The Coldest Girl in Coldtown Read online

CHAPTER 20

  Death gives us sleep, eternal youth, and immortality.

  -Jean Paul Richter

  The Monday morning after Tana went missing, Pearl woke up early. Her father was at the kitchen table, head pillowed on his hands, sleeping in the same clothes he'd worn the night before. A half-finished coffee rested next to him, a filmy ring formed around the inside of the mug.

  Most days on summer vacation, she'd gone over to a friend's house to swim in their pool, or shop for cheap earrings at the mall, or imitate dance moves from YouTube videos, but today she didn't want to go anywhere. Her stomach felt sour with nerves.

  She poured herself a bowl of Cheerios and added milk. Carrying it into the living room, she set it down on the coffee table and switched on the TV from the couch, flicking through channels until she came to a show she recognized-Hemlok: Vampire Bounty Hunter.

  All the neighborhood kids had been super into Hemlok when they were younger. For the last three whole summers, Pearl had played bounty hunters and vampires with them, running through backyards with a branch in her hand, holding it up like a stake. She'd even dressed up like Hemlok one Halloween, although Mike Chavez told her that it wasn't a good costume for a girl. But in the last year, Hemlok had been on at the same time as another show that she liked better, so she hadn't seen any of the new episodes. And this summer, boys and girls didn't play with each other anyway.

  But right then, the familiarity of the show was reassuring, so she left it on.

  "The thing about vampires," Hemlok said from his equipment room, strapping stakes carved from rosewood and hawthorn onto a bandolier, their tips capped with plastic so they didn't go blunt during travel. "They're all messed up in the head. They're hungry all the time. We gotta think like they do, think like predators, and outsmart them at their own game. They might be faster and stronger, but we're still human, and that's what makes us better, that's what counts. "

  The show cut to him sitting in his truck with his assistant, Jeana. She was drinking from a Big Gulp, in white jeans and a cutoff shirt studded with rhinestones, her hair teased so big that it hit the roof. They were parked in front of a strip club, loud music pumping from the speakers. A rerun, Pearl realized; an okay one, but not supergreat.

  "We think we've spotted her inside that building," Jeana said, in her exaggerated camera-friendly whisper. "There's a door around back, so we're going to have to get one of us on either side of the building and see if we can't flush her out. "

  Before he started vampire hunting, Hemlok used to be a wrestler. He quit (although some people say he was thrown out of the league) after an opponent died in the ring. Pearl knew all this from the Hemlok fan club she'd joined when she was nine, around the same time that Hemlok started going on talk shows and telling the story, weeping as he explained that the death of that man was the moment he realized he needed to change his life.

  Looking at the screen, Pearl wondered for the first time if the vampire was scared.

  Before, she'd always figured that good vampires went to one of the Coldtowns or someplace they were supposed to be and that bad vampires stayed behind to attack people. But now that it was Aidan, who'd always been nice to her, and her big sister, Tana, out in the world, sick or newly turned, she couldn't think of things that way anymore.

  Of course, there were bad vampires like the ones who killed those kids in Tana's class. Maybe the vampire that Hemlok was hunting was like that. But how could he tell?

  Back on the show, Hemlok was getting extra supplies out of the back of his truck.

  "There's three ways to kill a vampire and be sure it's dead," Hemlok said. "You put wood through its heart, you set it on fire, or you chop off its head. Anything else is fighting a gunslinger with an open-handed slap. 'Course some people stand by bleeding them out, but to me, that's like a silver nail in the head, might hold them for a while, but ain't permanent. "

  "And don't forget sunlight, baby," said Jeana, zipping herself into a chain mail shark suit. "Sunlight sure kills 'em. "

  He rolled his eyes. This was a big part of the show, the relationship between the two of them. "Nobody looking to kill a vampire is going to be like, oh yeah, I guess I better get out some sunlight. That's no weapon. "

  "It kills 'em. " She tossed her hair. "That's all I'm saying. Kills 'em good. "

  He grunted and picked up a clear bottle, screwing off the top. "Now some of you been asking about which holy waters or wild rose waters to use on stakes or why I use holy water at all, since there's been a whole bunch of hubbub about how it doesn't really do anything. Well, first of all, I always use oil, not water, 'cause it seeps into the wood better and stays there. And I use rose oil that's been blessed, so that's double duty.

  "And for all you people who say holy whatever doesn't help taking down vamps, I'm out here in the field-so who are you going to believe, me or some scientists?"

  Leaving that question hanging in the air, he hefted up a giant crossbow, its body carved into a crucifix. "Now, another common viewer question is which of my weapons is my favorite. " A wooden stake sat cocked and ready in place of a quarrel. "That's this baby. She can drop a vampire from thirty feet. "

  "It's time to start killing," Jeana said, tapping a white ceramic watch.

  He smiled at the camera. "Okay, let's roll. "

  Pearl felt along the couch for the controller. They were almost to the part where the vampire came out from the bar. There was a chase after that, and Jeana almost got bit on the arm, but her chain bodysuit protected her. Hemlok wound up shooting the vampire with the crossbow and sawing off her head for the bounty.

  Pearl didn't want to see it. Not right then, after all the stuff the police had said about her sister, not when her dad had come back from the hardware store with wild rose vines for the lintels and a big blowtorch he didn't explain. She clicked off the television and opened her laptop, booting up the feed for Lucien Moreau's party.

  Her dad hated that she watched stuff like this, where the vampires weren't portrayed like villains, but today she didn't care.

  She brought another spoonful of cereal to her mouth as the inside of his mansion came on the screen. It looked like something out of a fairy tale, with its gold damask wallpaper and candles on sconces jutting out from the walls. Elisabet, Lucien's consort, was on the screen, her beautiful dark hair pulled back into a chignon and the front of her dress wet with blood. Her red lipstick made her fangs seem even brighter when she smiled. Lucien Moreau, elegantly dressed in cream, his hair like spun gold, caught her up in his arms, whirling her around. His mouth was stained equally bright when he brought it to hers.

  Pearl smiled.

  That was where her sister was going. Tana was going to live like that, like a princess in a faraway city. Maybe, someday, Pearl could even join her. And once she did, she just knew that everything would be perfect forever.