by Молли Харпер
“I’m going to kill you,” I promised.
Emery’s cool, calm Lestat demeanor changed at my harsh tone. “I did it for her!” he hissed. “For my mistress! To prove that I am worthy of her dark gift.” He seemed to compose himself. “To hurt you. Oh, how she loves to hurt you.” He smiled to himself. “Andrea was my very first kill. It was so much easier than I thought it would be. After drinking that horrible bottled blood, it was a pleasure. You must know. You have to have tasted her, at least once. Giving her my own blood wasn’t as easy, though. The mistress is right, it’s quite exhausting.”
“You turned her?” The division of my feelings tore a hole through my chest, shock and horror that Andrea had been forced out of her human life, relief that she wasn’t entirely gone, grief for Dick.
“The mistress promised her to me,” he said, running his hand along her still, white cheek. He smiled up at me. “And she said I could have you, as well. I have needs, Jane, needs I’ve denied for far too long. And since I’m not worthy of the mistress’s attentions …”
“Oh, just back up the crazy truck, there, Foot Boy. There will be nohaving. Got it?”
“You have such a … unique way with words, Jane.” A soft, feminine voice chuckled in the darkness. Cindy, our latte-loving teen good-luck charm, stepped into the dim light. The green was washed out of her now-dark hair. It was drawn back into a high, Victorian style, oddly in sync with her ornately embroidered black skirt and white silk blouse. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her black nail polish had been removed. My instinct to protect the girl I’d grown so fond of jumped ahead of my logical thinking skills.
“Cindy, get out of here!” I cried. “You could get hur—oh, for God’s sake, you’re one of them, aren’t you?”
Shetsked and shook her head sympathetically. “Poor Jane.”
“I trusted you. I was nice to you. I gave you free coffee!”
She smiled and pinched my cheek. “Yes, and it gave me time to watch you, to listen to you whine and complain to your friends when you thought I was reading. It’s amazing what people will say when they think no one’s listening. It made writing those letters so much easier.”
“Wait a minute, you’re Jeanine?” I gasped. “But I saw inside your head. You’re a newborn!”
Jeanine took out a vial of rewetting drops and moistened her eyes. She dabbed delicately with a lacy handkerchief. She flashed a simpering smile my way as Emery reverently lowered a red velvet ceremonial cape onto her shoulders. “I’m a very talented actress. I could have been one of the great ladies of the theater, if Grandmama had allowed me to pursue it. But theater people were barely better than circus folk at the time, you see. Really, you were disappointingly easy to fool. I knew you’d try to read my mind, so I came up with that story about poor little Cindy, the misunderstood, lonely newborn, looking for a place to belong. I let you see that much. I knew you wouldn’t be able to turn me away. You never even suspected me. Of course, at the end of the day, I had to flush the toxins from your wretched coffee out of my system, but it was worth it. I learned so much about you, Jane, and it helped me direct Emery in how to best … instruct you.”
“Where exactly did you two meet up,psychoticsingles.com?”
Jeanine’s hand snaked out from under her cape, forcing the stun gun against my arm. The quick metallic sting of the current locked my jaw muscles. “Ow!” I grunted.
“There’s no reason to be rude, Jane. I don’t see why the two of us can’t be friends,” Jeanine said, smiling guilelessly. “I mean, honestly, we have so much in common. A love of reading, complicated relationships with our mothers, loving the same man. With Gabriel as a sire, we’re practically sisters. So let’s talk, the two of us. Just a couple of girlfriends.”
“I am not braiding your hair,” I growled.
In a cheerful voice, she said, “I’m just a good Catholic girl at heart, Jane. I’m very comfortable in churches, convents, monasteries. After Gabriel had so callously rejected my latest round of calls and letters, I traveled all the way to Guatemala, to rest in a little seminary high in the Sierra Madre de Chiapas. And one day, I wandered into the chapel to find Emery.”
“She was an answer to my prayers. I thought she was an angel.” He sighed. “My dark angel.”
“I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth,” I muttered, wincing when Jeanine gave me a light zap with the stun gun.
