Henry stretches his arms across the back of our bench until his forearm rests against my bare back. His hand hangs loosely next to my shoulder. It’s not like he’s got his arm around me. If he put his hand on my arm too, that’d be weird. This is just two friends not weirded out by touching. But for a second it’s all I can focus on even though I’m not supposed to feel anything right now.
I try watching the rotating cast of street performers. My favorite is a tap-dancing boy who’s so good he almost makes me forget about Henry’s arm. I toss money I should probably be saving into his bucket, but he deserves it, and it gives me a chance to get up and break contact.
Finally, the sun slips behind the cathedral and dusk approaches. And then I wait even longer, until the sky finally starts to turn to ink.
Henry is leaning back on the bench, his eyes closed. I kick his shoe.
“Wake up. The sun’s gone, and we need to check back at the convent.”
He grumbles under his breath but pulls himself to his feet and trails me to the convent. I hold my breath as we walk, like Carter will be standing there waiting, but of course, when we get there, we find nothing.
“Maybe we should wait here,” he suggests.
I shake my head. “He might not come back here if he suspects I’m hunting him. Plus, I’m tired of waiting.”
“Hunting seems like a strong word choice,” he says.
I ignore him and drift down the street in the direction Carter headed last night.
I turn down a busier side street with restaurants and bars and people talking too loudly and taking up the sidewalk while others weave around them.
Henry stops in front of a candy shop. “I want to grab another praline. Want anything?”
“I don’t know how you’re still eating those things,” I say, keeping my focus on the street. This is like his fifth praline of the day.
“They’re just too good,” he says.
“Fine. I’ll wait out here and keep watch.”
He starts to turn.
“Wait.” I fish a twenty out of my pocket. “Pick me up a package of them for my dad’s birthday next week. You know how my family loves sweets.”
Henry stares down at the bill. “Next week?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry. We’ll get back in time.”
He keeps staring like the money’s booby-trapped, and I have to shake the bill in front of him to snap him out of it. He plucks it from me and heads inside without another word.
I lean back against the brick exterior, still hot from the sun, and run through everyone on the street again: two girls in sundresses walking arm in arm, a homeless man sitting outside the building opposite me, a group of men laughing too loud, a woman in a VAMPIRES EAT FREE T-shirt—a choice to be sure—and I’m wondering if I should try some sort of bold advertising like that when I spot a flash of blond coming out of a club and heading in the opposite direction.
I move without hesitating, without even thinking of hollering for Henry.
I can only see his back, but he’s tall and dressed in black skinny jeans and a dusty rose tank top.
He turns a corner too quickly, and I’m stuck behind a family with three kids gawking at cats in the window of a tapestry shop. I dart around them, stepping into the street and earning myself the blast of a car horn. Ignoring it, I race around the corner, tearing through puddles that somehow never dry up in the heat. Warm water splashes my legs.
An empty stretch of broken sidewalk greets me. I twist in the other direction, but I’m sure he came this way. I keep going, away from the tourists on the main street and away from Henry. He’ll be mad when he comes out and I’m gone, but I can’t let him slow me down.
The streets running perpendicular to the river get more of a breeze, but somehow they’re always almost empty. A couple passes on the other side, each carrying a full plastic cup.
At least someone’s having fun.
“Why are you following me?” Carter’s breath moves the back of my hair, and I spin so fast my toe snags on a raised piece of concrete and I stumble, closing the already tiny gap between us and face-planting into his chest.
He grabs my arms and rights me, quickly stepping back like I’m the dangerous one.
As I smooth my hair, he folds his arms over his chest.
“I… I’m not. I’m lost. I’m trying to find my friend.” I swivel my head around like I’m looking for Henry. Really, I’m looking for anyone, but the street is vacant.
He smirks.
He knows I’m lying. I don’t even know why I did. Of course I’m looking for him. But standing alone with him on a darkened street makes my skin tingle with warning. My basic animal instincts say Lie, run, get back in the light where things like him can’t go.
That feeling’s exactly what I need.
Be strong like Buffy. I straighten. “You said you might be what I’m looking for.”
His eyes narrow, and he runs his tongue over his bottom lip in a way I might find sexy in a movie, but in real life it makes me want to turn around and bolt.
“You don’t look like the type,” he finally says.
“The type for what?” I glance down at my hot-pink tank top with the white lace overlay. One of my favorites.
He smirks again. “If you don’t know what, you probably shouldn’t be looking for us.”
My heart pounds, and not because I’m afraid, even though I know I should be terrified, but because he said us. He all but admitted he’s a vampire.
I struggle to get my breathing under control, but it’s like standing in front of a wild animal, hoping you don’t scare it away while also hoping it doesn’t eat you.
I put what I hope is a sexy purr in my voice as I take the smallest step toward him. “I know exactly what I want.”
I’m not sure I’m pulling it off, but at least he doesn’t laugh.
