I notice the Star Wars posters again and realize they aren’t just framed and evenly spaced. They’re in order of release, from Episode IV, the first, to Episode III, the last. Impressive. Not everybody remembers that.
The spaceship models hanging from the ceiling aren’t just good but excellent. I’m talking down-to-the-detail excellent with the right pilots in the right vehicles, with plenty of burn marks and bullet holes to look like they’ve flown straight out of the silver screen. (Hey, you live forever, you watch a lot of movies. Even Star Wars. You should hear me wax poetic on the Terminator series, you really want an earful.)
Next to Grover’s seat, there’s a papasan chair with metal legs, a lime-green cushion, and a matching Yoda throw pillow, which I clutch to my stomach as I sink in.
I can feel Grover’s warmth oozing from his massive body in the next seat over. He looks away from his precious screen (that athlete’s foot commercial might have something to do with it), sees Zander still mixing his precious Grape-Ade, and says quietly, “Thanks for coming. I know I’m breaking some kind of bro code or whatever by telling you this, but he was really upset when you didn’t show earlier.”
“I know. I just got carried away.”
He looks at the too big leather jacket and says, swishing his finger for maximum effect, “I hope he was worth it, girlfriend.”
I slap one of his massive shoulders.
He clutches his popcorn bowl protectively. “Seriously, though, that massive thing is way obvious. Why don’t you give it to me and I’ll stow it in the closet?”
I do.
By stow it in the closet, apparently he means toss it on the floor amidst a pile of dirty black jeans and one giant Chewbacca slipper.
He offers me a smaller, separate bowl of popcorn from a small table to his left.
When I decline politely, he smiles and says, “Look, this one never touched my lap, honest.”
I’m not convinced.
“Zander made it for you special, Lily. He’ll be upset if you don’t at least try it.”
I sigh and accept it, reaching my hand in and grabbing a few kernels from down in the middle of the bowl, where they’re still vaguely warm.
I can’t eat much, but I can stick them in my mouth and let them dissolve without much interference in the old vampiric digestive system, if you know what I mean.
Before they’re even between my lips, however, I can feel my fingers itching.
By the time the salty corn has reached my tongue, it’s already too late.
“Yowzers,” I say, greedily wiping my sizzling fingers off on one of Grover’s pant legs on the floor. “This is … spicy!”
Luckily a zombie attack is happening mid-screen, so Grover can’t be bothered. I quickly spit out the offending kernels but it’s not enough. My smoking tongue needs instant relief before it gets too damaged.
I panic, looking around, until I find a giant plastic cup sweating just out of Grover’s reach. I grab it and pour its contents into my mouth, the dark brown soda and slushy ice cubes working to delay and, eventually, counteract the damaging effects from the popcorn.
“Dang, girl!” Grover says, hand reaching absently for where his soda cup used to be. “Guzzle much?”
“Sorry.” I gasp, grateful to still be able to talk. “What, exactly, did Zander put on that popcorn, Grover?”
He smirks and holds up a saltshaker the size of most oil cans. On its side, in big green letters it says Garlic Powder.
“No wonder,” I say, fanning my steaming, healing tongue.
“What, you allergic or something?” he asks, eyes still wide.
“Something,” I answer, the moment passing, the damage done and, thanks to such a small sprinkling of garlic powder, quickly undone.
Still, that was a close call! Too close, if you ask me.
The movie flickers back to life, and Grover loses all interest in me.
Meanwhile, Zander has moved on to the next course. I hear a pot slam in the kitchen and lean in to Grover. “Maybe I should check on him.”
“Gooth idearsh,” he mumbles around a mouthful of buttery popcorn, not even bothering to look at me as a hungry zombie groom devours some poor waitress in a backwoods diner. Why are B movies always set in the backwoods? And who would get married there, even if you were a zombie bride? And what will they throw at her as she walks down the aisle? Chicken gizzards?
I somehow extricate myself from the papasan chair and walk to the kitchen doorway, fingertips still pink and puckered from my close encounter of the garlic kind.
