Team Human

by Justine Larbalestier

  “Is that a piano?” Kit asked at the fifth room we investigated.

  It was. Kit pulled off the cover and plunked at the keys. We both grimaced.

  “To call it out of tune is an understatement.”

  “Hey, is that a door behind it?” Kit asked.

  It was. With surprisingly little effort—wheels on pianos, an excellent idea—we rolled the piano out of the way. The door opened easily, revealing a small room with an old boiler, and running from the boiler were more old dusty pipes.

  In the shadow of the boiler, on the pipe, there was a flash of silver.

  We walked into the room and flipped on the light switch, which did not work.

  Time for the trusty flashlight. I’d been sure it would come in handy. I aimed the flashlight at the glint of silver as I knelt by the pipe, and realized I was looking at a few lengths of bike chain.

  Except it was too long to be a bike chain. They were real chains.

  In the shadowy corner of boiler and pipe, on the brick wall, there were crisscrossing lines. The bricks were scarred with long deep marks.

  “Whoa, Mel,” Kit said, in a low voice. I felt him lean against me, shoulder pressing solid and warm into mine. He took my hand, the one that was holding the flashlight, and held on tight.

  There were four gouges in the wall like someone had made them with his hands.

  In one of the deepest gouges, there was something pale and irregularly shaped.

  I pulled it out and shone the flashlight on my palm. It looked a lot like a fingernail.

  Someone had clawed at this wall so desperately, he had left a fingernail behind, lodged in the brick.

  If Dr. Saunders had told Principal Saunders he was leaving, and she’d decided she wasn’t going to let him …

  “She can’t be keeping him prisoner. She can’t be,” I whispered. “She’d have to be totally crazy.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Human Crazy, Vampire Crazy

  “We have to tell Mom,” Kit said.

  I didn’t argue with him. I was too busy trying to put a positive spin on what we’d seen. Maybe it had nothing to do with the Saunders family at all, but had been caused by someone else entirely. How long did it take for a fingernail to decompose?

  “Mel? Mom really needs to know what we found down there.”

  “I know. But she’s asleep, isn’t she? We don’t have to bug her right away. Also I have to return these keys to Anna.”

  “I can call and leave a message for Mom,” Kit said.

  He didn’t ask me if I was okay. He didn’t have to. My agitation was all too clear.

  “Right, yes, do that.”

  Kit did that while I called Anna.

  It wasn’t a long drive. Ty was the only one of the four of us who didn’t live in the neighborhood. In its own way, it was as cozy as the Shade was for vampires. Almost all my friends close together and close to school and … Principal Saunders couldn’t really have been keeping her husband prisoner, could she?

  The car shuddered along Anna’s street. It felt like my brain was rattling in my skull. Why did Kit have to be such a bad driver?

  When we reached the house, Anna was waiting outside, looking even more anxious than she had two hours earlier.

  “I’m sorry, Anna,” I told her, squeezing her hand. “We still don’t know anything for sure.”

  “Except that the basement is very dirty.” She gave me a small smile and pulled gray thread from my hair. Cobwebs, I realized.

  Kit nodded, looking down at his dust-streaked jeans. “Very dirty.”

  “Lucky it’s Saturday, and we don’t have to rush off to school now,” I said. “See you later, Anna?”

  “Okay,” Anna said. “You sure there’s nothing you can tell me, Mel?”

  Kit and I exchanged a look, neither of us meaning to.

  “Mel? I know you’ve found something. Why can’t you tell me?”

  “Because I don’t know what it means. Because I’m not sure. Because—”

  “You don’t think I’m strong enough?”

  “No! No, not at all.” I gave her an awkward hug, which she only half returned. “You’re one of the strongest people I know. It’s just that I’m—”

  “She’s an amateur,” Kit said. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing and if she told you something that turned out to be wrong, or that she misinterpreted, she’d be causing you unnecessary pain.”

  Anna didn’t say anything, but it was plain that Kit’s words hadn’t relieved her anxiety any. The opposite, more like.

