Mere mortals, p.6
Mere Mortals, page 6
Reg hesitated a moment, sighing into the setting sun, then he nodded once. “Okay, Charlie.”
I exhaled.
“Now, get your filthy paws off my Prada,” he joked, pushing my hand off his arm.
I looked down my nose at his flannel shirt. “If that is Prada, then I am the queen of England.”
“Ah, the queen!” Reg tipped his head back. “So tasty. I do miss a good royal feeding.”
“Stick with me. I’ll have you back to drinking royal blood in no time.”
“I believe it,” Reg said. “You’re better at it, you know—being vampire.”
I ticked my head to the side, trying to figure out if he was teasing still.
“Better at the hunt. Better at the bleed.”
“Except when it mattered most,” I said, my thoughts on the boy we had nearly killed.
“I didn’t say you don’t get carried away sometimes, but you’re still good at it. I thought I might be good at this.”
“At being human? You are,” I conceded, eyes on his plaid flannel. “Not that I would brag about it.”
“I’m certainly better at interacting with humans than you are,” he said.
“Why, because you get along with Sal? He’s hardly human.”
“Slayers are human,” Reg argued. “But I was talking about Dexter.”
“Who is Dexter?”
“The boy from school—the one who was so helpful this morning. At least I didn’t go mute when we met him.”
I was about to say that I couldn’t recall anyone being helpful at all, but then a flash of green eyes filled my vision.
Tall, Tan, and Blond.
“His name was Dexter?”
Reg laughed. “So, you went mute and deaf. Wow, he really made an impression!”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.” I sniffed.
“Please! The way you were ogling him . . .”
“Reg, I was so distraught over the hideous fashion train wreck in those hallways, I could barely remember my own name, let alone some human boy’s. And in any case, I do not ogle.” I tossed my hair and let the last of the sun’s rays warm my face. “It’s not a good look.”
“No,” he agreed. “It wasn’t.”
I pushed him over, laughing.
But as Reg rolled in the grass, I let myself picture the tall boy with the green eyes once more. If I had to endure being human a while longer, I might not mind another face-to-face with this Dexter to see just who ogles whom.
Reg settled with his back on the hill, staring out at the empty pink sky where the sun had been only seconds ago.
“I wonder why they didn’t take our immortal memories,” he said.
“Probably to torture us.”
It was a time-honored ritual to perform a memory fade on new vampires—a courtesy that apparently could not be extended to us.
“I’ll bet they want us to remember exactly how fabulous our lives were before,” I said. “Make sure we know what we’ve lost—Ouch!”
I looked down at a sudden stinging sensation and spotted a skinny-legged, skinny-winged insect perched on my shin. I waved it away and scratched, with mild curiosity, at my first-ever mosquito bite.
“Perhaps in time, the memories will wash away on their own,” Reg said. “If we are human long enough, we may forget our immortal lives.”
Another sting, this time on my upper arm, and I managed to slap the spot in time to squash the mosquito. I brushed my hand off in the grass, satisfied by the kill.
“We won’t be human long enough for that to happen,” I said with confidence.
Reg sighed. “You’re probably right. We would die long before our memories fade.”
“Wow, depressing much?” I smacked my neck. Another mosquito attack. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Or we could get Alzheimer’s. Then we might forget.”
“We’re not going to get— Ouch!”
Reg sat up straight. “What is it?”
“Mosquitoes! They are attacking me!” I swatted one away from my face and another off my leg. “Damn little bloodsuckers.”
“So you have that in common, then.” Reg said, and my next swat was toward him.
I scratched the first sting on my shin, which was turning into an ugly red welt. “Bug bites may be the worst thing yet about being human.”
“Not all bugs bite,” Reg said. He nudged my arm and motioned for me to look up.
All around us, hundreds of fireflies were blinking on and off, their bioluminescent bodies lighting up the quickly gathering dark.
“Exactly the kind of critters I like,” I said. “The kind that look best at night.”
I snatched up our three letters from the grass before we lost all light and held out a hand for the calligraphy pen. Reg passed it over, and I signed each one with as much flourish as my unskilled hands could manage.
Eternally Yours,
Charlotte and Reginald Drake
House of Drake, Clan of Bone
Reg helped me fold the letters and stuff them into envelopes. As he pressed a wax seal onto the final message, I felt the sharpest sting yet behind my left ear.
I slapped the mosquito and scratched the fresh wound.
PS: Hurry up!
Nine
Dead Poets & Living Boys
“This fabric itches.” I yanked on the hem of my shirt, trying desperately to force it into some kind of shape. “What is it, cheap wool?”
“It’s cotton,” Reg said. “And it’s perfectly comfortable.”
We were walking the dirt path between the cornfields, on our way to day two of the hideous torture humans called high school. Sal had suggested we try a little harder to fit in, and Reg and I agreed, knowing it would only help our appeal to be on our best behavior. But wardrobe remained a problem.