“Okayyy,” he says, dragging out the y at the end like it’s my last chance to turn around and pretend this never happened. I don’t, and he grins in answer, reaching into the back pocket of his impossibly tight jeans to pull out a crisp white card. He hands it to me. An address is written on it in elegant black script. Of course a vampire would have a calling card—Lestat would definitely approve. I tuck it into the back pocket of my jean shorts before he can change his mind.
“Be there by midnight and wear something different.”
I nod, too nervous to be offended.
“Victoria!” I turn my head and lock eyes with Henry striding down the street. He looks pissed.
I turn back around to confirm I’ll be there tonight, but the street is empty.
“Damn it, Victoria.” Henry jerks to a stop beside me. His chest heaves like he ran a mile to find me. “Shit. Wait for me next time.”
My mouth pops open a little. Henry never loses his cool.
He tucks his hands into his jeans and looks past me. “You scared me.”
“Oh.” The moment hangs between us, giving me a chance to step into it, wrap it around myself like an old familiar blanket.
But it’s too damn hot still, so I take the easy way out and change the topic.
“Did you see him?” I turn around and scan the empty street again.
“Who?”
“He just disappeared,” I whispered.
Henry snorts. “The blond guy? He literally walked away and went down an alley while you were turned around.”
I sigh. His mode of transportation doesn’t really matter. Vampires can walk too. They don’t need to morph into bats or something ridiculous to be real. This isn’t a Bela Lugosi film after all.
“He’s what we’re looking for.”
“What you’re looking for,” Henry corrects.
I pull out the white card Carter gave me. “I’m going here at midnight.”
Henry takes the card from my hand and examines it like there may be some secret code hidden there. “I don’t like it,” he says. “This guy told you he’s a vampire?” The cynicism in his voice is killing the rapid beating of my he
art, drowning out the tiny trickle of hope sneaking through me.
I yank the card back from him. “Obviously he didn’t come right out and say it.”
“He’s probably a serial killer.”
“I’m going.”
“Or a drug dealer.”
“Still going.”
He rolls his eyes toward the black sky. “We’re going.”
Welcome to my house!
Enter freely. Go safely, and leave
something of the happiness you bring.
—Dracula by Bram Stoker
Seven
I procured a fake ID from a shady dude I found on Craigslist for just this type of moment. I hope the thing holds up. I repeat my birthday in my head again and again as I smooth out my white eyelet sundress.
“You’re gonna have to sit this one out,” I tell Henry, who’s walking beside me, looking surprisingly suave in dark-wash jeans and a plain black T-shirt. The black hair usually draped over half his face is slicked back. “You look good, but they’re still going to card you.”
“I look good, huh? That may be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
He smiles, and I swear it’s sexier than usual. Dimples with high cheekbones is an excellent combination.
I smooth my unwrinkled dress again.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m covered.” He flashes his own ID.
I give him a hard stare. I know he didn’t have one of those before.
He shrugs. “A friend convinced me to get one when I turned eighteen.”
I can’t believe I missed his eighteenth birthday. He missed mine too. His was right after his grandma died, and mine was after Dad got sick. I didn’t have a big party, and I doubt he did either.
Neither of us needs to apologize for that. Other things maybe, but not that.
Being reminded of the year we lost opens a small ache in my belly that I thought went away when Dad being sick became my priority. But the way Henry’s arm brushes mine as we walk pulls it wider and wider, and I don’t have room to deal with that hurt right now. I’m about to walk in the street to get some breathing room when I stop.
I recognize the slanted cursive of the neon red sign hanging in the walkway up ahead: JOSEPHINE’S.
“Please tell me that’s not the address on the card.”
“What’s wrong?” Henry doubles back for me as I hold up the white card and the address. Crap. I hurry forward to confirm what I already know: this is the one place I promised Dad I wouldn’t go.
“Victoria?”
Henry’s standing beside me again, waiting for me to explain, but I don’t quite know how to feel. This is one of the places I thought I might find a vampire, and now I’m here at the invitation of someone I suspect is one. But someone died here. Where I’m standing.
My heart pounds from a weird mixture of fear and hope.
I’ve never broken my word before—not to Dad. But he told me to find him a vampire. In the moment I thought he was joking, but what if he has the same wild hopes that I do? Wouldn’t he tell me to go inside if he knew how close I was?
Henry’s hand is on my arm, and I didn’t even notice.
“Someone died here.”
His hand drops away from me, and I kind of want it back. Probably should have eased into that bit of information.
“Yeah, it’s a place people look for vampires—people who do enough digging on message boards, at least. Someone died from a stabbing to the neck out here. At least, that’s what it looked like.”
“I thought you had no other leads? Not that I’m anxious to visit actual murder sites.”
“I told my dad I wouldn’t set foot in this place. He made me promise.”
“Then we shouldn’t go in,” Henry says, like it’s that simple. He knows I take my promises seriously, especially to my dad. He steps back, looking relieved to have a reason to escape this scenario.
But it’s not that simple. Dad’s life never hung in the balance of me keeping my word or not. I could call and explain, try to get him on board with my plan, but deep down I know what he’d say. So I won’t ask. I’ll pretend he might have said yes. Plausible deniability and all.
“We’re going,” I say.
