Team Human

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Team Human Page 9

by Justine Larbalestier


  “Democracy at work,” I murmured, wondering how big a margin Kit’s fate had been decided by. And yet I’d still grinned at Kit’s eye roll when he mentioned Francis’s contribution to the baby debate.

  How could someone leave a baby on a doorstep for monsters to feed on? How could someone do that, and consider themselves human afterward?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Kit, Short for …

  We were finally out of the Shade and I was glad. Still in the old part of town, but there were neon lights flickering on some buildings and an all-night convenience store with one or two human customers. We were in the real world, bright with colors and life. A few more blocks and we’d be in more familiar surroundings, walking past my favorite coffee shop.

  The relief of it had me volunteering: “So they obviously didn’t get tired of you.”

  “Oh, they were sick to the fangs of me by the time I was a year old,” Kit said, still sounding amused. “But my mom doesn’t quit once she’s taken on a responsibility. And I was a smart kid. They still tell stories about how I used to stagger around holding on to her leg. The others had phases when they fussed over me, but even though Mom thought I was a nuisance—she wanted to get out and do her job—she was the responsible one. She made sure I was fed and cared for. She wore one of those dumb suits and woke me up for walks during the day so I wouldn’t get rickets. Poor Mom, she took me on enough walks that I knew my way home, so it was no good leaving me on someone else’s doorstep. I bet she was tempted, though.”

  “Bet she wasn’t.” I bumped Kit in the hip with my bike, a bit harder than I’d meant to.

  “Ow,” he said, but he looked pleased.

  We’d drawn level with Cathy and Francis at last—we were at Cathy’s house. I was almost disappointed. I had lots more to ask Kit.

  Cathy and Francis were bidding each other a drawn-out farewell on the porch. I saw Francis touch her face.

  “This whole Cathy and Francis thing is horrible,” I announced.

  “You don’t know anything about horrible,” Kit said. “You haven’t heard the ballad.”

  It was more support than I’d received from anyone else except Kristin, so I opened my mouth to say something else when Cathy called out, “Good-bye, Mel! See you in the morning.”

  It seemed so normal. I waved back at her. “See you!”

  “Now we will escort you home, Melanie,” Francis said, before noticing something and looking scandalized. “Good heavens, Christopher, take the lady’s bicycle!”

  “Er,” Kit said.

  “I told him I had it.”

  “She wouldn’t let me, Francis.”

  Francis looked disapproving and went to stand beside Kit. I was pleased to see that Kit was a head taller. Mind you, quite a few guys were taller than Francis. He’d been born in England in the 1800s. They weren’t big on nutritious bone-building food back then. Francis had probably grown up on gruel and boar fat.

  “In which direction do we proceed?” Francis asked.

  “It’s close,” I said. “I can go the rest of the way by myself.”

  “I wouldn’t hear of it,” Francis said firmly.

  I sighed and headed home. Maybe I could dissuade him from taking me to my front door. I had, once again, taken off without my parents’ knowledge.

  “You’ll find Melanie is quite a character,” Francis told Kit.

  I decided not to point out that I was right here.

  “Will I?” asked Kit. “How will I find Cathy? Aside from star-kissed. And still my age.”

  “Cathy is extremely mature for her age—”

  “She’d have to be, wouldn’t she?”

  “While you, I regret to say, despite the advantage of your upbringing, are not.”

  “Aw, Uncle Francis,” Kit said.

  I snorted. Francis looked vexed.

  “About Cathy,” I said. “My objections are unaltered.” (How’s that for Francis-speak?) “As Kit says, she’s much, much younger than you. Then there’s the matter of the book you’re writing about her.”

  Francis looked, to all appearances, honestly scandalized. I’d seen scandalized on Francis a lot by now—I seemed to bring it out in him—and I was sure it was genuine.

  “My book is not about Cathy.”

  “On Adolescent Homo sapiens sapiens and Love is not about the human girl you’re pretending to be in love with for the sake of your research?”

