The Wolf House: The Complete Series

by Mary Borsellino

  “Everything all right?” Alexander asks coolly, one eyebrow cocked. Jay nods, quirking his own eyebrow in return.

  “Sure.”

  “Hm.” The sound is noncommittal, like Alexander isn’t sure yet that he’s got the full measure of Jay, but he returns his focus to the mechanics spread in front of him. “Blake, if you’re planning to let a kitten loose in here while I’m working, I hope you understand that things will end very badly for it and for you.”

  Blake’s smile is teasing. “I’m tempted to call you on that bluff.”

  “Then you’d quickly discover that it’s not a bluff.” Alexander’s voice is bored and mildly irritated, but Jay can see the ghost of a smile on his mouth.

  “Kitten?” a new voice calls from another room. “Did I hear that right?”

  Like Alexander and Blake, this third vampire is young and lovely. He looks as if he’s in the last years of his teens, as if he’s only a little older than Jay. Like all vampires, his irises are the darkest shade of red, black in all lights but the most direct. His hair is a light, curling brown, brushing uncombed against the collar of his mustard-colored linen shirt. His jeans are frayed at their hems and his green canvas sneakers look to be on the verge of total collapse, and these are the first signs of wear Jay has seen on any vampire’s clothes. He feels surprised at himself that he’s never noticed that before, the way vampires hide their sometimes ancient ages by dressing in brand new clothing, making what is timeless and unchanging look simply freshly made by association.

  “This is Jay,” Blake says as the vampire crouches in front of the carrier beside Jay’s shin and reaches his fingertips through the wire grille to stroke the kitten. The kitten mewls at the attention, then bites at the vampire’s fingers. “Jay, this is Timothy.”

  “Is that safe for her?” Jay asks.

  “Yeah,” the vampire—Timothy—answers, “our blood doesn’t hurt animals. Is she yours?”

  “She’s yours, actually,” Blake says. Timothy looks up in surprise, then launches himself at Blake in an enthusiastic hug. Blake staggers a step under the force of the spring, grunting in surprise, and Jay can’t help but laugh a little under his breath. Seeing ever-superior Blake subjected to the small indignities of being pounced on is too much fun not to laugh at. Jay’s eye catches Alexander’s and Jay sees that he’s not the only one enjoying the sight of unflappable Blake being flapped.

  “You are my favorite,” Timothy declares, still clinging to Blake. Alexander objects with a pointed clearing of his throat, and Timothy waves a hand in his general direction. “You’re also my favorite. But right now Blake gets extra bonus points for the kitten.”

  Jay looks away, letting his gaze fall on the bookcases, on a shelf full to bursting with tattered paperbacks. When vampires form groups, the bonds are deep and strong. Jay feels uncomfortable around close families of any sort, and this one especially so.

  “I think it will be best if we confine her to this level,” Blake suggests, prying Timothy’s hug off himself and offering over the bag full of purchases from the pet store. “You know how Mikhail and Carrillo will be about it.”

  Timothy gives an agreeable nod. “Sure.”

  “For tonight, I think she can stay in your room,” adds Alexander in a pointed voice, still tinkering with the mechanism elements on his cloth. “Perhaps you could help Timothy get her settled, Jay?”

  “This way, c’mon,” Timothy says, picking up the cat carrier and tilting his head toward the door, gesturing for Jay to follow.

  Jay likes his first impressions of Timothy, perhaps even more than Alexander’s bitchy cool. He turns to Blake, wordlessly asking permission with a raised eyebrow. Blake nods, obviously rather pleased at how easily Jay is coping with meeting a household’s worth of eccentric vampires.

  “I’ll come collect you after I’ve had a conversation with Alexander,” Blake says. Timothy makes a soft snorting sound that, if he were human, would have been under his breath.

  “Classy,” he says, leading Jay into a sparsely decorated bedroom with heavy blackout curtains drawn back from a wide, tall window. There’s a double-bed dressed with simple black cotton sheets, and in a recessed shelf built into one wall is a sleek stereo system. A thin laptop sits closed on the dark wood bedside table. Otherwise the room is bare, save for a series of framed handbills hanging on the wall, photocopied fliers from punk shows—mostly screamo, riot grrrl, and queercore from what Jay can see—dating from the last twenty years or so.

