“Gross, gross, gross!”
It lowers its head and gnashes those teeth again, and Veronica army-crawls away, sliding over the polished tile. How do you kill a vampire spider? Usually she doesn’t kill spiders at all; she calls someone else to do it for her.
You’re on your own now, kid, she thinks, and flips to her feet.
But when she lands, crouched and ready to attack, the foyer is empty.
It’s just her. No spider to be seen. Veronica whips her head around, left, and right, and above her. Please don’t be above me.
There’s nothing there.
She creeps toward the stairs. Wherever it went, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not here now. All she has to do is get to the basement—
“Crap!” A leg lands in front of her, blocking her path, and Veronica falls hard on her hip. She scrambles backward as the spider moves closer, its legs making a tick-tick-tick noise as it crawls toward her, hovers above her.
It lowers its head and those red eyes, eyes within eyes, like the surface of a polished ruby gone wrong, all bulbous and leaking, watch her. They’re actually watching me, she thinks, pushing herself back until she can go no farther and smacks into the wall. “What do you want?” She yells it, as loud and harsh as she can, throwing away any attempt to be quiet and not alert the strigoi to her presence. She uses her hands to climb the wall, raise herself to her full height, and stand tall. “What do you want from me, huh? Come on! Do your worst!”
The spider opens its mouth, and for a long endless second Veronica can see straight inside it. The raw, glowing red of the cavernous opening, dripping with viscous white liquid, and oozing blood from between its sharp teeth.
It’s only when she feels something wrapping tight and sticky around her left ankle that she manages to force her gaze away. Down to her leg, where there’s a white ribbon twisting around her skin, trailing up and away to the beast’s underbelly.
Silk.
Spider silk, she realizes, and oh crap, she’s about to be trapped in its web. Trussed up like a delicacy, ready to be consumed.
Veronica feels the tug at her ankle as the silk tightens and the spider begins to reel her in, and she begins to slide across the shiny floor. “No, no, no,” she says, and she tries to grab on to the wall, her nails ripping through the obscenely expensive wallpaper and then catching on the antique baroque picture frame that hangs in the entrance.
Picture frame.
She digs her nails into the frame and wrenches it off the wall. Sorry, ancestors, she thinks as she flips the family portrait over and braces herself. She just about still has traction on the floor, and with her unbound foot she pushes off and up, bringing the painting down on the creature’s head.
She expects the sound of the canvas ripping, tearing, and she expects the jarring impact of it hitting the spider, and she expects to be yanked back by the tether at her ankle but—
None of it comes.
Veronica brings the painting down and it keeps coming down, smashing onto the floor, the frame splitting in two as she falls flat on her front this time, her chin cracking on the tile.
“Ah!” She gasps as one of her fangs slices right through her bottom lip, the heat of it searing, and in a panic she turns over, throwing her hand out for a shard of the picture frame, a weapon against the creature.
But it’s gone, again, and Veronica lets her arm fall to the floor as she breathes heavily. It’s not real, she thinks, and it’s just something she’s telling herself—but then it snaps into place and she stares, wide-eyed, at the gilded ceiling above her. “It’s not real,” she says out loud, and smacks the floor, making a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry. “It’s not real.”
These strigoi and their dizzying mind tricks.
Veronica’s just spent too much time and too much energy fighting a phantom vampire spider, an absolute figment of her imagination.
She groans and rolls over, gets to her feet. No spider silk clinging hot and wet to her ankle; no creature barring her way.
A wipe to her face leaves a slash of scarlet across her forearm, and Veronica swallows her own blood and the sour taste of bile as she rolls her shoulders back. You’re gonna need to try harder than that, she thinks, and marches up the stairs.
VERONICA SLIPS INTO her father’s study, clicking the door shut behind her. She pauses for a second, eyes closed as she leans against the weathered wood and breathes.
“Veronica.”
Her eyes snap open.
No effin’ way. “Daddy?”
