The Night House

by Rachel Tafoya

  “Come to spy?” Finn asks.

  “I’m not spying. Bianca’s not even in there.”

  “That’s what makes it spying, kid.”

  “You’re the one who sent a vampire to intimidate me.”

  He tilts his head. “I’m just getting to know my competition.”

  I keep my back straight. This guy is a blank slate on the outside. Even talking to him isn’t giving me much of his emotions. It’s like he’s got them locked up in a box in his head.

  “Do you think caring about her is going to help her?”

  I swallow past the fear in my throat. “I can do more for her than you ever did. You just turned her into a junkie.”

  “I’ve never made her do anything. This is her job; she chose to work for me. She can leave whenever she wants.” His eyes are coal black. They are like fabric, no shine nor water. “I brought her into my Night House to save her life. She was the one who asked me for work as a donor.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Believe what you want.”

  A guy comes jogging up the stairs to the platform.

  Finn puts his hand on my shoulder. Not roughly. In fact, he’s barely touching me. But the man keeps on walking, and now Finn has his hand on me.

  He recoils slightly, his face scrunched up in revulsion. “Your smell is even worse up close,” he says through clenched teeth.

  “What?” My voice is hoarse.

  “It’s like your blood is poisoned.” Something changes in his gaze. He pulls a knife out of his jacket and slices my upper arm, way too fast for me to react. Then he smudges his thumb across the cut, bringing the blood to his mouth to taste it.

  It happens in an instant—and now he’s three feet away, glaring at me like I’m the fairy tale monster.

  “Spawn. Stay away from Bianca.” He turns toward the Night House. “And stop spying on me.”

  Then he is gone. I stand, frozen, letting three whole seconds go by. Then all my breath rushes out of my chest, and my legs go weak. I stumble into the lobby of the subway, desperately searching until I find a bench to collapse on.

  Vampires. I need to know more about them if I’m going to be chatting with them on the subway.

  He called me “spawn.” Does that mean something to vampires? Does he know what I am? Where I came from? I swallow, but it burns my throat. This is nuts. He’s just trying to scare me.

  But what if he does know? What if he knows who—or what—my parents were?

  Bianca

  I get a cab to Thirtieth Street from the Night House. Finn doesn’t accost me when I enter, which is weird. I can’t remember the last time he wasn’t there to greet me. It is the middle of the day, though, so he could be sleeping. None of the girls are awake, either, so I get in and out pretty quickly.

  Now I’m shaking in the backseat of a taxi, crying on and off. I didn’t even leave a note for Alex or Finn. I can’t tell James. I just have to hope that they know I’m trying to finally help myself.

  This is completely insane. I can’t just leave. But I can’t keep doing this to Micah. This is what he wants for me. If there’s one person in the world I can trust, it’s him. He knows what’s best for me.

  I wish I could see James one more time, but if Jeremiah tries to sniff me out, he could follow my trail to James’ place and that would be bad. I couldn’t bear hurting him too.

  I remember the link we share. Does he feel my fear right now? I close my eyes and try to telegraph to him that this is what I should be doing. What I should have done years ago.

  It’s okay, James. It’s okay. This is how I’ll get better. When I’m on my feet, I’ll come back. I’ll show you how you helped me. Then I can help you too.

  “Alright,” the cabbie says. She is female, which surprises me for some reason. “Thirtieth Street Station.”

  The columns in front of the building are huge. I stare out at the other people dragging their suitcases behind them. Families hug and split apart. Loved ones are dropped off. I put my bag around my shoulder and take a peek inside—there’s not much, just what I could stuff in: a few dresses, some fruit, my sketchbooks and pencils, my copy of Emma. Micah’s pin. I reach in to run my finger across the pin’s surface before I get out of the cab.

  It’s not too crowded inside the station, but there’s a line for tickets. I scan over the prices, trying to figure out exactly how far I can get. There are trains going to New York, Washington, D.C., Boston. I could get to Canada if I really wanted to, but I don’t have a passport.

