Vamplayers

by Rusty Fischer

  “Indeed, I do. And she isn’t, but what Headmistress Holly doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right?”

  I shrug, break up a hush puppy with my fork, and move it around some more.

  The chatter in the cafeteria builds. I try to ignore the whispers and fingers pointed in our direction.

  “I missed you at the track this morning,” he says through tight lips, considering a piece of overripe watermelon on his fork before putting it back on his plate. “I thought we had a deal.”

  “Did we?” I watch from across the room as Zander labors under another heavy bus tray. “I thought I made it pretty clear I’d show up when I felt like it.”

  He arches his eyebrows. “I see.” He sounds vaguely like Bianca with his superior, sarcastic tone. “From the way you were lapping me yesterday, I thought you felt a whole lot like it.”

  I swallow a rebuke because it’s not my job to feel; it’s my job to pretend. I shrug, bite off a frown, and quip, “Well, somebody has to play hard to get around here.”

  He laughs uproariously, enough to draw the attention of students at several nearby tables, including Zander, who quickly disappears behind the kitchen door. “I must admit you’re a far sight frostier than your suite mates. What are their names again? Malice and Farah?”

  I laugh. Despite his massive ego and obvious Vamplayer tendencies, Tristan does have a certain charm about him. It’s equal parts aloof and knowing, confident and condescending. It says, Aren’t I special? Aren’t you lucky I’m talking to you? Don’t you dare think of not falling in love with me. It wouldn’t normally appeal to me, this blatant cockiness, but for some reason Tristan wears it well. Very well.

  “It’s Alice and Cara,” I correct him, trying to sound equally haughty and failing. “You might want to know the names of the girls you go skinny-dipping with.”

  He looks at me, opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it, playing with his cottage cheese until the lumps are lumpier and the whole thing is runny.

  ”Alice,” he says deliberately, his thin lips caressing the letters. “Cara. Yes, I’ll have to remember that next time we are, how do you say, skinny-dipping?”

  “Don’t be such a prude,” I say as the heat of his body wafts over like an expensive cologne. “I doubt you’re unfamiliar with the term.”

  He shakes his head, smiles, and with no trace of irony says, “If you’d care to show me, I’d certainly be more than happy to—”

  “Oh, no.” I laugh, nudging him with my shoulder. “Like you said, I’m the frosty one.”

  He overturns another spoonful of cottage cheese. I swear he hasn’t taken one bite. “Frosty? Did I really say you were frosty?”

  I can’t pin down his accent. It’s not entirely European, like that of some of the students whose rich foreign parents obviously ship them here to Nightshade for an exceptional education, but there are a few traces. It’s more adult than anything, be it his word choices—indeed, certainly—or the way he seems to measure every word like they all matter.

  “Yes, yes, you did. Just ten seconds ago you called me the frosty one.”

  “Oh dear, that’s not very complimentary, is it?”

  I shake my head. “No, in fact. And I demand an apology, or I’ll have security roust you out of that chair in no time.”

  Good gawd, am I? Am I really?

  Yes, I am. I’m actually flirting with this creep.

  Suddenly I feel bad about judging Alice and Cara for falling under Bianca’s spell so easily and so soon. Ten words and two smiles from Tristan, and I’m all soupy like his room temperature cottage cheese.

  “This?” he says, pointing to the kitchen doors where Grover and Zander scowl in our general direction until they see us looking and duck through the swinging doors. “This is your idea of security?”

  I don’t know if he recognizes Zander from bumping into him after our run yesterday morning or is simply disparaging all kitchen help as a group (probably), but I don’t respond.

  We sit in awkward silence until he puts his hand flat over mine and says, “You’re right. I do owe you an apology. And I would like to make it privately, if you don’t mind.”

  His hand is warm and, before I know it, he’s pulled me up from my seat and is walking me through the cafeteria. I don’t resist; it’s like I can’t resist. And it’s not just any old walk. This guy is known for making grand entrances. Why would his exits be any less grand? He has my hand in the crook of his arm, like we’re prom king and queen. His pace is steady and measured, like he’s done this a thousand times before.

