He nodded. “How about the other one?”
She started to answer, but then she thought of the crumpled piece of paper in her pocket and what Gavriel had said before they were stopped by the first guard. Tell them you know me. That I’m like you, one of you. From the party. Of course. He was hiding in plain sight—that’s why he’d come with them, why he was helping them, because he was going to slip into Coldtown as just some newly turned vampire kid. He didn’t want anyone to know that he was the murderous legend from the Père-Lachaise Cemetery.
The image of him laughing, covered in blood, came to her again, unbidden, along with the way he’d grinned at her in front of the gate guards. Maybe killing everyone in this building was his idea of fun, but he’d come to Coldtown for some purpose. Some purpose that required that no one knew he was coming.
“Gavriel? He’s some private school kid who was at the party, got infected, drank some of my blood and turned. We didn’t know where else to go, so I drove them both down here.”
“It was their idea to turn themselves in?”
Tana nodded. “They don’t want to hurt anyone.” She wondered if she might be laying it on a little thick.
“And how about Jennifer and Jack Gan? They say they caught a ride with you from the Last Stop rest area.”
Tana smiled involuntarily at their names. They were just so… regular, so exactly the kind of names Midnight would despise. Knowing them felt like having a powerful secret.
“That’s right,” she said. “They seemed nice, and they have some message board connections, so they offered to help us to find a place to stay inside if I drove them.”
“And you’re making the same stupid mistake they are.” The guard frowned. “Kid, you’re in shock. You’ve got survivor’s guilt in spades. You shouldn’t be making any kind of big decisions right now. Why don’t we call your parents and get them to come and get you? You can think about going into Coldtown later, if that’s what you really want.”
“I’m getting a marker, aren’t I?” Tana held her chin up. “It’s not like I can’t get out again.”
“Your friends are dead. I get it. I saw the pictures. It must have been awful. But those things out there—they might remember being human and they might ape being human, but they’re not human anymore. It’s supposed to be quarantine in there, but it’s closer to a zoo. Even with the marker, you’d have to take a blood test to be allowed to exit. No one infected leaves, under no circumstances. No infected and no leeches get out. Ever. Even with a marker. And there are lots of folks big enough and mean enough to jump you for that marker, too. There’s desperate people in there.”
“I know,” Tana said.
He cleared his throat, looking sad. “I got a daughter your age. Tell me why you want to go in. Give me one good reason and I’ll stop giving you shit.”
I’m probably infected, she thought. That would shut him up. But she didn’t want to see the way he’d look at her once she said those words, as though she were already dead.
She took a deep breath. “It’s not so much that I want to go,” Tana said, trying to string together words that could tell some version of the truth, an honest answer she hadn’t even given herself. “No, that’s not right. There’s a part of me that does. My mom got bitten and here I am, following the path of what would have happened if she’d turned. I’m curious. I want to see.” She pulled up her sleeve, showing him the scar on her arm, the mottled and discolored skin, the uneven flesh. “I guess that now that I’m here, I feel like I’ve been heading this way for a long time without knowing it.”
And that was all true. It wasn’t the whole story, but she hoped that it was enough to convince him that he couldn’t talk her out of going.
“Wait here,” the man said after a long moment. He stood up and went out the door, closing it hard behind him. She wondered if that was her psych evaluation. She’d heard something about one, about how you had to be sane enough to be able to say where you were going and why for the authorities to let you into a Coldtown. Back in the old days you had to have a driver’s license—suspended was okay—or a state-issued ID card saying you were over sixteen, but not anymore.
They made it easier and easier to give up your life so your neighbors could have the illusion of safety.
Tana sat in the little room, looked at her phone, and watched the minutes tick closer to dawn.
When the door opened, the gray-haired clerk from the front office was behind it.
“You carrying any contraband?” she asked, entering the room and patting Tana down the way airport security did if you set off the metal detector.