The Afterlife of the Party

by Marlene Perez

I’d clearly missed the signs that my best friend was in trouble. I wondered what Vaughn’s impressions were. “Funny how?”

  “Secretive,” he said. “Always taking off without either of us.”

  “She had been partying without us more,” I said. “I thought she was getting sick of how much we had to work. I can’t believe I didn’t notice. I suck as a friend.”

  “No, you don’t,” he said sharply. “You can’t blame yourself. Skyler lied to you. She lied to us all.”

  “That makes it worse,” I said. “Skyler never lies to me.”

  “Everyone lies,” he said. “Some of us just lie to ourselves most.”

  “Maybe that’s what Skyler was doing, too,” I said. “She was scared and didn’t know what to do, so she kept it all to herself.”

  I’d do better in the future, be a better friend, as soon as I found her.

  …

  Two hours later, we passed by the accident that had turned the freeway into a parking lot. After that, traffic improved, thank god.

  “What’s the plan?” Vaughn asked, easing the Deathtrap up to the speed limit.

  I shrugged. “We’re winging it.”

  I thought he’d ask me more questions, but instead, he glanced around the interior and said, “This car is so badass.”

  I nodded. “I just need to remember to fill it up every chance I get.”

  “I’ll pay for the gas,” Vaughn said quickly.

  I stiffened. “No, you won’t.” It wasn’t easy, but I made sure I always paid my share, despite Sky and Vaughn both coming from wealthy families.

  “She’s my friend, too,” he said softly.

  He had a point. “We’ll split all expenses,” I said. “Fifty-fifty.”

  “Sixty-forty,” he countered. “You’re providing the sweet ride.”

  I crossed my arms in mock anger but couldn’t hold it long and ended up in a wide grin. “Fine.”

  We drove in silence for a mile or two before I remembered the file Rose had given me. Why? What did she have to gain by sharing it?

  I hated the way my brain fired off suspicions immediately. Maybe it was why I didn’t have many friends. Maybe people could sense my deep distrust and skepticism and stayed away. Or maybe I pushed them away.

  It probably didn’t help that the one person I trusted the most, my grandmother, had told me my mother was dead when she clearly wasn’t.

  I flipped the file open. The first page listed the dates and places of The Drainers’ concerts for the past two years.

  At first, I thought Rose might be a weird superfan, but then I turned to the next page, and there was a list of names, which I soon discovered was a list of murder victims and the locations their bodies had been found. Many of the dates had been highlighted, and when I compared the two, I noticed in a lot of cases, The Drainers had been in the immediate vicinity near the time of the murder.

  My heart had relocated to my throat. I wiped my sweaty hands on my shorts. The Drainers weren’t just bloodsuckers; they were murderers.

  Chapter Eight

  The file was thick with documents, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to read the rest, even though I knew I should. My stomach was burning with acid at the thought of Skyler with those monsters.

  I turned to tell Vaughn what I learned, but he started talking first.

  “Ashley thinks the breakup is temporary,” Vaughn said. He kept his eyes on the road.

  Okay, so he wants to clear the air about his love life first. Cool.

  I swallowed. “Is it?”

  “It’s not,” he said. His jaw clenched so tight, I thought he might crack a molar. “I can’t believe you asked me that.”

  “Jeesh, since when did you get so sensitive?” I asked.

  “I’m not. It’s just… I’m not interested in Ashley anymore. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, ready to be done with the conversation. I was kind of embarrassed about how jealous I was that he’d dated her for so long anyway.

  I changed the subject. “Where was your dad this morning?” I asked. “Just out of curiosity.” Vaughn’s dad was not the kind of guy who stayed out all night. He was a lot of fun, but the catering company kept him busy.

  He’d cater anything. Like the time we worked a Chihuahua’s birthday party. Or a Ren Faire–themed wedding. Lots of turkey legs and steins of beer at that one.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Vaughn tossed me a quick look. “He’s dating someone.”

