The Eternal Tomb (4 page)

“Hello?” Oliver murmured at the insect. “I'm here.” The firefly didn't stir.

Bane had said that he'd spoken to Selene. That she'd told him how to undo Oliver's prophecy and that whatever he'd been doing was almost ready.
Bane, what were you up to?
This firefly must have been part of Selene. Maybe it contained a bit of her life force.

“Hey,” he said to the firefly.

“Who are you talking to, Nocturne?”

Oliver snapped the box closed and looked down to see his classmate Theo standing at the base of the basketball hoop. “Nobody,” said Oliver coldly, slipping the box back into his pocket.

“That sounds about right,” Theo remarked. He looked around the empty playground, his hands in his pockets.

Oliver braced for what Theo would say next. They had never been friends, but since the night of Bane's slaying, when Oliver had ruined a game of Gargoyle Tag by attacking Theo's friend Maggots in a fit of rage, Theo had been colder than ever. Oliver felt like a timer was ticking. Every night, he expected some kind of revenge for that outburst. And the longer he had to wait, the more worried he became that the payback was going to be brutal.

But Theo just stood there. After a few seconds, Oliver finally snapped: “What?”

Theo glared up at him, but then looked away again. “Heard about your brother,” he said.

“Yeah, so?”

“So…” Theo began, and lunged up into the air. Oliver flinched, but Theo grabbed the backboard and swung himself onto it, sitting above Oliver's shoulder. Strangely, he used only one hand. The other stayed in his pocket. “That sucks, that's what. Even for you.”

Oliver scowled. “Yeah, well, why do you care?”

“I don't, really.” Theo stared out across the playground. “But if you're wondering why you got off after what you did to Maggots, that's why.”

“So what, I'm, like, lucky?”

“Nah, you're just not broken in ten places, like you shoulda been, after what you did.”

“Okay,” said Oliver. Theo kept sitting there. Oliver was confused. “And?”

“My sister was torched,” said Theo. Torched was another term for being slain. “She was wild, so she had it coming, but still…” Theo's eyes glowed with a tinge of deep blue.

“Huh,” Oliver offered.

“My dad took it pretty hard,” Theo said quietly. “He wanted revenge, but they never found out who did it.”

“That's too bad,” Oliver said sincerely, yet with a note of distrust.

Theo pulled his other hand from his pocket and made a show of flexing it. A few of his fingers were purple and broken. Theo had shown up at school with injuries before. No one ever talked about them, but it was known that sometimes Theo's dad could get very angry, even for a vampire. “You gotta get some vengeance,” Theo said, and his voice lowered. “Otherwise, you do other things.”

Oliver waited for Theo to continue, but he didn't. “Okay,” Oliver finally said. “Thanks.”

“Hey, Theo!” Maggots, Suzyn, and Kym were strolling across the playground. “What are you doing?”

“Oh,” said Theo. “Back to business. Hey, guys!” he shouted, then turned and shoved Oliver violently off the hoop. As Oliver tumbled to the pavement, Theo soared over to his friends and they shared a good laugh. Theo sauntered away, an arm around Kym, but with his damaged hand still hidden in his pocket.

Oliver dragged himself to his feet. More kids were arriving now, filling up the playground. He felt the objects in his pocket, frustrated that he would have to wait to decipher them further.

Oliver headed inside early, brushing absently through the students who were milling around by the door, joking and playing. Theo's words had him distracted. Vengeance. He thought of Lythia, and imagined lunging at her, plunging a stake through her heart and watching her dissolve to ash…and he found that he very much wanted that. It made his teeth grit, his fists clench.
There you go, bro
, he could imagine his brother saying approvingly.

He knocked at the back door, but there was no answer. Trying the handle, he found the door open. The halls were alive with glowing grotesqua. Oliver proceeded upstairs, past the silent, leering demon faces and swirling battle scenes.

Rodrigo, a vampire who secretly worked as the school's night janitor, stood by Oliver's classroom door. His hands were coated in shimmering neon. He waved them around, sculpting a new grotesqua image, mumbling to himself in Skrit as he did so. Colors dripped from his fingers, composing images.

The scene showed a hall full of vampires dancing, dressed in fine tuxedos and gowns. To one side, an orchestra played, their bows waving in unison. The dancers twirled. Balconies arced above, and at the height of the scene, a glowing moon shone down. The Darkling Ball.

The room reminded Oliver of the one he'd visited in Bane's memory. After its destruction, Half-Light's main offices and the ballroom had been moved into the top floors of the Iniquity Bank Tower, a tall black skyscraper downtown. Oliver had never been to the ball, but of course he would be there this year. So would the rest of his class—this was the first year that they were old enough to attend.

“Looks great, Rodrigo.”

“Thank you, sir. I love the music,” said Rodrigo wistfully, as if he could hear it now.

“Me, too,” said Oliver truthfully. In honor of Waning Sun, the full
Melancholia
was being performed. Since the entire piece was over two months long, the performance had begun weeks ago, and would culminate Friday night at the Darkling Ball, with the unveiling of the newest movement. Oliver was actually looking forward to hearing it, especially since he played cello himself.

“It will certainly be a grand night,” said Rodrigo.

