Undead Philosophy 101

by Stephanie Burgis

  Undead Philosophy 101

  Stephanie Burgis

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2010, 2012 Stephanie Burgis Samphire. All rights reserved.

  Cover design and ebook conversion by http://www.50secondsnorth.com/ebooks.

  Undead Philosophy 101

  It’s hard to tell the vampires from the students in East Lansing.

  Let’s face it: in a university town, at least 80% of the people on the street look young and beautiful. In a northern town gripped by seven months of winter, the only people who aren’t inhumanly pale have spent way too much money in tanning salons. The ones still wearing fashions from twenty years ago are probably math majors; and in the grayest of short winter days, when darkness is only ever replaced by a bleak cloud cover, vampires can safely walk the streets both day and night.

  And in every department on campus there are the PhD students who have always been there, their dissertations never quite completed, teaching a section here, a section there, but never, ever leaving. No one in their departments can even remember when they arrived and started their degrees—but with 20,000 whispering, flirting, beer-swilling, belching undergraduates to teach, the professors are only too happy to have reliable teaching assistants on hand who already have the syllabi memorized. It isn’t in their interest to ask too many questions…and anyway, everyone knows that grad students keep strange hours.

  So I knew exactly where to go when I couldn’t ignore the vampires anymore.

  At nine o’clock p.m. on a Wednesday in December, even the street lamps were covered by falling snow, and Espresso Royale was a beacon of light and warmth in the pitch-black night. I stomped ice off the soles of my take-no-crap boots as I passed the fake fire blazing outside. All the tables inside were taken, leaving five or six stragglers shivering at the outer tables…but they were all bundled in puffy coats, their gloved hands wrapped around their coffee mugs for warmth. I wasn’t here for any of them.

  No, my target was seated safely inside, thin blonde ponytail tied behind his head and ragged little goatee stained from his double espresso as he typed on his laptop, apparently shielded from all the noise and conversations around him by the earbuds of his iPod.

  Ed Staggs was in deep cover, but I knew him for what he was.

  He’d been my teacher for the last two months.

  I didn’t bother to order a drink. Instead, I slid into the chair across from him and waited until he noticed me. It didn’t take long—and I’d have bet my first semester’s student loan that it happened well before he took the trouble to look up and widen his eyes in surprise.

  “Do I know you?”

  “Fourth from the back, far-left row, every Thursday at nine-fifteen.” I rattled off the stats. “You said my last essay on Plato’s Republic was insightful.”

  “Umm….”

  “And you said I should really work on my handwriting.”

  “Got it! Amanda, right?” He snorted out a laugh and leaned forward to share the joke. “My housemate thought, when you wrote—”

  I narrowed my eyes and cut him off. “I need your help.”

  “Ah. Yeah, right.” He settled back, sighing. “Office hours are on Monday only, two to five. You can sign up on my door.”

  “I can’t wait that long,” I said.

  “Trust me, you can.” He was already looking back at his computer screen, clicking on a link. “I’ve been teaching this class a long time, and I can tell you—”

  “I know,” I said, and something in my voice must have alerted him, because he looked up with sudden wariness as I finished: “You’ve been teaching it for forty years.”

  * * * *

  Ed Staggs’s eyes did not turn red. His canines didn’t flash; his face remained unchanged.

  He said, “Wow. A freshman who actually knows how to use the library. Amazing.”

  “It wasn’t that hard,” I said. “You didn’t even bother to change your name.”

  “Why should I?” He shrugged, still bonelessly relaxed in his chair. The chatter around us was unchanged, no one listening to our conversation as he said, “I like to keep things simple.”

  “Right,” I said. “Simple. I know what you are.”

  His pale green eyes narrowed. “And?”

  “My roommate’s been bitten by a vampire,” I said. “I need you to help me find out which one.”

  Ed Staggs blinked twice. Then he laughed. “Amanda,” he said. “Amanda, Amanda, Amanda.” He pushed aside his laptop and leaned forward across the table. “If you actually know what I am—”

  “I do.”

