by Trisha Telep
“We released the single and the photo-shoot pictures to all the best mags a month ago,” Faye pointed out cheerfully. “You guys already have five message boards dedicated to you. And the fan mail’s been pouring in, mostly for Bradley and Chris.”
“Oh ha ha ha,” said Christian, staring out of the darkened limo windows.
People were peering in as the car passed, curious and a little excited. Christian would have done it himself a year ago, presuming that the limo meant that those inside it had glamorous and interesting lives.
“Chris, Chris,” said Bradley, hitting him over the head to attract his attention as if Christian was deaf rather than, for example, a vampire with super hearing. “Are you really only nineteen? I thought vampires lived to be hundreds and hundreds of years old.”
“We do,” Christian said shortly. “And we get to be hundreds and hundreds of years old by living one year at a time. I’ve only been a vampire for a year.”
“That’s deep,” Pez told him.
They all stared at Pez who beamed benignly back at them. At last Faye cleared her throat.
“Right,” she said. “Let’s go through your program again, boys.”
They’d had it drilled into them for weeks. Christian looked out of the darkened windows again, and thought about how it had been at the first audition to become part of 4 The One, him desperately hoping to be chosen and hopeless about it, watching Faye’s eyes light up at Bradley’s careless, golden good looks.
“You’ll be the hot one,” she’d said calmly, then turned her eyes to Josh, who stared back beseechingly. “You can be the nerd. Geek chic is very in.”
“Lady, I think I got confused. I thought this was an interview for a job at a fast-food place,” said a guy with dreadlocks and crazy eyes who Christian would later learn claimed to be called Pez.
“You’ll be the drummer, obviously,” Faye told him.
Then she turned to Christian, who barely dared to hope in case she snatched it away from him and ground it to pieces under her scarily high heels. He’d had to leave home. Mum had told him that his little brother couldn’t sleep with a vampire in the house. He had no place else to go.
Faye smiled at him, almost as beautiful as she was terrifying.
“You’ll be the gimmick.”
It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
There was a screaming crowd outside the auditorium.
“Um,” said Christian. “Did we go to a Stephen King signing by mistake?”
“You read, Chris?” Faye asked. “That’s good. Make them think you have layers, that you’re deep and interesting. The kind of guy who will write them poetry—better yet, songs. Be sure to mention that in the next interview.”
“Come on, guys,” said Bradley, flinging open the door of the limo. “Our public awaits!”
He launched himself out of the limo and onto the red carpet, where he actually did a backflip. The crowd made a sound a little bit like applause and a little bit more like baying wolves, and Christian covered his eyes from the sheer shame of being associated with such a ridiculous person.
Faye jabbed Christian in the stomach with her pen.
“Get out there! And if you could possibly do that thing where you shield your face with your caped arm and hiss—”
“Faye,” said Chris earnestly. “I will never do that thing.”
Faye snorted and crossed her admittedly excellent legs with a rasp of silk. “At least get out there and flash them some fang.”
Pez and Josh had already climbed out of the limo, knocking shoulders as the crowds screamed. They huddled together. Christian drew his cape around himself.
“I miss my hoodie,” he informed Faye as a parting shot. “I know you stole it.”
“You’re talking crazy, you never had a hoodie,” Faye said. “Don’t let me hear you speak of it again.”
Christian climbed out onto the red carpet. He’d thought that the studio lights at the interview were bad, but the dozen clicking, flashing cameras were so much worse. He lifted his hand to cover his eyes, then realized Faye had glued his cape to his sleeve somehow and now he was doing that thing. That vampire thing.
When he lowered his hand he saw Bradley was blowing kisses to the yelling girls, pretending to move forward on the carpet and then doing a little backward walk to blow more kisses.
Christian gave up and shielded his eyes, even though it meant he was doing that thing again. He felt so cheap.
Pez and Josh, at this point shamelessly clinging to each other, were making a rush for the door of the auditorium. Chris started to flee after them, picking up speed even though Faye had made it very clear that specific and terrible things would happen to anyone who ran, hid behind someone else or—and this was directed specifically at him—used supernatural powers to evade a camera.
Even Christian’s hearing could barely make out all the sounds as he passed the crowd. There was so much screaming it was making his migraine worse, his fangs stabbing into his lower lip as his head pounded, random shrieks interspersed with shouts of their names coming from the mob.
“Bradley, Bradley, look at me!”
“Bradley, I want your babies!” yelled a guy who looked about forty years old and was wearing a purple feather boa. Bradley winked and blew him a kiss.
“Chris!”
“Pez!”
“Josh!” Josh looked around, his face puzzled and a little pleased by the sound of his name, and Christian almost walked into his back. Josh looked terrified and backed sharply away.
“Chris, bite me!”
“I love you, Bradley!”
“Chris, I wanna be your queen of the night!”
That was the feather boa guy again, Christian couldn’t help but notice.
“Christian! Christian, help!”
That turned Christian’s head. It wasn’t only that the girl had used his real name, which nobody had done since he’d left home, but there was a pitch and urgency to her voice that said she was in real trouble.
