“A trench of fire!” Matt said. He waved his arms dramatically in the air.
Zeke nodded. “We dig a trench around the mansion, fill it with wood, disguise it with flowers, drench it with gasoline, and then light it as soon as we all cross to the parking lot. If the vamps notice that we’re leaving, this should slow them down.” He patted one of the boxes of junk fondly. “Plus we have a few other ideas.”
“Remember one of the mission parameters is to limit casualties,” Evan said, “including vampires.” He laid his hand on Pearl’s shoulder.
“Ooh,” Matt and Zeke said simultaneously.
Wistfully, Matt asked, “So, no stake crossbows?”
Face filled with sorrow, Zeke shook his head. “You don’t comprehend the awesome glory that is a stake crossbow.”
Pearl raised both eyebrows in a fair imitation of Mother.
“Okay, okay,” Zeke said. “We can adjust. We are masters of flexibility and spontaneity. No plan ever survives contact with the enemy, and all that.” He patted another crate. “Good ol’ bucket of holy water over the door trick. Rig one over each cellar door in case the barricades fail. Slow down any vamp without causing permanent death and disintegration.”
Evan leaned toward Pearl. “Will it work?”
Just as conspiratorially, Pearl faux whispered, “Holy water hurts, and we’re very, very flammable. So trench of fire . . . kind of brilliant. But don’t tell them I said that. It’ll go to their heads.”
Matt beamed.
Zeke said, “I always wondered what the difference was between flammable and inflammable. Why have two words that look like opposites but mean the same thing?”
“Just give me a shovel,” Pearl said.
As Bethany calculated the exact location for the trench— it had to be far enough from the house to be hidden by the greenery but close enough so that it wouldn’t cut too close to the parked cars—other cars with students began to arrive at the mansion.
Zeke and Matt had enlisted the Goth kids, the smokers, and a few theater types. Sana brought the track team. Tara led the prom committee (minus Ashlyn). Shovel in hand, Pearl met them all on the walkway to the mansion.
“You guys all know about . . . well, you know?” Pearl mimed fangs.
Everyone nodded.
“Huh,” Pearl said. “And you still came?”
Tara shrugged. “It’s prom.”
Pearl studied them, unsure if they really understood this was real. She supposed it didn’t matter. If all went as planned, she’d be the only vampire they ever saw. “Okay then,” she said. “A few guests are already in the cellar, asleep for the day. Keep the conversation banal. We have excellent hearing.”
She sent Sana and the team, plus a selection of the Goth kids, to assist Bethany with the trench. Zeke went inside with a few of the theater kids, hauling in the buckets of holy water.
“We have supplies,” Tara announced to Pearl. “Centerpieces with garlic. Your kind hate garlic, right? Also, garlands of crucifixes and Stars of David and a bunch of other religious doodads. . . I wasn’t sure what would work so we made them all.”
Pearl began to shake her head. “Subtlety is key—”
Tara beckoned to Kelli. “Bring them out!”
Kelli opened the back of her SUV, and she and another member of the prom committee carried out six life-size foam cutouts of Edward Cullen, four of Jacob, and one panorama of the entire cast. Another prom committee member—Emma or Emily—fetched an armful of Twilight posters. Another carried Party City bags full of New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn cups, plates, napkins, and plastic tablecloths. “Theme!” Kelli said happily.
Pearl began to smile. “Have fun,” she said as she swung the door to the ballroom open to let them inside. Each of the girls oohed and aahed.
Tara marched past them. “Come on, ladies. Let’s make it gaudy.”
As work commenced inside, Pearl joined the trench crew.
Bethany had identified the location for the trench and calculated the best width and depth. Leading the other students, she’d begun to peck at the dirt with her shovel. So far, she’d chipped out about three inches of dirt. Stepping in front of her, Pearl slammed her shovel into the ground and began to dig. She didn’t bother to hide her strength. She powered through the dirt as if she were a living bulldozer. The students stared at her with jaws dropped open. Feeling their gazes on her back, she leveled a glare at them over her shoulder. “This isn’t performance art, people. Fill the trench with branches.”
Silently, they followed behind her, filling the trench with branches that they fetched from around the mansion’s land. Evan led forays for dry wood in the nearby nature preserve.
