Fatal Bargain (2 page)

Sherree began to sob.

The vampire smiled appreciatively. His eyes assessed their necks. “The person you choose…” he said, lisping through his teeth, “and I…” he said, lingering on every syllable, “…will have much to occupy us.”

He withdrew his teeth, tucking them slowly behind his lips. They hardly fit. He dried his mouth with the edge of his dark cloak.

The vampire said, “I will still be here, of course. The door will remain mine. But I won’t listen in on your little talk. That wouldn’t be fair.”

He disappeared quite slowly, folding himself up in his cloak.

His smell stayed after him.

W
HEN RANDY HAD SUGGESTED
breaking into the Mall House with the girls and spending the night there, he thought he was being clever. Randy needed to show off more than most boys because he hated his name. Randy was such a weak-kneed name. He wanted to be named Bobby, which sounded relaxed and strong, or Zach, which sounded successful and quick, but those were the names of his two best friends. Bobby and Zach were somehow always ahead of Randy. Not by much, but by enough.

And whenever Randy was the first to think of something, Bobby and Zach were the first to tell him how dumb his idea was.

“The Mall House?” said Bobby. “That pathetic old mansion with the broken shutters?” Bobby was a sophomore, Randy and Zach juniors. But Bobby had always seemed older than Randy because he was always in a position of honor, winning games and trophies for every team.

“The Mall House?” said Zach, laughing. Nobody could laugh with such scorn as Zach. “Come on, Randy. They stripped the place of anything valuable years ago.”

Actually it had been only a year ago that the last occupants had moved out. A weird family. Not that anybody normal had ever lived in the mansion. There were stories about a girl named Althea who’d moved away before Randy was in high school. The mansion had been vacant for a while. And then Devnee’s family had moved in. Randy remembered her clearly. A girl he had found plain at the beginning of the school year, captivatingly beautiful during the middle, and ordinary again toward the end. He had never figured out what she had done to herself to metamorphose like that. But Devnee’s family, too, had left town. Vanished.

Nobody seemed to enjoy living in the mansion.

“It’s just waiting for the wrecking ball,” said Zach in his most put-down voice. “I heard they’re finally pulling it down next week.” Zach always had facts nobody else had.

“Right,” said Randy. “If we’re gonna do it, we’ve gotta do it now.”

“Why,” asked Zach, “would we want to do it at all?” Zach was thin and languid and took his time at everything, from schoolwork to sports, and yet still he managed to ace and to win. Sometimes Randy worshiped Zach and sometimes he hated him. This was a hating time.

“Because the girls would be scared,” said Randy.

Bobby yawned, affecting mild amusement that his friend was so immature he’d rather scare a girl than kiss her. “Come on, Randy,” said Bobby. “We stopped scaring girls when we were twelve.”

In Bobby’s case this was actually true. There was nobody in the entire school system as socially advanced as Bobby. In sixth grade he had had ninth-grade girls flirting with him and now that he was in tenth, seniors were falling at his feet.

Bobby just jogged off the playing field and made a choice among the eager females waiting on the sidelines. This year, incredibly, Bobby made not one choice but two. He was not only dating Roxanne, a beautiful and brilliant senior, but also Sherree, a bubble-bath-cute tenth-grader. Bobby would alternate between Sherree and Roxanne, and either Sherree and Roxanne didn’t notice, or they adored Bobby so much they didn’t mind. Randy kept expecting a nursery rhyme situation in which the calico cat and the gingham dog would eat each other up, but no. Each girl linked arms with Bobby when it was her turn and stayed friends.

As for Zachary, he did not date. He said this was because he had high standards, and local girls simply did not meet them. Bobby said Zach did not date because Zach would not participate in anything where he could not get an A-plus, and you were never entirely sure whether you’d be an A-plus with any girl. It’s okay to get a C in class, Bobby told Randy confidentially, but it’s really lame to have a C average in girls.

Both Bobby and Zach felt that going around with Lacey was a C average in girls.

Randy tried to defend his suggestion about partying at the old mansion. “Lacey loves to be scared. We go to amusement parks, and she screams on the scary rides, and we go to movies, and she screams at the scary parts, and we —”

“Lacey is an airhead,” said Zach. “I can’t believe you go out with her.”