He could see a particularly dense part of the crowd, a nexus where there were too many bodies crammed and things had become frenzied, people shoving too hard. In the midst of the crushed bodies Christian saw a hand waving, going down, as if there was a girl drowning in that human sea.
Christian grabbed hold of the rail on top of the barricades and vaulted over it in one easy vampiric movement. He spread out an arm to clear the space before him and watched people scattering in panic.
That was when he realized that when he’d spread his arm his stupid cape had flared out, a swathe of billowing darkness, and he’d exposed his face, lips curling back from his teeth.
How embarrassing. Faye was going to be thrilled.
He knelt down and lifted the girl up gently by her elbows. She was pink and breathless, with red pigtail braids that had gone wispy and eyes that had gone big. Christian could hear her heart racing with the speed and strength of a charging rhinoceros. He was worried she was going to faint.
“Are you all right?”
“I—um—yes?” said the girl.
Christian smiled. “Are you not sure?”
“Um,” said the girl.
“Come on, you should get …” Christian paused and tried to think of something that might persuade a girl not to faint. All he could think of were smelling salts, which just went to show he should never have started reading Mum’s Mills & Boon novels. “A glass of water? There are probably chairs backstage. Or boxes to sit on. I mean, I hope you can have a chair, but I want to prepare you for boxes.”
The crowd was no longer screaming, but they were drawing in. Christian wrapped an arm protectively around the girl’s fragile shoulders, his cape settling around her like a blanket.
“Thank you,” she said, low into his ear, her heart still pounding. “My name’s Laura. Thank you.”
Christian led her back to the barricades and then boosted her over them. She was light and he could throw her like a tennis ball. She had to grab the r
ail as she passed over it to slow her trajectory, and she landed kind of hard.
“You’re welcome,” said Christian, leaping after her and steadying her as she wobbled from the impact. “Sorry about that. I’m a bit—” terrible at being a vampire “—strong.”
“That’s okay,” Laura whispered, warm against him. She was underneath his cape again somehow.
He walked her toward the door of the auditorium, slipping out of the night full of mysteriously screaming people and into a cool concrete refuge.
At his side, Laura spoke. “I’m really sorry for bothering you on your big night,” she told him. “I was just scared and I panicked. I knew you’d come to save me.”
Christian looked down at her, startled. She wasn’t red and breathless anymore, but pale with golden freckles. Her eyes were summer-sky blue and still wide, and she was looking at him like he was a hero.
“Er,” said Christian. “You need water! I know this because humans … need to drink water. For living.”
He stopped himself from adding, “this is just one of the many things that I know” and shaming himself further.
He led her up a steel flight of stairs into the labyrinth of corridors and curtains that counted as backstage, and then they went on a quest for a water cooler. Christian was beginning to get panicky over not finding one, so when Faye appeared and zeroed in on him like a manicured torpedo he actually felt a moment of relief.
But the usual paralyzing terror kicked in when she smiled at him, her white teeth like a row of tombstones. Christian suspected his name was written on every one.
“Chris, you have to go to your dressing room. Bradley and the others are already in makeup!”
“I want to get Laura some water,” Christian said decisively so that Laura would not think Faye bossed him around, and so that she might forget the mention of him putting on makeup.
“And of course Laura should have water, shouldn’t you, sweetheart?”
Laura looked at Faye with fear, which showed she was smart as well as pretty.
Faye clicked her fingers and her evil-twin assistants appeared, possibly out of the walls. Whenever Faye clicked her fingers it was as if she’d rubbed a magic lamp—her wishes were instantly granted. Christian had a theory that reality was scared of her too and so bent to her will.
“Water her,” said Faye. “Give her a place to watch the show. I love her. She’s news.”
Laura was led very firmly away. Christian cleared his throat and said: “I’ll see you after the show!” in a voice that cracked. She just stared at him with beseeching eyes, unable to escape from the custody of the dreaded Marcel and Marcy.
“Thanks very much, Faye.”
“Thank you very much, Chris,” said Faye, who was immune to all sarcasm but her own. She took his arm and started dragging him toward the dressing room. “You saved a girl’s life and you did the cape thing and you and she are going to be on the front of every magazine in this country. You even wrapped her in your cape. I love you today, Chris. I could kiss you on your stupid, fangy mouth.”
“Faye, please don’t. I’m scared of you,” Chris pleaded, terror making him blunt.
She stopped at the door of their dressing room, reached up and pinched his cheek between two pointy fingernails.
“I know you are, my little vampire cupcake. Now get in there.”
Christian’s dressing room was alarmingly large and had lights that reminded him of the lights in the TV studio, dazzling and oppressive.
He felt a lot more oppressed when he was tackled into a large leather chair by several women who looked at him with cold, dead eyes and wielded powder puffs with no mercy.
His first concert seemed like it was going to be as much of a nightmare as his first television interview by the time he was released by the powder-puff torturers and staggered with the others out toward the stage. His skin felt caked, and it shimmered under the neon lights.
“Lookin’ good,” Bradley drawled.
“Bite me,” Christian snapped, then shut his eyes and recited from the pamphlet. “Except do no such thing, because joking about biting from either side of the species divide is in poor taste, and also the blood would have long-term effects which might well prove detrimental to your health.”