  “What’re you going to call her?” Jay asks, crouching beside Timothy as he opens the carrier door. The kitten mewls, blinking at them with sleepy blue-grey eyes. Timothy gently lifts her and puts her on the bedspread. She pounces on his hand as he moves away, and he laughs.

  “I don’t know. I’m terrible at naming things,” Timothy says, letting the fingers of his other hand creep up behind the kitten in a slow ambush. “I’ll probably just name her after a song or a band or something.”

  Jay looks at the handbills on the wall again. “What, like Bikini Kill or something?” he jokes in a deadpan voice. Timothy grins delightedly.

  “Yes! That’s perfect. Hi, Bikini Kill. Hi,” he says softly to the kitten, stroking under her chin. Her purr is like the tiny whirr of a motor.

  “I was being sarcastic,” Jay says.

  “I know. I do live with Alexander,” Timothy says drolly. “Sarcasm is not lost of me. But it’s still the perfect name for a teeny tiny baby little kitten, yes it is.” He kisses the newly-named Bikini Kill’s head gently.

  “Blake gave me this whole spiel about cats being elegant predators, not teeny tiny baby little kittens,” says Jay, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. The view out this window is just as impressive as the one in the other room. Jay doesn’t even want to think about how much a house this beautiful and well-situated must be worth. Vampires are greedy sensualists by their very nature, but the level of luxury is still remarkable.

  “Blake says a lot of things. It’s best to just stop paying attention to the individual words and try to get the general idea of his point,” Timothy suggests. “Hey, you can put on music if you like. The stereo has an mp3 library with a couple of albums that aren’t out yet in it. We do mixing in the studio downstairs sometimes, and so I get to hear all the rough cuts in advance.” He grins, climbing off the bed and hitting a couple of buttons on the minimalist controls of the stereo. “Alexander’s got a ton of ancient jazz and blues recordings on here, too, if that’s more your thing. He’s copying all his vinyl into digital format to preserve it. It’s his other big project, when he’s not taking things apart and putting them back together to see how they tick.”

  A surprisingly melodic song starts to play over the speakers as Timothy goes back to the bed and Bikini Kill. “You’re the first person Blake’s left alive in a long time, you know. More than a decade, I think.”

  “Oh,” Jay replies, because it’s not like there are many other things that’re suitable responses to a statement like that. There’s a knock on the door, saving Jay from having to think of something else to say.

  “Speak of the devil,” Timothy says with a smile. “Come in. Blake, this is Bikini Kill.”

  Blake comes to stand beside Jay, reaching up to rest one bare palm against the back of Jay’s neck lightly. Jay shivers at the touch.

  “I was just saying,” Timothy goes on. “How I’m glad you didn’t kill Jay.”

  Blake gives Jay an unreadable look for a long moment. “I believe I am, too,” he says to Timothy.

  BETTE

  “I want to do another set of themed movies this weekend,” Rose announces on the way to school. Tommy’s texting Michelle as he walks and yet somehow keeping pace and not crashing into things, which surprises Bette more than a little, as she had no idea he was capable of such coordination.

  “Can we do epistolary horror?” Bette asks Rose. “You know, horror movies based on first-person accounts, like diaries and shit. Dracula’s one, and we could
watch Cloverfield and that Spanish one Tommy likes, the zombie one, and Fra —”

  “If you say Frankenstein, I’m gonna light your hair on fire, dude, I’m not even kidding,” Rose threatens in a mumble around the filter of a new cigarette, clicking the flint of her lighter a couple of times before the flame takes hold.

  “It’s exactly part of the theme! That’s a way stronger argument than your ‘important moments of the history of sunglasses’ crap,” Bette retorts, stealing the cigarette out of Rose’s mouth and taking a drag before handing it back. She doesn’t get paid from her part-time job for another week and a half, and she’s barely done any shifts lately anyway, so her attempts to cultivate a serious nicotine and tobacco addiction are temporarily on hold.

  “Those are going to kill you,” Tommy says flatly, like the words will have an effect if he just says them over and over often enough. Bette shrugs.

