Alexander gave me a blank look.
But I was undeterred. “The only thing I haven’t figured out is what the crop circles mean.” I leaned into Alexander intently. “Are they warning other vampires to stay away or inviting them in?”
Alexander quickly broke our gaze.
Jameson burst into the room carrying a dessert tray, ending my investigation.
“Just in time,” Alexander said. “We’re finished.”
Jameson presented us with two perfectly delectable crème brûlées.
“It’s like eating at a five-star restaurant!” I complimented him.
Jameson’s pale flesh turned pink as he wheeled back our dinner plates.
“There is so much to do while we are here,” I said excitedly, digging into my dessert. “You’ll have to meet Aunt Libby. Then there’s Hot Gothics. And of course the Coffin Club!”
Alexander gave me a stern look. “Not the Coffin Club.”
“Don’t worry, I can get in. I have a fake ID.”
“That’s not what I meant. A club like that is not a place a girl like you should frequent.”
“A girl like me?” I laughed in disbelief. “It’s a goth club. It was made for me! Ever since I visited it last time, I dreamed that we could return there together. What could possibly happen?”
“A girl in a bar?” he asked, like I had two heads. “Don’t you watch the news?”
“I know,” I said, rolling my eyes like I was getting scolded by my parents. “It’s not the safest place…but—”
“Last time you met Jagger. Remember?”
Alexander had a point. I didn’t have the greatest track record with my decisions. My curiosity had drawn my boyfriend’s nemesis right to him, creating a lot of danger for him and my family.
“All right,” I finally admitted. Disappointed, I chiseled away at the burnt sugar topping stuck to the inside of the bowl.
Alexander placed his ghost white hand on my pale one. “We will go, but together.”
“Can we go tonight?” I asked, perking up.
“How about tomorrow. I wasn’t expecting company, remember?”
“Oh, yes, of course.” I remembered intruding on him. Then I furrowed my brow skeptically and challenged him. “You don’t have a hot date, do you?”
“Yes. I do, as a matter of fact.”
“You do?”
“Yes, and it is almost ending.” Alexander glanced at an antique marble clock sitting on the mantel of the unused fireplace. The clock was barely ticking, and the minute hand was broken. I didn’t want my evening to end, but I knew of course it had to. He wiped his mouth with his linen napkin and then grabbed my hand.
“I’m so glad you did come,” he said adoringly. “You never fail to surprise me.”
“You surprise me, too…” I took a deep breath, then asked, “Why are you both still here?”
Just then Jameson returned to collect the dishes.
For the time being, Alexander was off the hook. “Allow me, Miss Raven,” Jameson said. Alexander and his butler placed the dishes on the top shelf of the cart.
“Jameson will drive you back to your aunt’s apartment.”
I glanced at the broken clock, still struggling to figure out the correct time.
“Jameson can drop me off at my aunt’s drumming class. It’s much closer. I believe you may have met my aunt Libby. She works at Happy Homes.”
“That beautiful woman is your aunt? I should have known. She is quite charming…just like her niece,” said Jameson.
“I look forward to meeting her,” Alexander said. Then with a whisper: “Although you’ll have to make a few excuses for me not being seen in the daylight.”
“Excuses? I wrote the book! I’ve got one for every occasion.”
Like a Victorian gentleman minus the top hat, white gloves, and British accent, Alexander escorted me out the door and down the rock path while Jameson brought the car around.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” I asked my boyfriend as I snuggled in his arms.
“Of course.”
“I miss you already.”
“I do, too.”
Alexander leaned into me and gave me a long, luxurious good-night kiss. He graciously opened the back door of the Mercedes and helped me step in. As we drove off, Alexander stood in the driveway, the mammoth-sized manor house looming behind him like a medieval monster.
Jameson was kind enough to chauffeur me to Hipsterville’s Old Town Folk Music Center, but the short five-mile drive from the manor house to the hippie school of music seemed to take longer than the journey from Dullsville to Hipsterville. If I’d pushed the car myself, we’d have made it faster.
