Team Human (17 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY

Interrogation with the Vampire

O
bviously it would have been bad manners to visit Camille when she was still asleep. So I waited until it was almost dark before heading to the Shade on my bike. The sun set as I rode through the empty streets; it colored the ornate buildings orange, red, and purple before fading to a dull pink and then darkness. As I got closer to Camille's house, one or two vampires began to appear. It was almost more eerie than when the vampires were all out promenading. Almost.

When I reached the house, I carefully left my bike against the low fence. (I did not want to destroy any more flower beds.) I took a breath, reminded myself that Camille was a tea-making mom, and knocked on the door.

Strangely, I'd decided to go with the front door rather than continuing the tradition of breaking in through the wine cellar.

It was immediately flung wide open.

“Darling Raoul!” exclaimed a vampire with a cloud of scarlet hair and an even bigger cloud of perfume.

“Uh,” I said. “No?”

“He can always be relied on,” the redhead continued mysteriously. “Well, come in, child, come in! We're starving.”

As invitations went, it was up there with “I hope you can attend the party at our place! Much love, the Manson family” or “Drop in anytime, our chainsaws are always buzzing.” I almost fell backward off the porch.

“I think you've made a mistake,” I said.

“I don't have all night, gel,” said the lady vampire.

I didn't think she was actually English, like Francis. I'd heard a lot of vamposeurs pretending to be foreign, as if it made them more vampiric. I hadn't expected an actual vampire to do the same.

Great. Pretentious vampires: That was all I needed tonight.

“No, really, you've got it wrong.”

“Children today are so indecisive,” the woman said. “‘Oh, bite me, oh no, wait, do, oh no, no, I've changed my mind, don't take so much, I feel all faint, call my mommy.' Every human who wants to experience the dark delirium of a vampire's bite is so whiny! I wish we attracted the taciturn, I truly do.”

Something about the way she said “children today” made me pause and take a gamble.

“Minty?” I asked cautiously.

“Oh,” Minty said. “Oh, just fine. ‘Minty,' indeed. My name is Araminta. I presume you're Kitten's little girlfriend, then, and I expect you don't want to be bitten at all.”

She gave me an accusing look. I shook my head apologetically but firmly.

“Splendid!” Minty exclaimed. “We'll all starve to death while entertaining a constant parade of humans, and the neighbors will think that we have set up a little human zoo. Absolutely splendid! I suppose you had better come in.”

I edged in past her, my neck feeling horribly exposed. I was afraid she'd snap at it.

She didn't. Of course she didn't: She might be having donors make house calls, but no vampire that hadn't gone completely rogue would dream of biting someone without permission.

“Is breakfast here?” asked a vampire guy in a waistcoat.

If you ever wondered how fangs and a droopy mustache look on someone, I am here to tell you the answer: Very weird.

“No,” Minty said, throwing me a bitter look. “This is Kitten's girlfriend.”

“Kit. Honestly, Araminta, you must try to remember,” said the man, and offered me his hand. I took it and he shook, hurting my fingers a little bit. A vampire's firm handshake is very firm. “My name's Albert.”

“Mel,” I said.

“You'll be wanting the lad, I expect. Let me see if I can fetch him for you.”

“Uh—no, no, that's okay,” I told him quickly. The last thing I needed was for Kit to think I was stalking him. “I was wondering if I could possibly speak to Camille?”

Minty and Albert both paused. They had poker faces as good as Francis's, but I'd had experience of the vampire version of “very perplexed” today already.

We all stood staring at each other in extreme perplexitude, and who knew how long that would have continued if not for the interruption of yet another strange vampire.

“Hi,” I said, before someone else could introduce me as Kit's girlfriend. “I'm— friends with Cathy?” At the last moment, I couldn't bring myself to utter such a total lie as saying I was friends with Francis.

Minty sniffed. “We are positively besieged by humans.”

The new vampire, a small woman with a sweet heart-shaped face, zoomed over with vampire speed that made me jump, and before I knew it, she had her finger on the pulse in my neck.