“Okay,” said Bradley. “4 The One, are we ready to reach new heights of awesome tonight?”
“Er, yeah!” said Josh.
“Sorry, what was that?” asked Pez.
“I cannot believe you just said that,” Christian squinted at Bradley. “I am judging you so hard right now.”
“Okay, never mind,” said Bradley. “Josh, remember to pop your hips, we don’t want a repeat of what happened last week. Let’s go!”
They walked out onto the stage, which was bathed in purple and pink spotlights, the noise of screams rising to greet them from the pit and the sound of a loudspeaker blaring behind them. Christian winced.
“The moment you’ve all been waiting for, ladies and gentlemen. This is … 4 The One!”
Bradley strode over to the microphone as Christian was swinging his guitar strap over his head, settling the instrument against his hip, fingers touching the strings and getting familiar.
“I wrote this song myself,” said Bradley—a barefaced lie. He sounded just like he did when he was waggling his eyebrows. “It’s called ‘Lock Up Your Daughters.’ And to all the mothers out there, I suggest you do!”
There was a scream of approval. “All the mothers out there” seemed to be intending to lock up their daughters, so they could have Bradley for themselves.
Pez started in on the drums, and they swung into the song. It was a good song, catchy. Christian liked these songs best, when everyone was playing instruments and Bradley was actually singing, his voice improbably good for someone with such an annoying laugh. These songs made up for the ones where Bradley, Pez, and Josh did a weird synchronized dance with enough hip-popping to cause injury, or at least induce high blood pressure in the crowd.
Christian was deeply thankful that Faye had told him he didn’t have to dance, though his role of standing in front of the wind machine with his cape blowing and his hair falling into his eyes as he leaned in and murmured into the microphone was not significantly better.
He was even more thankful for an opening song like the one they were playing now, the crowd singing along, Bradley’s voice convincing them that they all knew the words. Christian could be a little quiet at times like these, sink into the background, once again be the shy boy who loved his guitar and dreamed of being a superstar.
He liked it when that boy stirred briefly back to life.
Between the curtains to the left of the stage he saw Laura dragging a box as close to the stage as she could get without being revealed. She dusted off her hands and perched herself on top of it as he watched her. She noticed him watching and shot him a smile, blushing, giving him a sidelong glance as if they had an in-joke.
He looked at the box she was sitting on and realized they did. He smiled back at her and then turned his smile to the audience, loving them all, loving the band, loving the girl watching him from the side of the stage. His heart beat as theirs did for a minute, all of them swept away.
Euphoria carried him through the concert and the dash back onstage to play that first song again as an encore. Safely backstage, the band members were all laughing and breathless, the humans’ skin warm and sweaty. Bradley put his arm around Christian and Christian let him, even leaned against him. Bradley’s other arm was around Pez, and Josh was not keeping his distance from Christian like he usually was. They were a team for an instant, victorious.
Then Pez said: “That was an awesome rehearsal. When are we having the concert?” and Bradley let out a crack of laughter. Christian pulled away and turned to Laura.
She was still sitting on her box, face turned up to him like some pale flower turned up toward the sun.
He reached out a hand to her and she took it.
He said: “Do yo
u want to go for a walk with me?”
“I love walking in the night time,” Laura told him shyly. “Do you?”
“It beats walking in the day time. I barely get any exercise done before I burst into flames.”
Christian regretted that as soon as he’d said it. Here he was with a beautiful girl on a nighttime stroll and he’d said something that roughly translated to, “Yes, the scenery is very nice, which reminds me that I am the blood-drinking undead. Check out the teeth!”
He tried to look at the night as she was seeing it, deliberately crossing his eyes so his vision blurred a little, so that what was clear and rather dull became mysterious shadows. A tree heaped with dead leaves at the end of the road became a towering oak wearing a bright crown. The moonlit road became a silver path of infinite possibilities.
“It’s a beautiful night, though,” he said softly, and almost believed it.
He was rewarded by Laura slipping her hand in his. Her hand was warm, and he curled his fingers around it, hoping at least to shield it from the night air and keep her warm, even if he could not share any real warmth with her.
“I write poetry,” said Laura.
“I’d like to read some.”
“I write poems about … the night. And death.”
“Um,” said Christian. His own death hadn’t been particularly poetic, but deaths probably varied. “Okay.”
“I never let anybody read them,” Laura continued. “But I would. I think I could let you.”
She gave him that look again, as if he was a shining hero. It warmed Christian through and through.
“Yeah?” he asked. “Thanks.”
She swung his hand a bit, companionably, and he wasn’t a shining hero—they just seemed like an ordinary boy and girl alone together. That was better.
When they reached the tree at the end of the road, she stopped and looked up at him.
“I saw your picture in Bubbly,” she said. “It was an interview with the band. You were wearing a dark-green cloak with a sort of metal clasp at the throat.”
Christian remembered that Faye had stabbed it into his throat when she was putting the cloak on. He still wasn’t convinced that had been an accident: she’d been very annoyed with him for rebelling against the public-relations orders she’d given and showing up in jeans and a football shirt.