“New to you,” I answered.
He smiled, slow and lazy and stunning. “Ulric,” he said, extending a hand.
The lady returned and handed over a form, which Goth Guy—Ulric—grabbed out of her hand before I could. I noticed his nails matched mine, matte black, but that wasn’t bonding enough to keep me from ripping my schedule back from him.
“There something you need, Toby?” the administration lady asked, a bite to her tone. I don’t think she was defending me so much as hoping she could clear her office of both of us at once.
He colored up until he matched the fake blood dripping down my shirt. “No one calls me that,” he answered through clenched teeth.
“Yes, they do,” she said, the homeroom bell punctuating her comment.
I did my best to pretend that I was totally absorbed in my schedule and not paying them any attention, and I absolutely did not let a smile flicker across my face.
“Anyway,” he said with a sneer, “I’m just here to meet the new blood. Saw you through the window,” he added to me in a whisper, with a shrug toward the Plexiglas office walls.
Administration lady huffed. “Well, as long as you’re here, you can show Geneva around.”
“You’ll write me a pass?” he asked.
“Is that what you were really after, Mr. Erickson?”
He shrugged, but she wasn’t really waiting for an answer and had already started writing a million miles a minute. She tore a pink sheet off something that looked like a doctor’s pad and handed it over to Ulric, who took it with one hand, took my arm with the other, and marched us out of there.
I shook off his hand outside the office and glared at him. Apparently he had enough ideas of his own, without help from me. Rarely a good thing—guys thinking for themselves.
“So, Geneva, eh? For real?” he asked, ignoring my death-ray glare, which, sadly, had no effect. My powers just didn’t roll that way. Stupid powers.
I sighed, but I figured he got that a lot. “For real. My parents named me after the place I was conceived.”
“Classy,” Ulric said, pushing hair out of his eyes.
It seemed a perfect lead-in to my cover story. “Yeah, just one of my many grievances against them.” Grievances—I’d learned that word straight out of the portfolio. My parents, the real ones, would be so proud. You know, if I weren’t dead to them and all.
“At least you got a cool name out of it.”
Whatever weirdness was going on in the school, Ulric sure didn’t seem affected. Not that I really knew him or anything, but so far he didn’t reek of mind control or zombification.
“So, you just moved here with your folks?” he asked.
“Yes and no,” I answered, distracted by the sight of Bobby and Rick being led around by a swimsuit-model type with a perky little ponytail and scarlet sheath dress I’d vault sales racks to possess. In short, she was a bleached blond version of me, pre-vamping. If Bobby saw me at all, he gave no sign of it. Even though I knew he was probably just playing up his cover identity, it killed me to see him watching that hypnotic little ponytail bobbing as the Prissy Princess led the way. After all, I already knew she was his type. What if our assignment dragged on and he got bored of not being able to be with me and—
“You know them?” Ulric asked.
I must have been staring. Wow, I thought to myself, way to be subtle.
I recovered quickly. “No. Just wondering how many flies she’s swatted with that tail.”
“Who, Hailee? Couldn’t say. She’s always got so many buzzing around her.”
I made a face.
“My thoughts exactly. So, what amazing sights do you want to see? The gym? The library? The place where we all hang out for smokes between classes?” he asked.
“No, no, and yes.”
Here’s the thing—I didn’t smoke. It colors your teeth and makes your clothes stink, totally negating the positive effects of scented body wash, but it wasn’t like I was going to die of lung cancer or anything if I did. By nature, I didn’t even have to inhale. If I needed to light up to be in with the in crowd, I could take it.
Ulric led me through the long arm of the L toward a door halfway down that was propped open—and probably shouldn’t have been—by a piece of cardboard. I patted myself on the back for learning already that the school was a long way from being secure. He didn’t even look around stealthily before pushing straight through, which was either smart, since they taught us in super spy school to always look like you had every right to be exactly where you were since it put people off their game, or incredibly stupid, because by being smart he raised my suspicions. I could only almost follow my logic myself. I could just see myself trying to explain it to Agent Stick-up-her-butt.