  Micah said to go west. Los Angeles is about as west as I can go without crossing the ocean. My heart is pounding in my chest while my stomach is twisting into knots. I know there are Night Houses in New York City, practically one on every block. Finn knows a few owners out there. It would be so easy just to find a new Night House, a new routine, a new set of clients.

  More nauth.

  My knuckles are white around the wad of money in my hand. I can’t just find a new set of teeth to fall into. Besides, no one would be as kind to me as Finn. We have our issues, but he never wanted me to get hurt. He cares about me, and we have a relationship. I had Alex, too, and…I take a deep breath. The line opens up, and it is my turn at the ticket booth.

  “L.A.,” I blurt out.

  The man raises an eyebrow.

  “I’m trying to get to L.A.,” I manage. “Is this enough?” I put the sweaty money on the counter, feeling awful at the thought of going so far away. Feeling awful in general about this whole plan.

  The ticket salesman doesn’t say anything, just takes Micah’s money. Then he hands me a bunch of pieces of paper. “Track Five. You got an hour. There’ll be transfers, so just ask the conductor.”

  I shove the tickets into my bag. My stomach is doing somersaults. I find a place on the bench by Track Five and pull my knees into my chest. Sixty minutes, and I’ll be on a train to another state. Another coast. No clue what it will be like. Or where I’ll go when I step off the train.

  Micah said I was strong. So did James. Maybe I can do this.

  Maybe I want to throw up.

  I run to the bathroom, clutching my stomach. Nauth is draining out of my system and I can feel my veins tightening. When I throw the door of the bathroom open, I am staring at myself in a huge mirror on the wall. I am a ghost. I’m pale and covered in sweat. My neck is one big bruise. I stumble into the stall farthest from the doors and vomit until there’s nothing left.

  “You okay?” a woman asks outside the stall.

  I wipe my mouth and flush. “Fine…thank you.”

  Stupid stupid stupid. I’m not ready for this. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to be alone, and I don’t want to start over. It’s too much to ask of me. How could he ask me to do this? How does he expect me to live without him?

  “Damn it, Micah,” I whisper the words and then clench my teeth. I sink my nails into my knees, and the pain grounds me.

  After the sweat cools on my forehead, I open the stall door, and the woman is right there. She wears a sleek black pencil dress with a big red belt around the middle. With one thin arm, she slams me into the wall, knocking the wind out of me.

  “Where you headed?” she asks with mouth full of fangs.

  “Nowhere,” I wheeze. Will she really stop me from going? Would she hurt me? I slide my hand into my bag, gripping Micah’s pin. “Tell Jeremiah this is a new low.”

  “You can tell him yourself.”

  I take a deep breath, but it stings my chest. “I don’t take orders from thugs.”

  “Don’t you want to see your friend one last time?” She opens her hand, and my silver earring sits there on her palm.

  My mouth goes dry. “What did you do to him?”

  “I didn’t do anything.” The vamp has her hand on her chest in mock offense.

  I’m clenching my teeth so hard it hurts. “Where is he?”

  “He’s with my people,” she says. “We’re
treating him very nicely, I promise. And we’ll keep doing that as long as you keep your promise and have a nice evening out with the Monarch of Pennsylvania at his event tomorrow at midnight. Is that so hard?”

  Her voice grates on my nerves. “I want to see my friend!”

  She releases me from her grasp. “You’ll see him tomorrow at the event.” Then she stalks out of the bathroom, her heels clacking on the tiles.

  I can hear Micah’s voice in the back of my mind, telling me to get on the train and never turn back. But now Micah is in danger. I can’t leave him with Jeremiah. I can’t sign his death warrant.

  My own doubt whispers to me that she could be lying. Maybe she doesn’t have Micah. I have to see for myself.