Bethany lugged over a pile of brush. Her face was flushed bright red between her freckles, and she looked as if she was going to keel over any second. “Bethany,” Pearl called to her. “Can you check on everyone inside? Keep them from going downstairs or doing anything else idiotic.”
Bethany dropped her branch and fled inside without protest.
Pearl continued to dig. After Bethany left, she didn’t talk to the other students. It was enough to listen to her own thoughts. She’d done a lot of avoiding her thoughts in the past twenty-four hours, mostly because they were a snarl: If she did this, she was betraying her Family and would lose them. But if she didn’t do this and left, then her Family would betray her and she’d lose them.
She had to admit the whole situation was rather brilliant of Bethany and rather brave of Evan. He’d taken a massive risk. He’d let her into his life, his house, and his family’s secret. He trusted her with the truth of their plan. She couldn’t decide whether that was idiotic or sexy. Glancing over at Evan, she watched him haul brush into the trench. As if he felt her eyes on him, he looked up. For an instant they stared at each other, and then Pearl turned back to the dirt.
After three hours Pearl completed the trench. She climbed the front steps of the mansion to survey her work. Zeke and Bethany joined her. “Nice,” he said. “Pile it higher, everyone! We want it to burn until dawn. Plus it’s supposed to look like shrubbery, people, not a superobvious trap.”
As the students trotted into the nature preserve to fetch more brush, Pearl said, “The fire department will never let it burn until dawn.”
Bethany said, “With luck, we won’t need to light it. But if we do . . . it only needs to last until everyone is safely home. Anyway, Evan’s family will take care of the fire department. Some of them work there.”
Pearl rolled her eyes. “Of course they do. It’s the hero family.”
Smiling, Evan bowed at her.
“Technically, you’re doing the hero thing too,” Bethany said.
“I’m digging a hole,” Pearl said.
“Trench,” Zeke said. “Huge difference. Trench has a battle-worn poetry to it. Hole . . . kind of more a gopher thing.” He strode down the walkway to assist with arranging the branches.
Bethany tugged on her sleeve. “Come see what the prom committee did inside.”
Inside . . . the ballroom sparkled. Glittery tulle and black lace were draped over every chandelier. Movie posters covered every wall. The Twilight cutouts framed the windows, and every centerpiece featured bloodred roses ringed by garlic bulbs. It was garish. It was over-the-top. It was perfect.
“Bloody brilliant,” Pearl said in a fake British accent.
“Done!” Tara said. “Just in time to begin to beautify us.” She beckoned to the committee. “Ashlyn’s house, fifteen minutes.” She pointed at Bethany and Pearl. “You too.”
“R-really?” Bethany said.
At the mention of Ashlyn, Pearl felt her stomach clench. “Thanks, but I’ll prepare at home.” At home she might be forced into her aunts’ monstrosity of a black lace dress, but that was preferable to facing the zombielike Ashlyn.
“Ashlyn won’t be coming to prom, but her house is close to here,” Tara said. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. Pearl stared at her. She understands, Pearl thoug
ht suddenly. She knows this is real. “You should come with us.”
“Pearl . . . ,” Bethany began. Her eyes slid to the cellar door, and she changed whatever she was going to say. “Your dress is in my car. I . . . I thought we’d get ready together. I kind of promised Sandy.”
Pearl looked from Bethany to Tara. “You don’t trust me,” she said softly.
Bethany studied her sneakers as her cheeks flushed bright red. Tara, though, wasn’t the least bit embarrassed. “Bingo,” Tara said. “Just want to keep your loyalties straight. No one, and I mean no one, is ruining this prom.”
On a treeless hill, Ashlyn’s house gleamed with shiny new paint. It was the crown jewel of her cul-de-sac with gaudy White House pillars and a fake widow’s walk at the peak. Bethany and Tara sandwiched Pearl between them as they walked past daffodils toward the front porch.
“Does she know?” Pearl asked.
Tara snorted. “Do you want to be the one to tell her?”
“If you expect me to be all contrite, it’s not going to happen,” Pearl said. “I am what I am. Or was what I was.” They walked up the porch steps.
