggle at them. New Whitby is a city like any other, except this one’s mine: stretching up steeply from the harbor, where the Nightshade came in three hundred years ago, to the high smoked-glass towers gleaming in the sun beside the spikes and slopes of Victorian buildings.
The school’s doors were also made of smoked glass. The antidiscrimination regulations mean that it’s the same in all buildings throughout the city—vampire-killing UV rays must be kept out.
Cathy shut the door with such a loud bang I jumped. But when I turned to my best friend, I saw that she hadn’t taken her eyes off the vampire. She was staring at him as if Richard the Lionheart had arrived at her house for tea. As if a miracle had happened.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “For the noise, I mean.”
“Think nothing of it,” the vampire murmured.
“Hey! My name’s Mel Duan,” I announced, in an attempt to break Cathy out of her blissful vampire-induced daze. “Is there something I can do for you? Can we point you to the principal’s office? I bet you want to be on your way as soon as possible, huh?”
I have never received any compliments on my subtlety.
“I am not anxious to leave,” the vampire said. “In fact, I have been fortunate enough to be accepted as a student in this fine center of learning. But I thank you for your offer of assistance.”
His eyes slid over me in a funny way: as if he were looking at a chair instead of a person. Mind you, he didn’t seem terribly impressed with Cathy, either. He looked beautiful and bored.
He also looked like a crazy astronaut suit full of trouble.
The vampire inclined his head to both of us in a way I knew Cathy would shortly be describing as “courtly.”
“Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Francis Duvarney.”
“Heh, Francis,” I said.
The cornflower eyes iced over.
“Not funny,” I continued. “Obviously. Not a funny name. Does anyone ever call you Frank? Frankie?”
“No,” he said, the word coming down like an icicle dropped on my head from a height, though he wasn’t all that tall.
Pretty much everyone is taller than I am.
“I’m sorry,” Cathy burst out in a rush. “I’m Cathy. Catherine. Whatever you like. I … I’m …” And poor Cathy, she stammered, and went bright red, but struggled on. “This is Mel. Um, welcome to Craunston High.”
“Thank you,” said Francis the vampire, and his eyes rested on her for a moment as if he’d just noticed her. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
That was all he said. He gave yet another tiny head bow, then turned and walked away to the principal’s office or the little vampire’s room or wherever. I didn’t care. I had other things to worry about.
Namely Cathy, her big dark eyes open wide and glowing as if she had fireflies trapped inside her head.
“This year is going to be amazing,” she said with deep conviction.
Yeah, we were in trouble.
“A vampire who wants to go to high school?” I said. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
CHAPTER TWO
Vampire in High School
“He could be a recent vampire,” Cathy said. “Not quite used to it? So he decided to finish his education? Education is important.”
“Um, no. Did you hear how he talks?”
“Oh, yes.” Cathy’s sigh could have floated away surrounded by fluttering love hearts. “He was so courtly.”
Courtly! Score one for my psychic abilities.
I also figured that Cathy would be smitten instantly and that there would be trouble ahead. All easy picks because not only has Cathy long been fascinated by vampires, she also believes in the One.
Cathy believes that when she meets the One, she will know from a single glance that they will be together forever. She’s dumped two guys summarily after about a week each, because if they weren’t the One, why bother?
I knew from a single glance that Cathy was going to be ridiculous about this.
She currently had the weirdest expression on her face: eyes doubled in size, lips parted, a kind of softening all over. I swear her lips were glistening, even though I know for a fact Cathy doesn’t wear lip gloss. Cathy doesn’t wear makeup. Something to do with skin breathing and natural health. Straight from her mom, trust me.
I don’t wear makeup either, but only because I can’t be bothered.
I grabbed Cathy’s arm and pulled her away from the lockers she was about to walk into.
Here’s the thing. Boys really go for Cathy: they tend to believe she’s helpless when she’s just distracted. Cathy’s not used to the sinking feeling you get when you realize the guy whose name you’ve been doodling in your homework margins not only hasn’t been doodling your name, but doesn’t even know it. But how else was it going to be with Francis the who-knows-how-old hot vampire? I kind of doubted he’d come to school to pick up chicks.
How would Cathy react if her love for the One was unrequited?
I feared the worst.
Wow. Francis-speak was contagious.
I was so occupied thinking of Cathy’s potential heartbreak and how to snap her out of it before it actually happened that I almost let Cathy walk right past the door to our first class.
“Cathy? Hello?” I grabbed the back of her shirt and reeled her in. “We’ve got Mr. Kaplan, Cathy. AP Local History.” I steered her into the classroom, into a seat at the back, and then flopped down next to her.
“Hey, Mel. Hey, Cathy,” Ty, my ex-boyfriend and current second-best friend, said, plunking himself on my other side.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” Cathy breathed.
“Who?” Ty asked. “Oh, never mind.”
Francis Duwhosenamewhatsit glided into the room like an Olympic skater across ice. The penguin resemblance had vanished. He folded himself elegantly into a seat in the front row, and all talk ceased.
“His name is Francis,” I whispered.
Ty giggled. I wasn’t sure if he was giggling because of the name or if it was a hysterical reaction to Francis’s beauty.
“He’s a vampire,” I added. You know, in case Ty thought he was a really convincing vamposeur.
“I can see that. What’s he doing in Local History?”
“Correcting the many inaccuracies with which your teacher will no doubt fill your heads.”
Of course, Francis had freaky vampire senses, for hunting and for eavesdropping on every word we said. Cathy blushed and looked down even though Francis had not bothered to turn.
“So,” I said brightly, keeping my eyes fixed straight ahead. “First day back of senior year. How ’bout that?”
“Do you think he’s English?” Cathy whispered in my ear. Then she glanced at Francis, fearing he’d overheard.
It was my turn to sigh. At least she’d regained the power of speech. He did sound English, but it was hard to tell with older vampires, because in the past lots of rich Americans sounded English. Most vampires claimed to have been royalty or one of the Astors or something equally snotty. Astonishing how few peasants and regular people got vamped back in the olden days, when it wasn’t regulated.
“Welcome, seniors!” Kaplan said. “Since you’re in this class, I assume that you’re hoping to get into UNW to specialize in the history of New Whitby or possibly even vampire studies.”
I wasn’t hoping to get into the University of New Whitby. I was there to keep Cathy company and try to figure out what I wanted to do with my life after high school. I was not looking forward to my first session with my college admissions adviser. My SATs were really good. Not perfect like Cathy’s, but nearly perfect. They’d help me get in most anywhere I wanted. But my family wasn’t rich, nor were we poor enough for financial aid. Mostly, though, the problem was that I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Much less what to study in college.
Cathy wasn’t really thinking about UNW either. She was thinking about Oxford. They also have vampire studies. Lots of English accents there, though considerably fewer vampires. Not that before today I’d had any inkling Cathy was interested in dating a vampire. Even though it seemed so obvious now.
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