Vampire High Sophomore Year

25



I didn’t see Pestilence again that week. She e-mailed me a lot, and sent me updates to the Web site every day, but there was no mention of kissing at all. She was strictly business online.

Meanwhile, Dad got word on Turk. She was in Manhattan overnight, then in Brooklyn, then in New Jersey. Then the detective lost track of her for a day, and when he located her again, she was in Baltimore.

“She’s not doing anything,” Dad said. “She just checks into a motel, gets some gas, and drives on. Maybe she’s heading for Mexico to get some more tattoos.”

Then we lost her again, and this time the detective couldn’t find her. Mom and Dad were worried, but I wasn’t. Not much. I figured the detective had tipped his hand somehow and Turk had thrown him off her trail. Wherever she was, she was probably enjoying the feeling of being followed.

As for me, I was wondering if Diaghilev had ever had to beat people off with a stick.

Once the Web site was up and linked to, a lot of kids started to find out about the center. We were getting comments from people in Connecticut and Rhode Island as well as from the towns around New Sodom. Poets and painters and performance artists and dancers were checking in and signing on. The warnings about what might happen on Halloween didn’t scare them off. Some of them sounded like they were hoping for the worst.

I made up charts of every floor to figure out who could perform where. They filled in fast.

I told Gregor at school the next day. He was okay with the whole thing, which surprised me.

“Excellent idea,” he said when I told him. “The artists will meet under the wings of the Burgundians that night. The Mercians will be shamed and stay away, or they will come and we will defend the gadje artists against them. Either way, it will be our first victory. Thank you.”

“Man,” I said. “I am just trying to get the center open.”

“I know,” Gregor said. “But sometimes, Cody Elliot, you accomplish more with your stupid ideas than the cleverest jenti. This will be one of those times.”

“Just one thing,” I said. “Let me cut the police tape. If the police show up, they might not want to arrest everybody. Maybe they’ll just take the one who let the rest in. I don’t want any confusion about who that was.”

“As you like,” Gregor said. “I think the police will be the least of our concerns. If they are wise, they will not come to Crossfield that night. There are very few jenti among them, and if we decline to be arrested, there will be not much they can do.”

Another pleasant possibility for opening night.

I went over to the classics building. My feet made the only sound in the hall. Vlad didn’t feel like a school anymore. All the paintings on the walls and the expensive architecture seemed to belong to some other time all of a sudden.

As I passed Mr. Shadwell’s room, he came to the door.

“Ah, Elliot. I was hoping to see you. Please come in,” he said.

“I have to get to class,” I said.

“I don’t believe you have a first period this morning,” Mr. Shadwell said. “No one from the math department is here. And I have something to discuss with you. Please.”

I went in. Some of the chairs had been pulled out from behind the desks and arranged in a circle by the blackboard.

Mr. Shadwell pulled out his cell and dialed. “He’s here. Come right over.”

“Uh-oh,” I thought. “The gadje’s in trouble again.”

I expected to see cops, or maybe sword-waving jenti, come through the door. But the only thing that happened was that Ms. Vukovitch and Mrs. Warrener appeared about a minute later and smiled at me.

We sat down, with Mr. Shadwell across from me and the others on my right and left.

At least I wasn’t going to get beaten, arrested, or stabbed.

Mr. Shadwell leaned forward and said, almost in a whisper, “Tell me, Elliot. Is it true that you are planning poetry readings at that mill of yours?”

Huh?

“We have a slam set up,” I said. “Some kids from Cotton Mather are going to read.”

Shadwell took a deep breath.

“As you may recall, I write epics,” he said. “I wish to offer myself as a part of the evening’s events. If you still have room.”

“Wow,” I said. “Are you serious?”

“I do not speak lightly of my poetry, Elliot,” he said.

“No, of course you don’t,” I said, remembering last year, when he’d read us long chunks of the poem he was working on. “I mean, sure, you’re in. But you know—it could get ugly.”

“Precisely, Elliot,” Mr. Shadwell said. “That is why we wish to be there.”

“All three of you?” I said. “But it’s dangerous.”

“Not all jenti approve of this”—and he used a jenti word I didn’t know but that sounded terrible—“that is going on in New Sodom. This Mercian-Burgundian rubbish. We wish to demonstrate our opposition to it. We—”

“It’s like this, gadje boy—excuse me—Master Cody,” Ms. Vukovitch said. “Some of us think your center is a real cool idea. We want to be there.”

“Burgundians and Mercians together, Cody,” Mrs. Warrener finished. “Doing things for the love of doing them.”

“Okay,” I said. “But what do you want to do?”

“As you know, Mrs. Warrener is an accomplished pianist,” Mr. Shadwell said. “She will accompany Ms. Vukovitch, who will sing that night. And she has something of her own to offer as well. An original composition.”

“Ms. Vukovitch is a singer?” I said.

“In my youth, when I was still beautiful,” Ms. Vukovitch purred, “I sang in cafés all over Europe. They used to say I made the piano smoke.”

“We don’t have a piano,” I said.

“Elliot, you’ve lived here long enough to know that things like pianos turn up where they’re needed,” Mr. Shadwell said with a little grin.

“You mean like Dumpsters?” I asked.

“No idea what you mean,” he said.

I couldn’t tell whether he was lying or not.

“But in any case, thank you, Elliot,” he said. “I look forward to Halloween this year. Very much, in fact.”

They didn’t look like heroes. Mr. Shadwell was short for a Burgundian, and bald, and maybe just a little pompous. Ms. Vukovitch looked like the hero’s girlfriend, if he was a very lucky hero. And Mrs. Warrener was as delicate as an autumn leaf. But they were heroes. I had no idea what this was costing them among the jenti, but the price had to be high.

“Thank you all,” I said. “See you on Halloween.”

I went into an empty room, took out my charts, and looked to see where I could put Mrs. Warrener and Mr. Shadwell. The piano would have to go on the ground floor somewhere, so I moved the Sixty-Minute Shakespeare Theater Company from the north wing to the third floor, next to Gregor’s place. I already had two art exhibits slotted in for the walls, but people would just have to share the space. Mr. Shadwell I put in the same second-floor space as the Daughters, and gave them alternate quarter-hours all night long. I hoped that would work.

Before I put my charts away, I looked at them again, checking everything. I had drawn them on graph paper, and had made neat, precise notes of times, places, groups, and artists. It all looked so organized. But there was more going on than I knew about, maybe more than anyone knew about.

This Halloween was going to be long on trick.