Part of Randy wanted to tell Zach where to go, or beat Zach up and settle it with broken bones. But a larger part of Randy hated himself for dating a girl that Zach considered an airhead. Zach, of course, would never be seen near an airhead.

Randy addressed Bobby instead. “Bring Sherree or Roxanne,” said Randy. “Or both. We’ll sneak into the house around eleven o’clock, and —”

Bobby laughed out loud. “Randy, get a grip on yourself. Bring Sherree or Roxanne to the Mall House? They’d die first. Those are girls I have to spend money on, huh? Get it? They don’t sleep on floors, Randy. And they don’t lean back against splintered walls, eating in the dark from a bag of potato chips, and pretending it’s fun.”

Bobby and Zachary lost interest in Randy. They picked up the slick advertising circular from the movie rental place in town and discussed which films to rent. Did they want chases and archaeology? Or should they concentrate on war and technology? Horror and axes?

Randy’s insides knotted with rage. Nothing could be worse than being dismissed. If Bobby and Zach had not turned their backs…

But they had.

And so Randy turned his back as well, and left the room — although it was his house; he had the best home theater of any teenager in town. In his heart he knew that was why Bobby and Zach hung out with him — for the electronics he provided. Randy went to the telephone.

The rage percolated into courage, and he made three phone calls.

Phone calls he would never have made under normal circumstances.

But he was showing off.

And it seemed reasonable at the time…

…Randy stared at the vampire. It was becoming clear why this mansion had been sold so often.

Lacey did not know that anybody was referring to her as an airhead. She happened to despise Bobby and Zachary, the most conceited idiots in the entire high school, but although Lacey had a strong personality, she would not have been able to laugh it off. Being called an airhead by two such popular boys would hurt.

Lacey had never had a boyfriend before Randy.

Randy made her nervous and unsure, and dating made her very nervous and very unsure. But she wanted to participate; she wanted to be doing what all the songs on all the radio stations said you should be doing — falling in love.

She didn’t really love Randy, but she was trying.

She stuffed her head full of love-thoughts, and sat in love-postures, and listened to love-music.

It didn’t take.

Randy was just a nice ordinary kid, half twerp and half jock. He was growing in all directions at once, both mentally and physically, and it was hard to keep track of Randy, or know if she even wanted to. She was fond of him, but mostly she was fond of going out.

Lacey felt very guilty about this.

Should you go out with a boy just in order to leave the house and be seen in other places? This seemed mean and low-minded. Lacey was a nice girl and didn’t want to be mean or low-minded.

And yet, Randy kept calling her. He must be happy.

On that crucial night a week ago, Lacey had been half hoping he would call. Strange the way a telephone could rule your existence. It had become her center of gravity; she rotated around it like a moon around a planet.

And I don’t even love Randy, she thought. I wonder what it’s like when you really do love the boy.

She dreamed of love, of the boy she would meet one day, when stars and rockets and fireworks would fill her mind and soul and body.

And when the phone finally did ring, and it was Randy, she felt so guilty for dreaming about somebody better that she was ready to do anything Randy asked.

It took some serious planning to be able to arrange for a Saturday night without parental knowledge of her whereabouts. Lacey was always hearing about unsupervised teens whose parents hadn’t seen them in days and didn’t care where they were or what they were doing, but she, personally, had never encountered such a parent. All the parents she knew foamed at the mouth and confiscated car keys if anybody vanished for even an hour.

It was agreed that Lacey would say she was at Roxanne’s and Roxanne would say she was at Sherree’s. If there were phone calls from parents, they all had their cell phones and could fake it, and nobody would get in trouble.

Lacey had never been in trouble, or even close to trouble, and found herself strangely attracted to the idea. But if they checked on her, she would be in the Mall House and they would never know.

Lacey’s family lived on the far side of town and usually didn’t have occasion to drive on this road. Her mother was not of the shop-till-you-drop persuasion and would not have kept up to date on the possibility of a new mall going up where once a decrepit house had stood.