  My mouth fell open. “Holy crap, that’s right.” I’d been so preoccupied with Rose and Thorn’s info dump that his mention of his dad’s girlfriend hadn’t fully registered until right now.

  Mr. Sheridan hadn’t been on a date the entire time I’d known the family. Or at least not any that Vaughn had told me about.

  “Who?” I asked. “When? I need details.”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “He says it’s too early to introduce us.”

  “A mystery woman.” I smiled. “Good for him.”

  “Yeah, good for him,” he said, but a shadow crossed his face.

  I changed the music, not sure what else to say. When I was around eleven, I’d gone through a classical music phase after Granny had taken me to the Pacific Symphony. I’d eased up a bit, but it was why Skyler still teased me sometimes about being a music snob. She teased Vaughn about it, too, at least.

  I turned the volume up a touch and leaned back in the seat for a nap when a flash of red in the side mirror caught my attention. A white pickup swerved in and out of lanes, coming up on us fast. The driver had to be doing at least eighty. People drove like assholes every day in SoCal, but there was something familiar about the blond driver.

  Bobbie Jean?

  “I think someone’s following us,” I told Vaughn.

  “Friend or foe?” he asked.

  I lifted my shoulders. “She seemed friendly enough earlier.” I turned around and waved at Bobbie Jean. Her mouth opened, and then she smiled as she jammed a cowboy hat on her head.

  “She sure hates Travis, though,” I continued. “But I don’t understand why she’s tailing us.”

  “Maybe she thinks we can lead her to him?” Vaughn suggested.

  Bobbie Jean pulled up alongside us in the right lane. She rolled down her window and shouted something, but I couldn’t hear her through my window and over the freeway noise.

  She made a rolling motion with her hand, so I opened the window.

  “Pull over!” she shouted. “I need to talk to you.”

  Then why had she been acting so shady about following us? I mean, obviously she’d been following us for a while on the down low before she floored it and snuck in our rearview. Something was definitely up.

  “Next exit,” I shouted in reply, and she dropped back.

  Vaughn eased over into the right lane and then took the next exit. Bobbie Jean followed closely behind as we pulled into a gas station.

  Bobbie Jean got out of her truck, but instead of coming over to us, she jogged inside.

  “What is she doing?” I asked.

  Vaughn shrugged. “Maybe she had to pee.”

  We waited for almost ten minutes. I scanned the parking lot and then groaned.

  “The twins are here, too,” I said. At the gas pump, Rose filled up their nondescript sedan.

  “What do you think they want?” Vaughn asked.

  I reached over and honked the horn, and when Rose looked up, I waved. She waved back a little sheepishly, but Thorn just stared at me from the driver’s seat.

  I shifted in my seat. “Maybe I should go find her.”

  “She’s probably buying snacks or something.”

  “Maybe I should go buy some snacks,” I said. “I know you love those giant slushies.”

  “I do love a good slushie…” he said. But then someone kn
ocked on the glass, and I jumped.

  Bobbie Jean stood there beaming. She handed us a flyer. The ink it was printed with was so cheap that it turned my hands black. “This one has the location.”

  “What took you so long?” I asked sourly.

  “The guy who works there has a sister who follows The Drainers,” she said. “It took a little convincing for him to give up the information.”

  “Convincing?”

  She smiled a bright pageant-worthy smile and waggled her eyebrows. “Convincing,” she said. “But he was real cute, so it wasn’t exactly a hardship.”

  She’d managed to shut me up.

  “See y’all there,” she said.

  I looked down at the flyer in my hands. “The ‘Bat Cave’?” I said. “The concert tonight is at a place called the Bat Cave. Someone thinks he’s a superhero.”

  “Where could it be?” Vaughn asked.

  “No idea,” I said. “Obviously their fans know, though.”

  After we got back on the road, I opened the file again. What I didn’t know about vampires could fill the Pacific Ocean.

