Night World 1

by L. J. Smith

Jeremy’s expression changed again. He looked as if he were leaning against the car for support. “Who did it?” Then he glanced back at Ash, and Mary-Lynnette saw a gleam of teeth. “Wait—you think I did. Don’t you?”

  “It did cross our minds at one point,” Ash said. “Actually, it seemed to keep crossing them. Back and forth. Maybe we should put in a crosswalk.”

  Mary-Lynnette said, “Ash, stop it.”

  “So you’re saying you didn’t do it,” Mark said to Jeremy, at the same time as Rowan said, “Actually, Kestrel thinks it was a vampire hunter.”

  Her voice was soft, but once again, everybody looked around. The street was still deserted.

  “There’s no vampire hunter around here,” Jeremy said flatly.

  “Then there’s a vampire,” Jade said in an excited whisper. “There has to be, because of the way Aunt Opal was killed. And the goat.”

  “The goat…? No, don’t even tell me. I don’t want to know.” Jeremy swung Mary-Lynnette’s hood shut. He looked at her and said quickly, “Everything’s fine in there. You should get the oil changed sometime.” Then he turned to Rowan. “I’m sorry about your aunt. But if there is a vampire around here, it’s somebody staying hidden. Really hidden. Same if it’s a vampire hunter.”

  “We already figured that out,” Kestrel said. Mary-Lynnette expected Ash to chime in, but Ash was staring across the street broodingly, his hands in his pockets, apparently having given up on the conversation for the moment.

  “You haven’t seen anything that could give you a clue?” Mary-Lynnette said. “We were going to look around town.”

  He met her eyes directly. “If I knew, I’d tell you.” There was just the slightest emphasis on the last word. “If I could help you, I would.”

  “Well, come along for the ride. You can put your head out of the window,” Ash said, returning to life.

  That did it. Mary-Lynnette marched over, grabbed him by the arm, and said to the others, “Excuse us.” She hauled him in a series of tugs to the back of the gas station. “You jerk!”

  “Oh, look…”

  “Shut up!” She jabbed a finger at his throat. It didn’t matter that touching him set off electrical explosions. It just gave her another reason to want to kill him. She found that the pink haze was a lot like anger when you kept shouting through it.

  “You have to be the center of every drama, don’t you? You have to be the center of attention, and act smart, and mouth off!”

  “Ow,” Ash said.

  “Even if it means hurting other people. Even if it means hurting somebody who’s only had rotten breaks all his life. Well, not this time.”

  “Ow…”

  “Rowan said you guys think all werewolves are low class. And you know what that is? Where I come from, they call that prejudice. And humans have it, too, and it is not a pretty picture. It’s about the most hateful thing in the world. I’m ashamed to even stand there while you spout it off.” Mary-Lynnette realized she was crying. She also realized that Mark and Jade were peering around the edge of the gas station.

  Ash was flat against the boarded-up window, arms up in a gesture of surrender. He looked at a loss for words—and ashamed. Good, Mary-Lynnette thought.

  “Should you keep poking him that way?” Mark said tentatively. Mary-Lynnette could see Rowan and Kestrel behind him and Jade. They all looked alarmed.

  “I can’t be friends with anybody who’s a bigot,” she said to all of them. She gave Ash a jab for emphasis.

  “We’re not,” Jade said virtuously. “We don’t believe that stupid stuff.”

  “We really don’t,” Rowan said. “And Mary-Lynnette—our father is always yelling at Ash for visiting the wrong kind of people on the Outside. Belonging to a club that admits werewolves, having werewolves for friends. The Elders all say he’s too liberal about that.”

  Oh. “Well, he’s got a funny way of showing it,” Mary-Lynnette said, deflating slightly.

  “I just thought I’d mention that,” Rowan said. “Now we’ll leave you alone.” She herded the others back toward the front of the station.

  When they were gone, Ash said, “Can I move now, please?” He looked as if he was in a very bad mood.

  Mary-Lynnette gave up. She felt tired, suddenly—tired and emotionally drained. Too much had happened in the last few days. And it kept happening, it never let up, and…well, she was tired, that’s all.

  “If you’d go away soon, it would be easier,” she said, moving away from Ash. She could feel her head sag slightly.