I’d call suspicion an occupational hazard, but I’d always had a strict guilty-until-proven-innocent policy of my own. Especially with guys. Especially after my very ex-boyfriend Chaz slammed my side of his car into a tree on prom night, leading to the whole death trip. It also didn’t help that my current boy toy, Bobby, hadn’t told me when we hooked up that he had a communicable blood disease—as in the need to drink it on a regular basis. Not that it had worked out too badly for me really.
Just outside the propped door was a rock garden nestled where the two wings of the school joined. Or a boulder garden, more like. Bright flowers had been planted around the stones, but they were struggling to hold their own. They looked like they’d been trampled a time or two. On the largest boulder sat a single figure with her back toward us. Not smoking. I could tell because (a) no smoke—kind of a dead giveaway—and (b) she was singing. Hard to do both at the same time.
The girl’s voice was haunting, and for a second she seemed to be a siren, sitting on a dangerous outcropping of rock, singing sailors to their doom. Damn, Bobby was rubbing off on me. That was a him thought if I’d ever heard one.
You call me? Bobby asked in my mind, proving our mental communication network was still in place, though it was kind of one-sided. The power was all his, so unless he was focusing on me, he couldn’t hear me if I “spoke.” Nice to know he was thinking of me, though, especially after the blond bombshell.
Just thinking of post-mission snogging, I thought back.
You’re on. He sent back an image of the two of us locked up in an embrace my parents definitely wouldn’t have approved of. Then it cut off abruptly as though something, probably a teacher, had demanded his attention.
I sighed, and the singing girl broke off suddenly, her last note lingering in the air. Her head was as slow to turn as the note was to fade, so I knew my sigh hadn’t scared her. Just, it seemed, intruded on her solitude. From her expression, or lack thereof, she turned more because it was expected than because she was actually curious about who or what had come upon her. Her eyes … if my heart had been beating, it might have stuttered at the sight of them. At first I thought they had to be contacts, they were such a pale ice blue—the color of a frozen lake. Her gaze flicked from Ulric to me, locking on.
“Hello,” she said, her speech not nearly as breathy as her song. “I’m Bella.”
“Geneva,” I answered.
“Cool.”
“Bell, where are the others?” Ulric asked as she slithered off the rock, her long black skirt riding up enough to reveal calves nearly as pale as mine.
“Aren’t they here?” She looked around with the same lack of concern she’d shown at our approach.
“Did you lose them again?” he asked, as if it were a common joke.
“I guess so,” she said with a shrug. Was I seeing some of that lack of energy and focus we’d been briefed on or was Bella just a little … different?
“Come on,” Ulric said, taking Bella’s arm gently. “Let’s get you to class.”
She went quietly, and I trailed after them, already intrigued.
3
By sixth period I was cursing the Feds with every fiber of my being. What good was eternal life if you had to spend it in scho
ol? And it totally sucked being the new kid because teachers wanted to quiz you on what you already knew and do due diligence getting you up to speed and all that. And then there were the girls who tried to establish dominance over you—because everyone knows the new girl is automatically hot, at least until the novelty wears off, and that totally ticks off some folks.
Speak of the devil—between me and my locker stood Bobby’s bleached blond bimbo and her entourage. I thought of Becca and Marcy with a pang. Luckily, it was in character for me to totally ignore the posse’s existence and breeze on by, just as it was probably in blondie’s nature not to let that happen.
“Hey, new girl,” she called as I passed. “Don’t you know Halloween’s still a month away?”
I had to fight not to bare my teeth. She reminded me of Tina, my archnemesis from my old school, right up to choosing the most obvious put-down in the book, given that I’d gone goth. So, no points for originality. Maybe Bobby would look, but surely he wouldn’t touch …
“That all you got?” I asked. “’Cause I have just two words for you—bleach pen.”