  “Rose was telling the truth. Vampires can’t go out in sunlight,” I said. The file included a page on daylight spontaneous combustion, and she’d helpfully put a neat little V after most of the names. V is for Vampire.

  There wasn’t much to let me know what else could kill a vampire, which made sense. The Paranormal Activity Committee sounded benign, but I bet they wouldn’t be happy if she spilled all their secrets.

  I read aloud to Vaughn as he drove, but my voice trailed off when I saw there was a thick photocopied stack of information about the Mariotti family. My family.

  Someone had made a notation about my possible powers, including that there were signs I was immune to compulsion but was capable of magic mesmerizing.

  Vaughn took his eyes from the road for a second. “What did you read that made you go so quiet?”

  “Nothing,” I lied. “Just getting a headache.”

  “What time’s the show?” Vaughn asked.

  I read the flyer Bobbie Jean had given me. “Not until midnight.”

  We were only ten miles from Diablo. Vaughn took the off-ramp leading to the sleepy beach town—sleepy in the off-season, at least. As soon as we hit the main road, the Deathtrap was caught in a snarl of traffic, so I had time to stare. There were people everywhere: sitting on the outside patios of the restaurants, shopping in the cute little clothing boutiques, and clogging the crosswalks, some of them taking their lives in their hands by jaywalking across busy intersections.

  “It wasn’t like this the last time I was here,” I said. Diablo was a Central Coast popular location for summer vacations. Lots of tourists…with lots of blood.

  “You’ve been to Diablo before?” Vaughn asked.

  “Granny Mariotti and I came here right before Thanksgiving for one of her meetings,” I said.

  “Coven meeting?”

  I shook my head. “Library conference,” I said, then thought about it for a minute. “But there was some overlap. Granny says all librarians are magic.”

  “Your granny is usually right,” he replied.

  “I won’t tell her you said usually,” I added. “You know Granny thinks she’s always right.” I smiled at him, and the grin he gave me back made my heart thump. “So what’s the plan?”

  He turned back to the road as the car in front of us started moving again.

  “We can eat first,” he said. “There’s a great seafood place nearby.”

  “You’ve been here before, too?” Something I didn’t know about Vaughn.

  He nodded. “Dad used to take Kenzie and me when I was little.” Kenzie was his older sister, who was at college on the other side of the country.

  “I’d rather keep going,” I said. “Maybe if we walk around town, we’ll spot Skyler.”

  “You have to eat something.” Then he saw the reluctance on my face and added, “Please. She’s probably keeping night hours anyway.”

  I frowned at that. I wished I knew what was fact and what was myth about vampires.

  My stomach growled.

  “I’m starving,” Vaughn said.

  “Me too,” I replied. “Obviously.”

  “Let’s see if I can find that seafood place.” He used his phone to search for local restaurants and then grinned. “It’s two blocks away.”

  It had a blue roof with two giant surfboards on it, Splash Pad spelled out in neon letters on the sign. We parked around back.

  The front and rear doors were open, letting in the ocean breeze.

  “What’s good?” I asked as we strolled up to the end of the order line.

  “Everything,” he assured me. “They have the best clam chowder I’ve ever had.”

  The aroma of fried food made my stomach growl again. I put my hand on my stomach, hopefully forcing it to shut up. I ordered clam chowder, scallops, and fries.

  Vaughn grinned. “Same for me.” There were a couple of tourist brochures by the register, and he took one and slid it into the pocket of his jeans.

  He paid for our food, even though I tried to hand him some cash, and took the little black-and-white ticket number from the cashier. We found a table in the back before continuing our earlier conversation about the concert location.

  “Obviously, it’s in a cave,” he said, then grinned. “An ancient cave with ancient monsters.”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “My encyclopedic knowledge of horror movies,” he said. “And this brochure.” He took it out and showed me the photo on the front. It was a picture of about a thousand bats streaming out of the mouth of a cave at sunset.

  “You are a genius.” I laughed.

