Deathless (21 page)

Andy grinned. “Why not?”

“
What would you do?” Leesa asked. “Sing? Tell jokes?”

“
Nothing so boring. Maybe I’ll recite some poetry.”

Leesa hoped he was kidding. She had never been here, but she was pretty sure this crowd would not react too kindly to a poetry recital.

Movement at the front of the room drew their attention. A tall, dark-haired guy wearing the same white shirt and black pants outfit as their waiter stepped up onto the stage and grabbed the microphone. He tapped the mic with his fingers and waited for the crowd to quiet.

“
Welcome, everyone, to open mic night at The Joint,” he said. Some whoops and whistles arose from the crowd. “We’re going to start with our traditional opening act,” he continued when the noise subsided. “Give it up for one of your favorites, Tony Phillips!”

The whoops and whistles grew louder and were joined by applause. Leesa guessed this Phillips guy had a lot of fans here tonight, or maybe it was just a boisterous crowd ready to let loose and have some fun. The cheers continued as a chunky guy with long brown hair stepped up onto the stage. He carried his own guitar, much newer and nicer than the one leaning against the wall. The overhead lights dimmed and he began to play a customized version of Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar.”

“
We got winners, we got losers,” he sang in a deep baritone voice, “pot smokers and boozers. We got freshman, we got juniors, and we’ve got
lots
of slacker seniors.”

People laughed and clapped, and when he got to the chorus and sang “I love The Joint,” the place erupted. Leesa and her friends laughed and clapped along with everyone else.

When Phillips finished, the MC jumped back onstage and grabbed the microphone. “Tony Phillips, folks!” he said as the applause finally faded. “Thanks for getting us started, Tony. And as always, The Joint appreciates the plug.”

Phillips waved to the crowd and stepped down off the stage.

“
Before we open the mic completely, we’ve got one more regular eager to entertain you,” the MC continued. “You know him and you love him. Let’s hear it for the always popular Stefan Handlemenn!”

A slender blond guy dressed in an old black leather bomber jacket and a military cap with a shiny plastic bill stepped onto the stage. The audience began chanting something that sounded to Leesa like “ga…ga” over and over.

The guy set up a music player on a small table, fiddled with the controls briefly, and then stood with his back to the crowd. A driving electronic dance beat began to blast from the player. The rhythm was familiar, but Leesa couldn’t place it. She watched Handlemenn bend forward and do something with his cap. When he spun around, the crowd erupted. Under the cap, he was now wearing a platinum colored, page-boy style wig.

He launched into a surprisingly good impression of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi.” The audience loved it, joining in with a rambunctious “papa-paparazzi” whenever he reached the chorus. By the time he finished, a bunch of kids were on their feet, dancing.

The MC returned to the stage. “Thank you, Lady Gaga…uh, I mean Stefan. Wasn’t that something, folks?” The crowd roared once again. “Now, who’s brave enough to follow that performance?”

Apparently, the guy in the wild plaid sports jacket was the only one. His appearance was met with a few groans—Leesa didn’t know if it was for his outfit or because they had seen him before. He pulled the microphone from the stand and walked casually to the very front of the stage. He did not seem the least bit nervous.

“
Is everyone having a good time tonight?” he asked. There wasn’t much of a response, but he pushed on. “Did you hear about the guy on the track team who won a gold medal? He was so proud he had it bronzed.” He waited for a reaction, but except for a few groans, the audience remained silent. He seemed to like the groans, though. Leesa guessed any reaction was better than no reaction at all.

He told a few more lame jokes, then stepped from the stage to a mixture of polite applause and not so polite boos.

Before the MC even reached the microphone, Andy was on his feet.

“
That’s an act I can definitely follow. Wish me luck.”

Leesa looked at Cali. She did not seem bothered in the least that Andy was heading for the stage. Leesa hoped he wasn’t really going to recite poetry.

To her surprise, Andy did not get up onto the stage at all. Instead, he sat down at the piano. She had to admit, he looked pretty cute sitting at the piano with that fedora on his head. She worried this was not a piano music kind of crowd, though. Cali did not seem to share her concern—she was smiling broadly.

Andy started slowly, barely touching the keys. The tune was somber and hauntingly familiar. The low hum of conversation in the room began to quiet, as people strained to hear the music. Andy began to play louder, more forcefully, and Leesa finally recognized the song. It was “Hurt”—the original Trent Reznor version more than the Johnny Cash. The music grew more powerful and the room grew quieter. His playing wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty darn good.

Suddenly, the melody changed. Andy’s fingers started pounding the keyboard and his head was bobbing up and down. Without missing a beat, he had shifted from “Hurt” to “Whole Lot of Shakin’” by Jerry Lee Lewis. When his fingers slid across the keys in a loud glissando, the crowd roared.

“
Go get ‘em, Jerry Lee,” someone yelled. “Yee-haw!”

Andy banged the keys for another few moments, then lifted his right foot from beneath the piano and began bouncing his heel on the keyboard, playing the high notes with his foot. The crowd went wild, and Leesa now knew why he was wearing those wild sneakers.

Finally, he lowered his foot back to the floor and finished with a flourish, sliding his fingers along the entire length of the keyboard three times in row. The crowd cheered and whistled as he stood up and took a deep bow, then weaved his way back through the tables.

“
That’s my guy,” Cali said, laughing. She stood up and gave Andy a big hug.

“
That was amazing,” Leesa said when he sat down.

“
Twelve years of lessons,” Andy explained. “Mostly church music and show tunes, but when I learned my assignments well, I was allowed to have some fun.”

