by Gayla Twist
“I don’t believe you,” Leonora said. “You know I’m right and you’re just being a baby.” She slipped over to the window and fussed around with the curtain. “And let me tell you this, you are not going to enjoy being locked in a coffin for a century. I mean, think how bored you were yesterday, all day. Now think of that for a hundred years. You’d lose your mind.”
“You seriously think they’ll lock me in a coffin?”I asked, wrapping my arms around my knees.
“That’s their usual punishment for something minor.” She gave a sharp yank and detached the curtain cord. “Me they’ll probably lock in a cell with the windows open and wait for the sun to rise.”
“Oh, God,” I whispered to myself. I didn’t know what to do. Would Dorian try to help me? Or would he just disappear, leaving me to fend for myself like he had after Winter Formal? Breaking out of a vampire jail did not sound like it was going to be easy, but it did sound better than rotting in a coffin for a hundred years. Did I stay and face the Bishops or did I try to escape? My head was spinning. No matter how much I thought about it, I had no idea what to do. I guess it all came down to one thing. Did I believe in Dorian?
Chapter 26
Haley
“Okay, here’s the plan,” Leonora said, crouching next to my bunk. “The book lady will be here any minute. You engage her in a conversation about books. Get her to come as close to the bars as possible. Try talking in a really quiet voice so she kind of cocks her head to hear you. Then I’ll slip this around her neck,” she said, flashing me a glimpse of the curtain cord, “and pull her against the bars. You grab her keys and we’ll open the door. After that we’ve just got to make it to the roof and we’re out of here.”
“Leonora, I really don’t want to,” I told her. Plus, I wasn’t going to say anything, but it sounded like a pretty lame plan. “There has to be guards everywhere,” I pointed out. “And video cameras. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to just let us waltz free.” I shouldn’t have said the world waltz. It made me think of that wonderful night in the ballroom when Dorian had given me the flying lesson. There had been no word from Dorian since nightfall and I was starting to doubt that any was coming.
Leonora scowled at me. “Listen, I’ve been here for a month and I know this building inside and out. We can do this. You’ve just got to trust me.” She narrowed her eyes. “And stop counting on your maker to be a knight in shining armor. That’s never going to happen. Believe me.”
I shook my head. “I think it’s better if I just take my chances with the Bishops. I mean, I seriously didn’t do anything wrong. Or at least not that wrong.”
“You killed a couple of teenagers,” Leonora said. “Believe it or not, that’s something the Bishops aren’t going to be too pleased about.”
“But I didn’t,” I insisted. “I had nothing to do with it. I bit one guy on the neck one time. Once. I didn’t even kill him. And that was right before the cops, or whatever they are, grabbed me. So that couldn’t have been it. Plus the guy was a total jerk.”
Leonora scowled some more.
“Okay,” I relented, “not as big of a jerk as your old boyfriend, but he definitely had potential.”
There was some clanging, the sound of metal doors opening and closing. I knew that meant someone was headed down the hall. “Listen sweetie, I don’t care what you did,” Lenore said in a low hiss. “Just help me get the keys off the book lady so we can get the fuck out of here.”
We were the only prisoners in the hallway, as far as I could tell, so the woman didn’t have a lot of rounds to make. “Good morning, Leonora,” she said, stopping her cart outside the bars of our cell. She had caramel colored hair that she’d chopped short so it stood up in little waves. “Who’s your friend?”
“This is Haley,” my cellmate said, jerking her chin in my direction. “She loves to read so she’s going to want to load up.” She shot me a significant look. “Don’t you, Haley?”
“I do love to read,” I admitted, getting to my feet and tentatively approaching the bars.
“That’s wonderful,” the book lady said. “I’d be happy to get you set up with as many books as you’d like.”
My chest felt tight and I swear to god I was sweating. I didn’t want to hurt this woman. She looked perfectly nice and the only thing she’d ever done to me was offer me a book.