I had managed to find a pair of non-designer jeans, but it was harder to find a casual top. Reg ended up loaning me one of his T-shirts, and I had accepted, only because the baby blue matched the hue of my new eyes. Or my old eyes, I guess, since I probably had them before I was vampire. It was getting tricky to say what was old and what was new. The immortal version of “the chicken or the egg.”
In any case, I still didn’t feel like the girl in the mirror was me, but I noticed her hair was fading to a nice chestnut color, and I had decided it wouldn’t be entirely awful to live in her skin for a while. I might even buy her some more blue clothes to go with those eyes, if I could find a decent place to shop within a hundred miles of Nowhere.
At the thought of shopping, I turned to my brother. “Reg, where is our money? Not the cash from House Drake that we stashed in the suitcases, but the rest of it. You said it’s in a trust. Is that like a bank account? Do I need a new credit card?”
“You need a trustee,” Reg said.
“What’s a trustee?”
“Not ‘what.’ Who.”
I groaned. “Sal.”
We reached the spot where dirt became pavement, and the beating sun and blue sky turned to a leafy canopy punctuated by steepled rooftops. I sneered at the welcome sign and its inexplicable No more, no less! slogan.
“So . . . what?” I asked as we moved down the shaded street. “I’m supposed to ask the old guy for permission every time I want to buy something?”
“I imagine it will be more like an allowance. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to ask. I anticipated shopping withdrawal symptoms to set in sooner.”
“Very funny,” I said, tugging on the itchy shirt again. Who knew cotton could be so uncomfortable? “But I am not begging at the bank of Sal every week.”
I have my pride.
Reg shrugged. “It’s either that or get a job.”
Pride is overrated.
I made a choking noise. “A job? These hands have never worked a day!”
As I held out my hands, I noticed they looked a little rough around the nails, and I wondered if I had worked in my former life. Few vampires knew their human origins. In addition to the memory fade, vampires were given new last names and typically relocated immediately. Modern technology made it trickier to shield new vampires from their past, but most were so focused on their thirst, they had little curiosity about their human lives. It was funny that I should wonder about it now. Here I was mortal once again, and my first human history still felt so far out of reach.
I pulled my fingernails closer to inspect them. “Looks like I’ll have to start getting manicures,” I said.
“Manicures cost money.”
“Fine. If Sal wants to be our personal ATM, then—”
“Hey, new kids!”
Reg and I both stopped in unison, pulling up straight as if we’d walked into an invisible wall.
We’d reached the end of the tree-lined street, and the brick school building had come into view. We were earlier than yesterday, and the doors must not have been open yet, because a few hundred kids were milling around outside. One of them was waving at us from the opposite sidewalk.
Reg and I looked at each other, then behind us, then back to the boy. Yep, definitely at us.
Something in our expressions caused his arm to droop.
“Uh . . . you are the new kids, right?” he called.
Slowly, slowly, as if on the hunt, Reg and I crept forward toward the boy. He met us halfway across the road with his formerly waving hand now outstretched in a greeting.
Reg took it, and they shook. A perfectly normal human interaction. Well done, Reg.
I gave myself a few points as well, for not going catatonic this time.
“I’m Charlie.”
“I know,” the boy said, pushing a pair of chunky black glasses up the bridge of his nose. The glasses were expensive and perfectly on trend.
I decided I liked this human and would have to ask him where he shopped.
“You’re Charlotte and Reginald Smith. I was supposed to find you two yesterday, but I guess you got here a little late. I’m in student government—on the Hope High welcoming committee. So, it’s my job to say . . . welcome!”
“Thank you,” Reg said. “And you are?”
He stood nearly a foot taller than the boy, which would intimidate most humans, but not this one, who seemed to have a big presence despite his short stature.
“I’m Poe,” the boy said. “As in Edgar Allan.”
I stiffened, and next to me, Reg covered up his shock with a fake cough.
Was this some kind of test? Edgar Allan Poe’s death was no secret in the vampire world, but the Elders had managed to keep humans thoroughly in the dark for over a century. Could this mortal boy possibly know the truth?
A vampire by the name of Reynolds had tried to turn Poe but accidentally overfed instead. A shame, really. By all accounts, Poe would have made a fabulous immortal. Reynolds was famously banished for the crime—never to be heard from again, other than as a cautionary tale for new vampires.
Now that I thought of it, the circumstances were disturbingly similar to our own crimes. Maybe Reynolds had been exiled to Iowa too.
This new Poe looked nonplussed by our silence.
“The poet,” he said. “You know him?”
“No,” Reg said too quickly. “Never met him.”
“He died before our time,” I added.
Poe looked back and forth between us. “Yeah . . . pretty sure he died before everybody’s time.”
Of course. Idiots.
Hope High: 2, Reg and Charlie: 0.
“Right!” Reg let out a loud laugh, and I worried the boy—Poe—might actually run away from our crazy at that point, but instead, he started laughing too.
“You had me going there for a second! Thought you were about to say you’d never heard of ‘The Raven.’”
“Of course we have,” Reg said. “Though I’d venture to guess half the students in this building have not.”
