Evil Returns

by Caroline B. Cooney

  You are a vampire, she said to him. You are real.

  Inside her head the vampire raised his eyebrows.

  Her beauty trembled, unsure, not quite leaving, not quite staying.

  And I really gave you Aryssa, she admitted. And it was worth it.

  Her beauty returned. It returned with a permanency that was solid and sure. It would never slide off again. She had Aryssa’s beauty and the vampire had Aryssa.

  And it was worth it, she said to herself firmly.

  Chapter 9

  DEVNEE WALKED SLOWLY TO her locker and then slowly to the lobby. People smiled at her. They continued to remark on how nice she looked today—was it her birthday or something?

  Devnee had never been the center of anything. Even at her own birthday parties, it always felt as if the little girls she had invited were being polite.

  Today she was the center of it all.

  She had not known that beauty was literally pivotal: that heads would turn, bodies would turn, eyes would turn—all to look at Devnee Fountain.

  She had not known how differently she would stand and pose; how her chin would lift, and her head would tilt, and her eyes would tease.

  Usually she could leave school—any school, the last one, this one—in a few seconds.

  Today, what with talking and waving and smiling and flirting, it took a long time. There was so much to do, so much to say.

  This is how perfect people live, thought Devnee, stunned.

  They’re busy. Busy being beautiful.

  She laughed with the sheer joy of it and, listening to the sound of her laugh, realized that it, too, was different; not just an ordinary everyday garden-variety laugh—it was a beautiful cascade of joy. Everybody laughed with her, and the afternoon was free and soft and lovely.

  And the real Devnee—her soul, her personality—was at last where it belonged: in a perfect, matching body.

  She knew now why they had bought the house with the tower. It was because she, Devnee, was destined for beauty. The vampire had simply straightened out an error of birth. It was only right and just.

  Finally the crush of students in the lobby dwindled, as people went on to sports events, or orthodontist appointments, or the pizza place.

  And Trey came back to school.

  She saw his car coming to the front drive. Such an ordinary car for such a fabulous boy. A dull four-door sedan. Matronly. Middle-aged. And yet it didn’t matter, because with Trey on the inside it was incredibly exciting and wonderful.

  He parked right in front of the front door.

  Not allowed.

  Students had a student parking lot. Even disabled students had to park down below and come in the bottom entry.

  She wondered if handsome boys, like beautiful girls, could get away with things. Was Trey parking there because he knew nobody would tow his car?

  Trey came up the stairs, opened the lobby door, and looked around.

  He looked wrong.

  He looked off balance.

  He looked—well—spooked.

  “Trey?” said Devnee.

  He seemed to see her with difficulty. As if focusing his eyes were hard. As if she were coming and going from his sight. He walked over unsteadily and said, “Devnee. I’m so glad somebody’s still here. I just went to see Aryssa. She’s—she’s—”

  He couldn’t finish.

  Devnee’s hair prickled. Her skin stood out from her bones. Her soul stiffened. She said, “She’s what, Trey?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know how to describe it.” Trey shuddered.

  Devnee said softly, “Let’s go to the Doughnut House and talk about it.”

  “How did you know I love the Doughnut House?” said Trey, half laughing and half still upset.

  How did I know? thought Devnee, and now half of Devnee, too, was upset. She could feel the vampire tickling the edges of her mind and she hated it—that he could live there like that, that he was part of her and she was part of him.

  In Trey’s car they went to the Doughnut House. They could not find a space right in front and parked down a block. They had to walk slowly, picking their way around slush and ice piles.

  A guy in a mason’s dump truck honked at Devnee and grinned.

  A city bus driver tapped his horn and gave her a thumbs-up.

  Two men on a rooftop repairing shingles whistled.

  A woman in a store window changing the display gazed at her with the complex admiration of a plain woman for a beautiful one.

  Once inside, snuggled up to the counter and each other, they ordered hot chocolate, which she loved to stir more than to drink. Although she loved jelly doughnuts, they were messy, and beautiful girls did not risk eating messy foods, so she had a plain sugar doughnut instead.

