Jenna gave him her card as they went back to the party, clothes carefully straightened and cheeks still flushed. It had her name and number, email and screen-name listed, and a picture of a fairy in one corner.
“Drop me a line,” she said, and went to find her sister, and Jay went to the kitchen to get another serving tray.
They’d left hours ago, though, the sisters, and now Jay’s mostly just waiting for the night to be over so he can go home and get some sleep. It’s been a really good night, but it’s had its best and he’s getting a headache. He wishes he’d taken the pills when they were offered.
Glancing around to make sure he won’t be caught at it, Jay escapes back out to the balcony for a breath of air. The park the next block over is a lightless blotch, and most of the office buildings are dark now. The hotel ballroom is on the tenth floor, just high enough for Jay to consider what he’d think about in the airborne seconds on the way down.
“Don’t jump,” a voice behind Jay suggests. Jay damps down irritation at having his moment of quiet interrupted, and turns.
The vampire is taller than Jay, and if he were human Jay would think he was about twenty-three or twenty-four. If he’s a guest at this party he’s probably much older than that, because vampires with influence and power are almost always old vampires. That much, at least, Jay hasn’t forgotten.
“Climbing over the handrail would be too much trouble,” Jay replies, leaning his back against said handrail. “Is there something you need my help with?”
“You’re the food, are you?” The vampire gestures to the serving tray which Jay has put down on one of the small wrought-iron tables scattered along the balcony’s length, a fraction too late after the words. Jay snorts.
“Only if you buy me dinner and a movie first,” he says dryly. The vampire tilts his head a little in surprise, giving Jay a second and more searching look.
“You’re welcome to try the appetizer if you want, though,” Jay goes on, picking the plate up and holding it out. “It’s quail wrapped in bacon. I’ve been told it just tastes like dark chicken meat.”
“You haven’t tried it yourself?” The vampire makes no move to pick up any of the food. Jay would have been very surprised if he had.
“Not allowed,” Jay explains. “I’m Jason. Jay.” He puts the tray down and holds out a hand. The vampire takes it and shakes. Vampire skin is cool and soft, and Jay had forgotten how lovely it is to touch.
“Blake,” the vampire offers in return.
All vampires are beautiful, and Blake’s no exception. His hair is a deep brown and curls at the nape of his neck, and makes the dark of his eyes look less uncanny. Fair-haired vampires always stand out as strange more obviously, because of those dark, dark red irises. He’s tall and what a certain type of English teacher might call ‘imperially slim’, almost as thin as Jenna and her sister, but he died just old enough that his body had time to grow into its shape and so he wears it elegantly, not with the almost clumsy coltish charm of the girls.
His suit is charcoal and simple enough that Jay guesses it must be very expensive, and his shirt is a warm bone color which gives a little life to the whiteness of Blake’s throat and face. His eyebrows and nose are straight, his teeth slightly crooked when he smiles along with his handshake. His canines are just a fraction longer than a human’s, and taper to sharp points.
“You smell like a girl’s perfume.”
Jay laughs. He can’t help it. “You really suck at pick-up lines.”
Blake’s smile gets wider, and Jay can’t help glancing at his teeth again, either. He’s got poor impulse control at the best of times, and while it may not be the best of times, it’s still a pretty good night.
“I can’t tell if your hair is like that because you’ve been kissing someone, or because it’s meant to look like that,” Blake goes on, sounding genuinely perplexed. “There’s an awful lot of… stuff in it.” He steps in closer to Jay, into Jay’s personal space, on the pretense of getting a better look at Jay’s hair. “There’s some carpet lint here, you know. Cloakroom?”
“Cloakroom,” Jay agrees, mouth dry. Blake smells really, really good, like expensive shampoo and laundered clothing and warm dark.
“Pity.” Vampires breathe when they speak, because their voice boxes don’t suddenly change design when they stop being human, and Blake’s breath ghosts on Jay’s cheek with the word. “I rather fancied the mental image of your tryst taking place out here on the balcony, under the stars.”
