by Douglas Rees
Along with the prize, she got a free trip to a girls’ school in Arizona for troubled teens, which was Number 6’s idea. She was there about three weeks. Then the school sent her back with a note asking Aunt Imelda to please try somewhere else. Turk had organized the girls into a union and led them out on strike.
Now here she was in strange old New Sodom, where maybe half the population was vampires—I mean, jenti—and until a couple of months ago, nobody had ever talked about it. Not the jenti, not the gadje—which was what the jenti called us. They had lived side by side all their lives and never spoken of what everyone knew. That vampires were real. That they clustered in New Sodom. That they had been here from the beginning.
Things were more out in the open now. Things that nobody had admitted for three hundred years. But a lot of people thought things had been better the old way. And some of them probably blamed me for what I had done to change things.
So I could hardly wait to see what my cousin was going to do to me now that we were living together in the weirdest little city in America.
3
The next morning, late, I got up to a wet, cloudy day. The air was full of a sense that some nameless awfulness was going to happen. I wondered if my cousin brought her own weather with her.
Mom made me breakfast, which was nice of her. Then she said, “I was hoping you could introduce Turk to some of your friends today,” which was not so nice. But it had to happen sooner or later. Justin and Ileana and all the other jenti who’d become my friends were over quite a bit. Eventually, they were going to notice that our house was being haunted.
I figured I’d start with Ileana, because she was my girlfriend. And because she was a jenti princess. Which meant she knew how to be polite to anybody.
When I called Ileana, she said she’d be happy to come over. And she’d bring Justin. Which was maybe for the best. Maybe meeting Turk with Ileana here would kind of lessen the shock for him.
“Whatever,” Turk said when I told her. “Are they some of your vampire friends?”
“None of my friends are vampires,” I told her. “They’re jenti. Vampire is kind of an insult.”
“Whatever,” Turk said.
“No, really, Turk. If you’re going to live in New Sodom, you have to know what it’s like here,” I said. “There are the jenti and the gadje. That’s everybody who’s not jenti. And the V-word is not used unless you want to get someone mad.”
“I don’t care whether I get anybody mad or not,” Turk said.
“Well, I do,” I said.
“I know you’re some kind of big hero to them,” Turk said. “Congratulations. But you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t join in the worship.”
“Who told you I’m a hero?” I asked.
“My mom. She heard it from your mom. Isn’t it true?”
“Here’s what’s true,” I said. “I started at Vlad last winter after I basically got thrown out of Cotton Mather High across town. That was the gadje school. Dad put me into Vlad because it had such a great academic reputation, and it was supposed to be tough.
“Well, I thought they wouldn’t take me because of my lousy record at Cotton Mather. But they only asked one question: Was I willing to play water polo? I said sure, figuring I’d try out for the team and get rejected. I’d still be at Vlad, Dad would be off my back, it would all be cool.
“Only it turned out that the water polo team was kind of a scam. They only had one because the state required it for accreditation. Since jenti can’t swim, they recruited a few gadje and let them fool around in the water. They lost every game, and nobody cared.”
“And you were the big jock hero who said, ‘Come on, boys, let’s win one for the Flipper’?” Turk said.
“No,” I said. “When I found out what was going on—pretend to play water polo for a few years and get As without working and get accepted to some college where the jenti run things—I thought I was in heaven for about a day. Then I thought about how much contempt they must have for us to treat us like that, and I got mad. So I started trying to do the work. The teachers, and the principal, Horvath, didn’t like that. They wanted their gadje lazy and stupid. But I made a couple of friends who helped me. Justin Warrener and Ileana Antonescu. Justin explained all kinds of stuff about how things work in the jenti world, and in New Sodom. Ileana—”
I took a breath.
“She marked me. She did it to save me from getting beaten up by some guys who were going to throw Justin in a creek. As a marked gadje, I was her private blood supply, and none of them could touch me.”
“And she did this because …,” Turk said.
“I tried to stop the guys who were going to dunk Justin. Water can do very bad things to jenti. Only there were four of them and one of me. Plus, they were jenti. Stronger than we are.” I twitched, still remembering how they’d bounced me around like a soccer ball until Ileana showed up.
“Sweet,” Turk said.
“And Justin explained what was going on. I didn’t know that I was in a high school full of jenti. I didn’t know real jenti existed. Anyway, we got to be friends. And they both helped me with my work until I got good enough to make Cs. Without them, I’d never have survived last semester,” I said.
“I’m still waiting to hear the part where you’re a hero,” Turk said.
“It’s not that big a deal,” I said. “Well, it was to them. But all I did was give Justin a blood transfusion. Ileana was having her fifteenth birthday party, which is a major event to the jenti, and I was at the party feeling really out of it without him. I was probably the first gadje ever to get invited to something like that, and a lot of the jenti didn’t want me there. So I called to find out when he was coming. Justin couldn’t be there because, well, because he needed more blood than the average jenti and they were out at his house. The Warreners don’t have a lot of money. So I asked Ileana for permission to go over and give him a drink. Well, this turned out to be a huge thing to the jenti. It’s like, they have all this folklore about the kind gadje who just gives blood without asking for anything in return, and by the time Justin and I got to the party, everyone knew what I’d done.”