  “See, she’s all kind of—well—lumpy,” said Trey. He ate his first jelly doughnut in precisely two bites. Two huge raspberry-running bites. The raspberry filling dotted the corners of his mouth like blood.

  Devnee swallowed, although she had nothing in her mouth but panic.

  “Aryssa is always dumb,” said Trey. “I mean, that goes with the territory.” He half laughed, half shrugged. “But this time—I don’t know what’s wrong with her. She’s kind of heavy and thick and—well”—Trey looked as if he could not figure the next word out—“ugly,” he said at last. “She’s really ugly, Devnee.”

  Ugly? thought Devnee. She looks like I used to? I wasn’t ugly! I was just ordinary. Wasn’t I?

  Trey said, “I mean, I didn’t want to spend time with her. The kind of girl that guys puke if they get stuck with. You know. A real dog.”

  Devnee was chilled. Trey could not have been with Aryssa ten minutes. Did he really judge completely, entirely on looks?

  Devnee could not help herself. She said, “Maybe Aryssa is just coming down with something. You know. A bug. A virus. Maybe in a few days she’ll feel better and all that.”

  Trey shook his head. “Nah. I could tell. This is for good.”

  “Was there”—Devnee paused, feeling her way—“anything else different?”

  “Like what?” said Trey, eating a second doughnut. Another two bites and it vanished. She wondered if the vampire’s appetite was that great. If the vampire had—

  For a terrible cruel moment, it seemed to her that Trey was also a vampire. She gripped the hard edges of the yellow counter in both hands, until the rims dented her palms, and then she looked back at Trey. No, he was still handsome, sexy, impressive.

  He said, “So, Dev.” He grinned, putting Aryssa on the discard pile with his raspberry-stained napkins. “There’s a dance coming up.”

  Her heart pounded. No boy had ever even hinted that he might like to take Devnee Fountain to a dance.

  “A Valentine’s dance,” said Trey.

  They smiled at each other; small knowing smiles.

  He said, “I hear Eleanor nominated you for Sweetheart.”

  She ducked her head modestly.

  “Come on,” said Trey. “You know how gorgeous you are.”

  She laughed.

  He said, “It’s funny. I misjudged you. I guess with new kids, it’s kind of easy. They’re nervous and you get thrown off and don’t really realize who they are. I mean—I was thinking you were—” Trey shrugged again. It was a frequent habit with him. It was, Devnee suddenly thought, almost girlish. He used his broad shoulders to escape the ends of sentences the way Aryssa had used her beauty.

  He said, “So.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  They both laughed.

  “Want to come with me to the Valentine’s dance?” said Trey. He knew she would. They both knew she would. Beautiful people, she realized, always understood what other beautiful people were thinking.

  She was in no rush to answer.

  It had also come to her that beautiful people were not desperate.

  They were not threatened. They were in no hurry. They could say yes if they felt like it … or no.

  She sa
id to Trey, “I think that would be lovely, Trey.”

  “Like you,” he said, and he preened, and this time it did not seem girlish, but more like a peacock flaring its feathers, and it came to Devnee that there was nothing to Trey but his exterior.

  He was a boy who could dump a girl in, literally, a heartbeat.

  All because that girl had a bad day.

  Inside her head, the vampire corrected her. Bad night, actually, said the vampire, and the vampire laughed and laughed and laughed, and the laugh came out of Devnee’s mouth, and Trey was startled at the length of her laughter, but he joined in, because life amused him, and beauty amused him, and as long as Devnee remained beautiful, he would remain with Devnee.

  Chapter 10

  LUKE’S BASKETBALL GAME BEGAN at 6:15. They all had to go and cheer him on.

  She was furious at this waste of time until she arrived.

  People actually turned to look at her, flinging hoods off their heads, tucking scarves down, adjusting glasses. “Who’s that?” they whispered to each other.

  “New girl,” came the answer. “Lives in the mansion at the bottom of the hill.”