Jay forces himself to break the intensity of Blake’s eye contact and looks up. “Under the cloud cover and smog, you mean. It’s a little too public with the party going on inside, anyway. Anybody could come out and see.”
Blake’s thumb presses lightly into the dip below Jay’s lower lip, tilting his face back down so they’re looking at each other again. Typically, vampire lips are pale, barely darker than the skin around them, but Blake’s are flushed and full and almost red, and his eyes catch the light like a cat’s.
“What about a private room? This is a hotel, after all. There are balconies with no interruptions on many of the suites.”
Jay feels drunk and giddy, almost dizzy, lightheaded. He forces himself to blink, and the tiny movement takes supreme effort. The giddy feeling fades, a little. His heartbeat feels fast and heavy in his wrists and throat.
“I have to go,” Jay makes himself say, stepping away from Blake before he can change his mind. If he’s getting eaten by a vampire tonight then that’s seriously shitty luck, but Jay’s not going to fall swooning into the arms of death like a Hammer Horror starlet.
He tells the head waiter that he feels sick. He’s not sure if the lie is convincing, but he doesn’t really care. If the worst thing that happens tonight is that they dock his pay, he’ll call that a victory. He changes out of the mandatory outfit the wait staff is forced to wear and back into his own clothes, jeans and a fraying T-shirt from some underground band. Jay thinks the shirt might’ve belonged to Michelle originally, but he stole it long ago. Jay knows better than to think that he can throw a vampire like Blake off a hunt this easily, but he’s… Well. He’s not dying in an ugly uniform for a job he doesn’t like, at least. That’s something.
BETTE
The new club is made out of a modified cinema. The original movie theatre went bust when TV came along, and it lay empty and decrepit until it got bought in the seventies and turned into a club. Then the club went bust, too, and it went back to showing movies until it got sold again and closed down for renovations eight months ago.
The sign above the front entrance has “Entartung” painted on it in bold black script, with thinner letters underneath reading “Long Live Degenerate Art”. Bette can see that the projection screen from the old theatre is still up on the wall, a blank white rectangle against the newly-papered high black walls.
They get in free because Tommy knows the guy on the door, a college-aged Samoan dude who gives Tommy a smile that is way, way too much information for Bette and Rose. Seriously, Tommy and his friends could be a really slutty mafia if they wanted to be, they’ve got connections in every industry that counts: they get free tickets at all the late-night horror movies, they know pretty much every single waiter and waitress in the greater metropolitan area, they can usually get into clubs without paying the cover.
The security dude draws thick black Xs on the backs of their hands, the standard sign for “we’re underage, don’t give us alcohol”. There’s always a mark of that sort on Bette’s hand; she’s not away from live music for long enough for the old ones to get scrubbed off completely before a new one takes its place.
“I know your parents are, like, progressive and shit, but they did explain to you that you don’t have to share your special magical intimate privacy with every single person you think is cute, right?” Bette teases as they head inside. The place is still mostly empty, but everyone who’s there seems to be having fun, so it’ll probably fill up as the evening progresses.
Tommy shoots her a puzzled look. “Huh?”
Bette shakes her head. “Never mind.” She’d probably sleep with a heap of people too, if she knew how to be chill about it like Tommy, but mostly she thinks guys are jerks and so it’s a better use of her time to fight with them than to think about the best ways to get them interested in sex, and they don’t typically want to have anything to do with her after she’s broken their nose or cracked their teeth anyway. Bette would rather just hang out with Rose and go see bands and stuff like that. Sex is pretty overrated.
Tommy wanders off to where Michelle is chatting to one of the band techs by the stage. Michelle and Tommy are both skinny-hipped and deadpan and monosyllabic. Michelle’s dad is black and her mom’s white, and her skin is on the darker side of in-between. She wears her hair braided back in cornrows, the severe style making her wide-lashed eyes look even more striking. Tommy’s got one of his hands on her shoulder, stroking the skin of the side of her neck with his thumb.
