She bought coffee at A Shot of Depresso, where crushed beans were stirred into boiling water in massive copper vats, and the proprietor stood on a stool to ladle some into a cup. For fifty cents extra, you could get a squirt of fresh goat milk from a sleepy goat chewing on a patch of clover near a stall filled with bright green bottles marked laudanum.
Standing in line, she noticed that very few of the people in front of her paid in cash. Some seemed to be racking up a tab, giving their name and getting a note put down on a ledger. Others bartered tomatoes, a skinned rabbit, a bundle of weed tied with string, and even a handful of aspirin for their serving.
In addition to the coffee, Tana bought a giant glass of cold mint tea and two squirrel-meat burritos, which were surprisingly good. The queso was fresh made, and the red sauce was spicy and delicious, coating the stringy and kind of gamy meat. She sat in the moonlight at the edge of a clearing where a mismatched group of tables and chairs rested and ate until she felt full and was pretty sure Jameson wasn’t coming. Kids bundled in layers of clothes shared cigarettes back and forth and scrounged in their pockets for stuff to trade. An old man with white hair and red eyes sat beside a chessboard, inviting anyone with a shunt in their arm to play him for the price of dinner.
When she was done, she wiped her hands on her jeans and stood, telling herself she was going to remember to eat more than one meal today.
Then Tana made her way over to Oddments & Lost Things, knocking on the door and peering in through the grate. She heard the metal shift of the locks and then Valentina was there, ushering her inside.
“Tana, right?” she said, smiling. Today she wore a peacock blue slip dress with green flats, her hair pulled back in a high ponytail.
Tana inhaled the perfumed dust of the store and looked around with fresh eyes. She hadn’t realized how tired she’d been the day before, waking from being drugged and then exhausting herself with terror. Now, she felt angry and wide awake and a whole lot better.
“Yeah,” Tana said, pushing the stray hairs that had come out of her braid behind her ear. “You wouldn’t know where to find Jameson, would you?”
Valentina shook her head. “Sometimes he just shows up out of the blue with something he found—a sack of decent coffee beans or, once, a girl’s ring he thought might fit me—but it’s not like he comes by a lot or anything. He has a cell phone, or at least he did. He gave me the number, but I’ve never called it.”
“Can we try?” Tana asked.
Valentina opened the worn wooden drawers of the desk, sifting through the detritus. She pulled out a cell phone, the face of it cracked and the plastic scratched. When she pressed a button, though, the screen came to life. She tapped a few more keys, and Tana heard the faint sound of ringing on the other end. Valentina brought it to her ear. After a moment, she shook her head and hung up. “Voice mail.”
Tana sighed and took the phone from her, copying the number down. “He has that girlfriend at Lucien Moreau’s, so I was hoping he could help me get into the party. But if I can’t find him, at least you can help me find a really hot dress, right?”
Valentina gestured to the wall, where dozens of gowns hung, overlapping one another, silk and chiffon, beaded and spangled. “Absolutely. I hear Lucien likes bright colors that show up well on television. But are you sure you want to go tonight?”
Tana shook her head. “It has to be tonight. Why?”
“New vampires. A bunch of them.” Valentina went to a garment rack in the back and returned with three dresses on hangers—one white, one gold, and one red.
“What do you mean?” For a moment, Tana thought of Aidan and Midnight. But surely two new vampires weren’t enough to draw any notice.
Valentina dumped the clothes over a chair and pulled a heavy laptop from behind the counter. It was covered in stickers and hooked up to a weird-looking device with strips of metal. “You really didn’t see? Oh, you probably didn’t bring a laptop.”
“I didn’t bring much of anything,” Tana said, moving around the counter to watch. Valentina’s background screen came on—a picture of a bunch of friends in graduation robes. Tana looked for Valentina among them, but before she could pick her out, Valentina opened her browser.
“Here, look, this is a site that compiles the best links from all Coldtowns—and this is the page for ours.” She clicked through, bending over the screen, her ponytail spiraling over one cheek. “Springfield.”
She clicked on a link and a screen sprang to life. It was inside a theater, but someone had taken out most of the seats and there was a party going on. People got up on stage, declaiming poems and swigging from bottles, lace dripping from the cuffs of their billowing poet shirts.