She vows silently to herself that she’ll never make that mistake again. As soon as morning comes, if they make it to morning, Michelle is going to find Anna and learn things to do when faced with a vampire; things that are better than being afraid. Dangerous, powerful things.
Michelle’s memory of seeing Gretchen, even though it’s less than a year ago, doesn’t match up very much at all with the young woman in front of her now. That other Gretchen had been a girl, in fishnet stockings and uneven pigtails tied with rubber bands and dark leather boots. But this new Gretchen isn’t a girl. She’s something much older, sparer, less frivolous.
Part of that is because now Michelle’s perceptions have shifted, and she can recognise the tell-tale signs that give Gretchen away as a vampire: the subtle points of her eyeteeth, the pallor of her skin that’s outside the range of healthy paleness, the sharpness of her fingernails under their glossy purple polish, the deceptively casual posture of her body as she stands at ease—this last one reminds Michelle a little bit of cats, somehow. Cats are always ready to fight back, even when they seem relaxed.
Last time Michelle saw her, Gretchen had blue eyes and long black hair. Michelle remembers this, because she remembers thinking how striking that coloring combination always looked on pale people. Now Gretchen’s dark hair is even longer, braided into two loose plaits which twist down her back to her slim waist, stray shorter curls held back from her face by antique-looking silver hair slides.
The one eye Michelle can see is the same deep, heart-blood red of all vampires’ eyes. The patch covering the other eye is a soft black leather triangle tied by a black velvet ribbon, as if Gretchen’s some kind of especially stylish pirate.
In an echo of Rose’s outfit from earlier, Gretchen wears a simple suit of black pinstripe pants and a matching waistcoat, with a jewel-green blouse underneath and a leather jacket. The dark, rich shades of the outfit make hers whiteness even more striking, make it even more obvious that this is no ordinary girl.
Gretchen’s leather jacket is impeccably tailored and looks almost too soft to be leather, but Michelle knows a lot about clothes. There are animals with skins that soft. Young animals, like lambs and calves. It feels kind of fitting to Michelle that Gretchen would wear something made of that kind of leather. For her to have become the person standing in front of Michelle right now, at least one soft young creature had to die: the living human girl that Gretchen had been, once upon a time. It makes sense that other creatures should fall in service to the same end.
This is what vampires look like when they don’t care about passing as human, Michelle thinks to herself. Even to somebody who didn’t believe in vampires, Gretchen would look like something dangerous and beautiful, something other.
The thought puts Michelle at ease, a little, because it makes her remember the times when she and Tommy and Jay have gone to gay clubs. The music that mostly gets played in those places isn’t really their thing, which is why they usually stick to other clubs, but sometimes they go to the gay places anyway because there’s something electric about being among people who aren’t hiding, who don’t care about looking straight or ordinary or everyday. They let who they really are come out, and Michelle’s never been the least bit frightened of that.
On the contrary, it’s made her feel sure that nothing will ever scare her again, not while there’s somewhere safe in the world, somewhere that people can go to and take their masks off, or wear the masks that suit them better.
“Were you a vampire last time you were here? You look different now,” Michelle asks. She still can’t tell for absolutely certain when someone’s a vampire or not, most of the time. With Gretchen, right now, it’s easy, but sometimes vampires don’t look so different from people. Michelle wants to learn to see the difference anyway. She wonders if that’s even possible.
“Yes. I’ve been a vampire for a long time,” Gretchen answers. “But I was living a human life, sort of, then. I’m not now.”
“What do you mean?”
“An old lover of mine asked me to stay. To be a part of his family until he died. So I created somebody I could be, and played at being her until his life was done. Then I let her die, too. When you saw me play in the band that night, those two boys onstage, they were his grandsons. I suppose they’ll expect me to visit while I’m in the city. Hm.” Gretchen tilts her head to one side. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
Michelle feels a chill shiver run up her spine. The expression on Gretchen’s face is alien, predatory, distracted. Michelle gets the feeling that there’s not enough left of the affection Gretchen felt for her old lover to save his family, if Gretchen does go for a visit. The Gretchen they knew doesn’t have any ties to any family in this city, not anymore.