Her father’s sitting behind his desk, swirling something clear in one of his heavy crystal tumblers. He sighs, a hand rubbing at his temples. “Good lord,” he says. “What are you wearing?”
“Daddy,” Veronica says, moving forward. “I don’t under—”
“You look a complete mess,” he says sharply. “For god’s sake, with all the time you spend running around and flashing my credit cards, couldn’t you have found something a little classier to wear? You’re a Lodge, after all. I have to be seen in public with you. I can’t have you dressing like this. People will talk.”
Veronica looks down at her black dress, a little worse for wear after the beginning of the night’s activities but still just a dress, like a dozen others she’s worn to formal events. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. One, this is a perfectly fine dress, and two—I’ll wear what I want!”
Her father shakes his head as he rises to his feet. “That’s your problem, Veronica,” he says. “You always want to do what you want. Wear what you want, talk how you want, hang out with whomever you want. It’s really very unbecoming.”
“Unbecoming?” Veronica’s mouth hangs open. “Are you kidding me?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” her father says, slapping a hand to his forehead. “I forgot that word might be too complex for you. Here, let me say it in a simple way that you might understand: You are a pain in the ass.”
“Oh, don’t I know it,” a voice says, and Archie melts out of the shadows.
Veronica scrubs at her eyes. “You’re not here,” she says to Archie. “You’re back at the hotel, you’re not here, this isn’t real.”
Archie and her father exchange glances, and then break into loud, cruel laughter. Archie wipes a tear from his eye. “Ronnie,” he says. “You really are incapable of seeing the truth even when it’s right in front of you, aren’t you?”
“Thank you for bringing her to me,” Hiram says. He pulls a wad of cash from his pants pocket and licks his thumb, then begins counting it out. “Your payment, for your very last job.”
Archie strolls over to collect the money. “You’re lucky,” he says. “I was about to raise my prices. Spending all that time with her?” He whistles. “Should’ve started charging you double months ago.”
Veronica watches as her father passes the stack of cash to Archie. “I don’t understand,” she says. In her head, a voice reminds her: This isn’t real. This is a trick, an illusion. This isn’t real.
But it feels real enough, and when she stumbles forward to rip the money out of Archie’s hand, it’s real enough: the slip of the notes, the warmth of Archie’s fingers as they brush hers.
“Stop it,” she says. “What are you doing?”
Her father’s eyes narrow. “I’m paying the boy for his services,” he says. “Like I have to pay every single one of your so-called friends. What? Did you think they were hanging out with you because they truly liked you?” He leans over the desk, cold eyes fixed on his daughter. “Pathetic. Who could ever like you, Veronica? You’re a self-obsessed, spoiled, stupid little brat.”
It’s not real it’s not real it’s not—
Her father’s words—the illusion’s words, whatever—slice deep into her and lodge themselves inside her bones. Stupid and spoiled and self-obsessed, yes: That’s what she’s always feared she is.
“—you going to cry now?” Archie’s taunt reaches her ears. “That’s what you always do, isn’t it, Ronnie?
Turn on the tears when you don’t get your way, or when someone says something you don’t want to hear. God, you’re a sad excuse for a girl.”
“And to think she believed you wanted to date her,” her father says.
Veronica presses her hands over her ears, so she can only hear every other word they’re saying. Stupid—worthless—immature— vapid—ugly—
“Look at you,” Archie says. “Who would ever love you?”
“As if anyone ever could love you,” her father says.
Veronica is crying, she can feel the hot tears streaking down her face, but she won’t give them the satisfaction of wiping her face clean. Instead, she reaches for the door handle and yanks it open. “I don’t care if nobody ever loves me,” she says, raspy and low. “I love me. You two were lucky I ever even acknowledged your existence.”
She slams the door shut on their raucous laughter and breaks into a run.
THE HALLS move around her.
