The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.



-Voltaire



Tana made her way dizzily down the hallway, her heartbeat loud in her ears, the scent of her own blood in her nose, a metallic taste in her mouth. Sounds came from rooms below as the household woke, crawling from their chambers, ravenous, the night stretching out in front of them with its glittering carpet of stars.



Tana didn't want to be creeping down the hall alone, didn't want to be sneaking out of Lucien's terrifying manor without saying one last good-bye to Gavriel, but there was no safe way to say anything without being overheard. Better to leave him with the memory of his teeth against her throat and her teeth on his wrist. Better to leave him with the memory of their being a pair of monsters, wrapped in each other's arms.



And after tonight-after tonight, she'd have to chain herself up behind a sturdy door and hope for the best. Self-quarantine was dangerous, and, even without the borrowed trouble of an excess of vampire blood chilling her veins, there was a good chance she wouldn't survive.



You're not even really human anymore, some part of her sneered, sounding a lot like Winter's voice. Give it up. Just die already. It'll be just like the dream you had-blood and forests and snow, girls with raven's wing hair and rose red lips and sharp teeth as white as milk.



It worried her that it had gotten harder and harder to remember what it felt like to live her old life, even though she'd been living it mere days ago. Every memory had drowned in a sea of red.



She opened the door to Elisabet's bedroom, intent on grabbing her phone and cash, then stopped abruptly when she saw Marisol waiting for her. The vampire was sitting on the high bed, one dagger-heeled boot against the brass footboard, twisting her silver tooth ring in her fingers, clearly bored.



"You took your time getting back," Marisol said. Tana looked beyond her, to see the curtains in one corner of the room fluttering. The window was open and the white crow perched on the sill, looking in at her, its wicked curved beak opening to cry once. Something was attached to its leg-a little metal fastener where a piece of paper might fit if it was rolled up tight.



"What does Lucien want now?" Tana asked, forcing her gaze to Marisol. The vampire must have noticed the bird. Why was she acting so nonchalant about it?



"You don't have to worry." Marisol slid off the bed with a sigh. "Lucien's not the one that sent me."



The taste of Gavriel's blood was still in Tana's mouth, and she didn't feel entirely sober. "Jameson," she realized, speaking his name out loud. "You're his-"



"Mother." Marisol smiled, a cat with a canary it was resisting batting around. "He asked me to help you save some girl, so here I am, helping."



"Oh," Tana said, thinking abruptly of what he hadn't said when he'd talked about growing up in Coldtown-nothing about his mother, nothing about his parents at all. And then she couldn't help thinking of her own mother, of how her mother could have been very like this. "Oh."



Valentina was going to be so happy. Maybe happy enough to eventually forget the way Tana had ripped open a vampire's throat with a screwdriver and blunt teeth right in front of her.



"Go ahead," Marisol said. "The message on the bird's leg is for you."



Tana walked over to Gremlin. The bird was still, not pecking her fingers, letting her pull the thin piece of paper from the steel casing attached to its leg.



Trust her, it said. Trust me.



Tana sighed.



"There's one other thing." Marisol hopped off the bed, moving with unnatural grace. Her scarlet eyes gazed past Tana, taking in the room, as though looking for cameras. "Your friend wanted Jameson to pass on a message. Some girl from your hometown is here in Coldtown. Pearl. Does that mean anything to you?"



The world wavered in place. Blackness flooded the edges of Tana's vision. She felt as if she were falling, as if she were falling and falling and would never stop falling.



No, it couldn't be. No.



"I think her name was Pearl. Or Jewel? Some other friend of yours is trying to find her." Marisol made a vague gesture of exasperation. "I don't know. I don't know why any of you come here."



"That's my little sister," Tana said, some of her fury-at the universe, at herself, at Pearl-leaking into her voice. "She's twelve. She came here because-"



She came here because of me. Because of that stupid message I sent her.



She came here because Lucien convinced her he was harmless and excitingly dangerous at the same time.