  She didn’t ask me any more questions. “I’ll see you later,” she said, and walked back inside her house. I wondered if her mom was home. Or if she was off somewhere— No, I had to stop thinking like that. Anyway, I knew Principal Saunders was in the house. Her new truck with the sandy tires was still in the driveway.

  Poor Anna. I was starting to think that my investigating was a terrible idea and had only made everything worse for my friend.

  “So,” Kit said, breaking into my thoughts. “Where to now?”

  I’d had something to do today, before I’d found out about chains and craziness. I’d had a plan.

  For a moment my mind was terrifyingly blank, and then I remembered.

  “I have to go talk to Cathy’s mom.”

  I had to do something, or I’d go crazy.

  “Are you cool with me tagging along?”

  “Of course.”

  He started to walk to his car and I grabbed his arm. “Mind if we walk? It’s such a lovely day.”

  “Okay. You don’t think it’s too cold?”

  “It’s nice and brisk. Thanks for sticking with me.”

  “Pleasure,” Kit said. He leaned down and kissed my mouth lightly. I wished there was time for more. Instead I took a deep breath of the cold air.

  “It’ll be good for you to see more human stuff.” I tried to keep my voice neutral.

  I’m not very good at neutral.

  “So my mom always says. But fingernails embedded in basement walls? It’s true I haven’t seen much of that in the Shade,” Kit said. “But I really wasn’t prepared for it to be a regular part of human life.”

  “Very funny,” I said, even though it wasn’t.

  “Sorry,” Kit said, looking down.

  “It’s not you. We will have a normal date very soon,” I promised. “Things are not usually this …” I waved my arms around, trying to find the right word.

  “Crazy?”

  “It is crazy, isn’t it? I suppose vampires are all so cool-headed and unemotional, they never get into crazy situations.”

  Kit started laughing. Then he kept laughing. Harder and harder. He laughed so much, he had to sit down on the curb, two blocks from Cathy’s house.

  “What?”

  Kit tried to answer, but he was laughing too hard.

  His laughter was so contagious, I started to giggle even though I wasn’t entirely sure what at. Kit slowly started to recover. He held out his hand, and I helped pull him up.

  “I was thinking of the last fight Albert and Minty had. Over a teapot. It lasted months. Then there’s all the bizarre love triangles Marie-Therese keeps getting mixed up in. The triangle is her favorite shape. Also instrument. Then there’s Francis and his book. And lots more, of course.”

  “So there’s crazy all over?” I said.

  Not that I had ever doubted it. Personally, I would have said that vampires outcrazied humans, but at this point I was willing to admit that it might be a tie.

  Kit nodded. “Vampire crazy, human crazy. I’m sure if we could talk to birds or snails, we’d discover their brands of crazy.”

  “No doubt.”

  “So Cathy’s mom? You planning to get her to join your campaign to stop Cathy from transitioning?”

  I raked a hand through my hair. More cobwebs came off on my fingers. “Cathy says her mom’s given her permission to apply for a license while she’s still underage.”

  “Ah,” sai
d Kit. “My mom wouldn’t give me permission to do that, and my mom is a vampire. Cathy’s mom must be an unusual lady.”

  “Oh,” I replied, “she is.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Eternal Youth and Endless Nodding

  We stood outside Cathy’s house. During the day it looked even more run down.

  “That’s quite a pile,” Kit observed.

  I hadn’t ever thought about it like that. I was too used to it. But the old Beauvier house had once been majestic. It was still one of the biggest houses in the neighborhood. More than three times the size of my house. It had been built with servants’ quarters and stables.

  Cathy’s ancestors had had loads of money, but it had disappeared sometime around her grandfather’s day. Now the stables and servants’ quarters had been converted into residences and the lands were gone. All that remained was the old house, surrounded on all sides by smaller houses, looking shrunken and forlorn.