Now that Jameson and I had some quality time, I figured I’d make the most of it. I tried to pump the Creepy Man for info on Valentine and Jagger, but he was as evasive as Alexander.
“That was so kind of you and Alexander to reunite Valentine with his family,” I began when we drove past Gerald’s Gas Station.
“It was the right thing to do,” he said sweetly.
“Did you see Jagger?”
I waited on pins, needles, and piercing, bracing for his response.
“No, I didn’t. I left that to Alexander.”
So much for the facts on that conversation.
“I bet Ruby misses you,” I said, referring to my former boss who was now dating Jameson.
Jameson’s bulgy eyes brightened in the rearview mirror and his pale face flushed bright red with the mention of her name.
“Has she come for a visit?” I pried.
“Oh, no. We are hoping to return to the Mansion shortly.”
“Really, then why did you rent the manor house? You could have just stayed in a hotel.”
“I don’t stay anywhere that already has a housekeeper,” Jameson joked.
I felt as if I were playing a game of tennis with my dad. With all my might, I lobbed the ball over the net only to have it returned so hard I didn’t have a chance to swing. Frustrated, I always had to take a moment to collect myself. Time for another serve.
“Do you miss Romania?” I asked.
“Oh yes, it’s so beautiful there. But I am also quite happy here, in America. I’ve met some people that I am quite fond of, Miss Raven.”
I knew he was politely referring to Ruby and me.
But I wanted more. What were Alexander’s and Jameson’s plans?
“Do you think you’ll marry Ruby?”
“Uh…”
“If so, will you live in the manor house? Or in the Mansion?”
“I’m not planning…”
“Well, if you did.”
“I suppose…it would be up to…Why all of the questions, Miss Raven?”
We were volleying steadily now, and it was time for me to end the match. I paused, then asked, “I’m just wondering, what are you and Alexander doing here?”
Jameson pulled the car to the curb in front of the Old Town Folk Music Center. I’d swung too hard, hitting the ball over the fence. The match ended, Jameson the obvious winner.
The rain had subsided and the streetlights and lampposts were dripping wet. Jameson climbed out of the Mercedes and kindly held the door open for me, like I was an A-list starlet arriving at a premiere. The only thing missing were the paparazzi. I waved good-bye and was heading for Old Town when I noticed something flashing at the end of the block—the flickering neon red sign of the Coffin Club. As Jameson puttered down the street, I paused. The sounds of banging drums pulsed out of the music center.
It was as if the blinking neon coffins were drawing me to them, like a vulture to a corpse. No one would be the wiser if I just popped my head in for a nonalcoholic bubbly Execution…or two.
4
Return to the Coffin Club
I held my breath in wild anticipation of seeing the Coffin Club up close once again, but when I approached the underground club, I was shocked. More than a hundred young goths were anxiously awaiting admittance to the club—twice as l
ong a line as I remembered it being last time. The procession of clubsters, dressed similarly to me (except sporting different-colored streaks, tattoos, piercings, and shoes), wrapped the block like a line at Disney World. I’d be lucky if I gained entrance before summer break was over.
Frustrated, I began walking toward the end of the line. I was about halfway down the block when I noticed a guy with a cape and vinyl pants bent over, adjusting his monster boots. I snuck in the space before him and tried to appear inconspicuous. I avoided any trouble by standing with my back to him and gazed at the stars and then a few birds flying above the roof of the club. When the birds began to hover instead of fly off, I realized I’d spotted a cluster of bats. How wicked—bats at the Coffin Club!
I checked my watch. Aunt Libby’s class was going to end in less than an hour, and it appeared that I’d be spending the time waiting in this never-ending line.
I anxiously shifted back and forth. I peered out toward the club’s entrance to see if there was an obvious holdup, but there wasn’t anything more than a bouncer checking IDs. It was then I noticed a familiar couple standing at the head of the line. I leaned out, holding my place with one foot like a checkers player holds his place with his finger before making his next move. It was Primus and Poison, two clubsters I’d snuck in front of last time I’d visited the club.
