Mere mortals, p.8
Mere Mortals, page 8
“But why Hope High?” Reg asked at one point. “I thought high schools were usually named for the town.”
“Would you want to go to Nowhere High?” Sydney asked.
“It was named by the guy who paid for it,” Dexter said. “Some alum who got out and hit it big and wanted kids in his hometown to have a little hope.”
“That big brick box is supposed to give us hope?” I asked.
Dexter held his hands up in a “beats me” gesture.
“I just can’t believe the town actually built something new,” Poe said. “The school is only a few years old. Before that, the last time anyone in this place tried to open something new, it went up in smoke. Literally!”
He pointed out the coffee shop window, and I followed the angle of his finger to a set of boarded-up windows, across the street and a few doors down. Above the windows, an empty marquee jutted out, bare and dark.
“A theater?” I asked.
“Shortest business ever to operate in Nowhere at less than twenty-four hours,” Poe said.
“What happened?”
“A fire. Opening night. Gutted the whole place, and it never reopened.”
“Perhaps it still will,” Reg said. “How long ago was the fire?”
Poe locked eyes with Reg. “When our grandparents were our age.”
“Oh.”
“My grandad was there,” Dex said. “He and his buddies almost didn’t make it out.”
“Why didn’t they rebuild?” I asked.
Poe shrugged. “Apparently the owner’s insurance wouldn’t cover it for some reason. So he abandoned the place and sold it to some development company that never did anything with it. My mom says it happens all the time.”
“Poe’s mom is on the town chamber,” Dex said. “He thinks it makes him a big deal. But it mostly just means he knows a bunch of boring information nobody cares about.”
“Knowledge is power, my friend,” Poe retorted.
“If we’re going to have anything new, I’m glad it’s a high school,” Sophia said. “Kids used to have to bus out to a school an hour away, and they treated anyone from out here like hicks.”
Sydney added, “Now that school begs for away games so they can play on our fancy football field or shoot hoops in our gigantic gym.”
“Have you seen the gym yet?” Dexter asked. “It’s way too big for a school with just a few hundred kids. We can actually fit the entire population of Nowhere in there. That’s like a thousand people!”
“And we do fit them in,” Poe said. “All the time. Hope High is HQ for all festivals, carnivals, productions, and events.”
“The biggest of which is right around the corner,” Sophia chirped. “Only two months to the Halloween Hoopla!”
I was glad I had my coffee mug to my lips so they could not see my involuntary grimace. My eyes met Reg’s over the rim of my mug.
A hoopla?
Be nice.
As if sensing my judgment, the twins launched into a sales pitch.
“It’s a party.”
“It’s a parade.”
“It’s both.”
“It’s bigger than prom!”
I perked up at that. “So it’s like a dance?”
For all the events I’d attended in the last hundred years—from frat parties to formal galas—I had never once seen a school dance anywhere but on TV or in movies. I may not have a bucket list like Reg, but I had my own list of “never haves,” and high school dance was on that list. As long as I was stuck in this human skin, I was absolutely going to take it to a party.
“Kind of,” Sydney said. “It started out as a parade and exploded into a whole big thing.”
Sophia chimed in. “The Nowhere Halloween parade has been around forever—like fifty years. It’s so old.”
If fifty years was old, I was downright antique.
While fifty was young by vampire standards, I still had to wonder how a town that had been around long enough to have a fifty-year-old parade still barely had fifty buildings, other than houses. Why did some places on earth grow old yet never go away? It was as though towns themselves could be immortal.
Poe held his hands in front of him, palms a short distance apart, and spread them wider as he said, “Over the years, parade turned to costume party turned to festival turned to . . .” He spread his arms as wide as possible. “Hoopla. It’s ridiculous,” he concluded, with a shake of his head.
He dodged a swipe from Sydney.
“Keep talking like that, and we’ll kick you off the committee,” she said.