  “Pretending? What kind of a blackguard do you think I am? I’ll have you know my love is sincere. Furthermore—”

  “It’s true,” Kit said loudly, cutting him off. “He’s really in love with her.”

  After tonight’s display I had to admit that might be true. “But what about your book?”

  “My book, as you so crudely put it, is not merely about adolescent humans in love. That is but one chapter of the whole. My magnum opus, which has already run to several volumes, is a history of human and vampire emotions. For far too long there have been claims that we vampires have none or that they are muted compared to those of humans. Pure human prejudice. Some of our emotions are different, I will concede, but different is not the same as lesser. I am writing the monumental work that will refute those claims for all eternity and enable humans and vampires to communicate in a spirit of mutual understanding and goodwill. In order to prove my thesis, it was necessary to study both human and vampire emotions. To compare and contrast. I have found that …”

  “Now you’ve done it,” Kit whispered. “He won’t stop for months.”

  I giggled.

  “I will desist,” Francis said icily. “I am sorry that one of the great works of all time is so tedious to you, Christopher. And a source of mirth to you, Melanie.”

  “My name’s not Melanie,” I said, exasperated.

  “Mine’s not Christopher,” Kit said.

  “Yes, it is,” said Francis, addressing me. “He’s named after Christopher Marlowe. The poet and playwright. If not for his tragically early death, I feel it likely that he, and not Shakespeare, would have been remembered as the preeminent genius of his—”

  “Cathy’s been my best friend since birth,” I interrupted. “I know who Kit Marlowe is.”

  “Yes, of course, you would. She is remarkably learned for one so young.”

  I tried not to make a face.

  “May I have a word with you, Melan—Mel?”

  I nodded. Francis gestured for Kit to step away.

  “With regard to our arrangement, are you still determined to prevent me from attending your school?”

  I stared at Francis.

  “I know I agreed not to see Cathy again. But as you can see …” He waved his hand in the direction of Cathy’s house.

  “The deal’s off,” I said. “You can come back to school. I won’t tell anyone.”

  I could see that telling Cathy about his book would have zero effect.

  “Thank you,” Francis said. “I will not soon forget this. She means everything to me.”

  “Uh, sure,” I said. I was still wondering why he specifically didn’t want Principal Saunders to know about the book that was listed in his file. It made no sense.

  And, of course, if Principal Saunders didn’t know about the book, why was she acting so weird? Why did she hate him? Solely because he was a vampire?

  I needed answers. Anna needed answers, and I didn’t know how to get them.

  Francis drifted into a romantic trance, i.e., he forgot to keep pace with us mere mortals. That gave Kit a chance to cough, and bump against my bike.

  “Not really,” he said.

  “What?” I asked. We were almost home, and I was thinking about what my parents would say if they saw me with a vampire. Not that they’re prejudiced, but they’d be a bit surprised. Plus they didn’t know I wasn’t in my room.

  “I’m not really named after Christopher Marlowe,” Kit said. “Mom and Francis pretend that I am. But I remember what the others used to call me when I was really little.”

>   He leaned in and told me with a small smile.

  As they walked away, I stood in the darkness, thinking about the world my best friend had got herself mixed up in.

  A world of darkness and silence—except for the occasional lute playing. A world of monsters, where humans abandoned their babies knowing they would never be heard from again.

  Or if the monsters on a whim took in the baby, they would carelessly let the child know exactly what he was to them. Not a son, but a pet.

  They would call him Kitten.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Caught in a Really Bad Romance

  Cathy and I walked to school the next morning. Cathy couldn’t stop smiling and exclaiming on the beauty of everything. You’d think she was on drugs. Maybe she was. Lots of people are convinced that love is a drug.

  If so, Cathy was mainlining.

  It turned out she knew all about Francis’s book—oh, sorry, his magnum opus—and had known from almost the beginning. She was quite happy to tell me more than I ever wanted to know about it.

  Which begged the question: What had Francis thought I meant when I’d told him I knew what he was up to?