“Hey.” I lean on the doorway between the living room and the kitchen.
“Hey,” he grumbles, scraping homemade Chex mix off a cookie sheet and into a large white plastic bowl.
“I’m sorry.”
He still hasn’t looked at me. “Me too. I’m sorry I went to all this stupid trouble and look like a dope.”
“Better a dope than a jerk.”
He looks at me, cracks half his crooked smile, and says, “Yeah, I guess you’re right, jerk”
“Thanks, dope!”
He slugs me gently.
I slug him back.
“Do you mind telling me,” I ask after an awkward silence, “why you two have an actual kitchen in your dorm room?”
“Oh, this?” Zander smirks, pointing to the small appliances in the broom closet-sized space. “This is a perk for working in the kitchen seven days a week for the last three frickin’ years. You want to help us out four hours every day? I can see about getting you an elf-sized microwave too.”
“I guess that’s fair,” I say.
“Fair?” He snorts. “Fair would be a private helicopter and a trust fund, but we’ll take what we can get. Here, help me carry this out to feed the junk food black hole, better known as my roommate.”
I grab the bowl, still hot, the scent of buttery, chocolaty pretzels and marshmallows reminding me of slumber parties, pillow fights, eighties records, and bad hair. Of a life long gone; a mortal life, with mortal rules. And actual records—the vinyl kind!
A Target commercial is on, so Grover actually favors us with his presence for a change. “Uhmmm.” He trades out his popcorn for Zander’s latest creation. “We must have a special guest, Lily, because I’ll have you know my man Zander here doesn’t make his homemade s’mores Chex mix for any old coed.”
I think Zander’s blushing, though it’s hard to tell in the glowing red glare of the Target commercial.
Instead of the standard-issue couch and end chair and coffee table setup like the one in our suite, Grover and Zander have a kind of man cave setup with the two recliners for themselves (and of course a guest chair just for me).
I’m wondering if that’s a perk for working in the kitchen as well or just their prerogative for having stayed in the same dorm room so long.
I huff and grumble my way into my awkward chair.
Zander laughs. “You wanna switch?” he says, already halfway standing.
“Nah,” I say, watching the zombie who’s been stumbling and grasping to reach his next victim … for two full minutes. “The movie actually looks better from down here.”
“Hmm,” he says, sitting back down and staring at the screen. “Maybe I should try that. It looks pretty bad from up here.”
We laugh at Grover’s intentness. It’s like he’s not just watching the movie; he’s studying it. Even when Zander throws stale popcorn at him, he only whispers, “Quit it. Quit it. Quit it” his focus remaining on the movie.
Zander is close, but I wish I could see him better from this angle. He scowls at me and at the screen, alternately, until the scratching at the window starts and we both scowl at that.
“Did you hear that?” Zander looks past Grover to the shadowy windows.
It’s just after midnight. I’m looking for branches, anything that might make a scraping sound like that in the middle of the night.
Grover ignores us when we stand and walk toward the window, the scratches growing
louder.
Those aren’t branches. I know before I even get to the window.
Those are claws. Specifically, vampire claws. I’d know them anywhere.
What did Tristan say before he stormed off, favoring the finger I’d slapped when he’d gotten fresh? We’re not through here.
Is he making good on his threat? Here? And how would he know where Zander and Grover’s room was? Or that I’d be in it this late on a school night? Did Bianca tell him? The closer we get, the louder the scratching. When we’re near enough to look out of their third-floor window, it suddenly stops.
Zander goes for a better look, his face nearly to the glass.
I yank him back. Hard.
I look back to see him standing in the middle of the room next to the coffee table, where his legs have disrupted a stack of Grover’s graphic novels. He’s traveled four feet without a sound.
“Lily?” He gasps.
At least he’s behind me if anything should happen.
“Are you on some kind of illegal drugs I should know about? Specifically, Olympic-grade steroids?”
“Shhh,” I hiss, looking at the window, but the TV is flickering and the only thing I can see is my reflection. I listen intently for more scratching but don’t hear any.