After ringing the bell, Tara tried the door. Oddly, it wasn’t locked. Or maybe it wasn’t odd. If your worst nightmare could enter your house at will, locking the door had to seem futile. She wondered how aware of their fate Ashlyn’s family was.
As Tara, Sana, and the others piled inside, Pearl halted at the threshold. “My parents were invited in, but technically I wasn’t.”
“So?” Sana said.
“It’s a vampire thing,” Pearl said. She demonstrated by reaching toward the doorway. At the threshold, her hand hit what felt like an invisible wall. She knocked on solid air. “We need to be invited in by a resident before we can enter a home.”
“Weird,” Sana said. “Also, good to know.”
“Wait here,” said Tara. Without waiting for a response from Pearl, she disappeared inside. A few seconds later she reappeared, propelling a haggard woman in a half-buttoned blouse toward the doorway.
Reaching them, the woman leaned against the door frame as if she needed its support in order to stay vertical. “Not buying, not selling, please leave us alone,” Ashlyn’s mother said. Her eyes didn’t focus anywhere in particular. Pearl noticed that her makeup was smeared down her cheek into a puddle of bluish rouge. She wore mascara on her left eyelashes only.
“This is one of Ashlyn’s friends,” Tara said loudly and clearly. “May she come in?”
Ashlyn’s mother focused on her. “Ashlyn’s upstairs. Won’t talk to us anymore. Mopey teenager. Never should have had kids. Was meant to be an actress. You know I was in a commercial once, toothpaste. I had a beautiful smile. Still do.” Wow, the venom hit her hard, Pearl thought. Her brains were dribbling out her mouth, metaphorically speaking.
Bethany elbowed Pearl. Pearl asked, “May I visit Ashlyn?”
“If you want, come on in,” Ashlyn’s mother said.
Pearl tried walking forward. She felt a fizzle as she crossed the threshold. Inside, she peered at Ashlyn’s mother’s neck. Multiple scars bunched the skin. Her parents had visited often. Very often. “I’m sorry,” Pearl said without meaning to.
Bethany patted her shoulder.
Together they all went upstairs. Ashlyn lay on her stomach on her bed. She had a remote control in one hand. She switched channels as the girls piled into her bedroom.
Ignoring Ashlyn, Tara pointed at Pearl. “You need a shower. You have dirt on you.” She confiscated a towel from a closet and pushed Pearl toward a marble bathroom. “Clean up well. You need to perform tonight.” Pearl glanced over her shoulder at Ashlyn, who had yet to acknowledge them. “Consider her your object lesson. You can’t fail us again.” It occurred to Pearl that Tara was smarter than she looked.
Pearl nodded and obeyed.
As she showered, she listened to the chatter from Ashlyn’s bedroom. There were eight girls total: They’d brought along not just the prom committee but Sana and a theater girl. A few days ago the sound of so many humans would have made Pearl’s head pound. Now . . . all of them were wrapped up in the unicorns’ plan together.
Feeling fond (or at least protective) of the humans, Pearl came out of the shower wrapped in a towel and said, “Now what?” Immediately, Kelli and another girl descended on her. One of them grabbed a comb while the other sat her down and began painting her toenails. Pearl let them manhandle her.
Chatter washed over her. Everyone was discussing who would come with dates and who wouldn’t, who would wear what dress, and whether so-and-so would look good in a tux. No one mentioned vampires or ceremonies or blood.
Of course, Pearl couldn’t help smelling all the blood in the room, fresh and pounding through veins, but every time she began to think about blood, she looked at Ashlyn, and her stomach churned inside of her. Tara was right—Ashlyn made an excellent object lesson. Pearl kept her lips firmly pressed together, fangs in, as Tara applied makeup to her face.
“Done,” Tara said. She turned Pearl’s head so she could look in the mirror.
Pearl’s eyes widened. Tara had applied blush to her cheeks to mimic human coloring. She had eyes that sparkled and lips that looked out of a magazine. “I look like you.” She smiled. Just one of the girls, she thought.
“Not as pretty, but you’ll do.”
Bethany brought over the blue satin dress. Pearl slipped it on. Tara donated the shoes from Ashlyn’s closet. Ashlyn didn’t even notice. She hadn’t budged. As Pearl twirled so the others could admire her, Bethany clapped. Soon, others began to pull on their dresses.