  It takes fifteen minutes to get back to Micah’s. Every step is a knife in my gut. But there’s a part of me that still believes I’ll get there and everything will be okay. It could have been an idle threat, just to make me miss the train.

  When I get to his apartment door, I stop dead.

  Open. The door is open.

  I feel sick.

  It could be so many things. I half expect the door to slam shut, as if Micah had just let someone inside. But no, it stays open.

  Oh God, it’s true.

  When I push the door in, I don’t know what I’m expecting. Blood everywhere? Broken furniture? Bullet holes in the wall? But there’s nothing. I approach the only closed door in the apartment: his bedroom. With sweaty hands, I turn the cold, metal doorknob.

  I’ve been here so many times before. I know this room, every detail. The chipped white walls. The dirty window that lets in about half the light of a clean one. The bed, which is really just a mattress and sheets pressed against the wall. The broken nightstand that has newspapers stacked underneath one of its shorter legs. The one crooked shelf up on the wall.

  Everything is the same. No blood in here. Nothing is more broken than it should be. The only thing that is different is the sheets on the bed: they’ve been shoved aside. There is a space where Micah’s body would fit perfectly.

  He went without a fight. They came for him, and he walked out with them. He’s really gone.

  It’s my fault.

  It’s all my fault.

  James

  The Internet is not much help.

  The first thing I do is search for the word “spawn.” It’s just a bunch of movies and comics. “Vampires” is no better.

  I hate that Finn might know something about me. It’s not fair. This has tortured me for eighteen years, yet he tosses words around so carelessly.

  As I’m searching through the information, I get this sense of impending doom. Vampires are stronger and faster than me. How can I hope to save Bianca? If Finn came after me, I’d be hopeless. There’s a pit in my stomach. I feel sick. Nauseous. I might throw up.

  No, that’s not me. There’s nothing physically wrong with me. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. Who is it?

  I reach out to Ally downstairs. She’s making herself a late lunch. Nothing happening there. My parents aren’t home; it can’t be them.

  The feeling gets worse. Sadness crawls up my throat until my throat burns. What did I do wrong? Maybe it is me. It’s so intense. I stare wide-eyed at the keyboard of my computer. Tears are dripping onto the desk.

  Bianca. What happened?

  As I dwell on her feelings, pain ripples through me. Her neck is stinging with pain, and her thighs are still sore. She’s sick from the inside out. Something bad just happened. God, I wish I could call her.

  I pull myself up from the chair and head back to my bed. The longer I am focused on Bianca, the worse the feelings get. I send Ally a text.

  Headache. Do not disturb.

  I lie in bed and try to find a way out of Bianca’s brain. Molding my clay helps for a bit. I try to make something—a car, a building, a face. It ends in frustration. So I try to force myself to read a book instead. It’s hard to concentrate on a story I’ve read before. So I put a movie on my tiny laptop.

  There is nothing quite like watching people go through incredible and terrible experiences and not being able to feel it for myself. While Donnie Darko plays, I try my best to reach out to the characters on the screen, to feel their shock and sadness and their injuries. But there’s nothing. It’s comforting, to feel cut off from my own powers.

  It doesn’t take long until I pass out.

  ***

  When I wake up, the credits are rolling. “Mad World” by Gary Jules plays solemnly in the background. It’s too sad; I shut my laptop to turn it off.

  For a second, there is silence. But as I wake up, my mind catches up to me. There’s an extra person in the house. I take a deep breath. I’d recognize those scars anywhere; Ally is interrogating Bianca.

  My suspicions are confirmed when I head downstairs and see the two of them talking, but it is much less tense than I expected. Ally is already a little disappointed. She turns to me.

  “Bianca says my mom isn’t there.”

  I sit down next to Bianca, who frowns at Ally. “The girls who work there…they either get out and get clean, or…they don’t get out.”

  Ally picks at her sleeve.

  “It’s better to think that your mom managed to start her life over, don’t you think? Don’t make it worse by imagining other possibilities. She could be out there, living clean.”