Calm down! I ordered myself. Calm down, it's probably a vampire thing, it's like the vampire version of Eskimo kisses, it's probably totally normal.

“You're so unkind, Araminta,” she murmured. “I think she seems very nice.”

“Ulp,” I said. “Thank you?”

“My name's Marie-Therese,” she continued dreamily. “I am so fond of Kit. I hope we can be friends.”

“Friends, awesome, yes,” I said. “Do … friends always stroke other friends' veins?”

“Sorry about her,” Albert told me. “Spanish, you see. Very volatile people. Best to indulge her.”

I stayed very still as Marie-Therese's cold fingers traced up and down my neck. I'd never been outnumbered by vampires before. I felt fragile, crushable in a way I'd never felt before. I wondered if this was how Kit felt all the time.

Then, unexpectedly, Marie-Therese stepped back and called out “Camille!” in a piercing tone. She stopped and gave me a sweet smile. “Camille is lucky to have such a charming visitor,” she said. “Come back and have tea with me anytime.”

Marie-Therese drifted out of the room. There was a glimpse of a chandelier in the next room before the door swung shut.

“She gives herself all these unearthly vampire airs around humans,” Minty said in her fake English accent.

“The Spanish are a dramatic people,” Albert said stoutly.

“If she's Spanish,” I asked, “how come she's got a French name?”

“Nobody knows,” Albert said.

“Nobody cares, more like,” Minty said with a sneer.

I was grateful to see Camille coming down the stairs, hardly what I'd felt the last time I saw Camille coming down some stairs.

It was still eerie. I'd been thinking of her as more human than she was, more Kit's mom. I'd aged her, softened the cold lines of her face and the icy glitter of her eyes. But here she was, all vampire, in her uniform with her black hair hanging in a braid down her back.

“Mel?” she inquired. “Shall I fetch Kit for you?”

Did all these vampires have to keep harping on Kit?

“I was wondering if I could have a word with you, actually.”

Camille nodded, with not even the faintest sign of confusion. She led me silently into the kitchen.

Behind us, I heard Minty and Albert conferring on whether I might have come to ask Camille for Kit's hand in marriage.

“What can I do for you?” Camille asked in her remote voice, sitting with perfect posture in the chair across from me.

She'd already insisted on making me a cup of tea. I sloshed the cup around in my hands as I tried to think of a way to put this.

“The thing is,” I said, “I have this friend called Anna Saunders.”

Camille folded her hands on the table. “You seem blessed with many friends.”

“And—I may have sort of guessed that you sent Francis to our school so he could keep his eye on Anna's mom. Our principal. Principal Saunders.”

Because I was so sure that if Camille suspected Principal Saunders of lying to the police, she'd forgotten her name.

Camille actually made a slight expression. Sadly, it was not an expression that said, “Mel, you clever girl, you've guessed so much, you might as well know it all.”

It looked more like frustration.

“Francis,” she muttered, in a tone that let me know I'd gotten Francis in trouble.

Which was excellent, but not really the point.

“Anna's really worried about her mom and her dad,” I said in a rush. “I mean, she has no idea that something might have happened to her dad. That he might not have run away.” I studied Camille for a reaction. “But Principal Saunders has been acting strange for a while. I saw, the day of the Ratastrophe—uh, the day all the rats got loose at school—that she was terrified of Francis.”

Camille's whole posture changed so swiftly that I spilled tea on my jeans.

She was hunched over slightly. The way she sat made me think a word I didn't want to be thinking—predatory.

“You observed Principal Saunders's behavior on that day?” Camille asked, and fished out a notepad with a pen clipped to it. “Can you describe it to me?”

I immediately felt like a complete fool. Of course Camille looked intent. She was a cop. She wanted me to give an eyewitness account.

But an eyewitness account of the Ratastrophe? She wasn't a vampire health inspector.

“Why do you want to know about the rats? What could that possibly have to do with anything?”