  “Mary-Lynnette…” There was something in Ash’s voice that she’d never heard before. “Look—it’s not exactly a matter of me wanting to go away. There’s somebody else from the Night World coming on Monday. His name is Quinn. And if my sisters and I don’t go back with him, the whole town is in trouble. If he thinks anything irregular is going on here…You don’t know what the Night People can do.”

  Mary-Lynnette could hear her heart beating distinctly. She didn’t turn back to look at Ash.

  “They could wipe Briar Creek out. I mean it. They’ve done things like that, to preserve the secret. It’s the only protection they have from your kind.”

  Mary-Lynnette said—not defiantly, but with simple conviction, “Your sisters aren’t going to leave.”

  “Then the whole town’s in trouble. There’s a rogue werewolf, three renegade lamia, and a secret vampire killer wandering around somewhere—not to mention two humans who know about the Night World. This is a paranormal disaster area.”

  A long silence. Mary-Lynnette was trying very hard not to see things from Ash’s point of view. At last she said, “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, why don’t we all have a pizza party and watch TV?” Ash sounded savage. “I have no idea what to do,” he added in more normal tones. “And you’d better believe I’ve been thinking about it. The only thing I can come up with is that the girls have to go back with me, and we all have to lie through our teeth to Quinn.”

  Mary-Lynnette tried to think, but her head was throbbing.

  “There is one other possibility,” Ash said. He said it under his breath, as if he wouldn’t mind if she pretended not to hear him.

  Mary-Lynnette eased a crick in her neck, watching blue-and-yellow images of the sun on her shut eyelids. “What?”

  “I know you and the girls did a blood-tie ceremony. It was illegal, but that’s beside the point. You’re part of the reason they don’t want to leave here.”

  Mary-Lynnette opened her mouth to point out that they didn’t want to leave because life had been unbearable for them in the Night World, but Ash hurried on. “But maybe if you were—like us, we could work something out. I could take the girls back to the island, and then in a few months I could get them out again. We’d go someplace where nobody would know us. Nobody would suspect there was anything irregular about you. The girls would be free, and you’d be there, so there’s no reason they shouldn’t be happy. Your brother could come, too.”

  Mary-Lynnette turned around slowly. She examined Ash. The sun brought out hidden warm tones in his hair, making it a shimmering blond somewhere between Jade’s and Kestrel’s. His eyes were shadowed, some dark color. He stood lanky and elegant as ever, but with one hand in his pocket and a pained expression on his face.

  “Don’t frown; you’ll spoil your looks,” she said.

  “For God’s sake, don’t patronize me!” he yelled.

  Mary-Lynnette was startled. Well. Okay.

  “I think,” she said, more cautiously but with emphasis to let him know that she was the one with a right to be upset, “that you are suggesting changing me into a vampire.”

  The corner of Ash’s mouth jerked. He put his other hand in his pocket and looked away. “That was the general idea, yes.”

  “So that your sisters can be happy.”

  “So that you don’t get killed by some vigilante like Quinn.”

  “But aren’t the Night People going to kill me
just the same if you change me?”

  “Only if they find you,” Ash said savagely. “And if we can get away from here clean, they wouldn’t. Anyway, as a vampire you’d have a better chance of fighting them.”

  “So I’m supposed to become a vampire and leave everything I love here so your sisters can be happy.”

  Ash just stared angrily at the roof of the building across the street. “Forget it.”

  “Believe me, I wasn’t even thinking about it in the first place.”

  “Fine.” He continued to stare. All at once Mary-Lynnette had the horrible feeling that his eyes were wet.

  And I’ve cried I don’t know how many times in the last two days—and I only used to cry when the stars were so beautiful it hurt. There’s something wrong with me now. I don’t even know who I am anymore.

  There seemed to be something wrong with Ash, too.

  “Ash…”

  He didn’t look at her. His jaw was tight.