Primus and Poison. How could I forget their names when all I’d ever known were names like Billy, Matt, or Becky?
I took a chance and stepped out of line, racing up to the macabre duo. “Primus! Poison! It’s me, Raven!”
The pair scrutinized me. It was clear they wanted to recognize me—after all, I did know their names. But I could tell by their gaze that they couldn’t place my face.
“I met you a few months ago, here in line,” I said, finagling my way into the crowded line beside them.
“Oh yeah,” Primus, a Marilyn Manson look-alike, said, finally remembering. “How are you doing?”
Poison looked at me with venom in her eyes.
“I’m great!” I said to Primus. “It’s so cool to see you again.” Then I turned to Poison. “I love your corset! It’s beautiful!”
Poison’s disposition changed. “I just threw this together.”
“No way! You should be a model for Gothic Beauty.”
One could hear the sudden sound of a motorcycle’s engine revving above the other street noises and the throbbing music bleeding out of the Coffin Club. A Harley-Davidson Night Rod shot up the street and screeched to a halt in an empty VIP space right in front of the club. The hot rod had a sleek and sexy design, black-walled tires with orange pinstripes. The rider took off his helmet, emblazoned with a white skull and crossbones, unleashing shoulder-length jagged purple hair with black undertones. Wearing dark Ray-Bans and dressed in stud-and-chain-riddled leather pants and jacket, the motorcycle rider confidently hopped off his Night Rod, nodded to the bouncer, and walked right into the club as if he owned it.
“Who’s he?” I wondered aloud. “A celeb? I didn’t recognize him.”
“They all think they are movie stars here now,” Primus said.
“Yes, this club has tripled in size in the last few months. And so has the attitude,” Poison added.
The line inched forward, and before I knew it we were presenting the burly bouncer with our IDs.
The gatekeeper immediately stamped the image of a bat on Primus’s and Poison’s hands and strapped barbed-wire-shaped bracelets on their wrists, but he scrutinized my card like he was checking a passport at an international airport.
Poison doubled back and got right in the bouncer’s face. “She comes here all the time,” she said. “I can’t believe you don’t remember her.”
The bouncer lifted his gaze back to me, his expression one of disdain, then shifted it to the waiting line, sporting streaks in various colors of the gothic rainbow.
“I had blue hair last time,” I said.
“Oh, that was you?” he asked seriously.
He stamped my hand with the Coffin Club bat and wrapped a band around my wrist. I had gained passage to the Coffin Club. We slipped behind the bouncer, headed past the bloodred carpet and rope and two skeleton greeters, and before I knew it I was walking through the black wooden coffin-shaped doors.
“Thanks,” I said to Poison. “Everyone says I look younger than I am. I bet you get that a lot, since you have such flawless skin.”
Poison’s ghost white face lit up. She put her arm around me. “I’ll buy the first round,” she said.
The Coffin Club was still morbidly magical. Neon headstones flashed against black spray-painted cement walls. Pale mannequins, dressed in antique clothing or Victorian suits or bound in leather, hung from the rafters. Music pulsed hard throughout the club as if the DJ were trying to wake the dead. A balcony, the place where I’d first encountered Alexander’s nemesis, Jagger, loomed over the vampire-wannabe crowded dance floor, blood-filled amulets swinging from necks like Olympic medals.
But Primus was right. The Coffin Club had changed in the last few months. The club was packed, black wall to black wall, with clubsters. The thick dry ice permeated the air like a Jack the Ripper London fog, making it difficult to see. And where, as last time, I got stares as I ventured through the club, this time the clubsters were intensely partying and seemingly uninterested in a newbie.
I followed Primus and Poison to the bar, but other eager patrons pushed their way in front of me, leaving me to fall behind. I could see their heads above the crowd as I squeezed between the clubsters. When I thought I’d finally reached them, I realized I’d been following another couple the entire time. I popped out at the mini–flea market, where for a small price a clubster could buy anything from an amulet to a sit-down with a numerologist. The packed dance floor was next to the row of sellers, but the bar was nowhere in sight.