“Mel,” Camille said, “can I make myself perfectly clear? I am a police officer. You are a seventeen-year-old girl. That means I ask you questions, and if you respect the law, you answer them. It does not mean that I tell you confidential information about any of my cases.”

“Of course,” I said. I glared into my half-full cup of tea.

“Can you tell me about the rat incident?” Camille said.

I told her.

“Thank you for your help,” Camille said when I was done, serene as if we'd both gotten what we wanted when all I'd gotten was a lapful of tea. “Shall I call Kit down?” she asked. “I am certain he would be pleased to see you.”

She was a lot more certain than I was.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I have to get going.”

Camille hesitated. “I do hope you two haven't had a falling-out.”

“We kind of did,” I said, getting up from my chair. “But it's okay. I don't see us as having much of a future.”

Camille looked at my face for a moment, as if she wanted to say something.

“Perhaps you're mistaken about that?”

I shrugged. “Can I ask you one thing? Do you know where Rebecca Jones is?”

“You needn't worry about her,” Camille told me crisply. “Rebecca Jones is dead. She killed herself.”

“What?” Rebecca Jones dead? Then she couldn't be a kidnapper. She couldn't be
anything
.

“But—”

“That's all I can say,” Camille said, making it plain that our conversation was over.

I left the kitchen and stumbled into the hall with my head spinning. I didn't notice Kit on the stairs, not until he spoke.

“Mel?” he asked.

I felt too shaken up to even pretend I didn't care about being blown off. I did care, and I didn't know how to stop.

“Don't worry,” I snapped. “I'm not here to see you.”

I slammed the front door, ran down the steps, threw myself onto my bike, and took off pedaling as fast as I could down the middle of the street. Any vampire that had a yen to try my blood was going to have to run for it.

I hadn't realized how much I wanted everything to be as it seemed: Principal Saunders was understandably upset about her husband living in Rebecca Jones's vampire love nest. Which made perfect sense and did not send the world spinning off its axis. Even the wild story I'd come up with wasn't true.

Rebecca Jones couldn't be threatening Principal Saunders. So what did Principal Saunders have to hide?

And if Rebecca was dead, where was Anna's dad? I was pretty sure he didn't have amnesia.

I could think of only one reason for Principal Saunders to lie: if she was covering up something she had done.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Friends Don't Let Friends Become Undead

R
ebecca Jones could not be holding Dr. Saunders hostage. Dr. Saunders could not be living in her vampire love nest.

Rebecca Jones was dead.

I tried to digest this world-exploding information as I pedaled. I needed to talk to someone. I couldn't talk to Kit, on account of the blowing off. I couldn't exactly call Anna, either.

Ordinarily when I needed someone to talk to, I turned to Cathy, but, well, I wasn't sure I could do that now. She was so caught up with Francis and the whole wanting-to-become-a-vampire thing. We hadn't had a real conversation since the disastrous double date.

Yet somehow I found myself pedaling all the way to Cathy's house.

I dismounted and looked up at her room. The light was on. Feeling almost as nervous as I had when I'd knocked on the door to speak to Camille, I hauled my bike up the steps, hid it on the porch (vampires might suck your blood, but at least they wouldn't steal your bike), and rang the bell.

Then waited and waited and thought maybe she wasn't home after all? Maybe I should call Kristin instead?

The door opened.

“Hi, Mel,” Cathy said, looking genuinely pleased to see me.

“Hi. I was in the neighborhood.”

“You live in the neighborhood.” She smiled and beckoned me in.

“True,” I said, following her up the stairs. “Your mom's not home?”

“No. She's working late.”

Cathy ushered me into her room, which was not as tidy as usual. By Cathy standards, I mean. There were piles of books on the floor and bed and desk and every other flat surface, most of them festooned with forests of Post-its. A glance at a couple of the titles—
Cell Transition in Vampirism
,
Encyclopedia of the Undead
—told me more than I wanted to know.

“Hard at work, huh?” I said.

