A Taste Of The Nightlife Part 26

What if I did tell him what really happened? What would he think of me then? Maybe I should do it. Maybe after he knew the whole story, he'd give up this insane idea that he could take care of me. That'd be good. He could just walk away before one of us really did something stupid.

The problem was, even though I opened my mouth, I had no idea where to begin. I'd never told this story. There had never been anybody I could even consider telling.

"My parents live in Arizona," I said.

"You told me that."

"They moved there after Chet was . . . turned. It was my father's idea. And you were right. He wanted to go someplace really sunny. And Mom wouldn't leave Dad, so she went I see them at Christmas. Chet e-mails Mom." At least, I thought he did. "Anyway, before they left, Mom said to me, 'You have to look after him now.' "

"Why you?"

"There's no one else." That wasn't what I wanted to say. That had nothing to do with it. Well, a little to do with it. But this wasn't the important part, the part I hadn't been able to tell Anatole, or anyone else.

"Why can't Chet take care of himself?"

I scrubbed my hands across my face. The words had all jammed together inside my brain, and I couldn't move any of them.

"Charlotte . . . how was Chet turned?"

A few words fell out of the brain jam. They weren't the right ones yet, but they were a start.

"We grew up in Buffalo. I was the strange one. Chet was the athletic one."

"Football or hockey?"

I almost smiled. Those were the only two sports that meant anything on that side of the state. "Football. High school champion and Hollywood-level handsome. By the time he was seventeen, he was king of the world. Colleges were lining up to recruit him." Memories tumbled over each other; of misty autumn drizzle cold against my cheeks; the smells of charcoal and roasting peppers from my king-sized hibachi; the harsh glare of the fluorescents next to the open side of the rust-bucket Vanagon I'd bought for five hundred bucks. I sold sandwiches, bratwursts and pocket pies out of that van during the games, and listened to the crowd shouting my brother's name. "Have you ever . . . have you ever seen what happens to a topflight athlete when it's time to go to college?"

"I've heard stories."

"They're all true. I was living at home then, saving my money for culinary school. When the recruiters came . . . it was crazy." All those bluff, hardy men sitting in the living room, with their beefy hands and their ties in the school colors, talking about the excellence of their universities' academics, all the while checking out Chet like they'd check out some chick in a bar, wondering how he'd perform once they got their hands on him. "The money was just the start of it. They'd take us to campus and keep me and my parents busy with the tours and shopping and stuff, while they took him over to 'take a look at the facilities,' and 'meet the players.'"

"Parties?" asked Brendan.

I nodded. "And girls. And booze, and pot. I smelled it on him." My hands shook like they didn't want to let go of all this truth. "I tried to say something. I swear to G.o.d, I tried. But my parents wouldn't listen. They thought I was jealous because my brother was actually going to be successful instead of working in a diner. I tried to talk to Chet, but what could I say? Everything he'd ever wanted was being handed to him, and he knew he was king of the world, so of course he could handle it."

"And he met his nightblood sire at one of the parties?"

"Melody Linkowski." Tall enough to look down on me, she had that flat, willowy build that looked good in spaghetti-strap dresses with swishy ruffled skirts. Her chestnut hair curled into long ringlets around her skinny white shoulders, and her coffee brown eyes hadn't had time to grow old yet.

"She was all of sixteen when she turned. She cruised the campus parties, looking for meals. There were so many girls at the football parties, wo'd notice one more? Chet charmed her. He could always charm anybody, even Dad. And she . . . He told me she'd decided they were soul mates. He laughed about it." My words faltered. "She was a sixteen-year-old vampire girl. She thought she'd find a human to be her true love, just like . . ." Just like in that stupid, stupid movie.

"When did you find out Chet was feeding her?"

We were getting closer.

"I saw the bite marks. Chet decided to go to SUNY Buffalo, and she came up from Alabama to be with him. She started sharing blood with him during his freshman year, and of course he got stronger, didn't need sleep, healed faster. . . ." My whole body trembled now. We were almost there. "I was at school by then, and I'd gotten a part-time gig in the city with a caterer. I was home only some of the time. I tried to get him to give her up. I begged. I threatened. He told me he could handle it. He had it all under control. She loved him. She'd do anything he said. She was just a kid, it was no big deal."

"And then he didn't make it back to the dorm one night and your parents got a phone call."

"She said she loved him. She said they were soul mates, like in Midnight Moon, and now they'd be together always . . . and I couldn't . . . I couldn't . . ." I couldn't let her get away with it. She'd taken his life. She'd made him into one of her kind because he was too stupid to see what she really was, and I hadn't stopped her. Chet thought he'd be king of the world forever because Melody Baby had put the bite on him. I was so angry, I could have staked them both. Maybe that would have been better.