“Go on,” Leonora said, walking up behind me. “Tell her what you want.”
“Uh.” My tongue felt like a block of wood in my mouth. “I…”
“What’s that, hon?” the woman asked, taking a step closer to the bars. “I don’t have a ton of titles with me, but just tell me what you like and we’ll see what we can figure out.”
She seemed so sweet. I just couldn’t go through with it. Even if it meant inciting my cellmate’s wrath. Even if it meant facing the Bishops on some trumped-up charges. “No,” I stammered, shaking my head rapidly. “I’m fine. I don’t need anything. I’m good.”
“What’s that?” The vamp librarian leaned even closer to the bars.
That’s when Leonora sprang. She thrust both hands through the bars, somehow suppressing a scream as the silver seared her flesh. In a flash she strung the rope between both her hands and wrapped it around the book maven’s neck. As she yanked her arms back into the cell, the woman started to shriek, her face pressed against the bars and skin sizzling.
“Grab her keys,” Leonora shouted. “Grab them!”
“No! Just let her go!” I told her. “Let her go.”
“If you don’t grab those damn keys I’m going to burn her face off!” Leonora bellowed.
The woman was wailing piteously. I thrust my hands through the bars, somehow avoiding being scorched by the metal, and rifled through her clothes for the keys. A moment later I had them. “Here,” I said, throwing them at Leonora. “Just take them and get the hell out of here.”
The book lady collapsed to the floor, crumbling into a ball as Leonora released her. Snatching the keys off the ground, Leonora stuck her hands back through the bars to unlock the door. “Aren’t you coming with me?” she said with a grimace as her skin sizzled.
“No,” I told her. “The undead underworld is all yours.”
Thrusting open the door, Leonora shook her head at me. “You’re gonna regret this.”
“I know,” I told her.
A few seconds later and Leonora had disappeared down the hall. I gave it a few moments to give her a longer head start, and then I started shouting. “Help! I need help here!” Stepping out of the cell, I crouched to attend to the woman. “Help!” I called again. Gently I rolled the book maven over. Surprisingly, her face had already mostly healed. She looked up at me, a bit dazed. “Are you alright?” I asked.
“Perfectly fine,” she said, struggling to sit up. “Maybe you should go back in your cell before the guards arrive.”
“Okay,” I said, helping her to her feet. “If you’re sure you’re alright.”
“I’m fine, dear,” she told me. “Just fine.” Ushering me back into my cell, the lady grabbed the door with her bare hands and slammed it shut. Then she deftly locked it. I was surprised that she was willing to tolerate the pain of silver just to make sure I was locked inside.
Two seconds later and a squad of six black-clad guards arrived. There was lots of shouting and threats, all directed at me. But no one opened my cell door, which was a relief. They quickly left in pursuit of Leonora, after I gave them as little information as I could about her departure.
“Thank you for trying to help me,” the librarian said after the guards had left. “Would you like a few novels before I go?” She gave me a kind smile.
“Yes please,” I told her. “Whatever you think I’d like.”
After she rolled her trolley on down the hall, I stood there for a long time, staring at the silver coated bars. They hadn’t burned me when I’d stuck my arms through to grab the keys. And I was positive that I had at least brushed the metal. Cringing with the anticipa
tion of excruciating pain, I reached forward and placed a fingertip on a bar to the cell door. There was no pain. I wrapped my hand around the bars. It felt cool and smooth like the chrome on a car parked in the shade. It wasn’t coated with silver at all. But the librarian and Leonora had both been burned. Was I somehow immune to this specific kind of metal? Or had they been lying to me?
I sat on my bed and started at the door. I tried to rerun the conversations I’d had with Leonora in my head. Something was going on, but I had no idea what it was.
About forty-five minutes later two guards came in to get me. It felt like I’d been sitting there for half a day, but realistically it wasn’t that long. “Where are we going?” I asked as they undid the lock and pushed the door open. They were both wearing thick leather gloves to protect their hands from the silver, but I doubted they actually needed them.
