Jay leafs through a stack of ancient picture-postcards, the hand-tinted sepia gone as pale as dyed sugar crusts with time: fragile pinks and greens and blues highlight the creams and browns of clothes and faces in a way which makes them look ghostly and insubstantial. These are photographs Timothy knows—once upon a time he stared at them for hours, willing himself to remember the smallest flicker of the lifetime they depict.
The photos are from Alexander and Timothy’s earliest years together, of Blake posed beside the infamous Cora. Frontier photos, the poses stiff and formal, the expressions blurred by the smallest movements and leaving the faces looking as if they stare not only through the years but also through a thin film of troubled water.
Alexander, a child of the goldrush and the railways and the push to go further out, always out, is never happier than when a new frontier presents itself. It’s why he loves all things of the music business so much: every generation is dissatisfied with the rebellions of their parents, and remakes the landscape from the start. Courtney Love in her torn party dresses and Kurt Cobain, fey and elfin in the burly flannel plaids of Seattle lumberjacks, were pilgrims in their age, as brave and determined as the first covered wagons which set out seeking new worlds in the west.
Timothy understands this and loves it; the innovations of music performers fascinate him as much as they do Alexander. What Timothy has lost, though, is the love of frontier ruthlessness that Alexander thrives on. Timothy can only remember his village and his dreams of a wider world, and then the black gulf of missing memory yawns wide before waking to a world of Alexander and Blake at his side, of cities and cars and electric lights and wealth so large it’s almost meaningless. Timothy can’t remember the triumphs of his own struggle to success, and so replication of those first hardships holds no nostalgia for him.
Alexander, on the other hand, adores it. He has often told Timothy that frontier economies are humans at their most vampiric: selfish, hungry, clever, cruel, utterly unforgiving and utterly alive. The determined and uncompromising survive and thrive, their steel spines intact, while the soft and vulnerable are torn apart without hesitation. Courtney made it through, Kurt didn’t.
This was one of the first lessons Alexander taught to Bette, when he volunteered to take over her education. He may take every opportunity he can to disparage the inclusion of yet another young, tempestuous mind in their circle, but Blake and Timothy both know better than to pay any attention. Alexander loves having all the opportunities he can shape and guide the small directions of the world.
Perversely, that tendency in Alexander is the main reason why Blake is the official leader of their gang: with Blake seeing to the affairs and plans they have with other vampires, the tactics and strategy even apex predators must maintain in order to survive, Alexander has more time to exert influence over property markets and politics and pop culture and all the other bright shiny human affairs he finds so entertaining. And while Bette may be a vampire, she is a vampire still connected to a human web of life and loves around her, and that means that she is of significant interest to Alexander.
The almost-first lesson—perhaps it was the third, or maybe the fourth; Timothy can only be sure that it was very early in the piece—which Alexander gave Bette was this:
“The major philosophies which underpin the political systems of the world are all reactions against the idea that the universe is unfair. Conservative opinion declares that this isn’t true at all, that all men—”
“And women,” Bette had cut in automatically. Alexander had looked displeased at the interruption, but accepted the correction with a nod.
“That all people are born with the same capacity and opportunity to succeed, and if they fail to live up to this presumed potential then it is their failing, and not the fault of their society’s systems or a bad hand from fate. The concepts of heaven and hell—usually found alongside the secular elements of conservatism, for obvious reasons—are another facet of this same idea. A universe with heaven and hell in it must, ultimately, be a fair one, for the wicked are punished and the good rewarded.
“In contrast to this, socialist and communist schools of thought, as well as more moderate forms of liberalism, present the argument that since the universe is fundamentally unfair, it is humanity’s obligation to even the field. Resources should be shared as needed, and those with particularly bad luck are in need of especial compassion from those in a more favourable position. Such systems tend of regard heaven/hell-based religions with contempt, seeing them as a distraction which turns the populace’s attention away from the present, and the present’s need for a human-made sense of justice which is fairer than the universe’s unfair state.”