  “—Then why, exactly, do you think I’d help you track down another of my own kind?”

  “Because you’re different,” I said. I ticked the points off on my fingers. “Stupid goatee. Bad hair. Sloppy clothes. Sitting in Espresso Royale instead of one of the bars…” His eyes narrowed. Before he could argue, I finished, “…and pretending to listen to an iPod instead of picking up undergrads.”

  He glared at me. “I seem to have picked one up without trying.” Then he looked pointedly from my hair to my motorcycle jacket. “And speaking of bad clothes…?”

  I ignored him. “You’re not like the others.”

  “So, what? You think I’m a vegetarian hippie vampire? Stuck in the 60’s forever?” He snorted.

  I didn’t look away. “No,” I said. “But I think you have a different agenda than the others do.”

  He sat back, watching me. The earpods of his iPod still dangled from his ears. He should have looked harmless.

  He didn’t.

  “Tell me about your roommate,” he said. “Do I know her?”

  “I doubt it.” It was my turn to snort. “Aimee’s fantasy is to be a model someday, if she’s really, really lucky. She isn’t the type to take philosophy classes.”

  He raised wispy eyebrows at me. “You’re rooming with a wannabe model?”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re still offended about the bad clothes comment?”

  “I’m just surprised,” he said.

  “Don’t be.” I set my teeth together with a click. “Aimee and I aren’t friends.”

  “Then why are you worried about her?”

  “She’s been bitten by a vampire,” I said, “and she’s not dead. As far as I know, it’s only been once, but it might have been twice. And—”

  “Aha,” he said. “Third time’s the charm.”

  “Right,” I said. “I know how to use the library, remember? I looked it up.”

  “Smart girl.” Ed Staggs picked up his espresso mug and turned it slowly in his hands, still watching me. “So, if you’re not friends, and you don’t want to find yourself rooming with a vampire’s servant, then why are you going to all this trouble for her? Why don’t you just change rooms?”

  “I tried. Housing said there weren’t any openings this late in the semester.”

  “Got it,” he said. He watched me for another minute, unblinking. Then he nodded infinitesimally. “So. Where’s Aimee now?”

  “It’s a Wednesday night in East Lansing, and she’s a freshman who wants to be a model. Where do you think she is?”

  For the first time, he looked startled. “A bar? But if she’s already been bitten once—”

  “Exactly,” I said. “That’s where he—whoever he is—picked her up the first time, last weekend.”

  “Why’d you let her go back?”

  I looked at him with contempt. “Let her? The only way I could have stopped her was by tying her up. And somehow, I didn’t think getting myself arrested was going to help keep her from being bitten a third time.”

  “So you decided to go straight to the source.” Ed Staggs smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile, but I
didn’t have time to worry about it. He stood up, pulling out the earbuds. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “You’re agreeing to help me?” I blinked. I hadn’t even had the chance to make my offer yet—or my blackmail threat, if the offer hadn’t worked. “What’s the deal?”

  “Oh, we’ll figure the deal out later.” He leaned down to turn off his computer, so that all I could see of him was his limp, greasy blonde hair. His voice was abstracted as he pressed buttons. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

  * * * *

  Snow was falling through the night air in a soft, steady stream as we left the café, but some things are the same in every season: the line waiting outside the Blue Dragon stretched nearly a block down Grand River Avenue, and every single one of the waiting women was wearing a tank top or little babydoll T-shirt, without a winter coat or scarf in sight. As I looked at them—especially the ones who weren’t even bothering to put on a show of cold as snow fell onto their bare arms—I shook my head in disgust.

  How was it possible for anyone not to notice all the vampires in this town? And how had they become the ones in charge of fashion?

  I headed for the back of the line, but Staggs set off in a different direction.

  “What? You have a VIP pass?” I said.