Tara darted out of the room. She returned with a bag of tortilla chips, as well as Ashlyn’s cat. She tossed the bag on the bed. “Anyone hungry?” The other girls dived into the bag. Pearl eyed their young fresh necks and tried to remember when she’d had her last pint from the storage room. She told herself firmly that she could manage.
Tara thrust the cat toward Pearl. “I think it’s purebred. Maybe that will make it taste better?” On the bed, Ashlyn stared at the ceiling and didn’t speak.
Sana coughed on a chip. “Seriously?”
“This is insulting,” Pearl said, catching the cat before Tara dropped it.
“Imagine how it must be for the cat,” Sana said drily.
“Please try it,” Bethany said. “We don’t want you hungry.” All the girls stared at her. Some looked revolted. Others looked fascinated.
All her warm, fuzzy, one-of-the-girls feelings fled. Pearl retreated into the bathroom. She didn’t realize until after she’d shut the door that she had the cat tucked under her arm.
“Don’t mess up the lipstick,” Tara called through the door. “And don’t get fur on the dress!”
Outside the room, she heard silence. Everyone was waiting to see what she’d do. This was, she thought, single-handedly her most embarrassing moment ever. She held the cat up under its armpits and looked at it.
The cat looked back at her. It was one of those ridiculous fluffy white cats, Persian or something, with the flattened nose and the wide cartoonish eyes. It meowed.
“Oh, quit it,” Pearl said. She wasn’t going to become some pathetic cat-eating pseudovampire. She dropped the cat in the bathtub, and then she opened the bathroom window, hiked up her dress, stepped on the toilet to boost herself up, and climbed out onto the roof.
Pearl sidled down to the edge of the roof and then leaped off. She landed on the grass, and her heels sank into the lawn. She unstuck herself and readjusted her dress. Cat fur clung to the satin. She spent a few seconds plucking it off, and then she started to run.
She didn’t have a destination in mind. Her legs just needed to be moving. So she ran, at half-speed thanks to heels and a prom dress intended for slinky shimmying. She felt the sun on her bare shoulders and on her face, and she breathed in the air even though she didn’t have to. Soon, she slowed because she knew where she’d come: the Dairy Hut, or what was left of it.
She halted on the sidew
alk.
“Hey,” a voice said. She knew the voice, of course. It was as warm as a caress, a voice that made her entire body want to turn toward the voice’s owner.
“You have some serious stalker tendencies,” Pearl said without turning around. “It’s not very attractive.”
“I have a tux on,” Evan said. “Shouldn’t that help?”
“Every guy thinks he looks good in a tux,” Pearl said. “But it’s not true. Some look like overstuffed emperor penguins.” She still didn’t turn around. The Dairy Hut was a brown shell. The windows were plywood. The sign was charred. The picnic tables were absent. Only the dumpsters in the back remained untouched. She smelled smoke in the air, or maybe she imagined it. “This was my fault. That night that I came to your house . . .”
He was silent.
“I killed him,” Pearl said. “Believe it or not, it was an accident. I was trying . . . well, it doesn’t matter. I killed him, and my Family torched the place to hide the evidence. That’s what gave them the idea to do it with the prom . . . after, of course, I offered up the prom to them to atone for the accident.”
Still Evan didn’t say anything.
“I killed after your little experiment,” Pearl said. “I’m still a killer. You didn’t cure that.”
“I woke your soul. What you choose to do with it . . . that’s up to you.”
“I chose to kill,” she said.
“You said it was an accident.”
“Well, yes,” Pearl said. She hadn’t meant to kill him. “I’d only meant to take a pint. It didn’t . . . turn out that way. And I am feeling this horrible wrenching guilt, and I hate it. I hate what you’ve made me feel. I hate what you’ve turned me into.” She spun to face Evan.
He stood there in his tux, and he looked more handsome than anyone she’d ever seen, human or vampire. She supposed that made sense since he was neither. But she couldn’t help gawking at him as if her eyes were drinking him in. He was gazing at her too, in her blue satin prom dress with her human makeup and her hair that had only slipped a little on her run. She wished she knew how this boy had the power to unsettle her with just his eyes. More than anything, she wanted him to keep looking at her like that.
Drink, Slay, Love Page 24