“So where does the water polo come in?”
“That was Justin more than me,” I said. “In fact, it was all Justin, really. He was hanging out at the pool with me, just the two of us, and all of a sudden he jumped into the water. Well, I almost freaked. I mean, here’s my best friend, and he’s just dived into something that can kill him. Only he doesn’t die. He changes. Into something like a seal. They call it a selkie. Turns out that little jenti like him, the ones with the brown hair and blue eyes, can’t fly or turn into wolves, but they can survive in water. No, not survive. They love it. So we just recruited a new water polo team from the selkie jenti and the state had to let us stay open.”
“Why did the state want to close you down?” Turk asked.
“We hadn’t met our minimum number of games for the year when Justin beat up the old team,” I said. “And some of them quit.”
“Justin. The little guy. All by himself. Beat up the team,” Turk said.
“I said he was little, I didn’t say he was weak,” I said. “There’s no such thing as a weak jenti.”
“But why did he do it?”
“They were beating me up,” I said.
Turk pretended to brush away a tear. “I’m all choked up,” she said.
“Do you want to hear this stuff or not?” I said.
“Oh, yes, please,” Turk said. “Only get to the good part.”
“There isn’t much more,” I said. “We trained the selkie team in secret, then we all showed up for the last game, and we got into the water. By the end of the game, the gym was full. Everyone in the school was watching. Even Dracula. Of course, I didn’t know it was Dracula then. Nobody but Horvath did. We thought he was just this big wolf the school kept around as a mascot.”
For the first time, Turk looked impressed.
“You know Dr
acula?”
“I just met him once for a minute,” I said. “Of course, he showed me around the school the first day. But that was when I thought he was just a wolf.”
“When do I meet him?” Turk asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He decided to stop being a wolf at the end of the year and took off for Europe. He’ll probably be back, though. Ileana is one of his descendants, and she’s important to him.”
Turk closed her eyes.
“Oh, Cody,” she said. “So noble. So brave.”
“I had a busy semester,” I agreed. And I resisted adding, “And I was looking forward to the next one. Until you showed up.”
4
Mom turned dinner into a big deal. Ileana and Justin were invited. Which gave her the rest of the day to cook, which she loved to do, and gave me the rest of the day to worry.
As for Turk, once she had swilled a few cups of coffee, she went back to her attic, pulled the steps up after her, and made more noise. It was hard to tell what she might be doing up there, but the sounds moved all over the second floor ceiling.
“You know, I really feel like a total New Englander now,” Dad said as the gray light dimmed and dinnertime heaved into view. “We’ve got a two-hundred-year-old house in a nearly four-hundred-year-old town, a wood-burning stove in the kitchen, birch trees in the yard, and now—a crazy relative in the attic. Perhaps we ought to chain her up.”
I shook my head. “Good luck trying,” I said.
Exactly at six, a limousine purred up to the curb behind the little black Volkswagen, and Ileana and Justin got out.
Just seeing Ileana made me glow inside. We’d been together for four months now, and things kept on getting better and better between us. Sometimes, I could hardly believe that this beautiful little girl really liked me better than the jenti boys she could have had. She just came up to my shoulders—sometimes jenti are small—and she was perfect. Shining black hair, an ivory-pale face with glowing brown eyes, and lips like the bow on a present waiting to be unwrapped.
As for Justin and me—best friends. Enough said.
They came up the walk together, Ileana in a little black dress and Justin in a dark suit. I kind of wished they hadn’t gone to so much trouble for Turk. But that’s the jenti way. All out, whatever they’re doing. There’s no such thing as a casual jenti.
Ileana danced into the house, looking cool even on this muggy evening. She gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“Look at Justin,” she said. “He has become a Mercian.”
“A what?” I said.
I looked more closely at Justin’s coat and saw he was wearing a two-headed silver eagle on it. There was a crown balancing on both the eagle’s heads, and under its feet was the word MERCIA.
“Neat,” I said. “What’s a Mercian?”
“Just a kind of old jenti thing,” Justin said quietly. “I was invited to join.”
“He was invited to join because of you,” Ileana said. “Because you and he saved the school.”
Justin shrugged.
“So what do you do?” I asked.
“Oh, just talk about stuff here in town,” he said.
“It is more than that,” Ileana said. “Only certain families may belong. Even my father could not join, because he is not out of the Mercian line. And to be invited to join so young never happens.”
“Well, congratulations,” I said.
Sitting around with some old guys talking about New Sodom did not sound like much of an honor to me, even if it was secret and ancient and all that other jenti stuff, but if Justin was happy, I was happy.
Ileana handed me a small box wrapped in white paper and silver ribbon.
“For your cousin,” she said. “Please give it to her tonight.”
She flashed a smile that showed her cute little fangs.
“Oops,” she said, and covered her mouth. “They are out, are they not? Excuse me. I must be a little excited.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “My cousin—”
“Of course I am excited,” Ileana said. “This is the first of your relatives I have ever met, apart from your parents.”