Poe dropped out of his chair to kneel on the floor before Sydney, hands folded as if in prayer. “Oh, please. Please release me from your wretched committee.”
“Committee?” Reg asked.
“Hope High Halloween Hoopla planning committee,” Sophia said.
“Say that three times fast,” Dexter joked.
Not that funny, but still cute. Still very, very cute.
“The hoopla is a whole-day event,” Sophia continued. “Starting with the parade and ending with a big street party outside the school that night. There’s a barbecue and bands and prizes for best parade floats and best costumes. Everyone in Nowhere goes. Everyone. Since most of the fun happens at the school, Hope High students get to plan the whole thing.”
“Translation—free labor,” Poe interrupted.
Sophia ignored him. “We sell parade entries and take a cut of all the food sales to raise money for charity. So, yes, it’s volunteer work, but it’s great for college applications.”
“Charity, college applications, blah blah blah.” Sydney flipped her bubble gum hair over her shoulder. “Soph, you always leave out the best bit. The hoopla kind of replaced our annual homecoming dance, so now we have a faux dance in the gym at the end of the night. It’s more like an after-party, with everyone in costumes, so all the kids from school dress up in formal wear, but with a horror theme.”
“Like a zombie bride,” Sophia added.
“Or a mummy in a tux.”
“Or a sexy vampire.”
A warning look from Reg stopped me from announcing that they were looking at a sexy vampire. I hoped I was still the former, if not the latter. I kept my mouth shut and stuck my face in my coffee instead. It was my third cup, and my hands were shaking a little—an unpleasant but tolerable side effect.
“I like the dressing-up part,” Poe admitted. “Not so much the intolerable planning meetings.”
He looked hopefully at me and Reg. “I don’t suppose one of you wants my spot?”
“Well, you’re not exactly selling it,” Sophia admonished Poe. To me and Reg she said, “Being on the committee has its perks. You get to ride on the school float.”
“Oh, get real,” Sydney said. “The only perk for Soph is that she gets to boss people around.”
“Not all people.” Sophia poked her sister. “Just you.”
“But seriously,” Sydney said, “it’s pretty cool to ride on the float and help throw the year’s biggest party. Trust me, I’m not a joiner. I leave that to Soph. But this is one extracurricular activity that’s worth it.”
It sounded like work, and I was not interested in work. However, I was acutely interested in parties and not against the idea of waving down at people from a parade float.
“How do you get on this committee?” I asked.
Sydney slung an arm over her sister’s shoulder, and they put their heads together, pink and platinum hair intertwining, identical conspiratorial grins on their faces.
“You kiss up to the committee chairs,” she said.
I looked up at Dexter through my eyelashes. “Are you on the committee?”
He shook his unruly lock of hair out of his face. “Nah, but I’ll be at the party. I’m hoping a nice girl will ask me to dance.”
“Oh, a nice girl?” I said, lifting my coffee to my lips. “That’s a shame.”
Sydney and Sophia giggled in appreciation, and I rewarded them with a wink. Maybe I could teach these girls a few things before I left them in the sunlight.
Dexter still wore a confident, lazy smile, but I noticed a blush had crept into his cheeks. My little flirt had knocked him off-balance. The poor guy. I’d had a century to master this skill. He’d had, what? A few years? It really wasn’t a fair fight.
“It’s okay, Dex,” Poe said. “I’m not that into nice girls either.”
Reg set his empty cup on the barrel table and leaned, almost imperceptibly, closer to Poe.
“Nor am I,” he said.
Sydney and Sophia exchanged a look, eyebrows arching high into their foreheads. Realization had dawned. Their eyes flitted from Poe to Reg and back again. They both smiled.
“So, you’re a junior?” Dexter asked me, his blush quickly fading. “You look younger. How old are you?”
“I’m a hundr—uh, sixteen?”
He laughed. “You’re not sure?”
I opened my mouth a couple of times like a hungry koi fish, until I caught sight of Reg imitating me from across the table. I snapped my jaw closed.