Veronica’s trying to find her way to the basement, and it should be easy, she should know where she’s going, but every time she turns a corner the way before her is not the way she wanted, not the place she thought she would be. And no matter how hard she tries to focus, the house seems to slip from place to place, stripes sliding down the walls and carpet crawling up onto the ceiling.
It’s just the strigoi, she tells herself. They’re just playing tricks on me.
But it doesn’t matter how many times she reminds herself of the truth. The house still shifts beyond her control, and she can still feel the spider’s sticky web on her skin, and she can still hear her father and Archie calling her a pathetic, stupid little brat.
“I don’t have time for this,” Veronica says, unsure whether she’s speaking to the strigoi or to herself. “I have to finish this, for my friends—I have to put an end to this.”
She’s sweating as she runs through the never-ending halls, but then she turns a corner and look—her bedroom door. There, with the ornate V.L. stenciled in gold on the doorknob.
She’s never been so relieved to see her bedroom in her life.
Veronica heads straight for it, keeping her eyes locked on her destination, determined not to let it slip out of her grasp. She reaches the door and sighs in relief, twisting the knob and opening it.
But when she steps inside, everything has shifted again.
Inside is not her bedroom. It’s an entirely foreign room, although beautiful: wide windows looking out onto treetops, a four-poster canopy bed, and a gorgeous gilded mirror stretching from floor to ceiling, showing the reflection of a white woman in an ivory gown, her blond hair falling in delicate curls to her shoulder blades.
“Oh,” Veronica says, a small noise of surprise. “I’m sorry, I— Betty?”
The woman in the gown turns and clasps her hands to her chest. “V! There you are,” she says. “Oh my goodness, you’re still not dressed? Listen, I know you’re just being a good maid of honor and handling whatever crises are happening so that I don’t have to deal with them, but come on, we have to get you ready. You can’t walk down the aisle in that!”
It is Betty standing before Veronica. She looks older, maybe, but it’s definitely Betty there in a wedding dress, veil hanging off the end of the bed; she looks breathtaking, but Veronica shakes her head. “Maid of honor?”
“I know,” Betty says, smoothing her hands down the silk skirt of her wedding gown. “Doesn’t it seem like just yesterday that we were fighting over Archie? And now I’m marrying him. Isn’t it wild? I’m so glad you finally admitted that you weren’t good enough for him and let him be with the girl he really wanted all along.”
“You’re—” Veronica glances around the room, trying to get her bearings, but of course she can’t, because of course this room doesn’t belong here. She doesn’t belong here, Betty doesn’t belong here. “You’re marrying Archie?”
Betty smiles at her, her signature bright, sincere, glowing Betty Cooper smile. “Of course I am, V. What? Did you think I would have second thoughts?” Her smile turns sharper. “Is that what you wanted? Is that why you’re not dressed? You thought I wasn’t going to go through with it, or you thought he was going to change his mind and choose you instead?”
“No, Betty! I—”
“I should have known you were lying,” Betty says, and she bares her teeth and begins to run at Veronica, her eyes wild. “He loves me! He loves me, and he’ll never love you! You’re a lying piece of—”
Veronica slams the door shut and holds it closed tight as the Betty behind the door hammers on it, the force of her hits vibrating through the wood and into Veronica’s spine.
Then they stop, a sudden absence of sound and sensation.
Of course they stopped. It was never really happening.
Veronica sags against the door and lets out a wild yell, a noise that holds all her anger and deep-down self-loathing and fear. “Is that all you have?” she calls out into the silent dark. “You think that’s enough to scare me off? You think I’m so afraid of you? You can’t even come out here and face me. You’re hiding away trying to trick me out of finding you, but I don’t go down so easily. So fine, keep it coming! I can do this all night!”
The echo of her voice replays down the hallway for longer than is possible, the cracked yell coming back to her over and over.
It’s not true, is it? She can’t do this all night. She has limited time to find the strigoi before her friends won’t be able to hold off all the newly turned Riverdale vampires any longer.