  “Everyone’s gotta die of something. But no, seriously, we gotta watch Frankenstein if we’re doing epistolary horror. I’m reading Mary Shelley’s diaries, her real ones, and they’re cool. I want some freakin’ Frankenstein, ok?”

  “What if we do vampire vegetarians?” Rose suggests as they shortcut through the mall’s parking lot toward the train station. “Like, good vampires versus bad vampires. We can watch the first Blade movie, and Twilight, and Interview with the Vampire—for the first section with the rats—and a couple of Buffy episodes, and —”

  “Killing animals as your food source is not vegetarianism,” interrupts Bette. “It’s, like, the exact opposite of vegetarian. I don’t go around consuming the blood of deer with my lentils and tofu, I’m just saying.”

  “You totally do,” says Rose. “You have blood lattes every day, don’t even lie. Oh, shit, now I really want a latte.”

  Bette makes a gagging noise in her throat. “Only you get cravings when you’re talking about gore. That’s so gross.”

  “Seriously, I need a coffee now or I’m gonna die. Let’s go to the food court and get the late train.”

  Bette shrugs. “Okay.”

  “I’m out.” Tommy shakes his head, still looking down at his phone. “Michelle’s waiting for me and Jay’s got his phone off again, the asshole.”

  “See you at recess, then,” Rose says, waving as they split off from Tommy’s route to the station and head into the air-conditioned din of the mall instead. There are already a ton of early-morning shoppers around, browsing the stores as an excuse to escape the unseasonable warmth outside for a few hours. The coffee shop is already open and half-full, and Bette has to admit it smells pretty appetizing.

  Rose gets a crazy double-white-chocolate-mocha-coconut Frappuccino with triple coffee and whipped cream, and for a second Bette’s torn between lamenting that it doesn’t have a cherry on top (it’s totally the kind of drink that needs a cherry on top, and they should be wearing poodle skirts and sweaters. Or, well, pedal pushers and a work shirt in Rose’s case, probably. Bette used to want a pair of saddle shoes so bad when she was a kid) or getting in Rose’s face and giving her a lecture about eating and drinking unhealthy crap all the time.

  “This really looks like it should have a cherry on top,” Rose muses, dipping her spoon into the cream.

  “You know, if you cut down on this stuff, those bitches at school wouldn’t be able to give you so much shit anymore. Like, call you fat and stuff.”

  Rose’s eyes narrow. “What the fuck?”

  Bette’s hands flail and she talks fast, trying to explain. “I just mean. You know. If you lost a little weight they’d lay off and you’d stop feeling miserable.”

  “Jesus! Some fucking feminist you are!” Rose stands up, taking the stupid drink that started this stupid conversation in the first place. “Victim-blaming is bullshit. Fuck you.”

  “Rose, don’t be —” Bette starts, but Rose has already stormed off in a huff. Bette sighs, curling up in the armchair, and sips her tea. It’s too hot and burns her tongue, but she doesn’t care. Time ticks over past when the school day starts, but Bette doesn’t give a shit. She hasn’t ditched much this year; one day won’t hurt.

  She gets a text from Tommy a half-hour later—she knows it’s from Tommy before she checks, because Tommy’s the only person who texts her with any regularity. Everyone else uses their telephone to make telephone calls, weirdly enough, but Tommy and his friends are all fiends for the written word. Which is actually kind of ironic, since none of them spells well.

  dont b a dbag. say sorry. she made me dtch w hr. shes cryng.

  Bette rolls her eyes. Rose is always such a drama queen. It’s not like Bette said anything really offensive about her shitty drink, god.

  FINE, she texts back, then tries calling Rose’s phone. The call goes to voicemail, like always, because Rose never charges her phone. Bette dials their home number instead.

  “H’lo?” Tommy answers.

  “It’s me. Is she there?”

  “I can’t believe I have to play go-between in a chick fight between you two. Since when do you act like teenage girls?”

  “Um,” Bette says, not sure what the most tactful way is to point out to Tommy that, in fact, she and Rose ARE teenage girls.

  “That was a rhetorical question; you know as well as I do that neither of you ever act like it. Not normally, anyway. Now I’m in some crazy twilight zone where you’re telling Rosie she’s fat, like you’re both ordinary shallow jerks.”