She came here because she wanted to be a part of the show.



Marisol looked momentarily taken aback at the mention of Pearl's age and then resentful, as though Tana had forced her to feel something she didn't want to feel.



Ignoring the vampire, Tana headed toward the bathroom for her phone, the pale crow hopping after her. Checking her texts, she saw a new one from Pauline: Jesus. Yr sister not home. She texted yr dad 1 hour ago says goigin to live with u & b on tv. I called her 16x but didt pick up. Phoned all ur friends.



Frantically, her hands shaking, Tana hit the button to call her sister. The phone didn't even ring; it went straight to voice mail. Closing her eyes, she counted her breaths in and out, trying to find some way to calm herself.



WHERE R U RIGHT NOW????, she texted her sister, but time slid by with no immediate reply. Shoving her phone into her borrowed bra where she could feel the vibration against her skin if something came in, she resisted the urge to pound her fists against the counter.



If Mom had been alive and in Coldtown, I might have come looking for her, too.



"I'm just helping you and the girl, Valentina, understand?" Marisol called. "None of the guards or staff are going to be in their usual places tonight, but that doesn't mean we can be stupid."



"We're freeing every prisoner down there who's willing to come." Tana wasn't sure she recognized her own voice, all iron filings and ice. "Everyone we can find. And we're doing it fast."



Fast, fast, so that she could make it out and get to her sister.



"I'm risking a lot for you already," Marisol said. "You will do exactly what I tell you or else I'll-"



"You're not my mother," Tana interrupted, walking to the bed. Picking up her purse, she dumped everything out onto the blankets. She tucked cash into her bra beside her cell and abandoned the rest. "And you don't have to help, if this is too much for you. I'll tell Jameson that you were awesome. He doesn't need know that you couldn't be bothered."



Marisol's gaze sharpened. "I wasn't always-I wasn't a very good mother. So if my son asks me to do something, I do it, no matter how stupid it seems to me. Jameson says to help get out this girl he likes, so I'll help. Jameson says meet by the gate, so that's where we'll meet. If we get separated, he suggests we meet at the Eternal Ball, and that's fine by me, too. He thinks that we can blend into the crowd and that the cameras will keep Lucien's people from being too awful."



Marisol didn't sound as if she agreed with him, but the words passed through Tana without really mattering. Her thoughts had drifted back to Pearl wandering through the nighttime streets. For a single hopeful moment, she recalled a day in third grade, when her whole class had sat in the grass just beyond the jungle gym and Ms. Lee had whispered "It'll be time for lunch later" to Rachel, who'd whispered to Lance, who'd whispered to Courtney, who'd whispered to Pauline, who'd whispered to Marcus, who'd whispered to Tana. "It's time lambs ate hair," Marcus had said, his breath smelling of spearmint gum, and Tana had been proud, because she was sure she passed it on perfectly. By the time it got to the other end, though, it was even more garbled.



Maybe that was what happened. The message got confused. Marisol had misunderstood. Pearl wasn't really here.



But in her heart, Tana knew she was.



The white crow cawed, looking over with sinister eyes. Find Pearl, Tana wanted to command, but she knew Gremlin wouldn't understand and, anyway, he'd only listen to Jameson. No, she was going to have to get away from Lucien first, then figure out what to do from there.



What will you do? she chided herself. Are you going to find her and then, hungry as you're going to get, what next? Drink her blood quick, before someone else does?



Tana's eyes burned as she knelt down and reached for the box under Elisabet's bed. She strapped one of the wooden knives to her thigh, tying it down with two boot laces. Then she tucked the guard's keys into the fist of one of her hands and picked up a crossbow from the locker underneath Elisabet's bed-each bolt made of polished rosewood and thorn-for Marisol. "Okay, you point that thing at me, and hopefully everyone will think I'm some prisoner you're marching through the estate."



It really said something about what it must be like to live with Lucien Moreau that all Elisabet's weapons were the sort one used against other vampires. This must be a very different place when all the cameras were off.