  He walked straight past the open door of the bar and into the alleyway just past it. “Not exactly.”

  I hesitated at the mouth of the alley. Stupid to think of it as an alley, really—it was only a short, covered passageway leading out to an open parking lot. But it was dark inside the passageway, and the line of waiting bar-bunnies outside were making way too much noise of their own to hear if anything happened…

  The vampire laughed at me from the darkness. “What, you’ve thought better of your big plan already?”

  I set my jaw hard and strode into the alley to join him. “My parents would kill me for this,” I muttered.

  “For which bit?” I couldn’t see Staggs’s face clearly in the darkness, but I could hear him smirk. “Going to a bar underage? Or doing it with an”—he dropped his voice suggestively—“older man?”

  “I don’t think you actually count as an older man,” I said.

  There was a moment of nonplussed silence.

  “You’re the one who looked me up. Forty years of teaching, remember?”

  “Yeah, but you’ve been dead for all of them.”

  He made an irritated noise in the back of his throat. “Undead, actually.”

  “Whatever. That’s forty years of living like a student,” I said. “Sharing a house with a bunch of other guys? Wearing a stupid little goatee and jeans with holes in them and”—I thought back to how I’d found him in the café—“probably watching porn and getting into lots of internet flamewars? Personally, I don’t think those forty years added a whole lot of maturity.”

  He didn’t answer. But the air positively rippled with his irritation as he stalked out the other end of the alley in front of me.

  There was a door in the wall just to the left of the alley, looking out onto the parking lot. The only sign on it said No Entrance, but Staggs knocked anyway, and we only waited half a minute in the snow before it opened.

  “Huh,” said the man who’d opened it. “You.” He was wearing a cook’s apron, but his hair was lank, his fingernails looked dark with grime even in the faint light of the lamps over the parking lot, and I made a mental note not to eat anything while we were here.

  He looked at me. “And…?”

  “A friend,” Staggs said. His lips twisted into a smile. “For tonight.”

  “Got it.” The man stepped back to let us pass.

  “You made it sound like I’m on tonight’s menu,” I muttered as I followed Staggs down a long, unlit flight of stairs.

  The roof above the stairs was low and sloping, with weird symbols carved into the wood. Tight walls closed me in on either side. The cook shut the door above us with a click, and the last light disappeared.

  “You’re the one who asked for my help,” Staggs said.

  I scowled and concentrated on not tripping in the dark.

  At least I knew the man behind me wasn’t a vampire. Even in the dim light of the streetlamps, I’d seen the mark of old bites on his unwashed neck. Maybe if I showed Aimee the evidence of what another vampire’s servant ended up looking like, it would frighten her into seeing sense.

  On the other hand, this was the same woman who thought Britney Spears’ latest comeback TV special was the most Deep and Meaningful thing she’d ever seen. So maybe common sense and Aimee just didn’t exist in the same universe.

  Staggs opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, and light burst through. We pushed our way through a crowded kitchen, full of workers and noise, where no one looked twice at us. In fact, at least a few of the workers were intentionally not looking at us. I glanced sideways at them, but they were bent over ovens and sinks, and I couldn’t see their necks. The cook who’d let us in dropped away to go back to work, and Staggs cut straight across to the big swinging doors at the other end of the room. I followed after, just in time to keep them from slamming shut in my face.

  Music blared straight into my ears from the speakers in the wall on either side of the doors and drowned out my groan of horror. Saccharine voices married a thumping beat, somewhere halfway between wannabe techno and bubblegum pop.

  “Aimee is so not worth this,” I muttered.

  Staggs turned back, grinning. Vampire hearing really was excellent, unfortunately. “What, you don’t like the beat?”

  I stared at him. “You do?”

  “Hell, no,” he said. “I like the alternative scene.” His gaze added the word: Obviously. “But this is what brings them all in, so…”

  “…So this is what you guys play.” I shook my head. “Is every bar in East Lansing owned by vampires?”