“Why are you here now?” Michelle asks.
“Protecting our privacy,” the young man says. His voice isn’t rude or cold—he says it like he knows that the answer is a bit funny, a bit ironic. Like he’s entertained by telling her that. Somehow, that’s much, much worse than if he’d been straight-up evil. “I’m Quinn.”
Clearly, if there was anything which Chicago was lacking at this point, it was more creepy-as-fuck vampires. Michelle sure is glad that Gretchen and Quinn decided to fix that.
“Oh. I’m Michelle,” Michelle answers, because maybe, just maybe, if they know her name then they won’t kill her. To Gretchen, she says “You remember me from the show? Really? But we didn’t talk or anything.”
Gretchen’s cool snake-smile returns. “You were with Rose’s brother. I remember Rose, and so I remember you.”
Michelle really has to learn to stop asking questions which she doesn’t actually want any kind of answer to. “Oh,” she replies, echoing herself. Tommy’s sister needs more creepy-as-fuck vampires in her life just about as much as Chicago does.
Maybe Gretchen will get distracted by something else and forget about Rose, though. Michelle hopes that happens. Just so long as she’s not the distraction, anyway.
“Anyway.” Gretchen shakes her head, attention returning to the present, giving the three of them a long, unblinking look. Michelle forces herself not to flinch under that carnivore gaze. “I’m here to talk to you, Tommy, because very soon I am going to kill your sister. And once upon a time—a long, long time ago—I lost my brother, and felt that loss all through the years since. I want to spare Rose that, so I’m offering you the opportunity to come too, to become a vampire along with her.”
She turns to Jay, and her smile is suddenly so warm and happy and so human that Michelle feels like reality is a record that’s just jumped a groove. “It’s because of you that any of this is even possible, Jason. I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve given Blake. You’ve given him something I was worried he’d never have. I hope that you let Blake turn you, or that you forgive Blake when he does it.”
Before Jay has a chance to respond, Gretchen’s attention has shifted to Michelle. “You can come too if you want, if Tom and Jason both become vampires. You can be just as you are, have evenings just like this, forever and ever.”
Michelle bristles and feels her spine straighten. She’s nobody’s fucking afterthought.
“Anyway.” Gretchen rises to her feet smoothly, as if they’ve been having a friendly chat over coffee and now she has to get going. “Don’t say a word of this to Rose, of course. It would be a very, very bad idea for you to do that. Just think on what I’ve said, and I’ll get in touch again soon. We can let ourselves out.”
The front door has barely clicked closed behind them when Tommy is struggling to get up off the couch, Michelle and Jay rushing to support him as he stands.
“Art gallery?” Jay asks. As if there’s even the slightest chance that they’re not all thinking exactly the same thing.
“Art gallery,” Michelle and Tommy agree.
ALEXANDER
“I’m dying, Alex,” Blake complains, sitting in the living room still dressed in his pajamas, cat on his lap. The only evidence of any imminent de
mise that Alex can see is that Blake is, maybe, a few shades paler than usual, and a little gaunt. “Ashley, how do you stand to drink those smoothies regularly? I’ve had plenty of blood since I tried one, and I’m still being destroyed internally by its toxicity.”
“Because I am much tougher than you,” Ash replies unsympathetically, sorting through the day’s mail. “I think Will and Lily have signed us up to direct-mail catalog campaigns. Which, as tactics in the eternal battle between the living and the dead go, is kind of a half-assed effort. Look at this one! It’s a set of little plastic stairs that you put by your bed, so your pet doesn’t have to jump.” She holds the home-shopping pamphlet up so that Alexander can have a look.
“The cat does not need a set of little plastic stairs,” he tells them both, before anyone can get ideas. “And any uplifting and inspiring motivational posters anybody sees fit to buy are to be pinned up in their own rooms, where I don’t have to see them, because seeing them will cause me to vomit.”