  The problem is that there isn’t any tidy answer, Mary-Lynnette thought. “I’m sorry,” she said huskily, trying to shake off the strange feelings that had suddenly descended on her. “It’s just that everything’s turned out so…weird. I never asked for any of this.” She swallowed. “I guess you never asked for it, either. First your sisters running away…and then me. Some joke, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He wasn’t staring off into the distance anymore. “Look…I might as well tell you. I didn’t ask for this, and if somebody had said last week that I’d be in…involved…with a human, I’d have knocked his head off. I mean, after howls of derisive laughter. But.”

  He stopped. That seemed to be the end of his confession: but. Of course, he didn’t really need to say more. Mary-Lynnette, arms folded over her chest, stared at a curved piece of glass on the ground and tried to think of other phrases that started with in. Besides the obvious. She couldn’t come up with any.

  She resisted the impulse to nudge the glass with her foot. “I’m a bad influence on your sisters.”

  “I said that to protect you. To try and protect you.”

  “I can protect myself.”

  “So I’ve noticed,” he said dryly. “Does that help?”

  “You noticing? No, because you don’t really believe it. You’ll always think I’m weaker than you, softer…even if you didn’t say it, I’d know you were thinking it.”

  Ash suddenly looked crafty. His eyes were as green as hellebore flowers. “If you were a vampire, you wouldn’t be weaker,” he said. “Also, you’d know what I was really thinking.” He held out his hand. “Want a sample?”

  Mary-Lynnette said abruptly, “We’d better get back. They’re going to think we’ve killed each other.”

  “Let them,” Ash said, his hand still held out, but Mary-Lynnette just shook her head and walked away.

  She was scared. Wherever she’d been going with Ash, she’d been getting in too deep. And she wondered how much of their conversation had been audible around front.

  When she rounded the corner, her eyes immediately went to Jeremy. He was standing with Kestrel by the gas pump. They were close together, and for just an instant Mary-Lynnette felt something like startled dismay.

  Then her inner voice asked, Are you insane? You can’t be jealous over him while you’re worrying whether he’s jealous over you, and meanwhile worrying about what to do with your soulmate…. It’s good if he and Kestrel like each other.

  “I don’t care; I can’t wait anymore,” Jade was saying to Rowan on the sidewalk. “I’ve got to find him.”

  “She thinks Tiggy’s gone home,” Rowan said, seeing Mary-Lynnette. Ash went toward Rowan. Kestrel did, too. Somehow Mary-Lynnette was left beside Jeremy.

  Once again, she didn’t know the etiquette. She glanced at him—and stopped feeling awkward. He was watching her in his quiet, level way.

  But then he startled her. He threw a look at the sidewalk and said, “Mary-Lynnette, be careful.”

  “What?”

  “Be careful.” It was the same tone he’d used when warning her about Todd and Vic. Mary-Lynnette followed his gaze…to Ash.

  “It’s all right,” Mary-Lynnette said. She didn’t know how to explain. Even his own sisters hadn’t believed Ash wouldn’t hurt her.

  Jeremy looked bleak. “I know guys like that. Sometimes they bring human girls to their clubs—and you don’t want to know why. So just—just watch yourself, all right?”

  It was a nasty shock. Rowan and the girls had said similar things, but coming from Jeremy it sank in, somehow. Ash had undoubtedly done things in his life that…well, that would make her want to kill him if she knew. Things you couldn’t just forget about.

  “I’ll be careful,” she said. She realized her fists were clenched, and she said with a glimmer of humor, “I can handle him.”

  Jeremy still looked bleak. His brown eyes were dark and his jaw was tight as he looked at Ash. Under his quietness, Mary-Lynnette could sense leashed power. Cold anger. Protectiveness. And the fact that he didn’t like Ash at all.

  The others were coming back. “I’ll be all right,” Mary-Lynnette whispered quickly.

  Aloud, Jeremy said, “I’ll keep thinking about the people around town. I’ll tell you if I come up with something.”

  Mary-Lynnette nodded. “Thanks, Jeremy.” She tried to give him a reassuring look as everybody got into the car.

  He stood watching as she pulled out of the gas station. He didn’t wave.

  “Okay, so we go home,” Mark said. “And then what?”

  Nobody answered. Mary-Lynnette realized that she had no idea what.

  “I guess we’d better figure out if we still have any suspects,” she said at last.

  “There’s something else we’ve got to do, first,” Rowan said softly. “We vampires, I mean.”