When she looked totally blank, I brushed my little pinky finger across my brows and watched her go scarlet. Well, all except for those brows, which were at least two shades darker than the hair on her head.
I licked my index finger and air-scored a point for me, making a sizzle sound as I did it.
Blondie flung her hair around as if to fan me away and marched off with her gaggle of gaping groupies, all shooting me dirty looks. Ah, the mean girls. Got it.
During my extensive high school experience, which couldn’t be properly replicated in any kind of controlled spy school setting, I’d noticed that mean girls could be identified by the following:
the height of their noses in the air, which is inversely proportional to the length of their skirts
their brows, which are so often raised that they disappear into their hairlines (this helps disguise the effects of Botox and facelifts later in life, since no one will ever have seen their brows at resting height)
they travel in packs, and
they think ohmagod is an actual word, totally to be used as often as humanly possible.
In my old life, I’d been a fashionista. There was a difference. I’d only been trying to beautify, not belittle, the world one person at a time.
Anyway, I ignored them, as I did the guys in the hallway checking out my legs, and made for my locker when someone fell into step with me. I looked up into the leaf-green eyes of a girl dressed much like me, which is to say in black, though her dress was kind of gauzy with red ribbons criss-crossing over the chest, giving it the appearance of a corset, only she was so slim there wasn’t much for the bodice to push and smoosh. Her hair was nearly white blond, the natural way, except for where she’d added streaks of what looked like burgundy that had faded to a kind of brassy pink. All of it was stick straight. She looked like emo Barbie, only without the absurd proportions.
“That was pretty wicked,” she said. “Gotta admire anyone who can shut Hailee down. I’m Lily, by the way. Ulric’s already told us all about you.”
“That couldn’t have taken long,” I muttered. How much could he know?
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” she said, as if reading my mind. “Ulric knows trouble when he sees it, and he says you’re all that.”
“And more,” I added, smiling to let her know it was a joke … kind of.
“Anyway, so you’re Geneva,” she went on. “And next period you have study hall, right?”
I must have narrowed my eyes.
“Ulric again,” she explained. “Photographic memory. So, wanna blow?”
“What?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “What do they call it where you’re from? Cut? Skip? Ditch? Bail?”
“Those’ll do. But I’m kind of new here. I should probably make it to my classes at least once.”
“Why?” she asked.
I thought for a second. “Just seems like the thing to do.”
“Right,” she said, slipping a hand through my arm like we were either best buds or about to start a hoedown. “Come with me.”
I didn’t know what it was about grabby goths, but between her and Ulric, they seemed perfectly prepared to lead me around by the nose. If I had a ring through it, they’d probably attach a leash. At least they’d accepted me as one of their own. My cover would have sucked rocks without it.
I knew exactly where we were headed before we even got there. It had to be the hearse front and center of the student parking lot. It stood out from the other cars like a Kate Spade handbag in a sea of knockoffs … or maybe that should be a knockoff in a sea of Kate Spade bags. I’d totally never understood modern art, and this car was no exception. It was black with eyes painted on the headlights and oversized fangs mounted on the front bumper. Baby-doll heads, each different, were hot-glued to the hood all around its perimeter. Some had red eyes and fangs, others an eye-patch or pirate bandana. Some were painted like werewolves or zombies or even Frankenstein’s monster. It was … surreal.
My steps slowed as we approached, even though I was already starting to feel the sun sizzle on my skin. It was playing peekaboo from behind a cloud, but like the spit-ball bully from the back of the class, it made itself known.
“Quite a … car,” I said finally, because I was all about diplomacy, especially the kind that came with little ribbons meaning school’s out forever.
Lily had been studying my face, waiting for my reaction. “Yeah, and that’s just what they’ve done with the outside. Wait until you see the inside.”
“I can hardly wait,” I answered, trying for sincerity.
She laughed, and it was high and tinkly. Not at all the sort of Wednesday Addams, psycho-killer laugh I thought goths should sport. “Oh, don’t worry, the guys did the chassis mostly to piss off Principal Connolly. She threatened to have it banned from the school lot, so Bram and Byron did a makeover, called it art, and threatened to start a freedom of expression ruckus. Got the ACLU involved and all … Of course, that was before … ” She trailed off sadly.