“
Well, you looked like you were having fun tonight, for sure,” Leesa said. “Especially when you did that thing with your foot.”

He grinned. “Too much?”

“
No way,” Cali said. “It was perfect. Just right for this place.” She grabbed his hat and placed it atop her head. “I want to make sure everyone knows I’m with the superstar.”

They listened to lots more acts, some pretty good, some not so good. Only one got a reaction anywhere near as loud as the one Andy received, a pair of girls in sexy leather jump suits who brought the house down with a sultry rendition of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.”

By the time they got back to the dorm, it was nearly midnight. Leesa said good-night to her friends and headed up to her room, pleasantly exhausted. She was glad Cali had talked her into going out tonight—she had not thought about dreams or zombies for hours. She hoped her sleep would be as untroubled as the evening had been. As tired as she felt, she was pretty sure it would be.

Pulling off her coat as she entered her room, she stumbled over her straw wastebasket, knocking it over. Half its contents spilled out onto the floor, including a not quite empty can of soda whose syrupy brown contents were now beading up on her throw rug. Leesa cursed silently. She must have pulled the basket from its normal place beside her desk for some reason before going out and forgot to put it back. Angrily, she aimed a fake kick at the overturned basket and was astonished to see it go flying across the room and crash into her dresser, spilling the rest of its contents.

“
What the…?” she said half-aloud as she stared dumbfounded at the basket, thinking she must be even more tired than she thought. Because she was absolutely certain her foot had never touched the thing.

28. COUNTING SHEEP

L
eesa sat down numbly on the edge of her bed, her eyes moving back and forth from the soda stain on her rug—where the wastebasket had started—to the basket itself, now lying on its side across the room against the dresser. How had it gotten from one spot to the other? Sure, she had kicked at it after she stumbled over it, but she hadn’t actually connected with it. Or had she? The evidence was right there in front of her, lying against the dresser. She must have kicked it. What other explanation could there be? Wastebaskets did not fly across the room on their own. Unless….

She thought back to the Red Bull can. Maybe the darn thing had actually slid a few inches across her desk. Maybe the can and the basket hadn’t moved on their own—maybe
she
had somehow caused them to move. She remembered a special she had seen on TV, about a guy who claimed he could move objects with his mind. Maybe she was doing the same thing. But that was crazy, right—moving stuff with her mind? Either that was crazy, or she was. More likely, she was just imagining things.

She shook her head, unable to believe it was just her imagination. Sure, she might have imagined the can moving—it was only a couple of inches, after all—but no way had she imagined the basket flying across the room. Could she have kicked it without realizing it? Maybe. She guessed perhaps she was tired enough for that.

The Red Bull thing had occurred during finals, when she had been exhausted. Maybe she wasn’t crazy—maybe her mind just played tricks on her whenever she was overly tired. Between her dreams and her tossing and turning, she certainly had not gotten anywhere near enough sleep lately. She wished more than ever that Rave was here. Not that she expected him to have an answer about any of this, but she was pretty sure if she could just lie down cradled in his arms, she could get a much needed good night’s sleep.

But Rave was not here, and she had no idea when he would be back.

She wondered if Dr. Clerval might know anything about vampires being able to move things with their minds. She had never heard of them doing it, but that did not mean it wasn’t true. And if they could, maybe Stefan’s aborted bite had been enough to transfer a bit of that power to her. She definitely needed to ask the professor about this. First chance she got on Monday, she was going to head to his office.

There were no answers she could get tonight, though. Still, there was one thing she could do now, something she should have done already if she hadn’t been so stunned by all this. She got up from the bed and wet a washcloth in the sink. Dropping to her knees, she began cleaning up the soda spill.

Ten minutes later, Leesa had cleaned up the spill as much as she could. A faint brown stain was still visible on the rug, but that would need some real carpet cleaner or shampoo to get rid of. She had also put the spilled trash back into the wastebasket and returned the basket to its normal place beside her desk, where there would be no chance a fake kick would send it flying again. Her eyes were growing heavy, so she washed her face, brushed her teeth and climbed into bed.

Once again, sleep did not come easy. Her body was tired, but her mind refused to turn off. Just because her eyes were closed and she was tucked comfortably under the covers did not mean the questions racing through her brain were going to stop. She tried focusing on other, more pleasant things, recalling memories of favorite times with Rave, but the relief was only temporary. Warm and fun, for sure, but temporary. As soon as she began to drift off, images of the wastebasket flying across the room or dead bodies coming to life reappeared.

Finally, after what seemed like hours of tossing and turning, she fell asleep.

Sleep did not offer the succor she had hoped for. A familiar dream rose up from her unconscious, returning her to the cave, where she once again faced the dark figure with glowing eyes. Behind the vampire was the same poor girl, chained to the cavern wall. No, not to the wall—the girl was now tied to a small tree. What a tree was doing here deep inside the bowels of the mountain, Leesa had no idea. As before, she was certain she knew the captive, but something kept the image blurred. The girl was tantalizingly familiar, yet frustratingly unrecognizable.

Leesa’s eyes snapped open, only to be met by more darkness. At least this was real darkness, not some magical dream dimness that revealed some things and kept others hidden. Why couldn’t she see the girl more clearly, she wondered? Her other two dreams had been so clear—much clearer than she wanted—but not this one. Why had she been able to see every detail of the rotting corpses coming back to life, but the one figure she desperately wanted to see remained just out of her grasp? Was her brain protecting her from something? Or was this another kind of dream, not related to the other two? All three dreams felt the same, different in some profound, powerful way from her usual dreams, yet they differed in this one very crucial element.