I shouldn’t have left them there, she thinks. Why did I leave them? Betty, and Cheryl, and Archie and Dilton—if they die, it’s all on me. Their blood, their deaths, it’ll all be on me.
A laugh carries down the stairs.
Veronica’s head snaps to the sound, and she peels herself off the door. Follow it? It could be the strigoi.
Or it could be another trick, another illusion.
Only one way to find out.
Veronica climbs the stairs, stairs she finds suddenly right in front of her, as if they’ve been there all along, and she climbs and she climbs and she comes to a door. She puts her hand on the door and feels the warmth from behind it. Not the basement, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe this is where the strigoi has chosen to hide.
She turns the handle slowly and opens the door.
CHERYL’S BEEN TREADING water for what feels like hours, and she’s beginning to tire.
“How much longer?” Betty says, her voice shaking with the effort of staying afloat.
Cheryl looks up at the vampires gathered, watching them. Waiting. “We’ll be okay,” she says, although she can barely feel her legs anymore, and she’s beginning to struggle to stay above the surface. “Veronica’s going to do it, you’ll see. And then we can get out of here.”
“Uh …” Dilton sounds alarmed. “Not to put a hole in that plan, Cheryl, but—does it seem like the water’s getting lower to anyone else?”
“What?” Cheryl’s teeth click together as she scans the edge of the water. No. Dilton’s wrong. He’s just seeing things, he’s just panicking—
Her toe scrapes the bottom of the pool.
Oh.
She couldn’t do that before. She couldn’t reach the bottom of the pool before, and Cheryl’s torn between relief and a new fear.
Relief: She can put her feet down now, and give herself a break.
Fear: Oh god oh god—
Cheryl looks at the others. “The water’s going down,” she says. “Someone’s draining the pool.”
Archie looks so pale he could be dead, and maybe he will be soon. Cheryl can’t stop herself from thinking it. They’ll all be dead if the pool completely empties. This holy water dip is the only barrier between them and the hungry moroi, who are no longer staring blankly. No: They’re beginning to smile now, some of them, others reaching out toward their trapped prey, as if to say, It won’t be long now.
“What do we do when it’s empty?” Archie says.
Cheryl feels her feet find the floor of the pool once more, and she swallows the wave of water that laps over her mouth. “Yes,” she says, unable to keep the tremble out of her words. “She’s going to do it.”
We’re running out of time, V. I need you to do this.
“DARLING.” A DARK-HAIRED white man in a black suit takes Veronica by the elbow and kisses her on the cheek. “There you are. Carolyn’s been waiting to meet you.”
Veronica blinks at the scene before her. Some kind of cocktail party, guests milling in a low-lit room while servers pass out tiny canapés and shiny drinks in delicate glasses. “Carolyn?”
The man leans close again, as if kissing her other cheek, but what he actually does is speak directly into her ear, a cold harsh whisper that’s a thousand miles away from the warm tone he was just using. “Yes, Carolyn Heatherton, Michael Heatherton’s wife. Don’t tell me you’re drunk already. Go over there and talk to her and, for the love of god, don’t embarrass me.”
He pushes Veronica in the direction of a tall dark-skinned woman in a yellow silk dress that seems to move with the light. Talk to her? Veronica thinks. About what? What is this party for, and who is that man?
Her questions are answered a second later, when she sees the picture blown up to almost comical proportions and propped up near the entrance of the room. It’s a picture of her, and that man, and a small dark-haired child, and a matching black poodle. Mr. and Mrs. Porter welcome you to tonight’s fundraiser, it reads beneath the image, and below that, in large red and blue letters, Jasper Porter for Congress.
Veronica scans the room and a sick feeling rises in her.
This is it, isn’t it? Her future.
Her society-wife future, where she’s no more than a prop for a husband who doesn’t love her at all—just an actor costarring in the play of a political campaign.
Interview with the Vixen Page 19