  He shrugged. “You’re the one who did all the research. You tell me.” His gaze went out across the sea of heads before us, bodies jumbled up into too-close proximity all throughout the big, open room. “So, where’s your roomie?”

  “No one says ‘roomie’ anymore,” I said, but it was an empty jibe. I was searching, too. “She could be anywhere. How do these people breathe?”

  “They’re having fun,” Staggs said. “C’mon. Don’t they have any fun back where you come from?”

  I gritted my teeth. “I come from Northern Michigan, not the end of the universe.”

  “Close enough.” Staggs shook his head, looking more insufferably pleased than ever. “Lot of weirdos living up there in the wilds. Are your parents the hippie-dippie types, rednecks, apocalyptic end-of-the-world wackos, Michigan Militia nutjobs, or wannabe artists?”

  I couldn’t punch him if I wanted his help. So I just said as evenly as I could, “There’s a lot of room for different belief systems up North.”

  “I bet.” He looked smug. “End-of-the-world wackos, right? Holing up with shotguns and ammo and a thousand cans of food for when the UN finally invades…how did they let you come all the way down here for college?”

  “My parents and I want different things,” I said tightly. “Now, can we go look for Aimee, please? Because if she gets bitten again while we’re hanging around here—”

  “Cool down, Amanda. We’ll find her.” Staggs reached out and snagged the back of a passing waiter’s shirt. “Hey, John. We’re looking for a girl named Aimee. She’s—” He looked at me questioningly.

  I sighed. Incredibly, I knew her stats. “Five-foot-eleven, two-foot-long blonde hair, size 4, 38D bust.” I knew it all, because she’d made a point of telling me, the first day we moved into our room. It had been a defining moment in our roommate relationship. “She’s wearing a very small pink tank top and tight blue jeans tonight.”

  “I’ll bet she is,” Staggs said. “Wow.” He caught my glare and turned back to the waiter, lowering his voice. “She’s been bitten at least once already.”

  The waiter’s eyes widened. His hands were fu
ll with the two trays he was carrying, but he jerked his chin at the far end of the room. “She was over there fifteen minutes ago. I think Jeremy was on his way over to her.”

  “Jeremy?” I said.

  But Staggs was already setting off across the crowded floor. I gritted my teeth and followed after, pushing my way through the press of arms and legs by brute force. The music pounding through the air shifted to a new, even more intrusive beat, topped by a panting female voice mimicking cries of ecstasy, and I thought that if I saw Aimee’s vampire right now, I wouldn’t even need a stake or holy water. I could take him out with my bare hands for putting me through this.

  Throttling wasn’t an option, though, because Aimee was gone by the time we reached the other side of the room. Ten minutes later, even I had to admit it: we weren’t going to find her.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it.

  I wheeled on Staggs, balling my hands into fists. “Tell me who Jeremy is.”

  He shrugged, his glare still fixed on the crowd around us. “Who do you think?”

  “Who do I think?” My voice started to spiral dangerously out of control. “I think he’s a goddamn vampire! I think he’s about to turn my roommate into his servant, if he hasn’t done it already, and all because I didn’t—”

  I snapped my jaw shut, digging my fingernails into the palms of my hands. Breathe, Amanda.

  I couldn’t believe I was too late. And all because I’d wanted to prove a stupid, childish point to my parents, of all people, who weren’t even here to see me…

  “Look,” Staggs said. He turned back to me, his lean shoulders stiffening with sudden resolution. “I know where we can go, if you really want to get your roommate back.” He paused, cocking his head. “I know you don’t think highly of her, but…”

  “No,” I said. Aimee might be the Queen of Vapid, but I was the idiot who’d thought I could bury my head in my books and pretend the vampires in East Lansing had nothing to do with me. I was in no position to throw stones…and even if I had been, I wasn’t going to go back to bed in our room tonight and just wait for a strange vampire’s servant to walk in on me. “Trust me. I want to get her back.”