“Sex is so completely overrated and lame.”
Rose pats Bette on the shoulder. “I’m sure the guy on the door would help you out if you asked.”
“What? No, no, I’m… sex is lame. That’s all I meant.”
Rose shrugs. “Wouldn’t know.”
Bette can feel her eyes going wide. “Seriously? Okay, I guess the special privacy talk sank in for one of you, after all. Seriously?”
“Can we not?” Rose looks embarrassed. “My virginity is not a topic of public discussion!”
The opening act is putting their stuff together onstage, two lanky dudes fiddling with the microphones and drums, and a tall girl wearing an oversized red hoodie which is so big on her that only a few inches of black hemline show of her short dress. She has the hood pulled low on her face and is biting her nails as she talks to a middle-aged, neatly-dressed guy with a thinning salt-and-pepper ponytail.
“That must be the owner,” Bette says, nodding toward him. Rose follows the direction of her gaze. The guy leans in and pecks a kiss on the tall girl’s forehead, patting her shoulder like he’s encouraging or comforting her. “I guess that’s his kid. How awesome would that be, to have a dad who owned a club? She doesn’t look any older than us and she’s opening for Remember the Stars.”
“She looks nervous.” Rose sounds sympathetic. The girl is still mostly obscured by her hoodie, so they can’t see her expression, but her posture is most certainly not that of someone feeling at ease. One of the lanky guys gives her the thumbs up and sits down behind the drum kit. The other picks up a guitar bearing remnants of old band stickers.
The girl nods, unzipping her jacket as she climbs the stairs, discarding the hoodie behind her as she steps into the stage area.
“We are The Cretins And Whores,” she says, not bothering to approach her microphone. Even without help, her voice carries through the club’s high-ceilinged space easily; bold, a little deeper than expected, and carrying traces of a European accent.
It’s the perfect voice for her painted red lips, her white, sharp-chinned face, loose coal-black hair, short satin dress heavy boots and ox-blood bass. “Thank you for listening.”
“I’m in love. I’m going to marry that woman,” Rose tells Bette with total seriousness. Bette rolls her eyes, just a little.
“Are there any brunette girls on the planet that you’re not a total queermo for?”
Rose pretends to ponder the question seriously for a long beat. “You?” She grins, and grabs Bette’s hand. “Come on, come with me. I want to go meet her after they finish.”
“Okay, okay, god, don’t pull my arm out of its socket, you violent little psychopath,” Bette complains as she’s dragged along.
The band are okay, not great, though Bette doubts Rose would notice if they were the worst band on earth with the way she’s staring starry-eyed at the bassist. The bassist is easily the best player in the band, but she seems more interested in having fun than being good, bopping her head and ginning and, after the first song, winking at Rose.
“Don’t have a heart attack,” Bette warns, laughing, as Rose pretends to swoon.
They play five songs, all essentially forgettable but the last, which is when Rose’s bassist steps to center stage, and the band launches into a raunchy, grinding version of “Anything Goes”, the girl’s smoky voice growling out the lyrics like she’s daring the half-interested crowd to try to stop her from doing whatever the hell she wants.
“I could never sing like that,” Rose says, awed, as the song ends and the band thanks the audience for listening. Bette punches her on the arm.
“Whatever. Your voice is great.”
The bassist is winding cables into a haphazard coil when Bette and Rose approach her. Bette elbows Rose forward, making a small noise in the back of her throat which she hopes effectively conveys “talk to her, seriously, I promise she won’t set fire to your hair or rip your throat out or break your legs or anything scary”. Rose throws a nervous, slightly cranky glance over one shoulder at Bette, and then turns back to the girl.
“You’re great,” she manages to say, voice squeaking a little with nerves. Bette grins. So does the girl.
“Well so are you, for saying so. Thank you. I’m Gretchen.”
“Rose, and this is Bette.”
Bette gives a wave, staying a step and a half behind Rose. “Howdy.”