  I just want to bolt before Grover and Zander see us leaving together.

  A hush falls in the room, and Tristan guides me past what seem like miles of gawking faces, all of them whispering, most of them, “Bianca,” until at last we are on the other side of the cafeteria doors and I have the presence of mind to stop him.

  “Hold on. Hold on. Who are you and what did you do with that big snob Tristan?”

  He smiles, kissing me before I can stop him.

  And long after I can stop him.

  Chapter 17

  Tristan’s room is a few floors up from mine, but we stop there for only a moment. He walks into his dorm suite, and through the barely cracked door I hear some muted TV show. (Does everyone have a TV but us?)

  When he emerges, he has a picnic basket in his hand.

  “What?” I snort, disbelieving. “You happened to have a picnic basket within reach of your front door?”

  He grins. “A gentleman must always be prepared.”

  “Prepared for what? We just ate!”

  “You call that swill back there food?” he huffs.

  He leads me down the stairs, through a back hallway, out across a small employee parking lot behind the school, and toward a secluded spot in the deserted faculty break area. We’re just close enough to the school to feel safe, whatever that feels like, but far enough away from the rest of the cafeteria clowns or after-dinner jocks on the rugby field to have privacy.

  The sun has set by now, the night is cool, and I’m glad I chose to dress modestly for dinner in fluted slacks and a beaded sweater.

  He finds us a stone picnic table, the kind no one ever really sits at, and places the heavy wicker basket on top. He dusts off my seat dramatically and invites me to sit across from him. His actions and very presence make me feel like I’m at the nicest French restaurant in town.

  Stupid Vamplayers. Why do they always have to be so damn charming?

  As if on cue, the encroaching darkness signals a porch light next to the faculty break area to flicker to life; we both blink in its sudden brightness.

  He takes off his leather jacket, the weathered charcoal kind with two tan stripes down the arms, and wraps it around my shoulders. It’s like something out of some romcom Alice would watch four thousand times and Cara and I would make fun of four thousand one times.

  “But you’ll freeze to death,” I say before I can stop myself (total romcom line if I’ve ever heard one).

  He points to the gray hoodie he had on underneath. “Like I said, a gentleman always comes prepared.” He sits and opens the basket.

  Immediately my senses are awash with a bouquet of pleasing scents, which is strange because I never, ever lust for human food.

  Then again, this isn’t human food. At least, not in the strictest sense of the word. I can sense the ripe blood before I even see it, before I even smell it.

  “Blood cheese,” he says quietly, almost reverently, unwrapping a thick wedge of the imported delicacy.

  My hunger is so strong it’s all I can do to not snatch it out of his hand and devour it, fangs out, before his very eyes, mission be damned.

  “Blood sausage.” He slides another foil-wrapped package onto the picnic table. “Chilled blood consomme and, for dessert, blood wine. She even sent plastic glasses, two of them, as if she knew—”

  “She who?”

  “Why, Mother of course.” (He may as well have added, Ta-da!
)

  I shrug. That’s good enough for me. The hunger is too potent for me to be suspicious.

  We gorge ourselves. Well, mostly I gorge myself.

  The blood cheese is heavenly, heavy on the blood, light on the cheese, and literally melting the minute it hits my tongue and evaporating into my system the way a tea bag bleeds in hot water.

  The blood sausage is richer but no less fulfilling as my thirsty cells drink up every last drop of its rich, oily goodness, no need for digestion of any kind.

  And the blood wine is quite literally intoxicating.

  “Oh, I haven’t had this in years.” I’m so ecstatic I almost say, Decades!

  Pump the brakes, Lily. Pump ‘em! Don’t let a little thing like blood wine sabotage the whole mission.

  “Really? We have it all the time where I come from.”

  I bet you do, I think but don’t say. Best to let him do all the talking. Despite the quasi-romantic setting and extravagant meal, I’m still at work. This is still an interrogation. “I’ve never met anyone like you,” I say, like they taught me in Advanced Vamplayer Flirting.