I squeezed my way back between the dancing and drinking clubsters, past the giant tombstone-shaped restroom doors marked MONSTERS and GHOULS. I finally saw a wall filled with bottles, spiderwebs clinging to them. I knew I had found the holy grail. But the bar was so jammed with thirsty customers it was impossible to see who was bartending or where Primus and Poison were located. I squished my way through. Just as a girl was sliding off a tombstone-shaped barstool, I jumped on it.
A guy sitting next to me spun around. He was wearing more eyeliner than Alice Cooper, and it didn’t look as good on him as it did on the elder rocker.
“I’ll buy you whatever you want,” he said, slurring his way into my face and space.
I spotted the bartender, Romeo, but neither my barmate nor I attracted his attention.
Romeo responded to every wave of a ten-dollar bill but continued to ignore us. When he passed by for the hundredth time, I leaned over the bar and grabbed his tattooed arm.
Since Alexander and Jameson had been mum about all things Maxwell, I thought this was my chance to get some inside scoop. “Did Jagger go back to Romania?” I asked.
Romeo, holding a beer in each hand, glared at me. The mention of Jagger’s name gave him pause. Like Primus and Poison, he didn’t recognize me.
“Who wants to know?” he asked suspiciously.
“Raven. Is he in town? Or did he go back to Romania?”
“Raven…Your name sounds familiar.”
I realized I shouldn’t have let Romeo know I was looking for Jagger. I wasn’t a regular clubster; I was the girlfriend of Jagger’s nemesis. Alexander had already reunited Valentine with him. Now it appeared as if I was stirring up trouble. How could I have been so stupid?
“I’ll have a Medieval Massacre, and the lady will have—,” my barmate began.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t return.
It was time to call it a night. I’d lost Primus and Poison. I’d been asking about locations of nefarious vampires. And I was an underage girl alone at a bar. I’d better arrive at Old Town before this black-fingernailed Cinderella turned into a pumpkin.
Fatigue set in as I headed for the entrance doors. It was starting to hit me that when I’d woken up this morning, I was in Dullsville. I began to feel dizzy as I pushed and squeezed my way through the fog-filled club, my safety pins getting tangled on other clubsters’ chains. When I glanced up, I’d reached a wall that was unfamiliar but had a coffin-shaped door. I tried to open it, but it was stuck. I turned the knob and pushed my body against it.
The door flung open and I stumbled into a barely lit area. It took me several steps before I realized that instead of exiting into the street, I had entered a dimly lit corridor.
I would have turned back, but I heard music (different from the song being played in the Coffin Club) pulsing from the other end. Perhaps it was coming from Jagger’s apartment—the very one he had shown me when I visited the club on my last trip. It would take only a moment for me to find out. A single overhead naked bulb lit the cryptic corridor, and graffiti lined the cement walls like an urban overpass. When I reached the end of the corridor, I discovered another smaller tunnellike path, with arched stone walls and a very narrow, steep staircase that plummeted into darkness. I let the rusty handrail go untouched and crept down the stairs. They led to a single wooden dungeon door. Written in bloodred spray-painted letters was: DEAD END.
Was this someone’s office? Or perhaps another entrance to the apartment Jagger had been living in?
I pressed my ear to the coffin-lid door. I could hear a mixture of music and voices.
I slowly turned the knob and pushed the door, but it wouldn’t budge. I heard some voices behind me and the sound of footsteps descending the stairs. It was a dead end—I had nowhere to go. I knew at any moment I might be kicked out of the club and perhaps Hipsterville altogether—if I lived to tell.
Two guys with the complexion of corpses, one blond, one redhead, confronted me. “Can’t get in?” the blond one asked.
“I forgot my key,” I said flippantly.
“It’s okay, I have mine.”
He unclipped a skeleton key swinging from a chain attached to his studded belt.
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