“I wasn’t sure about being the first ones up here on the new stage, but it didn’t go so badly,” Gretchen says, coming down the stairs to the main floor level where Bette and Rose are. She retrieves her hoodie on the way, knotting the sleeves of the jacket around her waist to keep it handy. The impromptu belt pulls her dress up shorter, revealing more of her white, soft-looking thighs.
“Are you guys new? I haven’t seen you play before,” Bette offers, knowing that keeping a sane and socially acceptable conversation going with a stranger isn’t Rose’s favorite thing to do, even when said stranger is cute.
Gretchen nods, pushing her long hair off her shoulders so it falls darkly down her back almost to her waist. “Yes. Assembled just this afternoon, which is why we weren’t very good. Aaron and Joey are Ewen’s sons. It was their idea to do this, after they heard that there was only one band lined up for the night. I guess there are perks to being the children of the owner.”
“We saw you with him before the show. We assumed that it was you who was his kid,” Rose admits. There’s a faint and utterly charming blush creeping up her neck and cheeks. Gretchen touches her arm lightly as she answers.
“No. Ewen is the son of my grandfather.”
“Your uncle, then?”
Gretchen mustn’t have heard Rose’s words very well—the volume of the crowd is picking up to a pretty steady din around them now—because it takes her a second to answer. “Yes, my uncle, of course. That is a beautiful design.” She’s gesturing to the scrap of paper tucked into the clear plastic front of Bette’s shoulder bag. It’s a picture of a bird, a sparrow done all in blues and made out of a patchwork of squares in different shades, stitched together with visible lines. Like a ragdoll, or a Frankenstein monster. Bette’s had it in her pocket since forever.
“Oh, yeah, Rose drew that. I’m going to get it as a tattoo as soon as I’m old enough,” Bette explains.
“You’re a very talented artist,” Gretchen appraises. Rose wrinkles her nose.
“I’m not that great yet. I want to be, one day.”
The conversation lulls, Gretchen and Rose just staring at each other with slightly goofy smiles on their faces, and Bette’s between thinking it’s adorable and thinking that it makes her want to vomit.
“Rose was wondering if she could have your phone number,” Bette prompts, because what are best friends for if it’s not being totally mortifying all the time?
“Oh!” Gretchen pulls a tiny, sleek little cellphone out of a seemingly impossible pocket in her clingy dress. “Right. Yeah.” She presses a few buttons, obviously looking through the stored list
of numbers. “Sorry. I always forget my own number because I go through phones so quickly. I lose them all the time. Do you have your phone, or a pen and paper?”
Rose never charges her phone. Bette gives her shit about it, and Tommy seems baffled that anyone can survive without a keypad in their hands, especially someone so closely related to him. But her habits stay exactly as they are, absent-minded and infuriating and quintessentially Rose.
“Oh, I, um,” Rose stammers now. Bette takes pity, and comes to her aid.
“Here, put it in mine,” she says, handing the phone over. “Take mine too, if you want. I’m usually near Rosie outside of school hours.”
“Thank you.” Gretchen busies herself with the process of swapping the numbers.
“Do you go to school?” Rose asks. Gretchen shakes her head, still looking down at the phones.
“No. I write a little. My family has money, so. You know,” she says, as if Bette and Rose could have any idea what that kind of life would possibly be like. Bette can’t even imagine what it would be to exist without worrying about money and bills and how to earn enough to stay alive.
“Gretch,” one of the boys from the band says, nodding his head toward the backstage area. “Come on, Dad says he wants us cleared out so Remember the Stars can set up. Come get your bass.”
“It was great to meet you,” Gretchen says to Rose and Bette, touching Rose on the arm again and then repeating the gesture to Bette. “I’ll call. Or you can call me. I forget to get things done, sometimes.”
When she’s gone, Rose squeezes Bette’s hand in her own. “Oh my god! Did that really happen?”
Bette laughs. She can’t help it. Rose gets crushes easily, but Bette’s never seen her actually follow through to getting a number before.
The Wolf House: The Complete Series Page 2