  A server put our order on the table. “Thank you,” I said, but she was busy flipping her hair at Vaughn.

  I swallowed back my irritation. Hello. Right here.

  Besides, I was anxious to get to the show, but we had a few hours. The thought of Travis and the rest of The Drainers d-bags letting loose among a bunch of college girls made me sick.

  “What if we’re wrong? What if she’s not there?” I asked.

  “It’s the best lead we’ve got, unless they post something else on social.” He studied my face. “It’s only a little after six—you’ll feel better after you get some food in you.”

  The food was delicious. I returned my attention to eating, and before I knew it, my plate was empty.

  “Let’s walk down to the beach,” he suggested. “It’ll keep our minds off things for a while.”

  “Too bad you didn’t pack your surfboard,” I teased.

  We tossed our trash and then joined the tourists strolling along the boardwalk. Some guy jostled me when he walked by, and I lost my balance, but Vaughn caught me. “Watch it,” Vaughn growled at the guy.

  He kept his arm around my shoulder as we walked, and I tried not to read too much into it. Just a friendly arm across the shoulder. Nothing to see here.

  I took off my flip-flops when we reached the water. My nails were already growing again. I calmed myself by promising to freak out about this new development later. I needed to focus on saving Skyler from bloodsuckers.

  Diablo’s shoreline was flat as a pancake and easy to walk along, without many rocks or driftwood marring the white sand.

  The sky was a dark violet. I turned to splash Vaughn—and that’s when I spotted Fang. The sun had barely gone down and The Drainers’ drummer was already thirsty, out looking for “food.”

  He leaned up against one of the touristy shops, the kind that held tees and picture frames made of shells and kites. He was talking to a petite dark-haired girl taking photos with an honest-to-god camera around her neck instead of the more typical phone. She looked like she was asking him a question. Directions, maybe?

  I st
iffened when he took her by the hand and tried to lead her away. The girl resisted, and Fang dropped her hand and stomped off. He looked like he’d given up in search of easier prey.

  “Vaughn, let’s go,” I said. “We need to follow that drummer.”

  Fang didn’t look at us as he walked away from the busy pier and the beach. We’d gone about three blocks when I saw The Drainers’ tour bus in a three-hour lot.

  “How far are we from the car?” I asked.

  He winced. “At least another four blocks.”

  “We’ve got to hurry before they move the bus. We can’t lose them.” I told myself not to panic because losing it right now wouldn’t help, but I could feel my breathing speed up.

  “I don’t want to take any chances,” he said. “We should stay together.”

  He was right. We took off running back to our car, but it was summer at the beach, which meant it took us way too long to get back to the public parking lot. I resolved to renew my acquaintance with the gym.

  By the time we got back to the three-hour lot, the tour bus was gone. “Hurry,” Vaughn said. “Maybe they just left. We could catch up to them.”

  We scanned the area, but after several minutes of futile searching, I choked back a sob. “It’s no use. They’re gone.”

  I was cursing under my breath when Vaughn said, “I see them. Look, heading to the northbound lane.”

  I bounced in my seat. “Don’t lose them. Please don’t lose them!”

  We caught up and followed the bus. Then we lucked out when they got off the freeway to gas up the monstrosity that was The Drainers’ tour bus.

  “I really have to pee,” I said. I didn’t recognize the guy pumping gas, but my bladder encouraged me to take the chance he wouldn’t recognize me.

  I asked the clerk to point me in the direction of the bathrooms, which were located at the back of the store, next to the refrigerated beverages. I sprinted there and locked the door. It was cleaner than I had expected. Not clean, exactly, but not a toxic-waste situation.

  There was someone waiting when I got out. She stood in the little alcove outside the bathrooms—the petite camera girl Fang had tried to talk into something earlier. He must have persuaded her after all, and my stomach sank. At least she looked unharmed. There weren’t any bite marks on her…none that I could see, at least. She grinned as she texted someone and then stepped into the bathroom and closed the door.