  What didn’t he want Principal Saunders to know? And what was going on with Principal Saunders anyway?

  As if thinking about Francis and Principal Saunders had conjured them up, I saw them.

  Francis was waiting for Cathy on the school steps. As we approached, he stood up, bowed, and lifted Cathy’s hand to his visor as if to kiss it. I can’t speak for his expression, given that he was in his hazmat suit, but I imagine it was as beatific as Cathy’s.

  In the parking lot, Principal Saunders was locking her fancy new SUV. Her expression was the opposite of beatific. She went pale when she saw us. I thought she was going to pass out on the spot when the four of us walked into the hall together and Francis eased his helmet off and turned his cool blue gaze to her.

  I swear Principal Saunders shuddered.

  “Are you okay, ma’am?” I asked. She was looking thin, and the circles around her eyes were so deep and dark, I wouldn’t have been surprised if bats had taken up residence.

  “Fine, thank you,” she said crisply. “Have you recovered, Cathy? Your mother said you were ill.”

  Cathy blushed. “Yes, Principal Saunders.”

  “Good, good. We hate to see our valedictorian away for any length of time. Hurts morale.” Principal Saunders attempted a smile. It looked more like a death rictus. At the same time she looked lost.

  It was the strangest thing, but something about her expression made me think of how Cathy had looked when she’d thought Francis was gone forever.

  Francis’s expression was unaltered. What was going on between those two? Why was the principal afraid of him? What was he up to that he didn’t want her to know about?

  Most important of all, how was I going to find out?

  I didn’t see much of Cathy or Francis for the rest of the day—they were too lost in their own glittery little world, as if they were trapped in a snow globe of vampire love—but they might as well have been sitting in my lap, given that they were the constant topic of conversation. Apparently Principal Saunders wasn’t the only one who had noted Cathy’s absence. Many had noted that both she and Francis had been away.

  Though everyone seemed to have forgotten that Francis had been absent for a few days before Cathy. They also seemed incapable of asking Cathy or Francis how they were. No, they all asked me.

  “Is Cathy all right?” Ty inquired while gobbling down meatballs and rigatoni. “Was she sick? Did she and Francis go somewhere together? Are they married now?”

  “She’s fine. They’re fine. Everything is fine,” I said, even though it wasn’t. “They’re not married.”

  “What happened, exactly? Are you sure she’s okay?” Anna asked, joining us because Cathy and Francis were elsewhere. Under a tree reciting poetry at each other, I imagined. Or maybe he was reading to her from the magnum opus?

  I recited the touching story in a monotone. “She thought she’d lost Francis forever. Now she has him back. She is, and I quote, ‘in a blissful delirium.’ So yes. I think that means she is okay.”

  “Oh,” Anna said. She seemed taken aback, possibly because of the “blissful delirium” part.

  “Well, that’s good,” Ty said.

  “No, Ty, it’s not. In case you haven’t noticed, he’s a vampire!”

  Ty looked distressed. Francis’s beauty and airplane expertise had obviously dazzled all the brains right out of his head.

  “Francis is a really nice vampire,” he protested. “And, you know, some human-vampire relationships work out great.”

  “Oh, really?” I asked. “How many people do you know involved in happy relationships with the undead?”

  Ty and Anna both took this opportunity to be significantly silent.

  “Aside from Francis and Cathy, I mean!”

  “Well, none,” Ty said. “But we know it happens. There are books about it. There are stories in the paper all the time. Did you see that one about the vampire guy who kept dating all the girl descendants in this one family? Can you imagine being like ‘Granny’s ex sure is hot’?”

  “How is that an argument in favor of dating vampires?” I asked, wondering if Ty had lost his mind.

  He ignored me. “And then there’s Gina Lyons and Zac Rider.”

  “Their relationship is a stunt for the movie,” Anna put in. “Almost all celebrity hookups are.”

  “Well, I think their love is real,” said Ty, who seemed determined in Cathy’s absence to be the romantic of the group. He hesitated, then added: “And how about Rob Lin and Aaron Zuckermann? They’ve been together ten years!”