“I’m sure,” I said to Dexter.
Now I was the one off-balance.
“I’m a junior too,” he said. “Too bad we don’t have any classes together. But at least we’re in the same wing.”
“I guess I’ll be seeing you around, then.”
He smiled, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth in a delicious way. “I know I’ll be seeing you.”
Maybe it was a fair fight after all.
“Looks like somebody’s already lining up their date for the dance,” Sydney said to Sophia, loud enough for all of us to hear.
I didn’t know if Dexter was destined to be my date to this Halloween sock hop or whatever it was called, or if we would even still be human by then, but one thing was for certain. If I did go to the party, I would be wearing Prada.
Thirteen
Pretty Ugly
“I’ll thank you to keep me informed of your general whereabouts,” Sal greeted us when we returned to the cottage.
He was hulking in the doorway again, for who knows what reason. Maybe he was watching the corn grow.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than creep around on the porch waiting for us?” I retorted.
“It’s my house, and I’ll creep around wherever I damn well please.”
I smirked.
“Stand around. You know what I meant.” The flustered look on his face was a prize. “So, where were you?”
Reg pushed past me up the steps to the porch. “We were at a coffee shop frequented by the local youth. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s called All Hours and—”
“I know it,” Sal snapped.
Reg hesitated at Sal’s agitation. “We made some friends. We’re attempting to fit in, per your sage advice.”
I rubbed my nose and made exaggerated kissing noises, because words alone would not be enough to express to Reg what a traitorous suck-up he was.
“Look, it’s simple.” Sal turned away from us, and we followed him into the cottage kitchen. “If you go missing, I’m bound to report it. It’s part of the deal.”
“Report it to whom?” Reg asked. “The Elders?”
I shrugged my backpack off and dropped it on one of the carved wooden chairs around the kitchen table. “How much are they paying you to babysit us, anyway?”
“Not enough,” Sal muttered.
“And if you report us to the Elders for running off or misbehaving, what do they do, come give us a superpowered spanking?”
“Can’t say for sure,” Sal said with an ominous tone. “No one who leaves ever comes back.”
That wiped the smirk off my face. “Oh.”
“Do you think they . . . Would they . . . ?” Reg stuttered.
“I don’t think they’d hunt you down to kill you,” Sal said, a kind note cutting through his gravel voice. “Most likely a mind swipe, I imagine. Maybe a hundred bucks and a hotel room.”
I wasn’t sure that scenario was any better.
“That’s barbaric,” Reg protested. “Memory fades are not meant to be punitive.”
Sal busied himself at the stove, adding this and that to a giant pot.
“Not okay as a punishment but okay to use on human victims for mere convenience, eh?”
“The fade is used on newborn vampires as well, not solely humans,” Reg objected. “And it’s not convenience. It’s necessity.”
I smiled. After all his waxing poetic about humanity, it was good to hear Reg defending vampire culture and traditions.
Sal grunted a humorless laugh into his pot. “Necessary to protect your immortal arses. I’m sure you did a number on that boy you bled.”
Reg stiffened. “His fade was more than we were capable of. We usually only need to take a few small memories—our faces, the feeding. It is a talent that takes years to perfect. The Elders have to assist with . . . messier situations. But I assure you, the process is quite humane.”
I chose a chair at the end of the table and leaned back, hands behind my head. Watching Reg spar with Sal instead of kissing his ass was pure entertainment.
“That’s rich!” Sal twisted around to wave a wooden spoon at Reg. “Vampires deciding what’s humane.”
“Take a little blood, heal the wound, clear their memory. No permanent damage. It’s a kindness to spare them any trauma.” Reg sounded less sure of himself now.
“Oh yeah,” Sal said, his attention back on the stove. “Steal someone’s blood, inject them with venom so they pass out and then violate their brain. A kindness indeed. Nicest thing I ever heard.”