She nodded and cleared off a chair so I could sit down. She sat on an uncluttered corner of her bed. “Are you okay?” she asked as I sat.

“Fine,” I said. “No, not fine. It's Anna.”

“Yes?”

“She, well, really it's her dad. If he did run away with Rebecca Jones, he's not with her now.”

“Rebecca Jones?”

“The vampire he supposedly ran off with. She's dead. Killed herself. But he hasn't come home. So where is he?”

Cathy was pale and horrified. I could barely look at her: I didn't want to see how serious this was.

“How do you know all this?”

“Camille told me,” I said, apparently unable to stop talking now I'd started. “Anna said her mom was acting strangely. More than just being hurt and mourning because her husband left her. So I've been looking into it. I think I know why, and it's not good.”

Cathy waited for me to continue.

“
Really
not good.”

She nodded to encourage me to finish. She looked totally understanding, like nothing I could say would shock her.

“Anna's mom? Principal Saunders?” I said, lowering my voice although no one could possibly hear me. “I think she might have—done something to her husband.”

I said “something” because I couldn't say “hurt.”

I didn't know how to even think the word
killed
. I'd known Principal Saunders all my life.

But Dr. Saunders had vanished, and his wife was lying about where he was.

“No!” Cathy gasped. “She didn't. You're not serious.”

It was my turn to nod. “Yeah, I am. Completely serious.” I filled Cathy in on everything I'd learned, skipping bits that involved me being rude to Francis or too cozy with Kit. “I don't know how to tell Anna.”

“You're not going to.” Cathy took my hands in hers and squeezed them. “You don't know what happened. All you know for sure is that if Dr. Saunders did run away with Rebecca Jones, he's not with her now.”

“But—” I began.

“What about the texts?” Cathy asked. “Anna showed me some of the texts her dad sent her after he left them.”

“If you have the person's phone,” I pointed out, “anyone can send a text. Same with email.”

“If Principal Saunders killed her husband, why isn't she in custody?”

Cathy said it so coolly that for a moment all I could do was stare. She stared back, as if she didn't realize I was freaked out she'd said the unsayable. “She
is
being investigated.”

“Did Francis or Camille tell you that?”

“Not explicitly.”

“Of course not. Camille can't let you in on the true nature of her investigation. And Francis is working for her, so he has to operate under those same rules. He's so honorable,” she added.

I tried to not feel queasy at Cathy's obvious pride in Francis.

“You need to separate out what you do know from what you suspect. You can't go to Anna with any of this until what you have to tell her is fact, not conjecture. Have you thought of simply asking Principal Saunders?”

“Cathy, something is up. She's acting weird. She's scared of Francis. She's hiding
something
. She obviously isn't in a mood to confess, or the police wouldn't have to investigate her.”

“You don't know that they are investigating her.”

“Francis is at the school because Camille asked him to keep an eye on her.”

“Francis
isn't
a police officer. So whatever he's doing for Camille must be informal, right?”

I hadn't thought of that.

“Has Anna mentioned the police?” Cathy asked. “She asked for your help. Surely she would have mentioned if she'd been interrogated. Surely we would have heard if there was a police investigation. You know how fast gossip spreads.”

“Good point.”

“Maybe Dr. Saunders ran away with the vampire, then changed his mind and wanted to return to his family. Maybe that's why she killed herself.”

That did sound more reasonable than what I had been imagining. I began to feel foolish.

I bit my lip. “Then why hasn't he come home?”

“Maybe he's afraid to. Maybe he's gearing himself up to beg their forgiveness. Maybe he's still shocked at his lover's suicide. There are lots of explanations for the few facts you have.”

“Maybe he has amnesia?”

“Mel,” Cathy said, “stick to the facts. Why not simply ask Principal Saunders?”

“I can't ask her without letting her know what I know, and if she did do something to Dr. Saunders—even though I agree there's no proof of that—how's she going to respond to me asking about it? Even if she didn't do anything and she just got dumped, she's not going to take it well.”

It felt good to be talking to her about this. Almost like we were back to being best friends.