I wanted to kick Reg for his old-timey talk, but before I could even lift a foot off the ground, the bespectacled Poe lifted his chin and answered, “More of an astute observation than a guess.”
“Indeed,” Reg agreed. “And I’ve made a few observations of the teachers as well. For instance, I doubt many of them are fans of Poe.”
“They’re fans of this Poe.” He stuck out two thumbs and aimed them at his chest. “And I gotta say, I’m not that into the other guy either. I prefer manga to macabre.”
Reg smiled. “Fascinating.”
And so it was that here, in a tiny village in the middle of Iowa, surrounded by cornfields for miles, that Reg found a human who spoke his language.
Poe winked. “Just don’t tell my English lit teacher.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” Reg promised.
Safe with me? Was I invisible?
Even in a boring shirt and jeans, I didn’t think I could possibly be invisible, but Reg and Poe were doing a good job of making me feel like I wasn’t there. They walked together toward the school building, chattering on about the evolution of literature and the layout of Nowhere interchangeably, while I shuffled like a shadow behind them.
Once the Hope High doors opened, Poe led us to his locker, where he pulled out a stack of materials for each of us, rapidly naming off items as he piled them into our arms. “Student handbook, discipline policy, dress code . . .”
“Oh, they have a dress code here?” I quipped. “What is it, farmer chic?”
Reg shot me a warning look, but Poe agreed.
“I know, right? My kingdom for a Barneys.”
He dove back into his locker. “Extracurriculars, photo release, campus map . . .”
Could have used that yesterday.
“And a little school swag to keep it all in.” Poe topped off each of our stacks with a folder featuring a drone’s-eye view of the school and an enormous football field stretching out behind it, surrounded by tall walls of the same red brick on the school’s exterior, as if the building had grown long, skinny arms and wrapped the football field in a hug. Emblazoned over the image, gold letters proclaimed the school: “Hope High, the beating heart of Nowhere. No more, no less than academic excellence!”
Well, at least when the school used the town’s motto, they turned it into something that made sense. As Reg and I stuffed all the papers we would never look at again into our folders, we were joined at Poe’s locker by two girls who looked shockingly similar. He introduced them as Sydney and Sophia and informed us—totally unnecessarily—that they were twins. If it weren’t for the fact that Sydney had dyed her pale blond hair bright pink, they would be utterly indistinguishable.
“Are you also on the welcoming committee?” Reg asked the girls.
Sydney twirled a lock of pink hair. “No, but we’re a lot more welcoming than Poe.”
Both girls giggled, and Reg smiled politely as if he didn’t understand her meaning. He managed to keep his face passive even when he caught sight of the smirk on my face. These girls would learn soon enough that Poe was more my brother’s speed.
“We’re happy to show you around,” the blond one, Sophia, said earnestly to both of us. “Oh! You guys should come with us to All Hours.”
“All Hours?” I said. “What’s that?”
“It’s a coffee shop,” Sydney chimed in, her words wrapped around a wad of chewing gum. “Everyone goes there after school . . . and before school . . . and on the weekends and late at night and basically all the time. It’s the only place in town open twenty-four hours.”
All Hours. Got it.
“It’s the only place in town, period,” Sophia added. “Sorry to tell you, you haven’t moved to the most exciting place in the world. It’s pretty much school, All Hours, and the mall.”
“There’s a mall?”
Thank the Ancients. I might survive this after all.
Sophia looked apologetic. “It’s a couple of towns over, and you probably won’t be impressed. I saw your outfit yesterday, and I can tell you are used to better stores.”
I was liking Pinky and Blondie better by the minute.
“There used to be a movie theater,” Sydney said, with a pop of her gum. “Forever ago. But it burned down on opening night. Total disaster. All Hours is pretty cool though. And the coffee’s killer. You want to come?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, as Reg simultaneously answered, “We’d be delighted!”
We looked at each other, a silent conversation held entirely through our eyeballs.
Charlie, we need to fit in.
That doesn’t mean make friends.
You promised we could smell coffee.
You promised to stop saying things like “delighted.”
“Who’s going to All Hours?” someone said. “I’m in.”
Tan arms corded with lean muscle appeared in my peripheral vision.
“This is my buddy Dex,” Poe said.
“We’ve met.” Dexter nodded at Reg and turned to me. “Hi again.”
“Hello,” I said.
But it came out sounding too aloof or snobby somehow, so I tried again.
“Hi.”
His eyes held mine for a second, then tilted upward. “Your hair is different.”
“What?” I touched my hair self-consciously. “Different bad?”
“It was black yesterday. It’s brown now.”
“Oh. Oh yeah, I uh . . . it was a temporary dye. I washed it out.”
I silently patted myself on the back for this quick thinking.
“It looks better,” he said.
Excuse me?
“Was something wrong with it before?” I propped my hand on my hip.
He looked amused by my pose, and I was suddenly unsure of how to stand or where to put my hands.
“It’s just better now, that’s all,” he said, smiling.
I felt a heat creep into my cheeks, and I knew it meant my human face was turning all red under Dexter’s gaze.