“You’re going for your deposition,” the one with a seventies-style mustache told me. I wondered if he had died in the seventies and therefore he was always stuck with his facial hair or if he just liked the way it looked.
“Do you need to cuff me if I cooperate?” I asked as he reached for his shackles.
He looked me over. “I guess not. Just don’t try anything. I’d hate to have to cave in your pretty little skull,” he said, hefting his nightstick and then dropping it into his hand to show me the weight of his convictions.
“I had no interest in trying anything,” I assured him. I just wanted to explain to whoever was in charge that there had been a mistake and get the hell out of there.
The guards walked me down a series of hallways. I glanced into several open doors as we passed. Most of the rooms were set up as offices. A few of them had members of the undead behind desks, studiously working away. I wondered about that. Did some vampires have to work a desk job because they needed the money? Or were they just compulsive about it, preferring to spend eternity like they did when they were alive?
“In here,” one of the guards said, nodding me toward a room that was the only one in the hallway with a set of double doors, one of which was propped open.
I hesitated before the open door, but the guards prodded me in the back with his silver baton. That got me over the threshold and into a conference room. In the center of the room was a long, oval table. Seated around it were eight vampires. None of them were Dorian.
“Come in, Haley Scott,” a man’s voice commanded me, but not in a harsh tone. I saw that it came from a silver haired vampire seated at the head of the table. “Please, have a seat,” he said, gesturing toward the empty chair to the left of his. The man was handsome in an aging George Clooney sort of way. As I slid into the leather chair, he even rose a little in his own seat in a nod to old-fashion chivalry. “I hope you’ve been comfortable since your arrival,” he said, once I was situated.
“Yes,” I told him. “But there was some weirdness with a jailbreak and I’m sorry about that. I didn’t really know what was going on until it was happening” This made the other seven vampires at the table cluck and mutter.
The silver-haired man nodded, not looking amused or annoyed. “I hear that’s all been settled,” he said, “I am Everett Bishop, by the way. And I am overseeing this deposition.”
“Okay,” was all I could manage to say. It didn’t seem right to say something like, “It’s nice to meet you,” given the circumstances.
Everett cleared his throat and gazed down at a stack of papers in front of him and then back up at me. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help your eternal soul?” he asked.
He gave me an expectant look, so I hurriedly said, “I do.”
“Good,” he said. “Now that we have the formalities over with, why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
“Well…” I wasn’t sure where to begin. “I can tell you why I think I’m here, but I can’t exactly tell you why I’m here because nobody’s really explained it.”
Everett nodded. “Go on.”
“I think I’m here because a vampiress name Ilona something used to date my maker. And now she’s acting all nutty and trying to frame me for doing something I didn’t do. She’s mad at me for some reason, but she won’t say why.”
My words caused a flutter with the other vampires. Only Everett remained unfazed. He cleared his throat again. “That aspect of your case may need to be addressed,” he said, looking at his papers again. “But right now I’d like you to tell me about your activities since becoming a vampire. Any oversights you might have made as you adjusted to your new feeding habits. Any conflicts you may have had with your maker…” He looked at the top sheet of the papers in front of him and read, “Dorian Vanderlind.”
“Is he here?” I asked, the words catching in my throat.
The vampire shook his head.
I nodded and had to swallow hard.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Everett said, patiently.
“Alright.” I said, trying not to sniff. Dorian hadn’t even tried to help me. All his sweet words meant nothing. All of his promises were empty. “I died on Christmas Eve, close to midnight. I’m not sure if that means my maker’s day is Christmas or Christmas Eve.”
“Your maker can tell you the exact time,” a woman a little way down the table said. She sounded impatient. “If Dorian ever decides to show.” A small smirk played across her red-painted lips and I wondered if she disliked Dorian for some reason. I felt a throbbing pain deep down in my chest. She didn’t think Dorian was going to show up either. He wasn’t even going to try to help. I was on my own.