Blake puts the back of his hand to his own forehead, miming a sickly swoon. “Don’t talk about vomiting. I’m already at death’s door.”
“You went through death’s door nearly two centuries ago,” Alexander reminds him, distracted by the sound of the landline phone in his bedroom ringing, and Tim answering. He has a moment of concern that it might be Cora demanding attention again, but doubts it. This early in the evening, their calls are usually from humans who’ve been waiting for a polite hour to telephone. Vampires tend to call much later in the night.
“You’ll feel better if I get you this clock made out of golf balls,” Ashley suggests.
“I’m going to go find Lily or Will tonight,” Blake declares, rising to his feet and letting the cat take possession of his vacated seat. “They’re always invigorating.”
“Tell them thanks for the catalogs,” says Ash as Alex goes back into his room.
Tim’s off the telephone and sitting up in bed, clearly working himself up to the task of actually rising in stages. “That was Chloe,” he tells Alexander. “She says that our stalkers want to meet us tomorrow night. I said that’s fine, and gave her the new address. Is that okay?”
Alexander nods, sitting down on the edge of the bed beside him. “That’s fine. Are you sure you’re up to this?”
Tim smiles. His residual scars are less prominent, but still noticeable on his face. It might be months before they vanish entirely. “I’m fine, Alex. It’s not even the first time I’ve been shot this past year.”
“Don’t remind me. I’ll end up keeping you locked in these rooms like Rapunzel, if you keep getting yourself hurt.”
Tim laughs. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Are you going out tonight?” Alexander asks. Tim shakes his head.
“No, Phenex is coming by to do some track work down in the studio. You remember her? She’s the one who was in a car accident a few years ago. Walks with a cane, likes arguing about obscure French cinema, great fingernails?”
There are several of Tim’s friends which Alexander can think of who approximately fit that description. He just smiles and nods. “Tell her I said hello. I’m going to go see another of our pet artists; Rose is having some of her work shown in a gallery in the city.”
“Don’t let Bette know you’re going,” Tim cautions. “She’ll sigh and look wistful and sad for days if you let her know.”
“Why do think I’m rushing off so early?” Alexander answers with a laugh, standing up again and leaning down to give Tim a goodbye kiss. “Have a good night. I’ll see you later.”
~
There’s a consistency of style in Rose’s art already; she’s found confidence at a younger age than Alexander would have predicted for her. The girl’s hesitancy and awkwardness is less pronounced than it was back around the time when Bette died, but there is still the air of incompleteness about her movements and her manner. And yet Rose’s paintings are absolutely sure of what they are.
There are individual pictures and diptychs and triptychs, babies which become squid below the waist and androgynes trapped by sinister corsetry, girls wrapped in fire and in wire.
The series of three paintings Alexander lingers at for longest is done in soft, slightly muted colors, the jeweled autumn tones of firelight in evening rooms. In the left-hand panel a man stands before a portrait. He’s golden-haired and flawlessly handsome, his fair cheeks flushed with life and youth—the Dorian Gray that Oscar described. And in the portrait, an older Dorian, but rather than the monstrous sinner from Oscar’s little novel, Rose’s painting-within-a-painting shows a man who is a little worn, a little weary, but who wears a smile with wisdom in its tired corners. Beside him in the portrait is a little girl, her own coloring lily-gold like the younger Dorian’s. Those inside the portrait and the Dorian outside it are pointedly looking in opposite directions from one another, as if they dare not risk eye contact.
The central canvas of the three is candle-lit, like the first. Wendy Darling sits with her back to a shut and bolted nursery window, her hands busy with the task of stitching two pieces of a patchwork heart together. There is a metal bolt peeking from one of the valves of the heart, giving it the look of a prop from a 1930s monster movie. Peter Pan hovers outside the window, watching her, the soles of his feet sliced open where they’ve been cut away from the feet of his shadow. The shadow itself is a flickering suggestion on the carpet inside, frozen in the act of dancing with Wendy’s own shadow in the moment Rose has captured with her paint.