  Ally nods, clearly unhappy with this answer.

  Then Bianca touches Ally’s shoulder. “Don’t go looking for bad news.”

  “Yeah. You’re right, of course.”

  “Do you mind if I steal her?” I ask Ally.

  Ally shrugs. “It’s cool. Bianca and I can totally hang out some other time, right?”

  Bianca smiles and nods, but it’s forced. Her eyes are sunken in, and she has a constant shiver. Her skin is paler than I’ve ever seen it. I take her bag from the floor and put my arm around her waist. She leans against me. We shuffle off toward the stairs.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. “I got worried when Ally told me you had a headache.”

  “It’s okay. I just want to talk to you about something.”

  Her lips settle into a frown. “Let’s go upstairs, okay?”

  We make it into my room. As soon as the door is closed, I turn to her, ready to tell her about my encounter with Finn, but I feel how her whole body is used up. Pain pulses in my neck and I touch it, expecting to feel a wound. Then I notice Bianca’s scarf and I remember it’s her wound, not mine. I step over to her and push her hair behind her ear.

  “What happened?”

  She tries not to let the sadness show. “I really screwed up.”

  I lead her toward my bed, and she sinks down onto it. I want to tell her about my encounter too, but I let her go first.

  “I have this client.”

  She begins to explain about her client, an important vampire who runs the state. How he became obsessed with her and had to blackmail her into agreeing to accompany him to an event tonight. He thinks she’s related to another person named St. Germain who lived centuries before. And now her friend Micah, the vampire who saved her life, is on the line because Bianca tried to skip town.

  “They kidnapped him?” I ask.

  She’s shaking. “He was an easy target, because his fangs were pulled out. He’s barely alive as it is, and now he’s with that monster.”

  “His fangs were pulled out?”

  “They do that to vampires that they think are weak, or with ones who side with humans. Vampires need their fangs to feed; they’re like needles that they draw blood through, into their bloodstream. I’ve been seeing him on the side for a year, just giving him blood to keep him alive, since he can’t come to the Night House.”

  “And you’re sure they took him?”

  “I went to his apartment, to see. His door was busted open, and he was gone. Micah warned me about Jeremiah; he tried to get me to leave. He gave me all his money to b
uy these useless train tickets. He also gave me his pin.”

  She pulls a pin out of her bag and shows it to me.

  “It’s from when he was an officer. It’s made of oxidized iron. It can kill vampires. It’s like poison to them. I had everything, James. I had everything I needed to leave. I was so close, but now everything’s ruined and it’s all my fault. Micah is gone, and I just don’t know what to do.” She clutches my hand, trying to breathe. “James, what do I do?”

  I take both her hands in mine and squeeze them tightly.

  “We get him back.”

  Bianca

  “That would be suicide.” I clutch his hands back. “We can’t just charge in and get him.”

  “You’re right, which is why we have to play it much smarter.” He seems much more confident than I feel. I hope it will rub off on me. “Micah is just collateral, right? As long as you go to the event, we can get him back. Take his pin with you, so you’ll be prepared.”

  “To fight him?” The thought seems crazy. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “Trust me, Bianca, you can. I know how strong you are. I feel it every time we’re together. You could do anything you want. You’re amazing.”

  I’m not sure if he meant to say that because his face is bright red. It only makes him cuter. I want to be closer to him. No one’s ever made me feel this good about myself. No one really makes me feel good at all. I just want him to put his arms around me, to be held against his chest. Maybe even to kiss him.

  “What did you want to tell me?” I blurt out, because thinking about kissing him is overwhelming.

  Guilt is written all over his face. “You have to promise not to get mad.”

  “I don’t like that sentence.”

  “I went to the Night House when you were gone.”

  My first instinct is to yell immediately about how stupid and dangerous that is. Then I take a breath, because he looks like he knows he’s about to get screamed at so I try to rein in my anger. “You’re an idiot,” I say as calmly as I can.