Zander, who’s crept up, asks behind my shoulder, “What is it?”
“I dunno,” I whisper. “Can you get him to turn it down?”
We both look at Grover, who’s engrossed in another epic, if creepingly slow, zombie battle.
“Good luck,” Zander says.
I tsk but know he’s right. “Are there trees outside your window? Bushes?” I ask hopefully.
“No trees, and they’d have to be really tall bushes. We’re on the third floor, remember?” His breath spills warm on my neck.
“Sorry, I know that! I’m just … wait. Shhh.”
Then comes a tapping, rhythmic and constant, seemingly at the top of the tallest window.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Steady, controlled, deliberate.
Like the living room in every dorm suite, Zander’s has three windows: a tall one in the middle, two smaller ones on either side. Each has a high, gabled point and a bulky protruding sill for frames or plants or, in the boys’ case, a full-scale replica of the planet Tatooine.
The windows are lead framed and seem heavy to open, with those latch locks in the middle.
“Check those,” I say, and Zander knows what I mean.
“They’re locked. Shoot, they’ve probably never been opened. We’re not exactly the outdoorsy type, you—”
“What’s going on?” Grover says, suddenly at our backs.
Hmm, must be a commercial break.
Zander looks mildly irritated, like maybe he thought this was our own private Fright Fest. “Nothing, Grover. Go back to your movie.”
But a new one has started. Maybe Grover’s already seen it. “This looks like more fun,” he says and then, once he’s quieted down enough to hear the tapping, “What’s that?”
”We don’t know,” I whisper so he’ll hush.
The tapping starts to alternate with scraping.
Tap-tap-tap.
Scrape-scrape.
Tap-tap-tap.
Scrape-scrape.
Yup, it’s definitely deliberate.
Grover’s eyes are big, and he’s suddenly standing next to Zander, so close I keep waiting for them to hold hands.
The TV screen is still flickering behind us, wreaking havoc on our view through the window. I tell Grover to turn it off. Amazingly, he does.
There is still light coming from the bathroom, the kitchen, Zander’s bedroom. Zander joins Grover, and they race around turning them off one by one. They’re in different rooms when they hit the last of the light switches and the suite suddenly blacks out.
With no reflection blocking what’s on the other side of the window, the image is crystal clear and absolutely frightening.
I see claws and fangs, both a blur, the scraping and tapping stopped. A figure, too quick to be human and dressed all in black, zips from the top of the center window to the smaller one to my right.
Zander and Grover emerge from their rooms.
“What was that?” Grover says.
The last trace of the shadowy shape vanishes.
I’m panicking, wondering what to say, how to lie, when Zander, still in his doorway, asks, “A bird?”
“Yeah.” I turn around, eager to get their attention off the window. “That’s what I thought too.”
Grover, the true creature feature aficionado, shakes his head. “I dunno, you guys, that was a pretty big bird.”
“Lot you know,” I say, trying to sound light-hearted. I punch one of his arms and settle nervously into my green chair. “Black birds look bigger at night. Especially when all those zombie movies in a row have you so scared.”
That does the trick. Nothing like calling a guy chicken, especially a guy like Grover, to take his mind off the Vamplayer hovering out in the gloom.
“I’m not scared,” he says, pressing the remote control dramatically as the TV screen flickers back to life, “but you should prepare to be when Zombie Mutants 4 wraps you in its spell.” He makes one of those evil mastermind “whoo-hooo-haaa-haaa” sounds while rubbing his ham hands together.
Zander and I groan.
The two boys become absorbed in the roving band of zombie mutants (is there any other kind?). I glance at the three gabled windows at the other end of the room, half expecting them to implode at any moment.
They don’t, and eventually I relax too, caught up in the spell of the movie or, at least, the boys’ enjoyment of it.
But in the back of my mind, I’m thinking of the shape, how big it was, how fast it moved, and wondering, Was Tristan wearing black when we parted?