“Emery was so eager to please,” she said, stroking her fingers along the curve of his face. He leaned into her caress like an adoring spaniel. “So considerate. He promised to do anything he could to restore my health, even when it meant bringing me the blood of every student in the seminary. Imagine my shock when I found out he was from Half-Moon Hollow, the birthplace of my dear sire. Emery told me about his uncle’s bookshop, about a book he remembered from his boyhood, which described a ritual to ‘revampirize’ an ailing immortal.” She lifted the copy ofThe Spectrum of Vampirism,stained with my blood. “It was fate, you see, the book, Emery, Gabriel, all circling this silly little town. I wanted to leave immediately, but then he got a message from you, saying that his uncle had died. And he learned that you’d been given the store and all of its contents. That complicated matters for us. So, we waited and we watched.”
Her lip curled. “And I saw you with him, with my Gabriel. How could I help but reach out to him? You took my sire away. He stopped thinking about me when you came along.”
I narrowed my eyes, thinking of all the stress she’d put Gabriel through. “He stopped thinking about you a long time before that.” I let out a loud “Gah!” when she shocked me again. “OK, I will admit that was not a constructive thing to say.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve guessed what my special ability is, have you, Jane?” She preened, as if she hadn’t just sent thousands of volts into my body. “You might call it having a ‘one-track mind.’ If I focus on someone hard enough, I can find them anywhere. No matter where they are, no matter how hard they try to hide, I just have a knack for guessing where they’ll turn up next.”
“Your special power is you’re a supernaturally gifted stalker?” I panted. “Gabriel really did screw up by turning you.”
She ignored me, possibly because the stun gun still had to recharge after the last round. “I’ll admit Gabriel’s given me a challenge over the last few decades. He’s become very skilled at keeping his plans vague, at bouncing between this horrible little shanty town and the rest of civilization. I was always guessing with him. But you, oh, Jane, you were very easy to follow.
You were a considerable help to me while Gabriel dragged you from city to city, hotel to hotel.
You were practically a homing beacon. I didn’t even have to try, which was fortunate for me. I find travel to be so draining. It was all I could do to write those notes and leave them at your hotels before collapsing into a tea-tree and eucalyptus bath. They’re very restorative, you know.
You might try it sometime, Jane. You’re looking a bit tired.”
“I’m not tired, I’m concussed.”
She chuckled, making calf-eyes at Emery as he lit several oil hurricane lamps I’d kept in storage for power outages. “Meanwhile, Emery stayed here. He wasn’t very happy with you either, Jane.
You took over the store. You were handed everything his uncle had left in this world. He wanted to punish you. It’s another interest we share. So, I let my Emery indulge his need for petty revenge. I helped him learn to guard his thoughts around you. I let him play his little games with you. I even fed him a few ideas. Rifling through your purse and finding that silly little can of vampire mace was particularly inspiring.”
Suddenly, the disappearance of my mace made a lot more sense, though I had to wonder what sort of evil vampire ninja skills Jeanine had employed to get at my purse without anyone seeing. I grunted, wanting to smack myself on the forehead. I’d told her to help herself to coffee whenever she needed a refill. My purse was under the counter.
No more trusting tee
nagers, ever.
I smiled nastily. “Well, it backfired, because sending me a box full of silver is what brought Gabriel and me back together. So … thanks for that.”
A black sneer flickered across her features before she forced them back into her mask of serene control. I waited for her to shock me again, but the sting didn’t come. When I opened my eyes, Jeanine was holding the book in her hand, poring over whatever ritual she was convinced would turn her into a real girl.
“Are you sure this is the right book?” she demanded as Emery cowered before her.
“Of course, mistress,” he simpered.
She growled. “But there’s hardly anything in here. There’s no special ceremony for re-turning a vampire, just a footnote about whether it’s possible. The footnote says, ‘Highly unlikely.’” Emery blanched at her tone, spluttering, “B-but-but I didn’t make any guarantees, mistress, I said I vaguely remember reading something as a child—”
“You said a little more than that, Emery. As I recall, you seemed sure that you knew how to cure me. You promised!” She stamped her foot.