  “In which time Aaron Zuckermann has had like fifteen plastic surgeries,” said Anna. “That we know of.”

  “That’s because looking good is important to him. He feels he owes it to the fans and that it expresses his dedication to the job,” Ty said. “It’s not because he’s insecure about their love.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Anna. “Plastic surgery does not make you look good. He’s freakish.”

  I took a deep breath. “Stop talking about celebrities! So they date vampires, so what? I assume we all agree Cathy shouldn’t get extensive cosmetic surgery! And please, Ty, don’t bring up any of your romance novels. They’re fictional.”

  “Some of them are based on true stories.”

  “This isn’t a story!” I said. “Cathy’s not a celebrity! She’s got herself all tangled up with this stupid vampire and her own dreams, and I’m worried sick about her!” My voice might have risen a tiny bit. Ty and Anna were staring at me.

  “Oh, is that the time?” Ty exclaimed unconvincingly. “I have an appointment with, um, the counselor. I’ve been feeling very troubled lately!”

  “Uh-huh,” I said as he scampered away from the lunch table as fast as he could, abandoning meatballs, pasta, and his soda. “That or he has to go rearrange his sock drawer.”

  “You were a bit fierce,” Anna said. She looked almost as tired as her mother. What had I been thinking, going on about love affairs with the undead, letting Ty talk about vampires and celebrities dating? This whole Francis and Cathy thing must be unbearable for Anna, considering her dad had gone off with some undead home wrecker.

  “I feel fierce,” I said, lowering my voice and moving closer to Anna. “I had to go rescue Cathy from Francis’s house last night.”

  I was still talking about vampires, but at least Anna looked more awake. “You didn’t! You went into the Shade? By yourself?”

  “I did. It was terrifying. He lives with a vampire cop who almost killed us both!”

  Anna shuddered, and I thought of her mother’s shudder this morning.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be telling you about this when …” The words your dad hung between us, all the louder for not being spoken.

  Anna bowed her head. “No, that’s okay. I want to hear about it. Was the house dark and cold?”<
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  She spoke as if she’d spent some time imagining a vampire’s house, imagining it being dank and dark and refrigerator cold where her father had chosen to go.

  “It was cold, but not dark.” I cast about for a way to distract Anna. “You’re not going to believe this, but there’s a human who lives in Francis’s shade.”

  “Actually, it’s quite common,” Anna said in a brittle voice. “Vampire-human cohabitation. For a brief time, at least. I imagine my dad is living in a vampire shade right now.”

  “Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … I just … Argh. Sorry.” Apparently it was foot-in-mouth day. “There’s this boy who lives there called Kit. Well, not a little kid, he’s our age. But he calls the vampire cop his mom and Francis his uncle. He grew up with vampires.”

  Anna’s mouth dropped open. “Okay, you were right, I don’t believe it. How on earth did that happen?”

  I told her.

  “He’s really strange, Anna,” I said, thinking of Kit cheerfully telling me his name was actually Kitten because he was a vampire pet.

  “He thinks vampires are …” I paused, not entirely sure what he thought they were. “Grown-ups? How people are? He seems to think he doesn’t quite measure up. It’s awful. I got the impression he doesn’t know any humans. Poor Kit. He doesn’t even know that vampires and humans don’t mix.”

  “They shouldn’t,” Anna said bleakly. “I’m with you. Ty’s wrong about that.” She twisted her hands together for a moment, then burst out: “Sometimes I think this city shouldn’t exist. I mean, yes, we can mostly stay out of one another’s way. But not always. Then there’s people like my dad, who work with them every day, who bring them into your life even if you don’t want them. It’s wrong. It leads to … bad things.”

  She closed her eyes for a second. I hoped she wouldn’t cry.

  “One time Dad’s vampire came to our house. I never told you, did I?”

  “No,” I said.

  Anna had told me almost nothing about what had happened. Unusually for me, I hadn’t really asked. I hadn’t known where to start.

 

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