  “I didn’t say she was fat,” Bette protests. “I said —”

  “I don’t care,” Tommy cuts her off. “Fix it. This phone’s a cordless that doesn’t get reception in the basement. Hang on while I get her.”

  Bette taps her fingers against the inside of her ankle, crossed over her knee, as she waits for Rose to pick up the phone. “I’m sorry,” she says before Rose can say anything, once the scuffled sounds of the handset being picked up have come down the line. “I’m a bitch who doesn’t know anything and I’m sorry, let me make it up to you?”

  Rose sniffs pathetically. “Do you really think I’m fat?”

  “No. I was just in a totally shitty mood and I said shitty things and I didn’t mean them and I’m super, super sorry. Can I come over later?”

  “I guess. I gotta go wash my face. I’m all snotty and puffy now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bette says again, but Rose has hung up. Bette swears at her phone and gets a dirty look from the barista, so she leaves the coffee place and heads for the DVD store. Her conversation with Tommy gave her an idea for an apology-present.

  Sure enough, they have box sets of the original Twilight Zone TV series for sale in the ‘cult’ section, which Bette thinks is sort of lame because by ‘cult’ what they really mean is ‘nerdy’ and if they stick all the good shit in ‘nerdy’ it means that there’s only crap left under ‘sci-fi’ and ‘horror’ and stuff.

  She pries the security tab off the inside of the box and slips the set into her bag when nobody’s noticing, then gets out of there before anyone can start paying attention. Shoplifting was way easier when Bette had looked boring and normal, before her nose ring and ripped clothes and all. Now people get suspicious of her, as if she’s some kind of criminal just for looking different. It’s pretty fascist and way wrong anyway, because now that it’s harder to steal stuff Bette hardly ever does it anymore.

  She walks back home and changes out of her school clothes, then heads around to Rose and Tommy’s, climbing in through the basement window. They’re watching the original Dawn of the Dead, which means Bette seriously fucked up because that’s Rose’s cheer-up movie for when she’s feeling really, really lousy.

  Rose grins at Bette though, a loose dopey smile that tells Bette that Rose has had a heap to drink. Shit, shit, shit. Bette doesn’t like drunk-Rose that much. Drunk-Rose reminds Bette too much of how Bette’s mom was for the year after Bette’s dad died. And it’s only like eleven in the morning on a week day, what kind of lame person gets drunk then?

  “I got you an apology
present,” Bette says, handing over the box set and forcing herself to smile.

  “Oh, awesome. I’ve wanted this for ages,” Rose says happily, waving her hand at the empty spot on the couch beside her. “Come sit down. Tommy, is there any vodka left?”

  Tommy gives Bette a brief look. “No,” he tells Rose. Tommy hates it when Rose gets super-drunk as much as Bette does.

  Bette sits on the couch between them, leaning her cheek against Rose’s shoulder and slipping an arm around her waist. The alcohol smell is easy to ignore and Bette likes the way Rose feels against her, warm and solid and soft.

  JAY

  The hangover is even worse this time. All it takes is the walk from Blake’s bed to the ensuite’s sink to leave Jay clutching at the edges of the marble basin, his back clammy with sickly sweat. The fabric of his shirt clings uncomfortably to his skin. Jay slowly unbuttons the shirt and eases it off his shoulders and holy shit, he aches. His neck and shoulders and arms feel like they’ve been hit repeatedly with small, highly localized trucks.

  He looks up to check the extent of his bruising in the mirror, then starts in surprise as he sees the reflection of Blake standing in the doorway.

  “Fuck! I take back all the bitchy cracks I made when you were comparing yourself to Bikini Kill last night. You really are a goddamn cat, moving around silently like that. Or maybe a ninja.”

  Blake grins, unmoving. “Your heart-rate goes up when you’re startled.”

  Jay grimaces, turning on the tap. “You have a one-track mind. And you show up in mirrors.”

  “I don’t think the two facts are related.” Blake steps in close behind Jay, reaching over to shut the water off. “Let me. I’ll help.”

  Blake guides Jay toward the shower, which is more than large enough to accommodate both of them. All the proportions in Blake’s house verge on the ridiculous; extravagance for extravagance’s sake.