  I lean closer, lips flush and thick from the intake of blood, senses on high alert, pores open, fangs quivering below the gum line, making my teeth tingle.

  ”Nor you I,” he says eloquently (I think), and I practically need a dictionary to decipher it. “You are like a flower, Lily, in more than name.”

  Wow, he is good.

  I don’t need a dictionary to translate his next move. One hand creeps into the leather jacket and straight toward my chest.

  I slap it briskly, so sated by the meal, so supercharged I think I hear something snap.

  “Witch,” he says, standing, clutching his offending hand close to his chest. “After all I’ve done for you. This meal. Do you know how much it cost to import to this godforsaken school in these godforsaken sticks? I think I deserve a little—”

  A sound behind us interrupts him, which is good because if he’d said two more words my foot would’ve interrupted him one way or the other—al-though he still would have been able to talk, if you know what I mean.

  He sniffs, grabs his precious wicker basket plus the rest of the blood wine, and stomps off.

  “We’re not through here,” he says over his shoulder before disappearing into the school.

  “Trust me,” I say to the breeze rustling the branches in the tree line. “I know.”

  Chapter 18

  I am not alone in the dark.

  It isn’t just the breeze rustling the branches.

  Three figures emerge from the tree line just beyond the picnic area, looking gaunt and ghostly in the darkness surrounding them.

  It’s such an odd sight, like something you’d see in a really bad scary movie, that it takes me a minute to focus. When I do, the words pour out of my mouth: “Bianca? Alice? Cara?”

  They step forward, as if they’ve choreographed the whole scene to look extra super creepy, then stand there looking at me.

  And looking.

  And watching.

  And waiting.

  They don’t say a word. Not one. Not to me, not to each other. This from two girls who have not shut up in the entire time I’ve known them.

  I stand but stay put. I know it’s stupid, especially for me, but it feels safer somehow on the patio under the lights.

  “What are you guys doing?” My voice disappears into the darkness once it’s past the cloistered little patio area where we’ve been enjoying our picnic. You know, until Mr. Vamplayer got all touchy-feely at the last minute.

  “Aren’t you cold, standing out there?” I say, realizing I’m still wearing Tristan’s jacket. I tug it closer around me, feeling his warmth lingering in the shoulders, on my arms. It smells vaguely of cigarettes and imported cologne.

  Nothing.

  They don’t even blink.

  They look eerie, odd.

  For girls who are normally so active to suddenly just be standing there, doing nothing—I think that’s the scariest part of all.

  I move to the left, positioning myself for a run at the back hallway door.

  Only then do they move, advancing in unison two full footsteps.

  “Guys, come on, you’re freaking me out. It’s late. Are you kidding me with this?”

  I sound so corny speaking to the wind, talking to spirits, but it’s like the quieter they are, the more I want to talk.

  They shake their heads, again in synchrony, and take two steps forward into the light of the patio.

  I see Cara’s fangs first and am immediately upset that she’d bare them in front of Bianca like this. Revealing herself to a civilian so blatantly? And soon?

  Protocol, my butt. That’s it. I’m writing her up when we get to the Academy. Her and Alice both. I don’t care if they do outrank me.

  This whole assignment has been strictly amateur hour. I don’t blame Dr. Haskins for keeping us out of the Saviors if this is how we’re going to—

  Cara’s fangs! They’re twice as long as I’ve ever seen them, and she’s well past the age when her fangs should have stopped growing.

  Alice’s too. She smiles next to Cara, and her fangs just keep extending past the point where they usually stop.

  It’s like they’ve gotten fang extensions in the last forty-eight hours.

  A kind of secret ripple passes among them, and they smile. The fangs retract, if they were ever out in the first place. Am I seeing things out here in the moonlight?

  “Lily?” Cara says, “What are you doing here?” Her tone is vaguely accusatory, like I’ve caught her up to something rather than the other way around.

  “Me? What are you guys doing out there? Just lurking. You nearly scared me half to death.”