  What had once been the most commanding balcony for miles now sagged in the middle. The imposing white columns had lost most of their paint and were more green mold than white paint. The steps leading up to the house were broken and uneven, with weeds growing in the cracks. If someone had told you the Beauvier house was haunted, you would not be surprised. Cathy’s mom insisted her great-great-grandmother Isabelle liked to float around in the old ballroom. Though neither Cathy nor I had ever seen her.

  “It’s amazing,” Kit said. “No wonder she’s interested in Francis. He’d fit right in here. You’ll be shocked to hear he doesn’t hold with new architecture. By which he means anything built after he transitioned.”

  “Wouldn’t he tsk-tsk the fact that it’s about to collapse?”

  “Oh, no,” Kit observed cheerfully. “He’s always bemoaning the lack of proper ruins in the New World. By which he means European ruins. Specifically Roman. Aztecs need not apply. So, are we going in? Or are we going to stand here and make bets on how long before the balcony collapses?”

  It was possible that we had been standing there for a little while. Okay, maybe twenty minutes.

  “I’m gearing up.”

  “You’re worried about running into Cathy, aren’t you?”

  “No, no. She has an all-day Go tournament.”

  “Go? The Japanese game?”

  I nodded.

  “Figures. Francis loves it. It’s about the only non-European thing he does love. He tried to teach it to me one time. I’m not really a games kind of person. But at least it wasn’t as bad as chess.”

  “Nothing is,” I said. “Cathy’s been playing it for years. She’s a junior champion.”

  “They really are made for each other, aren’t they?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Sorry,” Kit said.

  “No, it’s okay. I can see that they have a lot in common. I just don’t think that’s enough of a reason for her to …”

  “Become a vampire,” Kit completed for me.

  “Maybe you should wait outside? No, wait, you should come with me! Er … because I’m sure Cathy’s mom would want to meet you. I’ve known her all my life. She’s interested in my life, in who my friends are.”

  “You’re nervous.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said, marching up the stairs and losing my footing twice, narrowly avoiding a fall. Kit, being much taller, took them three steps at a time. “Show-off,” I muttered.

  The front door opened before we reached it.

  “Hello, Mel,” Cathy’s mom said, in her usual vague, smiling way, as if she was pleased but puzzled by the whole world. “Cathy’s not here.”

  “I know. I came to see you. This is Kit.”

  “Ah,” she said, brightening slightly. “The boy who was raised by vampires. How fascinating. Do come in.”

  She ushered us into the parlor, muttered something about cookies, and then disappeared. Cathy’s was the only house I’d ever been in that had a parlor.

  The windows looked out on the street. The room was filled with furniture that smelled—and looked—as old as the house. When we sat down, puffs of dust went up in the air. Kit let out a sneeze, and I valiantly suppressed mine.

  “Not big on cleaning, are they?”

  “It’s just the two of them and there are a lot of rooms. They don’t normally use the parlor. I guess she thinks you’re special.”

  “Awesome,” Kit said, and he sneezed again.

  Cathy’s mom returned with a silver platter piled with a plate of cookies and two glasses of milk.

  “Do you like living with vampires, young man?” she asked, sitting down.

  “Kit,” he said. “My name’s Kit.”

  “Do call me Valerie,” said Cathy’s mom. She was that kind of mom: She wanted you to call her by her first name and act a little like a friend. Sometimes I suspected it was so she didn’t have to be a responsible adult.

  Kit coughed, instead of calling her anything at all. “I do like living with vampires. Not that I’ve ever lived with anyone else. But they’ve been very good to me.”

  She leaned forward, knees on her elbows. “Do you think my daughter will be happy as a vampire?”

  “Er,” Kit said. “It’s hard to know. The vampires I live with are happy. Mostly. I mean no one’s happy all the time.”

  “She’s very happy right now. I’ve never seen her so happy. Her Francis seems like a good man.”

  “He is,” Kit said, looking at me nervously.

  “He’s like a father to you, isn’t he?”

  Valerie said it as if that was a good thing, her eyes brightening, as if Cathy’s boyfriend should be like a father to someone her own age, because that wasn’t creepy at all.