  “She’s beautiful!”

  It worked everywhere, this beauty, with everyone. With adults and teenagers, with teachers and toddlers.

  A crowd of kids from the high school decorated the top two bleachers on the right. In her old school Devnee would not even have tried to join the crowd. She would have known she was unwanted and a pest. In this new school Devnee would not have tried to join. She knew how people like Aryssa and Trey saw her: as the kind of girl who never understood that you didn’t really want her there.

  But this was now, this was beauty; she climbed easily up the bleachers and people who saw her coming smiled and moved apart, knowing that she of course was going to the top.

  She hardly even knew the kids at the top, but she joined them without a flicker of concern, and sure enough, they were delighted to have her. Devnee basked in their attention, and went with them at halftime to buy candy from the fund-raiser in the lobby, and when her brother made baskets everybody in her row cheered extra hard. Not because she was related to Luke—but because Luke was related to her.

  She was the one who mattered now.

  There was only one bad moment.

  She was introduced to Aryssa’s parents.

  “Where is Aryssa?” said everybody else.

  “She doesn’t feel well,” said her parents uncertainly. “She’s under the weather.” They looked at each other, deeply upset, confused, disoriented. Perhaps they did not even know the teenage girl who had gotten up that morning.

  They were nice people.

  They reminded Devnee of her own parents. Solid, dull, uninteresting, ordinary people. How did they have a daughter like Aryssa? she wondered.

  But they don’t now.

  Aryssa isn’t, now.

  How hot the gym was. How loudly the sneakers squealed, how cruelly the cameras flashed.

  “Do you feel faint, Devnee?” said one of the girls solicitously. “Want me to help you? Somebody buy Devnee a soda.”

  Two boys bounced down the bleachers to buy Devnee a soda.

  At last, at last, she was alone in the tower. Her family had wasted so much of her time, fawning over her, complimenting her. Suffocating her. Really, couldn’t they tell she had better things to do than fuss with them?

  She was strangely angry at them. Why did they have such a light in their eyes? Where had that light been for the first fifteen years? Why did it have to take beauty to make them proud of her?

  What if they find out? she thought. What if they learned what I did to get this beauty?

  There were questions to ask. Futures to decide. Facts to learn.

  She did not bother turning on the light.

  He was more likely to come in the dark anyhow.

  She waited.

  He came by mouth, teeth first, like green shoots in the spring, moss covered. He wiped them on his black cloak and the fungus was gone, leaving stains on the cloak, leaving his teeth white and gleaming and ready.

  Her blood seemed to cease circulating, as if it knew what those fangs were for, what those teeth had been doing, what could happen next.

  All the things she had meant to say evaporated.

  Her head was as empty as her soul.

  Devnee sat absolutely still in her bed, watching the smile drip, and advance. To her surprise, her shadow joined her. In the dark her shadow was soft and fuzzy, like a friend. Like somebody on her team.

  The vampire smiled, and something phosphorescent oozed from his fangs. His mouth was a cave, and stalactites were forming even as she watched.

  She knew better than to let her terror show. She said to her shadow, “You stay here! You hear me?”

  The shadow said nothing.

  The vampire said, “A nice girl, Devnee …”

  But I’m not nice, she thought. Trey isn’t, either. He goes only by looks. But that’s what I go by, of course, and I’m not nice, either; we have proof of that now, don’t we?

  “Say what you have to say,” said Devnee sharply, “and get out. I have to get some sleep.”

  “Beauty sleep,” said the vampire, “isn’t that what they call it?”

  She closed her eyes, although it was difficult in his presence. She felt as if she needed several more sets of eyes, so some would always be open, always be a sentry to protect her in the night.

  “Yes,” breathed the vampire, “beauty sleep. A different kind of sleep than you have ever had before, isn’t it, Devnee ? A sleep in which you are beautiful! What a wonderful feeling. To be beautiful at last.”

  His voice was soft and rumbly as a purring cat’s.