I hissed out a hoarse laugh. “Emery is your go-to guy in this scenario? You’re the worst nemesis I’ve ever had.Mama Gingerhas better plotting skills.”
“Emery,” she said absentmindedly. Emery reached out and backhanded me, his fingers striking my jaw with bone-buckling force.
Ow.
As I stretched my aching jaw, I realized Jeanine was trying to prevent hurting me too badly. The stun gun was enough to keep me in line, but she didn’t trust herself to really lash out. She needed me. And the only reason I could think of for keeping me alive would be to“Gabriel,” I groaned. “You want Gabriel here for whatever weirdo ritual you have planned. I’ve been relegated to bait. This is insulting.”
“Don’t be insulted, Jane,” she said, her lip drawn up into a bewildered pout. “It’s a compliment, really. Gabriel cares for you. He’s almost obsessed with your safety and happiness. As soon as he realizes you’re not at the shop, he’ll come running here looking for you. And your … predicament is just the incentive he needs to cooperate. Do you realize that I’ve been trying to contact him for decades, but the first time he ever responded in any way was when I told him I was going to talk to you, to hurt you? Personally, I don’t see the attraction.” Her rosebud features grew dark, petulant. “It’s not fair. He cared enough to turn you completely, to make sure you could take care of yourself, fend for yourself. He turned me into less. He made me into a ghoul.”
“You are not a ghoul. You’re a hypochondriac. You travel with a humidifier, for goodness sake.”
When a lightning-quick flash of insane fury crossed Jeanine’s features, I had an idea. If there was no bait, there was no trap, no reason for Gabriel to be here. Jeanine would be left with no big evil plan. She wouldn’t be able to hurt him. And with me gone, Jenny would finally get the house.
Now that my life seemed to be finally, truly coming to a close, I found I didn’t mind so much.
Annoying her didn’t seem so important now. It really sucked that I was reaching some level of emotional maturity moments before imminent death.
I snickered loudly, making my voice as condescending and Courtney-like as possible. “You don’t even have the guts to come after me yourself. You had Foot Boy do your dirty work for you.”
Jeanine rolled her eyes but didn’t respond. I dug deeper into the bitchy-insult well, lowering my voice to a sly, sneering tone. “You know, Gabriel told me all about your little crush on him, when you were human. Following him around like a little puppy dog, making a nuisance of yourself. I pointed out that not much has changed, since you’re still doing pretty much the same thing. And we laaaaaaaughed. Did I mention we were lying in my bed, naked, at the time?”
Jeanine’s teeth ground together as she barked out, “Emery!”
Emery turned and really walloped me. Unfortunately, he did it at just the right angle, so that my temple barreled into the corner of a china crate. I slumped to the ground, my head spinning, blood seeping through the neck of my sweatshirt. I was vaguely aware of my arms being pinned under my back, the ropes biting into my wrists. So, instead of dying to protect my beloved, I was going to wake up with a headache and a serious case of pins-and-needles in my arms.
Overall, not my most well-thought-out plan.
As unconsciousness tinged the edge of my vision, I glared up at Jeanine. “I don’t like you.”
Jeanine grinned, patting my cheek. “I’m glad we’ve got that out in the open.”
From the dark, bottomless pit of oblivion, I heard shouting. I blinked a few times. I heard Dick’s pained howl and his voice moaning, “No, baby, no,” over and over. When my eyes could focus, I saw him in the corner, Andrea’s body pressed against his chest, his face buried in her neck.
Gabriel’s voice was louder, stern. “Stay down, Emery!”
I sat up, wincing at the numbness in my arms. I shook my head, trying to fling away the last fuzzy spots in my head.
“Gabriel?” I peered up, seeing Gabriel choking Emery against a wall as Jeanine stood nearby, wringing her hands. She looked so helpless and panicked. It seemed that faced with the object of her obsession and fury, our mutual sire, all of her high-flown evil plans had evaporated, and she was reduced to dithering like a flustered schoolgirl. I almost felt sorry for her.
But not really.