Chapter 20
Zander walks me to my room after the last zombie has eaten the last brain in the last frame of the last god-awful living dead flick of the night. He has long forgotten the tap-scratching at his windows. And as he lingers near me, tall, soft, and alive, I tell myself I have as well.
If only that were true.
It’s after two in the morning. We shouldn’t be out roaming the halls, period, but the night has taken on such a surreal quality—between the blood wine and Tristan’s roving hands and Bianca and the girls appearing from the tree line and the scratch-tapping—that it only feels right to be in a gothic walkway hours after curfew. All alone. Shadows dancing beyond the huge stained glass windows. Only our footsteps (hopefully) tapping on the cool marble floors. I mean, the only things missing are a fog machine and fake spiderwebs in the rafters.
Now that we’ve made up, Zander seems calmer, at peace. He grabs my hand about halfway to my room. It’s so warm.
Everyone back at the Academy has such cold hands. It’s always a treat to hold a mortal boy’s hand.
“So, what do you do for fun around here?”
He laughs. “You mean, besides watch Grover eat popcorn and put together Star Wars replicas? You’re looking at it.”
What a nice life. What a normal, cozy, human life.
I know many girls would run at the sight of the first Yoda throw pillow. Not me. At this point I’ve had enough charmers, charlatans, slick talkers, and Vamplayers. Give me a tall, strapping, curly-haired, crooked-smiling, pug-nosed, Vader-boxer-shorts-wearing, good guy any day of the week.
I think of how unfair I’ve been to Zander by meeting with Tristan, leading him on, kissing him. Mission or no mission, it’s my job to help humans, not hurt them—not even their feelings.
If only I could go back in time, say no to Tristan, ignore him. I’m supposed to be less susceptible to a Vamplayer’s charms, not more.
Maybe the Academy is doing it wrong. Maybe they need a Simulator for deflecting the Vamplayers’ emotional seduction, not so much his fighting.
Still, I only have myself to blame. Deep down, I wanted to go with Tristan, wa
nted to be with him, my own kind, embracing the night, gorging on blood wine and the limitless potential of an evening spent with another immortal. How did I let this creep get to me after all the Vamplayers I’ve put down over the years?
“Careful,” Zander says, extricating his hand from my increasingly tightening grip. “I don’t know what you’re thinking about, but he must be some kind of a jerk to make you squeeze that hard.”
“Sorry.”
I have got to talk to Dr. Haskins about my anger reflex. As I age it’s getting stronger, not weaker.
“I do that,” I explain without explaining.
“Who were you thinking about?” he asks in the weak lamplight bordering the gothic stone walls.
“Nobody special.”
“I’m not blind, Lily. I know what Tristan’s jacket looks like.”
I shake my head and let him speak.
“I don’t blame you, okay?” He puts his big hands in front of him. “Let’s see.” He raises his left hand above his shoulder in a scales-of-justice motion. “You’ve got the smooth Euro trash player here.” Now he brings his other hand way low. “And the geeky dishwasher-slash-busboy-slash-financial-aid guy down here. I get it, okay? I do. I just, I don’t blame you.”
“Blame me for what?” I ask, but I’m not snappy anymore. I’m more curious.
He blushes and hangs his head, adorably. “Nothing. It’s just, Grover warned me about you.”
I slug him. “He did, huh? You mean Grover, expert in all things girl?”
“Yeah. If they’re zombies maybe. No, he said you were out of my league, that I should watch out or I’d, you know, get my heart broken.”
“Out of your league?” Secretly, I’m thanking Grover for at least thinking that much of me. “That’s why I was sitting alone at dinner tonight?”
“Not for long.” Suddenly his lean body is several inches closer than before.
I flinch at the memory of how charming Tristan was, at least until he turned not so charming. “It’s not easy, you know, being the new girl. Everybody’s watching, taking notes, comparing, testing you. I thought Cara and Alice had my back. They usually do, but I was vulnerable, okay? It was stupid, and I’m sorry.”
Vamplayers Page 10