“So which one do you think is better?” Bette asked. Alexander smiled at her then, in the particular way vampires smile when they are amused and also wish to show off the deadly shape of their incisors.
“They are both ridiculous, naturally, though I find a certain naive charm in liberalism’s love of mercy. The real truth of the situation is this, my dear: the universe is a cold and unfair place, and those who do best are guided largely by good luck, though they’ll probably claim that some inherent virtue in themselves should have the credit. The real trick of doing well is making sure that the bad luck which comes your way ends up happening to other people.”
“That’s pretty misanthropic, even for a vampire,” was Bette’s response, and Timothy had felt glad that her shrewd young brain was a match for Alexander’s somewhat overblown rhetoric.
“The definition of ‘misanthropic’ is ‘a hatred of humankind’, but on the contrary, I love humankind very, very much. I simply believe that the only way to do true justice to one’s loves is to see them exactly as they are. If you are too smart to expect that you’ll get any sort of benevolence from life, then you will find that there are far fewer sharp shocks to be had.”
“And has that worked for you?” Bette shot back, still unconvinced. “Has believing that everything sucks kept you from nasty surprises?”
Alexander had blinked at her in surprise, his pose of artful cleverness slipping and a look of true admiration forming the first honest expression his face had worn in the conversation. “No,” he confessed. “It hasn’t.”
“Then I think I’ll pass on the cynicism, if it’s all the same. I’d rather be surprised by pain than mistrustful of happiness,” Bette had said, and Timothy had wondered at what kind of girl she was, who could still say things like that with sincerity even after being murdered in the dark.
BETTE
She manages to sleep the day through for a change, though all her dreams are wet and hot and bloody, and Rose’s face appears time and time again, and Bette wakes up feeling clammy and restless and hungry in the evening as the sunlight fades from bruise-pink to gray. Still in her pajamas, she slips on a pair of shoes and pads downstairs.
Mikhail and Rupert are standing on the front steps of the house, lighting cigarettes in the clear cold outdoor air. Vampires can’t smoke, not really. They don’t inhale in the right way, so the smoke doesn’t get down properly into their lungs. But sometimes it’s nice to go through the motions anyway. Bette joins them, taking one of Mikhail’s cigarettes from the engraved silver case he offers to her and lighting up.
The vampires whose homes are the ground floor of the house make Bette feel a little self-conscious. They’ve all been around much longer than her, and yet she moved into a room on the top floor almost as soon as she got here. She doesn’t know if there’s any kind of status thing attached to where different vampires live—probably not, since downstairs is even more luxuriously appointed than upstairs—but no matter how little it may or may not actually mean, she still feels like she’s somehow separated from them.
“How’re the chess lessons going?” Mikhail asks her with a smirk. “He cheats, you know.”
Bette rolls her eyes. “I know! And if you call him on it, he goes ‘all’s fair in love and war, and chess is both’, and then I want
to set him on fire with the power of my hatred, but I think that would probably go down badly,” she sighs. “I tried to convince him that I should be allowed to prove my tactical abilities through hours of dedicated Bioshock playing. He wasn’t buying it.”
“You are truly oppressed,” Rupert agrees breezily, stubbing out the end of his cigarette on the wrought-iron handrails. “I’m hungry. Let’s go get something.” He strides down the stone steps, Mikhail and Bette trailing behind.
“You can do that mesmerism thing like Timothy, can’t you?” she asks Mikhail as they walk together. He nods. “Do you use it much?”
“Not really. I like the hunt,” he replies with a sharp smile. “There’s no sport in shooting fish in a barrel, as they say.”
“Yeah,” Bette agrees, but she can’t help but wonder, just a little, what it’s like to do. She breaks away from the other two, heading off alone toward the parts of town where she’s more likely to find junkies and alcoholics, people whose willpower is already eroded down and laced with hairline fractures.