“Before what?”
Instead of answering, she yanked open one of the back doors and the sweet, sharp, unmistakable scent of weed nearly knocked me on the ass-phalt. If I hadn’t been pretending to breathe, it probably wouldn’t have hit me so hard, but between that and my super-vamp senses, it was the practical equivalent of pepper spray. My nose ran, my eyes watered, and I quickly wiped the moisture away before Lily could tell it was blood, a totally grody side effect of becoming a bloodsucking fiend.
“Climb in,” she said.
I could have told her I had my own wheels, but she had me curious, so I did what she said. As the haze started to clear, I noticed two things. First was a guy who looked like he’d stepped out of an Anne Rice novel—poet shirt, pants tight enough that I could practically tell his religion, long hair in a girly-cut. I mean, had anyone really rocked that hairstyle since Fabio? Well … maybe Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing. Second was that the hearse was set up like a limo inside, with bench seats facing each other for most of its length. The seats were a microfiber that mimicked suede—black, of course. Except for the windows, rug, and seats, words were shellacked everywhere: the ceiling, the spaces between windows, the dashboard … It looked like someone had ripped pages out of books or artistically torn fancy printed passages to use as wallpaper. I’d never seen anything like it.
“Because I could not stop for death—” I read.
“He kindly stopped for me,” Poet Boy continued. “The carriage held but just ourselves and Immortality.”
Okay, I was poetically tone-deaf, but even I could tell that was pretty good. “Wow, did you write that?” I asked. I could see right away it was the wrong thing to say.
Poet Boy barked out a laugh, and I was about to quote my shirt, Bite Me, when Lily’s tinkling laugh joined his. “He wishes. This one’s his.” She pointed to one of the torn printouts. “Tragic death, be
still thy heart, and keep thee true once we part. As in death, though not in life, I turn the tables with a twist of the knife.”
I thought about that for a second, a little squicked out by the sentiment. You’d have thought they’d gone vamp by the way they were holding their breath. “Sounds more like a spell to me. But, uh, nice rhyme scheme.”
Lily and Poet Boy exchanged a look, and then he shrugged. “Not much difference really. Spells don’t actually need to rhyme, but it helps you remember them.”
Okay, that was kind of unexpected. Not a confession, but … I tried not to let my reaction show. “Cool. Maybe you can teach me. I’ve dabbled, but never really gotten any results.”
“Yeah, I’m kind of a dabbler myself,” Poet Boy admitted. “Bram’s the one you want to talk to. He swears he’s seen books bleed.”
“With or without pharmaceutical aid?” Lily asked, a bite to her voice. But she didn’t wait for an answer, and I figured it was an old riff. “Anyway, Byron, this is Geneva, the one Ulric told us about. Geneva, this is Byron, our resident poet and artist. Bram—”
“Did someone take my name in vain?” asked a new guy, popping his head in through the open door. With four—well, three, and Bram’s head—in the back of the hearse, it was starting to get crowded. The newcomer was the rich, warm color of a mochachino, with a shaved head that was absolutely the perfect shape for it. And trust me, not all heads are created equal. He sported deep, dark, kohl-lined eyes and cheekbones that would cut glass. “Beautiful” is not supposed to apply to men, but that was exactly the word for him. If only he weren’t wearing enough hardware to open a store.
“Not yet, but give me time,” Lily said.
Bram smiled, his canines as long and pointy as I’d ever seen on a non-vamp. I wondered if he filed them or wore falsies. “Thanks for the introduction,” he said wryly, holding out a hand to shake. I noticed that his nails were bitten to the quick, and his brick red polish was chipped and cracked. I was glad to see the imperfections.
“The gang’s all here,” called a voice from behind us—Ulric’s, if I wasn’t mistaken.
ReVamped Page 2