Mere mortals, p.22
Mere Mortals, page 22
Dexter eventually headed home for dinner (and I think to check on Poe), and I stayed, sipping coffee, until the rest of the shop emptied out. I wanted to check on Reg too, but I sensed he needed some time alone. When all the customers were gone, and darkness began to fall, Lina collapsed into a chair across from me, propping her feet up on the oak barrel that passed for a table.
“Tired?” I asked, as if vampires could tire.
She sighed. “Exhaustion comes in many forms.”
“What will you do?” I asked. “When everything is done?”
“You mean when the good people of this village have had their minds violated, their homes stolen, and their futures forever changed?”
I shrank back in my chair, hiding my face behind my coffee mug. “Well, when you put it like that . . .”
“If you’re going to do a thing, you should be able to talk about the thing.”
“And if you feel so strongly about a thing, you should have tried to stop the thing.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, and finally, Lina looked away, shaking her head.
“You’re right.”
“So why aren’t you fighting it?” I asked. “I mean, not that I want you to—but I would understand. It’s just . . . me and Reg, we don’t have a choice. This is our one shot to get off death row.”
She smiled. “You have a funny way of talking about life, princess.”
“And you didn’t answer the question.”
“I’ve been around long enough to know that if the Elders want this town, they’ll take this town. Without your help, they might send the Bloods in to take it themselves.”
“That would be . . .”
Awful.
“Messy.”
Lina agreed. “The alternatives certainly make the current operation look downright friendly.”
“Will you stay?” I asked.
“And what? Turn the coffee shop into a blood bank?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Point taken.”
“I honestly don’t know what I’ll do next,” she said. “I never think that far ahead.”
“Why not?”
“An endless road is an overwhelming prospect. When you’ve got eternity in front of you, the present becomes a lot more interesting.”
“Well, I hope you don’t stick around,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “Oh yeah? Why not?”
“Because I don’t want Sal stuck here with a bunch of Bloods, and I think if you stay, he will too. To be close to you.”
Lina said nothing, but if she were human, she looked like she might cry.
I set my coffee cup down and tried to be gentle with my words.
“You know that thing people say about the thin line between love and hate? In a hundred years, I’ve never understood it until now.”
Lina didn’t answer, but a puff of air caused me to blink, and when I opened my eyes again, she was cradling a picture frame in her hands. It was the photo of her and Sal in front of the pyramids, under the bright Egyptian sun. She ran two fingers over the image.
“I wanted to turn him, so this could be us forever. But it would have taken millennia before he could walk in the sunlight with me, and it was against everything in his being.”
“Really? He seems kinda dark, if you ask me.”
Lina smiled. “Don’t let the rough exterior fool you. That man is made of pure light.”
I thought of Dexter’s bright eyes and golden hair and skin, as if the sunshine was burning right out from his core. Now, that was a guy made of pure light. Sal? Not so much.
“You know, it’s funny really,” Lina said, moving to hang the picture back on the wall—this time at a speed I could see.
“What’s funny?”
“He didn’t want to be vampire, and I didn’t want to be human, and yet we both turned against our nature anyway. He no longer slays, and I no longer feed.” She adjusted the frame until it was perfectly straight. “And yet somehow, we still can’t find a way to be together.”
Just like Dexter and I would never be together. Not that we were some epic love story, but it was sad to know we never would be. At least Dexter wouldn’t remember us, and I would have my thirst to distract me. Sal and Lina had to keep spinning in the same universe, and when I saw the pain in Lina’s face as she stared at that photo, I decided it was probably for the best that Dex and I were going to end before it got any harder to say goodbye.
Thirty-Two
So Much for the Sun
The day of the Halloween Hoopla dawned gray and chilly, and the clouds remained thick throughout the morning, as floats and flatbeds clustered at the edge of town, lining up for the march down Main Street. I stared up at the sky, looking for any cracks of light, but the gloom was solid. I guess the sun just wasn’t much for goodbyes.