  Her shadow lay back on the bed with her. She felt sleep coming, and he was right—it was different.

  “You are glad you made that wish, aren’t you?” he whispered.

  She nodded against the pillow. She was glad. How could she not be glad? Some things have a price, she thought. I just have to accept that. Aryssa has to accept that. I accepted being plain for fifteen years, now it’s her turn, so there.

  “Of course, a nice girl would give it back,” said the vampire briskly.

  Give it back?

  She opened her eyes.

  “I mean, is this really kind to Aryssa?” said the vampire.

  Of course it wasn’t kind. It was horrible.

  But—

  A hundred buts came into her head. But I like being beautiful. But it isn’t my fault. But I didn’t go out and get this beauty. You’re the bad guy! “You gave it to me,” she said finally. “It’s up to you what happens to it.”

  The vampire laughed. “No, my dear. It’s up to you. Isn’t that a wonderful thought? Aren’t you thrilled? You have the power to go back to being plain again. You have the power to decide to be dull and boring. Just wallpaper. Just another sample in the book. Just another faceless member of the crowd.” He had retracted his teeth like turtle legs; his smile was sweet and kind. “You can make Aryssa happy and beautiful again, Devnee. What a wonderful feeling! You can be kind.”

  She was holding hands with her shadow.

  Or was it an extension of the vampire’s cloak? Both were thick and cloudy and velvety. But this had a taste. It tasted of vapor and mold. She gagged slightly. She tried to remember why she had actually wanted the vampire to come tonight. She had had questions. What were they?

  “Of course,” said the vampire, “everyone has a streak of selfishness in her. Some of us more than others. But it’s inevitably present in a human being. It’s simply a matter of tapping the selfishness.” He studied his horrid fingernails in a girlish way, as if his wrinkled foil needed a touch-up.

  She envisioned him in some world alien to her own, in front of some evil mirror, inspecting himself, admiring himself.

  The vampire raised his eyebrows. “But my dear, that’s exactly what you do. I saw you today, in front of the mirror, inspecting and admiring.”

/>   “You followed me?” She was outraged.

  “I am you.”

  “Don’t be disgusting!” she shouted.

  The vampire smiled and this time held his hand neatly over his mouth, keeping his weapons delicately hidden.

  She said in a low voice, “Aryssa isn’t actually hurt, is she?”

  “Of course not, my dear. How could you think that of me? It doesn’t hurt. Aryssa is simply … rather … tuckered out.”

  Devnee was feeling rather tuckered out herself. But she doubted if it was the same thing.

  The vampire said, “Sleep well, my dear.”

  Right, she thought.

  “Tomorrow in school …” He laughed gaily, like a child going to a picnic. “You will cross paths with Aryssa. My path will be there, too, of course. Just another shadow, you will think. But of course there is nothing ordinary about my path.” The vampire smiled proudly at his dark path.

  He said, “It will happen in the lobby, my dear. Such a pretty room. All that glittering marble in which you—the beautiful stunning you—will be reflected. And as the paths intersect … yours, Aryssa’s, mine … you will have the choice, dear girl, of whether to stay beautiful … or … be kind.”

  He blinked several times, as if slamming doors with his eyes.

  He slid away toward the shutters and she felt her shadow being suctioned off her, and she clung to the shadow, holding it in her fingers, and this contest she won; the shadow was hers.

  But the choice was still to come.

  She could be nice. Or she could be beautiful.

  “Oh, what a beautiful morning!”

  It was an old, old song. Devnee did not know where it came from.

  Her mother was singing in the kitchen. “Oh, what a beautiful morning!” She could hear the shuffling slide of dancing feet. For her mother, the day, her life, her daughter—it was all so beautiful it had to be sung about and danced to.

  Sun was everywhere.

  Snow had fallen during the night, and the sun glittered on the pristine white world, and gleamed through every window and sparkled on every surface.

  Devnee went downstairs to find her family in wonderful moods, her mother trilling, her father bouncing, her brother leaping.