And for some reason that thought made her realize, with horrible certainty, that she knew where Pearl would be headed once she crossed the threshold into Coldtown. She'd go right to Lucien. He was Pearl's favorite celebrity vampire, after all, and she'd said she was going to be on TV. Tana closed her eyes, and for the first time since she'd woken up among corpses in Lance's farmhouse, for the first time since the scrape of teeth against her leg, she let go of the hope that she was going to make it. Maybe she could find Pearl in time and give her the marker, but there was no way out for Tana.



There was only what she did before she died.



Marisol gave her an appraising look, as though something in Tana's whole manner had changed. Frowning, she walked to the door, her movements fluid as she turned the ornate knob. Barefoot, Tana padded down the stairs with Marisol.



The scent of blood and sweat was sharp in her nose and sharper still once the door to the basement opened. No one seemed to notice them passing, especially when Marisol's hand clamped tight around Tana's upper arm. "Act like a prisoner," the vampire said, hauling her along like a piece of baggage, a crossbow bolt pressed into her back in a way that suddenly felt all too realistic.



At the bottom of the stairs, she saw the cages, lit by a dim bulb in the center of the room. Valentina sat against the back wall, next to a boy in smudged white pants and black suspenders over no shirt, and the dark-haired girl Tana had spoken with before. They pushed themselves to their feet. Valentina slipped her fingers around the bars, squinting into the gloom. Tana could see perfectly. She could hear the prisoners' hearts speed, too, could hear the warm tide of their blood lapping against the edges of her mind. She thought of the crowd of people standing in the theater in front of Gavriel, all the people he'd bitten, and wondered if hunger like hers could ever be sated.



"Tana, you found her!" said Valentina, looking at Marisol. "It's her! How did you-"



"This is Jameson's mom," Tana said quickly, ignoring her red vision, ignoring the answering drum of her own heart. "And she's going to help get us out of here."



Marisol frowned, clearly confused by the emphasis Tana had put on the word mom.



Valentina stared at Marisol and couldn't seem to stop staring.



Tana knelt down and slid one of the keys into each lock, jiggling it around. After a moment, it turned with a heavy metallic clank.



"Hey," one of the prisoners, a hollow-chested boy, said. "What are you doing? You're not supposed to do that!"



As Tana fumbled to fit the second key in, someone started down the stairs.



"Who's there?" a guard called. "What's going on?"



"They're letting us out," called one of the girls before Valentina grabbed hold of her, pressing a hand against her mouth.



Tana leaned back against the wall, slipping Elisabet's long wooden dagger into her hand. She could picture the way it would sink into the guard's skin if he came down the stairs, the way she would rip it through his heart. Killing Midnight had been hard, but she thought of the other vampire she'd stabbed in this very place and wasn't sure it would ever be hard again. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a silent snarl.



Marisol gazed up the stairs at him, tossing back her hair and smiling. "I'm taking a few of the prisoners out back to hose them down. You can't expect Lucien to serve them up covered in dirt."



Tana looked at Marisol's smile. She was disturbingly good at faking her feelings. Tana wondered what had happened that had made Marisol abandon her son years before? Was it that she was afraid she'd drain him? Turn him? Was it easier to glut herself on blood and give up on everything else?



I have a friend who lives in Lucien's house, Jameson had said. He hadn't called her his mother, not once, not even in the note telling Tana to trust her.



They're not human, Tana reminded herself. I am not wholly human anymore.



The guard seemed to swallow the explanation, but he took another step closer. "Need some help?" he called to Marisol.



Tana braced to swing. She tried to concentrate on the place to one side of his breastbone where his heart would be.



"No," Marisol said. "But find me someplace to put them upstairs. Couches or-I don't know-a table that's long enough to display them lying across it."



"Sure, okay," he said. "But we're supposed to be out of here before the Spider arrives. Lucien wants just a skeleton crew-servers and a guard or two. Charles is going to be the only one manning the cameras. So, if you're going to get them ready, you don't have a lot of time."