“Earth to Charlie!” Sydney tugged on the hem of my fairy dress. “What’s wrong, you not get enough coffee yet this morning? Need me to call Lina for a special delivery?”
Sydney was sitting on the bed of the float, at the edge of our paper-mache graveyard, gluing some fallen letters back onto their Styrofoam headstone. I dropped down beside her, perched on my knees, so that my fairy wings wouldn’t touch the ground.
“Yeah, just need a caffeine fix,” I said.
But that wasn’t true. Sal and I had split a pot of coffee that morning, the two of us watching the sunless dawn break over the cornfields in total silence, both drowning in our own thoughts. I wondered what we would be to each other by nightfall. Friends or foes? When we reached the cold dregs at the bottom, Sal clinked his mug once against mine. Friends, I hoped.
But I was fooling myself. Unlike everyone else in Nowhere, Sal would remember us, would know what we did, and how could he ever forgive? Eventually, he disappeared into his woodshed, and I went to cover myself in glitter.
Which I was regretting now that the glitter had seeped into a few very itchy places. I wiggled side to side, trying to scratch without being obvious about it. Itching was, by far, the worst part of being human. I would not miss it in the slightest.
“Have you seen Dex, yet?” Syd asked, eyes on her headstone repairs.
“Not yet,” I said. “The Future Farmers float is way up at the front.”
“He is so Iowa.”
Sydney put the last letter in place and adjusted her horns. Somewhere nearby, her mirror image was sporting a halo.
“You know,” I said. “If you and Soph really wanted to come in costume, you should be the angel and she should be the demon. Because we all know which of you is the good girl.”
Sydney feigned offense. “I can be good!”
“You can be no such thing!” Poe declared, appearing alongside our float in a top hat and vintage suit.
I slid down to the street and gripped Poe’s lapels. “This is amazing, and you did not get it in Iowa.”
“Special order from a costume shop in Hollywood.” He removed my hands from his fabric and pretended to brush off my dirt—or maybe he was brushing off actual glitter. “When it comes to Halloween, Poe doesn’t play.”
“But what are you supposed to be?” Sydney asked.
“Not what,” he corrected. “Who.”
He lifted up a large, ornate picture frame, entirely empty in the center and positioned it around his upper body.
I frowned. “You’re a painting?”
“I don’t get it,” Sydney said.
“He’s Dorian Gray.” Reg strolled into view around a passing group of parade preppers, startling Poe. The two of them had not spoken since their fight. I had tried to ask him about it, but he’d only told me to leave it alone, and, eventually, I did.
Poe lowered the frame. “Well, the portrait of Dorian Gray, but yes. That’s right.”
Reg smiled, but the rest of his face was stiff. “It’s really good.”
“Thanks.” Poe’s smile was warmer than Reg’s—more hopeful. “I knew you would get it. And you’re a—”
“Vampire,” I finished, treating my brother to one of my most withering looks.
Reg, to my total annoyance, had chosen to dress like so many of the masses . . . as the humans’ cartoonish idea of a vampire. He’d claimed it would be funny, except he wasn’t laughing, and it seemed to me that he was being deliberately disrespectful with his white plastic teeth and his black-and-red satin cape. I hoped he would de-accessorize before the night’s events.
“Charlie, can I talk to you?” Reg said, turning from Poe and gesturing for me to follow him to the end of the float.
I trailed him to a quiet spot between the cab pulling our float and the bed of a long tractor trailer covered in fake cobwebs with a sign that read, “Haunted Hayrides, Morgana Farms.”
“I’m skipping the parade,” he said. “It’s . . . too difficult.”
I hurt for Reg, for both of us. I just wished he could see that we would feel better when we shed our human emotions . . . or at least had them dulled by the desire to feed.
But who are you to decide for him? A little voice asked me.
I pushed that question down, and another one rose in its place, more pointed than the other.