  Mary-Lynnette could tell just by the way she said it. But Mark asked, “What?”

  “We need to feed,” Kestrel said with her most radiant smile.

  They got back to Burdock Farm. There was no sign of the cat. The four vampires headed for the woods, Jade calling for Tiggy, and Mary-Lynnette headed for Mrs. B.’s rolltop desk. She got engraved stationery—only slightly mildewed at the edges—and a silver pen with a fussy Victorian pattern on it. “Now,” she said to Mark as she sat at the kitchen table. “We’re going to play List the Suspects.”

  “There’s nothing in this house to eat you know,” Mark said. He had all the cupboards open. “Just things like instant coffee and green Jujyfruits. The ones everybody leaves.”

  “What can I say, your girlfriend is undead. Come on. Sit down and concentrate.” Mark sat down and sighed. “Who have we got?”

  “We should have gone to find out what the deal was with that horse,” Mark said.

  Mary-Lynnette stopped with her pen poised over the stationery. “You’re right, that must be connected. I forgot about it.” Which just goes to show you, detective work doesn’t mix with l—with idle dawdling.

  “All right,” she said grimly. “So let’s assume that whoever killed the horse was the same person who killed Aunt Opal and the goat. And maybe the same person who broke the gas station window—that happened last night, too. Where does that get us?”

  “I think it was Todd and Vic,” Mark said.

  “You’re not being helpful.”

  “I’m serious. You know how Todd is always chewing on that toothpick. And there were toothpicks stuck in the goat.”

  Toothpicks…now, what did that remind her of? No, not toothpicks, the bigger stakes. Why couldn’t she remember?

  She rubbed her forehead, giving up. “Okay…I’ll put Todd and Vic, vampire hunters, with a question mark. Unless you think they’re vampires themselves.”

  “Nope,” Mark said, undeterred by her sarcasm. “I think Jade would’ve noticed that when she drank their blood.” He eyed her thoughtfully. “You’re the smart one. Who do you think did it?”

  “I have no idea.” Mark made a face at her, and she doodled a
stake on the stationery. The doodle changed into a very small stake, more like a pencil, held by a feminine hand. She never could draw hands….

  “Oh, my God. Bunny.”

  “Bunny did it?” Mark asked ingenuously, prepared to be straight man for a joke.

  But Mary-Lynnette said, “Yes. I mean—no, I don’t know. But those stakes in the goat—the big ones—I’ve seen her using them. She uses them on her nails. They’re cuticle sticks.”

  “Well…” Mark looked dismayed. “But I mean…Bunny. C’mon. She can’t kill a mosquito.”

  Mary-Lynnette shook her head, agitated. “Rowan said she had a lamia name. And she said something strange to me—Bunny—the day I was looking for Todd and Vic.” It was all coming back now, a flood of memories that she didn’t particularly want. “She said, ‘Good hunting.’”

  “Mare, it’s from The Jungle Book.”

  “I know. It was still weird for her to say. And she’s almost too sweet and scared—what if it’s all an act?” When Mark didn’t answer, she said, “Is it any more unlikely than Todd and Vic being vampire hunters?”

  “So put her down, too.”

  Mary-Lynnette did. Then she said, “You know, there’s something I keep meaning to ask Rowan—about how they wrote to Mrs. B. from that island—” She broke off and tensed as the back door banged.

  “Am I the first one back?”

  It was Rowan, windblown and glowing, slightly breathless. Her hair was a tumbling chestnut cloud around her.

  “Where’s everybody else?” Mary-Lynnette asked.

  “We separated early on. It’s the only way, you know, with four of us in this small of an area.”

  “Small!” Mark looked offended. “If Briar Creek has one good thing—and I’m not saying it does—it’s space.”

  Rowan smiled. “For a hunting range, it is small,” she said. “No offense. It’s fine for us—we never got to hunt at all on the island. They brought our meals to us, tranquilized and completely passive.”

  Mary-Lynnette pushed away the image this evoked. “Um, you want to register a guess on Whodunit?”

  Rowan sat down in a kitchen chair, smoothing a wisp of brown hair off her forehead. “I don’t know. I wonder if it’s somebody we haven’t even thought of yet.”