“So anyway” I said, and then I went on to give a brief outline of my activities since being turned into a vampire. I was honest about how I’d fed. I even told them about Tommy and my aborted plans for revenge. The one thing I did omit was my feelings for Dorian. I didn’t mention the times we’d kissed or how much I ached inside because he wasn’t there. I had no obvious reason for concealment, but my gut told me to withhold the information. That and the fact that I thought if I brought it up, I would burst into tears. It would be too humiliating to cry with all of them staring at me.
“And you never drank from any other teenager?” the smirking woman asked, raising one pencil-thin eyebrow. “You never snatched anyone off the street?”
“No,” I insisted, shaking my head. “I kept my feeding to the perverts outside the bars.” My words made Everett chuckle.
“And how about your maker?” the vampiress went on, obviously not amused. She made a big show of looking around the room, as if searching for Dorian. “Do you obey him?”
“Uh…” Her question caught me off-guard. “No,” I admitted. “I don’t feel compelled to obey him, although I know that’s pretty unusual.”
“He has no control over you whatsoever?” she asked, this time arching both eyebrows.
“Well, I listen to him,” I told her. “Or at least I do now. We had some challenges when I was first turned, but I was pretty freaked out.”
“Have you had any contact with any other vampires that can verify your feeding habits?” a tall man at the far end of the table asked.
I had to say no. “Just that Ilona chick,” I told them. “She’s the only other vampire I’ve met so far and she’s…” — I was going to say, “a completely nut-job.” But I thought better of it and said — “not my biggest fan. Although I really don’t know why.”
“Maybe Dorian knows,” I heard the annoyed woman mutter.
Chapter 27
Haley
Things weren’t going well. The woman with the arching eyebrows did not seem to be that fond of my maker. Everett appeared friendly, but everyone else was distant and a bit haughty. Or at least that was the impression they gave me.
“Do you have anything else you’d like to say before we bring in the witnesses?” Everett asked.
Witnesses? I thought. Who the heck were the witnesses? “I’m not sure,” I told him. “I don’t exactly know why I’m here so I really don’t k
now what you want to hear.”
“We want the truth,” the woman said, leaning across the table and glaring at me. She definitely had a bug up her ass about me. That much was obvious. She was rather pretty, in an uptight sort of way. My stomach lurched as I wondered if Dorian had ever been with her. That would just be my luck. I’d have a hundred years locked in a coffin because my maker couldn’t keep it in his pants.
The witnesses filed in. It was no surprise to see Ilona, her eyes blazing with hatred when she saw me. But there was also Leonora. “What happened?” I exclaimed, leaping to my feet.
One of the guards sternly told me to, “Sit down!”
I sat back down, but kept looking at Leonora. The librarian from the jailbreak came in after her and the two of them appeared to be on friendly terms. I knew something had to be up because that’s not how I would have acted if someone had pressed my face up against some silver bars.
Once everyone was seated I turned to Everett. “This isn’t really fair,” I said. “I only just met Leonora and I don’t know the librarian very well at all. Just for the whole jailbreak thing. And like I said, I kind of stumbled into that.”
“I was a plant,” Leonora said in her gravelly voice before Everett could stop her.
Suddenly everything made sense. There was a reason I hadn’t been burned by the bars. No one had. They were just good actors. And then I remembered Leonora mentioning that I had grabbed some teenagers off the street. I’d never told her that. She’d known that information from a different source. I just hadn’t noticed the slip-up at the time.
“So you never killed your boyfriend?” I asked her, feeling hurt. It’s never nice to be lied to, especially when your life is on the line.
“No, I killed him alright,” she told me. “That was all true. But part of my community service is to, you know…” Her eyes shifted about and it was obvious she was uncomfortable. “It’s to try to get information out of people. And, you know… check them for vulnerability.”