I made eyeballs at Reg behind Sal’s back. He was letting the old man win. Reg opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Sal went on.
“And what happens when it’s more than a little . . . when it’s a wound that won’t heal? It’s not just one or two memories to erase, is it?”
Sal’s meaning was heavy, and we all fell silent, thinking of the boy and what the Elders had to do to make him forget. Total amnesia. Reg and I had panicked once we realized we . . . I . . . had taken too much. He was so close to death, and to kill a human for any reason other than self-defense was to violate one of the highest vampire laws. Thanks to the Treaty of Annis, to turn him at his age would have been even worse.
So we panicked. We dumped him outside that emergency room, even though we knew the memory work we’d attempted was useless. Vampires could manipulate the mind only when the person was under the influence of our venom—a poison that became more potent with time—and the more blood lost, the harder the memory work. It was a delicate thing to pull the threads of memory—keeping some and discarding others. Sometimes the threads got tangled into a knot that couldn’t be undone. The Elders had to send in a team later to wipe the boy’s mind entirely.
For a few minutes, the only sound was the scrape of Sal’s spoon against the bottom of the pan and the quiet bubble of whatever was inside the pot. It smelled more amazing with every passing second, but I had lost my appetite.
Finally, Sal’s shoulders sagged. “You’re young. Impulsive. You weren’t in control of yourselves.”
I glared at the back of his head, feeling more patronized than pitied.
“Okay, yes,” I said. “We made a mistake, but this punishment is still beyond. We had never left a mess that big for the Elders to clean up before.”
“Well . . .” Reg squinted one eye and scratched the side of his face, where a fine stubble was sprouting from his new human skin. “There was that one time, in Burma, with the—”
“Oh, right.” I’d forgotten.
“And that other time, in Helsinki—”
“And New York.”
“And Peru.”
“We agreed never to speak of Peru.”
I frowned. Maybe we were just teenagers.
Sal covered the pot with a lid and joined us at the table. “Well, now that I’ve got you in such good moods, here’s another ray of sunshine for you.”
He pulled a folded envelope from the front pocket of his plaid flannel.
When this was over, if I never saw plaid or flannel again, it would be too soon.
“Two in one day,” Sal said, letting the envelope fall to the table. “One guess who this is from.”
But we did not have to guess, and we probably didn’t even have to open it to know the contents. The front of the envelope was written in blood, the crude signature of the Blood Clan, and it was addressed, venomously:
To the Disgraced Drakes, Reginald and Charlotte
I huffed. “We’re a disgrace? They would bleed puppies if the Elders allowed it.”
Reg took the envelope between the tips of two fingers and pried it open, careful to avoid the address, but more blood was waiting inside. They had used it to script the entire letter.
“It looks like they’ve been playing with their food,” Reg said with disdain.
I sniffed at the red scrawl, but my mortal nose could not detect whether the blood was human or animal. In either case, it was wasteful and, to my new human senses . . . kind of gross.
Most of it was hard to read, due to where the blood had run or smudged, but we got the gist. The Blood Clan leaders had not only refused our request but they had also forbidden anyone in the clan from sponsoring us.
“‘Imagine,’” Reg read aloud from the letter, “‘Bone asking Blood for favor for free. Centuries, Bone hoard wealth that ought be shared with Blood and other clan.’”
“Oh, this again.” I rolled my eyes. “If the Bloods ever climbed out of their coffins for anything but dinner, maybe they would have a few bucks of their own.”
“This grammar is atrocious,” Reg said. “I’ve always detested the way this clan speaks. Where did they come up with this dialect, anyway? It’s so primitive.”
“Better primitive than pretentious.” I would have laughed at my own jab if I didn’t feel like crying. “What else does it say?”
Reg turned the paper over in his hands. “That’s pretty much it. There’s something about entitlement and superiority and . . . I think this bit is a vague threat that they might come feed on us now that we are . . .” He squinted at the page. “Tasty little humans.”