"Charlotte, what did you do?"

Chet had thrown his whole life away because instead of listening, he'd let himself be snowed by a vampire named Melody, for G.o.d's sake.

I sat down, hoping that would still some of my tremors. Wrong again.

"You ever hear of Be Positive?" I asked.

"That's the network for friends and relatives of vampires?"

"They were having this big fund-raising banquet. I was on the catering team. This was five years ago."

I watched reality slowly rearranging itself in Brendan's head. Five years ago. He was putting it together with the billboards and posters all over town. With the endless replays of the last interviews and video clips on FlashNews. It was one of those things you couldn't miss, even if you wanted to. "Five years ago Joshua Blake disappeared after an appearance at a Be Positive banquet. . . ."

"Dinner dance. Seven-course meal, with eight kinds of hors d'oeuvres and a plated dessert."

Brendan's mouth opened, and closed, and opened. "You got Chet's sire into the banquet," he breathed. "You got a teenaged fan-girl vampire into a party with the reigning angst-actor of his day."

"Chet told me she'd seen Midnight Moon a million times. She'd gone on and on about how she and Chet were going to be just like Trent and Clarinda in the movie. She was too stupid, too permanently sixteen, to know she was deluding herself." So I was going to prove that too. In the face of all Chet's denials and protestations through his brand-new fangs, I was going to prove to him that I was right.

"I told her about the party, and where to meet me." The back alle, her eager, hungry eyes, the wad of bills. "We slipped the guy on the door fifty to take a smoke break while I walked her through the kitchen in a borrowed uniform."

"Joshua Blake vanished." It had been all the media could talk about for months. The rumors were nonstop. His body had been found in Chicago. Richard Gere had smuggled him out to a monastery in Tibet. He'd been spotted with Elvis at that Burger King in Kalamazoo.

"Melody Linkowski vanished too." Not that anybody else cared. But Chet never heard from her again. So much for the eternal bond between sire and vamp. "They set up house on a ranch outside Duluth."

"How do you know?"

"They sent me a thank-you card." Which included a gush about how Joshua was happy to retire. Now that he was the star of Melody's life he didn't need to be any other kind. Which just goes to show Chet wasn't the only king of the world taken in by a declaration of eternal love from the undead waif. I had been right, totally and completely right. Chet should have listened to me, and now he knew it.

The problem was, it hadn't made anything better.

"I didn't know how much he'd miss her. I didn't know he'd never grow up . . . never grow out of being that stupid football-hero kid. I didn't know it was going to be forever." Those last words came out as a whisper. "He's got n.o.body left but me, Brendan, and it's my fault."

Brendan sat next to me. I thought-I hoped-he'd put his arm around me. But he didn't. He just rubbed his hands together.

So I was right again. Now that he knew what I'd really done, it was too much for him to handle. I was way too far gone to be worth taking care of.

Batting a thousand was supposed to feel better than this.

"You can't go up to Connecticut on your own," Brendan said without looking at me.

"You've got to get to Margot and Ian," I reminded him. "Keep your family from hurting themselves worse." Don't screw up, like me.

"At least let me get you on the train."

I didn't have the strength to protest. We could have ourselves a decent good-bye scene. "Okay."

And that was that. A call to housekeeping produced my dry-cleaned clothes. While I climbed back into T-s.h.i.+rt, jacket and black slacks, Brendan Googled departures from Grand Central Station and found out there was an 11:22 train we just had time to make.

His car drove us to the station. We didn't talk on the way. I was back to my real life now, and he had no place in it. No need to remind either one of us of that. We crossed the great hall of Grand Central under the dome with its sparkling constellations. I kept having these visions of Linus O'Grady and his P-Squad charging past the information booth and announcing that I was under arrest for . . . something.

But Little Linus didn't appear. I bought my ticket and Brendan walked me down to the platform to stand beside the battered red-and-blue-striped Amtrak train.

"You'll call and let me know you got in okay?"

"Yes." He was too tall for Humphrey Bogart and I was too short for Ingrid Bergman, but our problems still managed not to amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

"This isn't over, Charlotte."

Yes it is. "We'll talk when I get back with Chet."

He leaned in and I closed my eyes. The second kiss surprised me, and it was every bit as good as the first. If it had gone on a second longer I would have started crying all over again.

Brendan finished the kiss, and I stood there for a moment, seeing my hand on his chest but not remembering when I put it there.

"Be careful," he said.

"You too." I turned away, because I knew I wasn't going to be able to force "good-bye" out of my mouth.