If not for me, would Reg stay mortal?
The question was right there on my lips, but I couldn’t ask it. I was too afraid of the answer. Instead, I asked out loud, “Why don’t you just talk to Poe?”
“And tell him what? The next time you try to kiss me, I might bite you?”
“He might like that.”
“Everything’s a joke, isn’t it?” Reg said.
“Hey, once upon a time, you would have liked that joke.”
“Well, once upon a time feels like a lifetime ago.”
He had me there.
“Look, Reg. If you’re not in the mood for a parade, I understand, but this is it—our last day in the sun.” I shot the gray sky a dirty look. “Sort of. And you’re already in your awful costume.”
“I just can’t. You have fun though, okay? You’ve earned it. I mean that.”
“But, Reg—”
“I’m fine. I promise.” He popped the ridiculous teeth into his mouth, raised his arms, and in the loudest and most embarrassing way possible, shouted, “I vant to suck your blood!”
I managed a laugh and pushed him away. I watched him weave through the parade lineup, skirting floats and circling a pickup truck full of fat little puppies. The sign on the side of the truck declared the parade entry was for the Northern Iowa Pug Rescue. When I looked up again from the sign, Reg was gone.
Weeks of building a float, hours of sitting around in the staging area, and yet the start of the parade seemed to come all of a sudden. We made the short trek through the village, with most of the freshmen and sophomores desperately propping up gravestones that toppled over with every bump in the road, while the rest of the committee members waved from the edges of the float. Sydney and Poe lounged against a railing, making judgy comments about costumes. No one pointed out that Poe quit the committee and shouldn’t be on the float, because that was the power of Poe and the Carlone twins. Sophia beamed as parade announcers barked over the megaphone that we were the Hope High Halloween Hoopla party and parade planners, and the crowd cheered.
What little crowd there was. It seemed most of Nowhere was in the parade, leaving only a smattering of people to populate the sidelines. In front of us, a float decked out with stained glass and a steeple trailed a banner that proclaimed, “The only path to immortality is through Him and His church.” Behind us, a small tractor pulled an actual bar, with barstools and everything, and the burly group of guys filling the stools all donned shirts that read, “The Bar Drove Me Home.”
I leaned on the back rail of the float, watching the tail of the parade snake down Main Street. One of the bar patrons lifted a mug of beer to me.
“Nice job, kids! Best parade in fifty years!”
I waved back but could not speak, as I was hit with a spasm of nausea. Fifty years.
This village had fifty years of parades and ages of history before that—more than the people of Nowhere even realized. And it would all be wiped away in one night. I shuddered, trying to shake away the thought, but it clung to me, like cobwebs.
The parade trundled past the only real crossroad in Nowhere, and from down the street, the loud, bright storefront of All Hours seemed to scream out at me not to strip the color from this community. Under one of the coffee shop’s turquoise awnings, Lina hovered, arms crossed. I wondered if she still planned to hock coffee at the party, or if she couldn’t bear to watch it all go down. I lifted a hand to wave to her, but she only ducked her head and disappeared back through the shop’s yellow front door.
“Guess she didn’t see you,” Poe said, joining me at the back of the float. His portrait frame was slung over one shoulder, and he set it to lean on a gravestone.
I lowered my arm, hand clenching to a fist. “Yeah, guess not.”
Poe slumped against the rail, and he looked so sad, I couldn’t even chide him for wrinkling his vintage threads.
“Poe,” I said. “You know how much Reg cares—”
“Don’t.”
“But . . .”
“He already told me.”
I stilled. “What?”
“I know you guys are leaving.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, because I was afraid to say more.
“Back to New York,” Poe said. “Can’t say I blame you. This place must seem so boring to you.”
I placed a hand on the rail to steady myself. I felt off-balance, and it wasn’t from the float rocking down the road. It would have been nice for Reg to keep me in the loop on the tales he’d been telling. But I couldn’t blame him for his little fib. At least making up a story gave him a chance to say goodbye.