Nobody had called it the Mall House when it still had a family living there.

It got the name Mall House when the zoning committee decreed that nobody could rip the place down because it was a “Historic Building” and the would-be builders said, “No, it’s a piece of junk.” For months people argued the pros and cons of this situation, and the old boarded-up mansion had gotten its nickname.

Wrong nickname, thought Lacey. It’s the Vampire House.

The vampire sifted slowly out of sight. Not because he left, but because he ceased to be. She felt his molecules still drifting around the room, like an evaporating perfume. She did not even want to breathe, for fear that vampire threads would clog her lungs.

Sherree had never had a phone call from Randy before. She had to stop and think who on earth this could be. Randy, she had pondered. Do I know a Randy?

Luckily Randy expected her to be confused and he added, “You know. Bobby’s friend. You came to my house to see a movie last month.”

“Ooooh, yes! You have that fabulous media room, with the carpeted levels and the big soft floor pillows and the little kitchenette full of snacks and sodas right downstairs. I never saw a TV that big in somebody’s house! Sure, I remember your house, Randy.”

Sherree did not hear her own sentence. (She never did quite hear what she was saying out loud.) She did not realize how hurtful it was to be told your TV room was easier to remember than you were.

“A sleepover?” said Sherree dubiously. “I don’t know, Randy. My parents are pretty strict.”

She paid attention to his offer because she paid close attention to anything a boy said. Sherree did not believe there was much worth thinking about except boys. Luckily there were so many of them. Sherree knew perfectly well that Bobby was dating Roxanne at the same time, but Sherree had learned that what boys wanted most was what other boys already had. Going with Bobby was increasing Sherree’s desirability, and pretty soon Sherree would extricate herself from Bobby and take advantage of the boys who envied him. She had pretty well decided to wait until after Christmas because a girl who had dated Bobby last year said that Bobby was really a big spender in December.

Sherree could not bring Randy’s face to mind. Normally her brain was like a huge yearbook of available boys. Why hadn’t she registered Randy? Was there something wrong with him, or had the rented movies been especially good?

Randy wanted Sherree to pretend that she was really spending the night at a girlfriend’s house, but he would pick her up and they were going to stay in a haunted house. Bobby and Zach would be there, too.

“A haunted house?” said Sherree. “Give me a break, Randy.” Randy plowed on. The house, he insisted, really was haunted. That was why they were ripping it down. Not because they were going to build a mall there but because of the terrible things that had happened to the human beings who had lived in that house, listened to those banging shutters, climbed those creaking stairs.

“Well…” said Sherree.

“We’ll have fun,” said Randy. “I’ll bring the food.”

“And movies?” said Sherree. “I love movies.”

(Randy had just told Sherree that the house didn’t have electricity anymore, but apparently Sherree had drawn no conclusion from this. Perhaps she thought Randy traveled with his own generator.) He said they would have so much fun that they wouldn’t need movies. “In fact,” Randy said, “I’ll bring along a video camera and film us!
We’ll
be the movie!”

“Well…” said Sherree. “Are there going to be other girls?”

“Of course. Lacey’s coming, for one.”

Sherree couldn’t remember Lacey, either. Randy patiently described Lacey and after she had heard the description three times, Sherree felt as if she knew Lacey after all. “Oh, right,” said Sherree. “Sure. Lacey. Great.”

“Now we don’t want lots of people there,” warned Randy. “Spoil the fun, you know. So don’t tell anybody.”

“I won’t tell anybody,” promised Sherree. She hung up feeling confused. She did not know why they were going to the haunted house, nor quite what they would do once they sneaked in, but Randy seemed very sure of himself.

Sherree wondered what to wear to an event like this. She stood quite happily in front of her closets and bureau drawers, matching and re-matching, thinking maybe she would call this Lacey to see what she was wearing.

The only kind of movie for which Sherree did not have a taste was horror. She never watched those. They were too scary. She could not sleep at night after a horror movie, and if she ever managed to get to bed she had to sleep in a fetal position because she was afraid of what would happen to her toes if they stuck out.

Sherree was wearing sandals and her toes stuck out.