“I'm still me,” Cathy said.

“What?” I asked when I meant, “How did you know what I was thinking?”

“I know you think I'm all about Francis all the time now. But I'm still me. We're still friends.”

“Of course,” I said.

She did seem like the old Cathy. I could almost forget about Francis and her insane desire to become a vampire. All I had to do was ignore the fact that she was completely surrounded by books about becoming a vampire.

“You don't have to do it, you know,” I said quietly.

“Do what?” Cathy said, though I knew she knew.

“Change. You can still be with Francis as a human. Why do you have to change?”

“It's something I really want,” Cathy said. “I wish I could make you understand. I think I've always wanted this.”

“To be dead?”

Cathy started to say something and then stopped. She took a deep breath. “Being a vampire is not being dead. You know that. You've talked to Francis and to Camille. You've talked to Kit. He's spent his whole life with vampires. It's a different way of living. Francis says—”

“Francis says!” I shouted, losing my temper. “When did you become so brainwashed? Ever since you met him, it's been ‘Francis says this! Francis says that! Francis says I should die now!' When did you stop thinking for yourself?” I stood up. “I can't believe you're going to give up on humanity. And I'm sorry, but that's what you're doing. That's what becoming a vampire means. At least it does if your transition
actually
works. If you don't wind up dead or zombified and
then
dead. Plus there's the little matter of whether or not you'll adjust to being a vampire. Do you have any idea how high the vampire suicide rate is? Or how hard most of them find being a vampire? And you're going to go through all of that BECAUSE FRANCIS TOLD YOU TO!”

Cathy stood up too. She looked even paler than usual, her lips were thin, and her eyes narrowed. I'd seen that face before. That's how she'd looked when Tommy Lewis had lied about kissing her behind the girls' room in the third grade. How she'd looked when her fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Hildergardt, had accused her of plagiarizing her first-prize-winning, end-of-year, best-of-Maine competition essay. She had never turned that face on me before.

“How long have you known me?” she asked.

“Since we were born, I guess.”

“Have I ever made any major decisions in my life simply because someone told me to? Have I ever shown myself to be a sheep? Have I ever made any major decision without weighing every pro and every con? Do you think I have been researching every single aspect of what I'll be undertaking
because Francis told me to
?”

“But you—”

“If anyone here rushes into things, it's you, Mellifluous Li Duan. You're always rushing into situations thinking you know best, when you haven't got the faintest idea. Like deciding Anna's mom has murdered her husband!”

“What!” I shouted at her. “I'm the one who always knows what to do!”

I thought Cathy understood me. She'd known me for years. She was the only person besides my family who knew my real name. If Cathy didn't know who I was, who did?

Cathy kept talking in that cool, precise voice. “For other people, perhaps. For yourself? You went out with Ryan after you had known him for precisely three seconds. Dozens of his previous girlfriends could have told you what a jerk he is. You didn't even have to ask his girlfriends—casual acquaintances could have told you the same thing! You started fencing because you had a crush on Raj Singh. You didn't know a single thing about fencing except that some cute guy did it. You don't even choose your own classes! Every year you pick the same classes as me. What are you going to do when we're at different colleges? How dare you tell me I can't think for myself!”

I had the strangest feeling in my chest. I was going to yell back at her, tell her she was wrong, scream at her about her being Francis's puppet, but I found myself on the brink of tears, a knot in my chest. Sometimes, yes, I did stuff because Cathy or Anna or Ty or Kristin or whoever was doing them. I mean the classes thing was because I didn't care that much about school. It was easier to do what Cathy did. I wasn't a sheep. It was just that I didn't have as many passions as Cathy. I wasn't like her. I'd never known what I wanted to be when I grew up.

It wasn't the way she was making it sound. I could make decisions.

I couldn't let her make me cry.

“I think you should go now,” Cathy said.

“Right,” I said, moving toward the door.

“One last thing,” she said. “You're the first to know: Mom gave me permission. I can apply for a license whenever I want.”