"Time is the only thing any of us do have," Marisol said with a shrug.



"Suit yourself," the guard told her, and Tana heard his footsteps retreating. A skeleton crew? Lucien had promised Gavriel that his people would be there to take down the Spider's Corps des Tenebres. Not only must he have been lying, but it seemed clear that everyone in the house knew Gavriel was being set up. Even Marisol must have known it.



Tana wanted to slam the wooden knife into Lucien's heart, wanted to watch the bubbling of deep blue blood. How was she going to warn Gavriel?



And what was Gavriel thinking, letting Lucien chain him and drag him back before the monster who'd imprisoned him for a decade? Did he think that nothing could touch him now? Did he believe in the power of his own madness to carry him through? Was his head so foggy with poems and plans that he had no room for doubts?



She had to tell him before the Spider got there, before it was too late.



Marisol turned the second key, swinging open the door and regarding the prisoners, smiling a fanged smile. "You'll come with me like good little boys and girls, won't you?"



The humans looked at one another with shadowed eyes.



"Come along," Marisol told the prisoners. "That was just a story I made up for the big bad guard. Anyway, wouldn't it be easier to escape from outside? Don't you want to come with me?"



"No," one of them said, the thin boy with his ribs sticking out and liquid eyes the color of weak tea. "I knew you were lying. Lucien is keeping us safe. We're earning our place."



Marisol shrugged thin shoulders and smiled in Tana's direction. "We offered. You can't ask for more than that."



Tana gripped the cold flesh of the vampire's shoulder. "No, wait." She turned to the boy. "Please-please come with us. You've got to know this is a prison. You must know he's never going to-"



"Shut up," the boy said, folding his arms.



"Let them be," Marisol told her, smug. "They made their choice."



But a few, shamefaced, shuffled out. Others stayed put with the boy, resolute.



Only the muzzled girls and boys didn't move. They slumbered away, barely stirring. Valentina shook one, but his lashes only fluttered. His eyes didn't even open.



Marisol raised both her brows. "Satisfied?"



"There's nothing else we can do, Tana," Valentina said.



"Yeah," said the dark-haired girl. "Time to cut and run. Jesus, I didn't think we'd even get this far."



Tana knew they were right. She couldn't worry about the people they were leaving behind, not now. Not with Pearl out there somewhere. Not with Gavriel about to be betrayed.



"What's wrong with your mouth?" the boy with the suspenders asked her. "Are you okay?"



Tana touched her lip and realized that her newly sharp teeth must have broken the skin. She hadn't even noticed.



Valentina leaned heavily on Tana's arm as she left the cage, clearly stiff and sore. The heat of her skin made Tana flinch with pleasure.



Marisol led them up the stairs and through a series of elaborately furnished rooms. There were a few vampires there, talking together. None looked armed for a fight with an ancient vampire's minions. As Marisol and the others moved cautiously through the glass-domed banquet hall, Tana heard a vampire's voice echo off the walls. "You, there! Stop! Stop where you are!"



At that, the prisoners ran for the door, wrenching it open and running across the dew-covered lawn under the moonlight. They scattered, with Tana, Valentina, and Marisol racing after. The moon was high in the sky, bright and full, like an overripe piece of fruit grown too heavy for its branch.



Only a single guard was stationed by the gate. He came running to intercept the boy in suspenders, calling for him to stop. Marisol shot him with the crossbow, dropping him onto the lawn with a single bolt. Tana stopped running, stunned.



You killed two of them! she yelled at herself. You're not allowed to be shocked by death.



Behind her, another vampire exited the house, running after them. Marisol swung the crossbow around.



"Come on!" Valentina shouted, frantic, pushing her toward a hole cut in the iron fence, the bars snapped out.



Jameson was on the other side, holding a weathered-looking flamethrower pointed toward the house and waving the other prisoners through.



Tana went after, Valentina right behind her.