  “Oh, come now.” Bianca runs her fingers through her luxuriant hair. “A big, bad sister like you getting scared by a couple girls like us?”

  Half of her tone is condescending, and so is the other half.

  “Yeah, who just appears out of the woods like that,” I splutter, still trying to make sense of this place, these people, this night, “and doesn’t say anything? I called you guys, like, four times. Why didn’t you answer?”

  Alice makes a face. “It’s really loud in there. All those crickets.”

  “I don’t hear any crickets.”

  They say nothing.

  It’s like they’ve all agreed to say nothing.

  Or maybe I’m overreacting.

  I mean, I did just get date groped. Vampire or no, I’m still prone to basic overreaction mode.

  What did I really see? And besides, now they are standing right in front of me under the patio lights, happy and smiling. Or at least smiling.

  “Nice jacket.” Bianca reaches out to touch it. “Why does it look so familiar?”

  “That’s what I get for shopping at Target,” I bluff.

  Cara wrinkles her nose. “It’s a little big.”

  “It’s way big,” Alice says. “Like a-guy-let-you-borrow-it-because-it’s-so-cold-out big.”

  Stupid Alice and her stupid big mouth. She’s borrowed, what, four thousand guys’ jackets, and I’ve never said two words. I show up in one—one— in all this time and she has to go and make a big deal out of it? In front of Bianca, no less?

  “Yeah, so this is a coed school, right?” I turn around to put an end to the jacket conversation.

  Bianca smiles. “Speaking of boys, aren’t you late for a very important date? Something about zombies or werewolves or vampires if I eavesdropped correctly?”

  Oh, God, the witch is right!

  Zander.

  Grover.

  Me.

  Zombies.

  Movie marathon.

  Hours ago.

  But how would she know? When did she have the chance to eavesdrop on us?

  I guess she was right. Nightshade is the kind of place where you know everything about everybody.

  “Oh, shoot!” Over my shoulder, I echo Tristan’s parting words, “We�
�re not through here.”

  Is it my imagination when somebody says, “Not by a long shot, Lily”?

  Chapter 19

  I don’t knock on Zander’s door so much as kick it open. “Whoa!” Grover sits up in his easy chair, which would look more at home on the command deck of the Starship Enterprise, in the process spilling a double batch of triple butter popcorn on his lap.

  “What the?” Zander says from the tiny kitchen area, where he’s pouring tap water into an overflowing pitcher of Grape-Ade and glaring at me.

  “Lily?” Grover scoops a handful of popcorn out of his lap and shoves the kernels into his mouth.

  “Hmm.” Zander turns off the faucet, looks at his weak Grape-Ade, and leans rakishly in the doorway. “You’re right on time for the credits, Lily. Thanks for showing up so soon.”

  “I know.” I gasp, not quite out of breath but out of patience with myself, with the Sisters, with this whole operation. “I’m sorry. I just had some homework and forgot. I’m so sorry.”

  Zander spots Tristan’s jacket right away. “Hmm, was your assignment to borrow some big guy’s jacket and wear it all sexy-like over your shoulders?”

  I cock my head, about to apologize, when good old Grover steps in: “He’s joking.”

  A hand reaches up from a fake grave on their big-screen TV.

  “Look,” Grover says, “another movie’s starting right now. You’re just in time. She’s just in time, Zander,” he shouts toward the kitchen, like he’s half of a bickering, old married couple. “Don’t be rude, dude. Come and join us.”

  Zander ignores him, ignores me, pours out his light purple drink, and starts all over again. He makes much ado about it, huffing and puffing and tearing and pouring and measuring.

  I drift into the dorm suite area. The room is warm and smells vaguely of guys who spend way too much time in front of the TV, eating out of the microwave, and hiding candy bar wrappers under the couch. It’s not an entirely unpleasant smell.

  Grover is normally polite to a fault, at least to me. But tonight he is glued to some B-rate (maybe even C-rate) zombie flick about a zombie. In a bride dress. Marrying a zombie groom. In a tux.