“It’s not boring,” I said honestly. “Thanks to you. Thanks to all of you.”
Poe grabbed me up in a surprise hug, and I had to swallow a lump in my throat.
“Reg doesn’t want to leave, you know.” I pulled back to meet Poe’s eye. “It’s me who wants to go home. Reg, he . . . he would probably stay here if . . .”
If it wasn’t for his selfish sister.
I gripped the rail until my knuckles bleached white. Funny how much I disliked that pale shade on my skin now, compared to the warm olive of the rest of my hand.
“He asked me to come with,” Poe said.
I stifled a gasp. It wouldn’t surprise me if Reg fantasized about turning Poe the way I’d thought of turning Dexter, but did he actually make an offer? Was he trying to get permanently stuck here?!
But of course. He was. That must have been his plan, exactly.
“I turned him down,” Poe went on. “I’m sure he told you.”
I nodded. It was all I could do; I was so tired of giving voice to lies.
“You don’t want to leave Nowhere?” I asked.
Poe shrugged. “Someday, sure. But it’s not such a bad place to be from.”
He waved at someone behind me, and I looked over my shoulder to see Sydney and Sophia coming our way, faces lit up with identical smiles.
Not a bad place at all.
“This is the end,” Sydney called as they approached.
Hope High loomed up behind them, and the parade line scattered, floats and flatbeds veering off to claim various parking places around the school.
The end . . .
Sophia pulled off her halo and ran a hand through her blond tresses. “We’re going to park around back by the gym and start decorating. Poe, you in to help?”
Poe faked a groan. “Fine, but I don’t stand on ladders, and I don’t do glue.”
The twins laughed in their harmonious, infectious way, and I couldn’t believe I would never hear that sound again. Would never share another coffee with this crew at All Hours, never drive down another sun-soaked dirt road with Dexter, never again spar with Sal across the kitchen table.
It wasn’t just the people, I realized with a squeeze in my chest. It was this place. I had convinced myself that it was worth sacrificing the village to spare the villagers, but tearing the people and the town apart would mean taking more than their blood and their memories. We’d be stealing a piece of their very soul—the piece called Nowhere.
Our float lumbered into its assigned spot alongside the school, just below a giant banner, slung between second-story windows:
NOWHERE ANNUAL HALLOWEEN HOOPLA
NO MORE, NO LESS THAN HORRIFICALLY FUN!
Except the second half of the banner had sagged, the top edge folding over the bottom, so that only the words on the far left still stood tall.
NOWHERE
NO MORE
The flatbed under my feet lurched to a stop, and my heart lurched along with it. I still didn’t know what the hell that stupid motto meant, but I knew this much: if Nowhere was no more, the world would definitely be a little less.
After all these weeks, Nowhere finally felt like somewhere.
Sophia barked an order to head to the gym, but my feet didn’t move. I had somewhere else I needed to go first.
“Charlie, you coming?” Sydney asked.
Poe’s hand fell soft on my shoulder, turning me around. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
I swiped at my eyes, but they were dry. The time for tears was done.
“Poe,” I said in a rush. “Listen. Whatever happens tonight, promise me you won’t forget us—me and Reg.”
“As if I could ever forget—”
“Promise!”
He backed away a step. “Oh. Okay, promise.”
The twins appeared at his side, then moved past him, reaching for me.
“Charlie?”
“Are you okay—”
“I’m sorry, I have to go!”
I leaned away, even though all I wanted to do was fall into their outstretched arms. If I worked fast enough, with any luck, there might still be time for that later. But I needed to move.
I hauled myself up over the float’s back railing and climbed down to the street.
“Where are you going?”
“What’s happening?”
“Is this about New York?”
My feet hit the road, but my fairy wing was caught on the rail. I ripped the wings from my shoulders, leaving them dangling from the back of the float, beneath the concerned faces of my friends.