Henry shakes his head. “Your dad wouldn’t want this.”
“Don’t speak for him.” I stride toward the entrance. I don’t want to hear it, especially when I hear truth in it. Why can’t Henry lie to me when I need it?
At least he follows me.
The guy at the door frowns, glancing between me and my license a couple of times, then shrugs like he knows it’s a fake and doesn’t care. He waves Henry through with barely a glance.
“Don’t say it,” I say, but the noise swallows us, and all I get is Henry’s half grin in reply.
Lights pulse and flash from the ceiling, spotlighting one writhing body for a second before moving onto another. There’s no smooth, soft jazz in here, just a DJ on a high circular platform in the center of the room, bobbing his head with his eyes closed like he doesn’t want to see the mass of bodies beneath him. Two long, packed bars line both sides of the club.
“Well,” Henry says. “Not what I expected.”
“Yeah.” Even though I’m standing on the edge of the crowd, occasional body parts brush up against me. More people enter, and we’re slowly getting pushed deeper in. For a moment I get cut off from Henry by a throng of grinding people. Then a hand settles on my waist. “It’s me,” he shouts against the music.
I turn and am pushed too tight against his chest as more people struggle around us to get to the bar. His hands splay out across my lower and upper back.
The smell of alcohol, the music so loud it drowns out my thoughts, the people pressing too close around us—all of it reminds me of the last time we kissed. The fatal mistake in our already strained friendship.
I tilt my head up to look at him, and he’s already staring down at me—lips parted, eyes conflicted, and I know we’re reliving the same memory.
It was just over a year ago. Henry’s grandmother was already really sick, and Bailey and I had teamed up and convinced him to get out of the house for a little bit—go to a small party at a friend’s house that ended up a little wilder than we planned.
It seemed like it was helping, and when Bailey had to leave to make curfew, Henry and I stayed. We danced with everyone else, and if we got a little closer than usual, so what? I missed the way we casually touched each other before—an absentminded hand on the shoulder, legs brushing from sitting too close, a squeeze of a hand. We were best friends. It didn’t have to mean anything.
But then I saw the tears rolling down his face, and I didn’t think—I reached up and brushed them away, and when my hands stayed on his face, he didn’t protest or stop me, so I pulled his face down closer to mine, and when I kissed him, he kissed me back, and it wasn’t the soft peck we shared before—it was years of pent-up feelings. At least for me. It felt right and wrong and confusing, and then he pulled my hands away from his face and stepped back.
I still remember his expression perfectly: an odd mix of longing and confusion, but also disgust.
I’m sure we both thought about Bailey. Bailey, who was my friend too.
He turned and ran, and I didn’t follow him the way he followed me five years before.
I hated myself a little too much.
And maybe if I’d apologized, it would have been okay. But his grandma died a few days later, and I didn’t know how to bring it up but also couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen either. Plus, a ton of our mutual friends saw it, but they waited until after the funeral to tell Bailey. And everyone turned on me—not that I didn’t deserve it. I kissed him. Henry got a pass—he was grieving and confused. Bailey still dumped him, though. And for a second I thought he’d reach out, but too much damage had been done.
But here we are, and all the damage between us feels electrified, like we could shape it into something els
e.
But that’s not what I’m here for.
I look down, even though it smashes my nose into Henry’s chest. When I look back up, he’s scanning the crowd.
“I say we go up,” he says.
I nod. He weaves us through the crowd, arms still tight around me until we get to one of the twin staircases framing the entrance that lead to a balcony surrounding the entire dance floor below. A velvet rope blocks the stairs along with a burly gentleman flaunting a receding hairline.
“I’m really sick of all the roped-off stairs in this town,” I mutter to myself. To the man I say, “How do I get up there?”
“Invitation.”
I frown. It’s like I’m already a vampire, and I can’t get invited in anywhere.
“How do we get one of those?” Henry asks.
“If you’re asking that, then you don’t have one.”
“Wait.” I break away from Henry, who seems to have forgotten how tightly he’s holding onto me, so I can dig into my purse and find what I’m looking for. I hold out my white card with the address, grinning when he begrudgingly unlatches the rope and waves us through as I tuck the card back in my bag.
“Thank you, kind sir.” I smile at him but get nothing. Not even a flicker of annoyance.
“Not you,” he says, clicking the rope back in place as Henry tries to follow.
“Hey,” I say.
“One card, one person.”
“Can’t I just loan him mine?” I ask.
The man doesn’t even look at me, so I guess that’s a no.
Henry’s fingers wrap around my elbow. “I don’t like you going alone.”
An unexpected rush of warmth hits me. He worries about me. It’s clear now in the way his eyes shift up the stairs toward whatever I’ll find up there and then back to me. It was clear earlier when he found me after I’d disappeared, chasing after Carter. But I don’t need his worry holding me down. The weight of his fingers becomes too much, and I pull away.
“I don’t remember needing your permission.” My stomach clenches as I say the words, but I turn without waiting for his reaction and take the dark wooden stairs two at a time. Henry calls my name at least once, but I don’t look back.
Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things Page 9