And in the third, a bedroom in a state of disarray, the corners and the ceiling thrown into shadow by the lamplight from a table. The bedclothes are rumpled and there is a set of antique medical equipment strewn bloodily across it, the remnants of a transfusion. In the darkest of the corners lurks a white-gowned girl, her hair long and dark and heavy around her young face with its dead-white skin and bloodied mouth. Around the lamplit table three men stand, their elbows wrapped in matching rings of bandages, stakes and hammers in their hands. They don’t seem to be aware of the girl lurking in her corner, but she stares at them with sadness and hunger.
Beside the pictures, in Rose’s neatest handwriting, is a card with the title. Life Goes On.
Alex can see Rose standing with some of the other artists, a little way deeper into the gallery space, talking and laughing. She practically glows with pride and confidence, her thoughts as clear and edged as shards of glass: I could die in this moment and be happy.
It’s one of the world’s stranger truths, Alexander muses. Joyful and stricken alike, the strongest moments of life are the ones when death seems least fearful.
Rose’s brother, looking very much the worse for wear, goes up to her. He’s flanked by his girlfriend and Jay, all three wearing worried frowns.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Rose asks immediately, breaking off from the group she was chatting to. “Did Bette do something?”
“It’s not Bette,” Jay assures her. “But we need to go somewhere and talk, because it’s—” His usually quiet voice drops even quieter. “Other vampires.”
“You should still be lying down,” Rose tells Tommy accusatorially. “My stupid vampire bullshit isn’t important enough to put your health in danger.”
“We’re all in danger, Rosie,” Tommy replies. “One of them—two of them, actually—came to the house.”
“Who?”
“C’mon, let’s go somewh-“ Michelle starts to say, laying her hand on Rose’s arm, but Rose just looks more insistent.
“Who?”
“Gretchen. It was Gretchen. I’m sorry, Rose,” Michelle says quietly. Alexander raises his eyebrows. Curiouser and curiouser. Gretchen coming to town just as Cora has manipulated events into getting Nicole to visit.
Alexander highly doubts that Cora played any part in Gretchen’s arrival, though: Gretchen is close to impossible to manipulate and getting her in the same place as Nicole is nobody’s recipe for happiness, not even Cora’s current twisted definition o
f the term.
“She wants to make you a vampire,” continues Michelle. “And came to offer it to Tommy too, if he wants it. So you won’t miss him.”
“She threatened you?”
Michelle nods. Rose closes her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, then opens her eyes and locks her gaze on Alexander’s. “Wait here a second,” she says to the others, approaching him.
“Do you have one of those stupid town cars here?” she asks.
“I walked.”
“Call a car. My brother isn’t well; he should get home. You should come too, so the others aren’t scared by other vampires showing up.”
Alexander smirks. “What if I have other plans?”
“I’m not in the fucking mood,” Rose snaps, her voice even and absolutely humourless. “Call a car.”
Alexander does so, and the five of them go outside to wait for it. Rose takes Tommy’s cellphone from him without asking and enters a number, taking a few steps away from them and turning her back for the illusion of privacy.
“You fucking jackass,” she says as soon as the call is picked up, her voice furious. “Get back to my house right now.” She ends the call without waiting for a reply.
“You don’t seem as intimidated as everyone else,” Alexander notes as she rejoins them.
“I’m not. I’m fucking pissed,” Rose answers.
~
Gretchen and Quinn are already waiting by the front door of the suburban home when the town car arrives there. Tommy and Michelle look very afraid, in their special too-cool-for-facial-expressions way. Even Jay, rarely fazed by vampires, looks worried. Alexander nods a hello to the pair and receives nods in return.
“Inside,” Rose orders everyone, and sounds so deadly serious that even Alex thinks it would probably be wisest to obey.
Rose ignores Gretchen and Quinn until Tommy is settled on the couch to her satisfaction, then turns and glares at Gretchen.
“You are a fucking coward,” Rose bites out, every word a snap of her teeth. To Alex’s surprise, Gretchen is the one who breaks the eye contact, looking down. The eye patch is an interesting look for her; he’ll ask her about it when he gets an opportunity.
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