Jameson grabbed Valentina by the shoulder as soon as she was away from the fence, gripping her tightly and looking at her with a devouring gaze. "I would have gone for you," he said, not quite making sense. "You should have told me and I would have done it instead, whatever it was."



"It wasn't like that," Valentina said, clearly not sure what he thought had happened.



For a moment, Tana thought that Jameson would kiss Valentina, but he dropped his hand, turning toward his mother as she ducked between the bars and swinging the flamethrower off his shoulder.



"Thanks," he said. "So, let me guess, you're going straight back to Lucien?"



"Not tonight," said his mother, glancing back at the house. It glowed with dark light. "Tonight I'm sticking with you, kid."



Over their heads, the white crow was circling.



Tana thought of Pearl, on the lawn one late summer day, her pale hair tangled because she'd cry if anyone tried to brush it, spinning around and around until she got so dizzy she fell in a pile of bare feet and dandelions and sundress.



Pearl, who was probably coming straight to the place Tana was running from. If Tana went out, scouring the streets, calling Pearl's name while Pearl went straight to Lucien, if something bad happened, Tana would hate herself forever.



She remembered a late-night episode of one of those shows on the History channel with a bunch of professors talking about monsters. It was one of those memories that came with the feeling of the scratchy afghan over Tana's legs as she sat on the couch; the smell of microwave popcorn; and Pearl stretched out on the old rug, stacking up LEGOs. The monster is bigger than human, it represents abundance-overabundance, the white-haired man had said, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose. It has lots of eyes, extra arms, too many teeth. Everything about it is too many and too much.



That was how she felt, right then. As if there was too much of her, as if her skin was tight with muchness. She felt ripe to bursting.



And she remembered what Gavriel had said when she'd woken up handcuffed to a bed. Being infected, being a vampire, it's always you. Maybe it's more you than ever before. It's you as you always were, deep down inside.



Maybe this was who she always was. Always shoving all that muchness down deep inside her where no one had to see.



And once she'd found Pearl, how long before she became the monster her mother was? How long before the infection sank so deep down into her blood that all she could think of was how to get warm again? How long before Pearl was just soft skin and a beating heart? She might be herself still, but she'd be herself hungry, a self she didn't know yet. Herself with the brake lines cut. A self she didn't trust to do anything but kill.



"Give me the crossbow," Tana said as calmly as she could. "I'm going back inside."



"What?" Valentina spun toward her. "No!"



"I have to." Tana pulled out her phone, opening her photographs and flipping to one of her little sister a year before, hair in pigtails. "Pearl's on her way here; this is what she looks like. I need you guys to do me one last favor. Please, find her."



Marisol started to object, but Jameson just nodded. "Yeah, of course. Your friend Pauline says that Pearl couldn't have made it inside before today. She might not even be through the gate yet. We've got this. Finding strays is my specialty."



Tana handed him the phone. "Please, please keep her safe."



He nodded, looking sidelong at his mother. Then he took his own cell from his back pocket, handing it to Tana. "Here, I'll call as soon as we know something."



She tucked it into her bra, overwhelmed with gratitude.



Valentina looked back at the house. "Just don't take any chances in there," she said. "The ancient, insane vampire doesn't need your help."



But what if he did?



Never again, Tana had promised herself. No matter what, she was never going to let anyone get the better of her ever again. No more mistakes.



"I'm through believing things will work out on their own. I'm going to kill Lucien Moreau myself," Tana said, taking the crossbow with the wooden bolts from Marisol's hands and setting it down on the ground, so that she could unclasp Gavriel's garnet necklace from around her throat, the token for leaving Coldtown safely inside. "When you find my sister, give her this for me."



Valentina took the necklace and promised that she would.



Tana hefted the crossbow, tracing her thumb over the smooth wood and cold metal as she watched them leave, Marisol gliding into the shadows as though made of shadow herself.



I'm going to kill Lucien Moreau myself, Tana repeated and this time she allowed herself to finish the thought. I'm going to kill Lucien Moreau myself or die trying.