She picks one, a man who’s probably only in his early thirties or so but looks much older, more weathered. His clothes are stained and stiff, too thin for the cold temperature in the air. Bette stares at him from across the street and concentrates, demanding silently for him to follow her into the darkened parking lot down the block. He does. She wonders if her influence inside his head, clouding his judgment, feels like another kind of drug.
There are track marks and razor cuts on his arms, the veins collapsed long ago from repeated punishment.
“It was never a death wish, really,” he tells her quietly, his voice almost calm. “I just wanted to feel something. Anything.”
“I know what that’s like,” Bette says sympathetically, and rips out his throat with her teeth.
~Blake and Alexander take her to see her new club after she gets back to the house. Bette’s been there before, back when she was just another human kid who liked to see bands play and hang out with her friends. The space is large, adapted from a movie theater, and Bette can’t get her head around the idea that it’s hers, really hers. One little piece of her old daydream is still capable of coming true.
“I’ve got a heap of ideas,” she tells Alexander, pointedly ignoring the skeptical look her announcement causes on his face. “I’ll type them out in a report. I’m going to do this properly. Prove to you I’m not some idiot kid who’s going to run this place into the ground.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry to grow up,” is Blake’s lofty advice. “Just enjoy yourself. Everyone is allowed to make disastrous monetary decisions when they’re young. That’s one of the things youth is for.”
Alexander makes a noise of dissent. “If she wants to be sensible about this, I think that’s admirable. A report of your plans would be an excellent idea, Bette. Blake, can you please make an attempt to at least pretend that you care about money?”
“And if I did that, who would you have left to scold?” Blake retorts, smirking.
“Me,” Bette says bleakly, at the same moment that Alexander says “I don’t scold, I educate,” and then proceeds to tell them both off for not taking his advice seriously. Bette and Blake share a furtive smile, and allow him to carry on with his lecturing until he wears himself down to silence.
~
She makes a list of ideas when she gets home, in one of the small soft leather notebooks she uses for her school work.
1. No alcohol. I know that sounds like a terrible idea and I know that’s how clubs make their money but hear me out. Instead of a liquor license, just get one for food and soda. Have two menus on offer: one of hipster food, like hummus and that squeaky Greek cheese stuff you can grill and sundried tomatoes on Turkish bread and lots of stuff like that. This is the expensive menu. The people who would have kept the club in business by buying high-priced drinks will buy high-priced food, trust me. It’s all about making people feel like they’re having a classy night out, and the more money they have to spend on things, the classier they feel.
Bikini Kill, purring quietly, twines around her ankles as she writes. Bette’s in another of her jewel-coloured silk slips tonight, this one a deep crimson colour that accents the blood shade in her irises. She feels alien and strange, her hand paper-pale as she leans down to pat the kitten. She’d kidnapped the cat and shut it in her room with her as soon as they got home, because sometimes she just needs the company of another animal. Bikini Kill, in the way of all cats, doesn’t seem to mind the imprisonment as long as affection is offered when demanded.
2. The second menu is the cheap menu. This will have the stuff kids like to eat at three in the morning when they have no money. Pizza slices, fries, nachos. Soda is cheap too. Put this stuff just a tiny bit above cost price and you’ll sell enough portions to make it turn a worthwhile profit anyway. I have been to enough clubs where I can’t afford anything to know what I am talking about.
Alexander and Timothy are having another argument in the room beside Bette’s. It’s about something dumb and pointless. It’s always about something dumb and pointless; Alexander’s vintage record collection being left out or Timothy not being able to find a book when he knows he left it somewhere or Bikini Kill leaving a shredded toy on the bed or whatever. Dumb, pointless, pointless things that don’t mean anything.
On the page opposite her planning list, Bette scribbles I would never get angry with Rose over stupid shit. She would never get angry with me over stupid shit.