I climbed aboard the train and made my way forward, where I wouldn't have to watch him getting smaller when the train pulled out. The car wasn't even half full. People settled down to sleep, or worked on their laptops or thumbed their BlackBerries. I pa.s.sed rows of empty seats, but none of them looked right. I crossed into the next car, and the one after that, all the way to the front, until there was nowhere else to go.

"h.e.l.lo, Chef C."

My head jerked up. There in the very front quartet of seats waited Taylor Watts, with Tommy Jones the alley vamp beside him.

I whirled around in time to see Julie loom up behind me and grin.

"Now, you just hold still, Charlotte Caine."

Then the world went black.

24.

Charlotte.

Now you just hold still, Charlotte Cain. That laughing command blocked out every other thought. There was nothing in my head but her eyes and that laugh. Just hold still.

Charlotte, look at me. There was another voice. Another scary voice right inside my head with the laughter. This was bad. Really bad. I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't even do that.

Hold still. Hold still.

You can move, Charlotte, said that other voice. It was familiar. I could almost recognize it. I wanted to recognize it. It's all right. Just look at me.

But he couldn't hear the laughter. He couldn't see the eyes. I can't.

You can. Look at me.

No, please. Don't make me. She'd be angry. She'd hurt me. She was right inside my head and she'd split me open if I so much as . . .

She will not harm you, Charlotte. I will not permit it. Look at me.

I looked. He had green eyes. I knew them. I knew him. I'd think of his name in a minute. It was in my mind, way back behind the orders and the fear.

"You are free, Charlotte Caine. You need obey no one. You are free."

Something snapped, and the fear and the laughter fell away.

Then everything went black again.

"Charlotte."

My head hurt. Migraine-level hurt. My throat was dry and my tongue felt like old leather as I cursed. Then I realized my eyes had opened, but I was in.

"Charlotte?" a man's voice said from somewhere to my right.

I s.h.i.+vered and groaned, cursed some more, and sat up. "Who the h.e.l.l . . . ?" I croaked, but consciousness settled in before I finished the question. "Anatole?"

"Unfortunately. Are you all right?"

"Mostly. I think." I rubbed my hands together and tried to think how I'd gotten into this cold, dark place. I remembered the train, Taylor Watts, and Julie and Tommy the hench vamps. (Or would they be minions? Did henches and minions have separate unions?) Then . . . nothing except Julie's eyes and I couldn't move and . . . and . . .

I'd been whammied. She'd ordered me not to move, and I hadn't, until Anatole freed me. His was the other voice. Anatole Sevarin had followed Julie Vamplette inside my head.

I sat there in the dark and decided I wasn't going to think about that right now.

"Can you see where we are?" I asked instead.

"I believe we may be in a restaurant walk-in."

"How . . . ironic."

"Our captors showing their sense of humor. The front door is directly behind you. I regret I cannot stand up."

"Oh. Okay. Hang on." I turned and pushed myself onto my knees. The floor was ice cold underneath me. I rubbed my hands together and blew on them, and groped out around me. My left hand found splintering wood and brushed something ruffled. I rubbed the ruffled something and my fingertips identified lettuce leaves. Bibb lettuce if I had to guess. Behind that was a wire shelf. I grabbed the upright support and pulled myself to my feet. Dizziness washed over me. Pins and needles danced up my s.h.i.+ns, but I stayed standing. With my left hand resting on the shelves, I shuffled forward.

"I promise you, Charlotte, the next time you and I are alone in the dark, I will arrange for the circ.u.mstances to be far more pleasant."

I ignored this, as much as you could ignore a vampire metaphorically whistling past the graveyard. My searching fingers brushed a thick plastic flap. Bingo. Those flaps hang over the entrance to a walk-in to help keep the temperature inside stable even while people are going in and out through the course of a dinner s.h.i.+ft. I had just found either the walk-in's front door or a door to the freezer at the back. I rattled the handle. Locked. No surprise there. It also meant this was probably the front door, which was good news. Walk-ins are not like your fridge at home. The door does not control the light. There would be a switch. I skimmed my hands up and down the wall until I felt it, squeezed my eyes shut and flipped it on. My eyelids turned dark red. I counted ten and slowly opened my eyes.

Yep, walk-in. The wire shelves were crowded with plastic bins of various sizes. White five-gallon buckets were stacked on the floor along with wooden crates and cardboard boxes of fresh produce, and blue Rubbermaid tubs of onions and potatoes. Oh, and Anatole Sevarin lying on his side with his hands cuffed behind him. The tattered remains of what had been a black sack hung around his neck.