Jenti are big on family. But then, when your reunions are attended by people who’ve been alive since the fifteenth century, relatives probably seem a lot more important.
“Thanks for having us over so soon,” Justin said, and handed me a small package wrapped in brown paper and blue ribbon. “This is for your cousin, too.”
“Why don’t you give her these?” I asked.
“Because you are the connection between us,” Ileana said. “If I give something directly to your relative on our first meeting, it is a great insult to you.”
“Like cutting you out,” Justin said.
Jenti manners are only slightly less complicated than their special language, which even most of them don’t speak well anymore.
“Well, thanks,” I said. “Let’s go into the dining room.”
Mom and Dad were already there. I noticed Dad had his wineglass in hand. Lucky Dad. All I had was the certainty that Turk was going to do something to show us how little we all meant to her.
Then Turk made her entrance.
She was barefoot, and wearing paint-smeared black jeans and one of her T-shirts. There was a lot of paint on her, too, most of it black. I wondered how much time she’d spent decorating herself.
“Oh. Hi,” she said. “Sorry. Didn’t know it was so late.”
Like Mom hadn’t told her twenty times to start getting ready.
Ileana and Justin both smiled. This time, without fangs.
“Welcome, kinswoman to Cody,” Ileana said. Then she added something in jenti that means “Rest beneath the shadow of my wings,” which is a huge compliment to a gadje, especially one you’ve just met.
“Hello,” Justin said.
“So you guys are vampires, right?” Turk said.
Polite. I was going to be polite. I could always kill my cousin later.
“These are for you from Ileana and Justin,” I said, handing Turk the boxes.
“What? Do I open them now?” Turk said.
“It might make it easier to say thank you if you knew what was in them,” I said.
“Sure. Whatever,” Turk said.
She opened the one from Ileana first.
Inside was a turquoise pendant set in silver and hanging from a chain.
It was fun to watch cousin Turk just then. She wanted to look so unimpressed. And she couldn’t.
“It’s Hopi,” Turk said. “Classic Hopi.”
“From Cochiti Pueblo,” Ileana said.
Turk turned the jewel in her hands.
“Nobody’s doing this kind of work anymore,” she said.
“My grandfather brought it home from one of his trips,” Ileana said. “His friend Kit Carson gave it to him. That is the story in the family.”
Turk put the jewel back in the box. Carefully.
“Well. Thanks,” she said.
Then she opened Justin’s box.
Inside was a folded-up piece of paper.
“This is kind of a certificate,” Turk read. “It’s good for any two of my angelfish, any kind you might like. I can help you set them up. I have plenty of spare aquarium stuff, and can give you plenty of tubifex worms. They really go for tubifex worms as a supplement. Welcome to New Sodom, Justin Warrener.”
Turk gave him a thin little smile.
“Thanks, man,” she said. “But I kill fish. Goldfish see me coming and they turn belly-up. Neon tetras commit mass suicide. Guppies eat themselves. I don’t want to ice a couple of your pets.”
“Bet I could help you keep ’em alive,” Justin said.
“Justin knows everthing about angelfish,” I said. “He’s got a room full of them. He sells them all over the country.”
“If you like angelfish,” Justin added.
“They don’t fit with my lifestyle,” Turk said. “Thanks anyway.”
“Oh. Okay,” Justin said.
I cringed inside.
Dad rolled his eyes.
“Let’s have dinner,” Mom said.
Mom had gotten out the best china. There was a French soup that would have been good enough for the dining room at Vlad, and quiche and salad. Dad had spent all day caramelizing his patented flan for dessert.
Ileana and I sat across from Turk and Justin, with Mom and Dad at the ends of the table. There were flowers and candles.
In the flickering light, I couldn’t help noticing how much more my cousin looked like a typical jenti than Justin did. He was short and brown-haired like most of the old New England jenti. Dark and rangy Turk in her black-on-black-on-black ensemble could have slouched down the hall at Vlad Dracul without getting a second look, except for her paint and tattoo.
We got through the soup and salad all right. Mom and Dad and I talked with Justin and Ileana mostly. We tried to include Turk, but most of her answers were shrugs. That suited me. I hoped she wouldn’t say more than three complete sentences, one of which would be “Good night.” But it was not to be.
“So, you’ll be going to school with us?” Justin said when we were starting on the flan.
“Yeah, I guess,” Turk said. “If I like it. If not—” She shrugged.
“What will happen if you do not?” Ileana wanted to know.
“Drop out, grab my stuff, head for Europe,” Turk said. “Or back to Mexico. Doesn’t matter. I won’t be staying long anyplace from now on. But, yeah. I’ll go to school until then. The only reason I agreed to come here was to try out Vlad.”
“We are so glad you did,” Ileana said. “Cody has found it quite interesting.”
“Interesting and hard,” I said.
“Hard,” Turk said. “Well, let’s face it, Cuz. I’m the one with the brains in our little duo.”
I could tell this was going to be a dinner party I’d remember for years to come.
“Cody’s smart enough,” Justin said, which may not have sounded like a ringing endorsement of my intelligence but meant a lot in Justin-speak.