Which is a total lie, because when Bette was alive they’d bicker all the time over idiotic things, like Spiderman versus Wolverine (Rose always picked Spiderman, which was totally wrong and how was Bette meant to stand by and not say anything when Rose was totally wrong?) or what movies they should watch or if it was right to hit back at bullies or not if it meant they’d beat you up worse in the end. Their friendship had been a series of arguments, good-natured or heated depending on the day, and the day-dream fairytale of Bette’s words—I would never get angry with Rose—was a watery and useless lie compared to the messy, difficult, wonderful reality of the closeness they’d had.
Bette tears the page out, crumpling it into a ball and throwing it at her wastepaper basket. It lands in, of course, because her aim is preternatural and perfect.
“Nothing but net,” she mutters, feeling hollow in the tiny victory, and goes back to her list.
3. Three bathrooms. One for girls, because clubs need a place girls can go where boys can’t. One for boys, because boys are totally disgusting in the bathroom and nobody else should have to see that stuff. And one that’s for everybody, so the people who are trans don’t have to deal with other people being creeps or shitheads, and so couples can go somewhere a bit more private if they’re getting gross on the dancefloor. All three bathrooms should have lots of toilet paper and soap, and working condom machines.
4. GOOD BANDS ONLY. No sexist assholes or corporate fuckheads. It is okay if the music is shitty but the band has to be decent people.
5. No killing. None. Not of humans OR of vampires. There will be a BIG SIGN by the door and another one at the bar saying this. People who don’t know will think it is a cute decor joke, and the people who do know will either abide by it or suffer the consequences.
6. Bouncers and indoor security who don’t treat kids like shit. If anyone feels harassed in my club, I want them to feel that they can ask for help from the people who’re meant to be keeping them safe. Should the bouncers and security be vampires? Should vampires have a menu as well?
Bette sits back, considering her list and wondering what else she should include. The argument is getting louder next door. Bette grabs the bulky headphones that came with her stereo and plugs them in, cranking an old hardcore album up until she can’t hear anything but the noise of the music. She lies on her bed and stares at the ceiling, and waits for another night to be over with.
TIMOTHY
Blake returns home shortly before night’s end, with a mutinous-lookin
g Jason in tow. The reason for Jay’s dark expression becomes obvious after Blake removes the bowler hat he’d decided to wear out for the evening and shakes the loose waves of his dark hair away from his face. There’s a particularly vicious bruise of purple and red stretching from the outer corner of one of Blake’s heavy-lashed eyes over the smoothness of his temple, disappearing behind his ear into the shadow of his hair. The blow caused a little cut, but that has already healed to nothing but a browning smear of blood on the tender skin.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” Blake says before Timothy has a chance to react to the sight of the injury, heading through the main hall to his own suite of rooms. The sound of the bath being run starts up a few seconds later.
“Lily?” Timothy guesses as Jay sits down in an armchair, still scowling.
“Lily,” Jay confirms. “I was at the skate park with her and Tommy, and then Blake called and said he was done with his meetings for the night if I wanted to hook up -“
“There is no way on this earth that he used the phrase ‘hook up’,” Timothy cuts in.
“Well, no, but ‘impromptu tryst’ sounds so dorky,” Jay explains, making a face at Blake’s choice of words. “So I said bye to Lily and Tommy and went to meet him. But Lily gets it into her head to follow me, and says bye to Tommy after I’ve gone, and leaves him alone! Dude’s not even seventeen yet, and she ditches him in a skate park in the middle of the night. Doesn’t even walk him to a bus stop or anything, because she’s too busy shadowing me so she can get into another shitty little catfight with Blake.”
Jay is a year younger than Tommy, but Timothy doesn’t see a point in suggesting there’s an unfair standard in Jay’s view of himself and his friend. Instead, Timothy says “You shouldn’t be so bothered by their clashes. I doubt you’d even be alive now if Blake didn’t have Lily and Will to entertain himself with as well as you.”
The Wolf House: The Complete Series Page 38