  Kit bit his lip. “Er, well,” he said awkwardly. “He’s taught me many things.”

  Like waltzing.

  “Don’t you think he’s too old for Cathy?” I asked, staring at Valerie and willing her to be a real parent for a change.

  Cathy’s mom nodded. “I did worry about that. It’s more than a century and a half since he changed. Though he was only seventeen when it happened. I think he has a young soul. And Cathy has such an old soul. They seem to have evened out.”

  I took a deep breath. “Why did you agree to let her apply for the license early? She could have waited a few months!”

  I hadn’t meant to yell.

  Cathy’s mom nodded again. She had the very annoying habit of saying yes or nodding even when she was disagreeing with you. “She could have waited,” Valerie said. “But is it right, to ask love to wait?”

  “Love should wait,” I said between my teeth. “If it’s the right thing to do. She would have to wait if you refused permission.”

  “Yes,” Cathy’s mother said, a little sadly, as if it was out of her hands.

  It wasn’t out of her hands. Cathy’s life was in her hands. “You could still withdraw your permission. She hasn’t applied yet.”

  Valerie leaned forward again, drawing close this time as if she was going to pat me.

  “Mel,” she said, “you’ve been Cathy’s friend for so long. Can’t you be happy for her? Becoming a vampire is a great honor, you know. Some would say she’s been blessed: to stay young forever, perfect forever, to defy the passage of time.”

  Cathy’s mother looked around the parlor, her eyes trailing over those dusty tables. I thought of the balcony on the front of their house, sagging like an old, disappointed mouth, and felt dread because I saw that Cathy’s mom might believe she was doing the best for her daughter, making sure she never grew old.

  “She’s only seventeen,” I whispered.

  “I remember what it was like to be seventeen. I was so impatient. In a hurry for my life to begin, and it all went by so fast,” Valerie said. “Sometimes I still can’t quite believe it. Cathy is so much more mature than I was. She makes me proud.”

  “I bet,” I said. I couldn’t help thinking that Valerie’s own immaturity was a big part of why Cathy was so grown up for her age. She’d b
een looking after her mother all her life. “She’s sure to get into Oxford. She has a perfect GPA and SATs. She’ll probably win the Go tournament today. She’s the smartest person I know.”

  “Yes,” Cathy’s mom said. “She’s brilliant.”

  I heard my voice get louder than I’d intended. “So don’t you think it’s, I don’t know, a bit of a waste for her to throw her life away?”

  “Oh, yes,” Cathy’s mom said. Her yes-means-whatever-I-want-it-to-mean strategy had never been so annoying. “If she was throwing her life away. But Mel, Cathy is so brilliant. I try to let her go her own way. She’s never let me down yet. Would you like another cookie?”

  Given that I hadn’t touched my first cookie, I declined. I had forgotten how impossible she was to talk to.

  “What school do you attend, Kit?” she asked, as if this was a social call and Cathy’s life or death a subject that could be changed, as if we were debating the weather.

  “I’m homeschooled,” Kit said carefully, eyeing me as if he was afraid I might explode.

  He may have had some basis for that fear.

  “If you refused your permission,” I said, “then Cathy would have to wait. You’d be making sure she doesn’t rush into this enormous decision.”

  “Rushing is never good,” Valerie said pensively. “I don’t believe my Cathy would rush into anything. You can’t blame her for wanting this. We all want it: the promise of eternal love.”

  “I don’t blame her,” I told Valerie, and I was trying not to. “Please, will you’ll talk to her? About rushing?”

  “Cathy and I talk all the time,” Cathy’s mom said. She stood up. “I must buy groceries. You’re welcome to stay until you finish your milk and cookies. Lovely to meet you, Kit,” she said, shaking his hand.

  She bent to kiss my cheek.

  “Will you even consider withdrawing permission?” I asked desperately.

  Cathy’s mother’s hands were light on my shoulders. “I simply do not feel as if it is my decision to make,” she murmured. “Not truly. And Mel, if you don’t mind my saying so? I don’t think it’s yours, either.”