Gabriel dropped a barely conscious Emery at the sound of my hoarse whisper. Emery slumped against a stack of crates, toppling them over. I heard Jeanine gasp as one of the unlit hurricane lamps shattered near her feet, soaking her cloak in the lamp oil.
“Jane?” he murmured, probing my temple gently with his fingertips. Between the barely healed cuts on my arms, the head wound, and the drying maroon blood soaked into my sweatshirt, I imagined I wouldn’t be winning any beauty contests soon. Sadly, at this point, I think Gabriel was used to seeing me this way.
“I’m really sorry about this. Emery got me from behind.” I groaned. “That’s not what it sounds like.”
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Bored and annoyed, a little worried about Emery’s mental state. But yeah, I’m fine,” I grumbled, trying to push to my feet. “Nope, I was wrong, my head really hurts.”
“Come upstairs,” he said, taking my arm and supporting my weight. “Jeanine, I’ve called the Council here. You’ve gone too far this time. When they see …” Gabriel’s voice broke as he took in the sight of Dick huddled protectively over Andrea. “There’s nothing I can do to help you.”
“That’s not true,” Jeanine mewled. “You and I have a long-owed debt to settle, Gabriel.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” he growled, pushing past her and dragging me with him.
“All of this is your doing! Your fault. You made me what I am!”
The pitiful voice, the sight of Jeanine’s twisted baby-doll visage, were playing Gabriel’s guilt strings like a virtuoso. I could see the conflict play out on his face. After everything, he wanted to try to find a way to help her. He turned, leaving me to stand as my sense of equilibrium returned.
“I shouldn’t have left you alone, Jeanine,” he said. “And I’m sorry for that. But I was afraid of you, afraid of the things you would do. I was ashamed of you. I thought that you would listen to Violette, that she could teach you.”
“She didn’t teach me anything!” Jeanine pouted. “It was just more rules! More rules than my Grandmama had. Don’t feed from the weak. Don’t kill for the sake of killing,” she said, mimicking a heavy French accent. “It was so much worse than my life. You left me with that. I didn’t have anyone to turn to. Please, just give me more of your blood. Make me whole. The Council will understand that I was sick and not in my right mind, that I had no choice but to do what I’ve done, especially when you talk to them.”
He took a deep breath. “I won’t do that, Jeanine. I won’t speak for you and I won’t give you another drop of my blood. There’s no such th
ing as a re-turning.”
“Yes, there is!” Jeanine screamed.
“Jeanine,” he growled.
I cleared my throat. “Gabriel, let’s not antagonize the crazy with the stun gun.”
“Jane, don’t help. Wait—she has your stun gun?”
I shrugged my shoulders, my expression apologetic.
“I can make you happy, Gabriel, if you just give me the chance. But now that you haveher,you don’t even think of me,” Jeanine begged, her voice reedy and desperate. “Can’t you see what she’s done to me, by coming between us? I need you.”
Oh, Lord, it was Gabriel’s kryptonite, a lady in distress. But instead of reaching out to Jeanine, he simply shook his head.
“I can’t keep living like this,” Jeanine cried, real tears of blood streaming down her cheeks now.
“I won’t keep living this half-life. I want the gift of immortality or no life at all!”
“I gave you the gift of immortality,” Gabriel said, his voice cold now. “And you’ve wasted it.”
With a mad cry, Jeanine sparked the stun gun and moved it to the hem of her cloak. “I’ll end it now. I’ll take you all with me.”
“You won’t do it. You’re terrified of death,” I told her. I thought reminding her of the immediate dusty consequences would make her drop the stun gun, but Jeanine seemed to take my words as a challenge. She sneered and pressed it down, the arc of electrical energy combusting the lamp-oilsoaked cloth with a bright orange glow. Within seconds, her clothes were engulfed. Gabriel threw me behind him. But Jeanine stood perfectly still, a shocked look freezing her face in a mask of horrified regret, as if she couldn’t believe what she had done in a toddler’s fit of temper. Her panicked hands beat at the flames as they licked up her clothes, toward her face. There was a horrible scream as Jeanine’s body seemed to disintegrate before our eyes. Her face turned gray, then black, then crumbled into dust. The flaming cloak crumpled to the floor.