“Yeah,” Oliver replied quietly. Rodrigo didn't know the half of it. Oliver wondered what he would think, what everyone at school would think if they knew about Oliver's prophecy, and about the Anointment. Only members of Half-Light knew of Oliver's destiny. Would his classmates, teachers, Rodrigo even, think differently of him? Would it make him a celebrity again, as he'd briefly been last winter, when everyone thought he'd only befriended Emalie in order to torment her by killing her cousin? Oliver was glad they didn't know; it would make things even harder, he guessed. He already felt guilty enough about wanting to undo the prophecy.

Oliver entered his classroom. He was the first to arrive in the candlelit room, and went immediately to his desk. As he sat down, he caught a familiar scent, felt a twinge of excitement, and reached under the desk. Sure enough, something was wedged between the desktop and the metal bar.

It was a key chain: an empty ring attached to a tiny black plastic square. There was a curved space at the top of the square that revealed the edge of something inside, made of clear plastic. He pinched and pulled, revealing a small magnifying glass.

Leaning over, Oliver held the glass over the desk, close to the wood surface. The spot he was focusing on was blank, but changed when Oliver whispered: “
Segretthh…
” a Skrit word meaning “secret.”

Charred lines appeared in the desktop, making words so tiny that the magnifying glass was necessary for reading them. Emalie had created this device as a safer way of passing notes than regular paper. Only Oliver or Emalie's voice could activate the message. What Oliver read now caused a ripple of worried excitement:

it's ready. meet at Dean's. 4 A.M.

It
was the Portal. Finally, he would find out for sure if his parents were alive.
And then what?
Oliver thought.
Am I really going to go find them? What good will that do?
He had no idea. All he knew was that if they were alive out there somewhere, he desperately wanted to know them, and well, that was that.

Oliver blew on the words and they disappeared in a small cloud of ash.

Moments later, the rest of his class began piling into the room. Theo and his friends immediately leaped up to the ceiling, where they formed their upside-down circle to joke and flirt and make fun of the others entering, like Berthold and Carly. Even Seth took some abuse, Maggots making a joke about his hair even though it was the exact same curly blond that it had been for years. No jokes came Oliver's way, thanks to Theo, he guessed, and so he settled back into his seat and waited for the long school night to be over.

Chapter 4

A Day Older…And Farther Away

AS OLIVER LEFT SCHOOL
that night, he paused. Sometimes he still expected Bane to be skulking outside, waiting to walk home with him and harass him along the way. He felt a fresh wave of anger, toward Lythia and Désirée, toward Half-Light.… But these thoughts would have to wait, because tonight, there was something else important to be done.

After a quick stop along the way, Oliver arrived at Dean's house just before four. He found two people on the porch. One was Emalie's great-aunt Kathleen, whom Oliver had recently met. She was a middle-aged, heavyset woman, an Orani like Emalie, and helped her with learning enchantments and skills. “Hi, Oliver,” she said as he climbed the steps.

“Hey.”

Beside her was a man with dark straight hair in a youthful mop on his head, his hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket. His eyes had a familiar shape and darkness.

“Mr. Watkins?” Oliver asked.

Emalie's father, Cole, looked down at Oliver apprehensively. “So you're Oliver.”

Oliver nodded. While he'd been in Emalie's house many times, this was the first time that they'd ever met. “Nice to meet you,” said Oliver. With the way that Cole was looking at him, like he was someone not to be trusted, Oliver didn't bother with the human custom of sticking out his hand.

But then Cole did. Oliver shook it.

“I know,” said Cole, “that as a father I should probably…well…probably
something.
But I don't know what. You're Emalie's best friend. Nothing I can do about that, is there?”

Best
friend? Oliver felt a rush, but managed to just shrug. “Guess not. I'm not dangerous—”

“Yes you are,” Cole said quickly. “But so is the world Emalie's a part of now. That her mom was part of.” A slight frost edged Cole's words. “So just don't pretend that you're not, and we'll be fine.”

“Sure,” said Oliver. He thought that was a pretty good perspective to have on things.

Dean opened the door. “Hey, everybody.” He craned his neck out, gazing up and down the street. “Come on in,” he said.

They followed Dean through the dark living room to the kitchen, which was lit by a candle chandelier and bustling with activity.

“Hey, Uncle Cole,” Dean's younger brother, Kyle, said breathlessly, racing past. “Oliver, Oliver, Oliver!” he shouted, jumping up and down. He was in his pajamas, his hair sticking this way and that. “Check it out!” He held up a small plastic figurine that was missing one arm and both its legs. Kyle grabbed the remaining arm and yanked it free.

There was a sharp popping sound. “Oh, no, my arm!” The doll moaned in a high-pitched electronic voice.

“Ha!” Kyle shouted. “So great!”

Oliver nodded. Dismemberment dolls were popular with vampire kids and teens. Even just pretending to tear someone's limbs off helped them work out their frustrations. Dean had gotten this one for Kyle in the Underground.

“Knock it off, Kyle,” said his older sister, Elizabeth, who sat on a stool at the kitchen counter. She was also still in her pajamas, and was busily making sushi rolls, her nose wrinkled in disgust.

Oliver could smell why: Though the large plate beside her held a wonderful display of different maki rolls and sushi featuring tuna, salmon, avocado, and crabmeat, Elizabeth was now doing the rolls with more zombie-appropriate items inside. She winced, sinking her fingers into a small bowl of light pink meat with a squishing sound.

“Hi, Elizabeth,” said Oliver meekly.

“Hey,” she replied without looking up. It had been a few months since Oliver, Emalie, and Dean had needed to draw Elizabeth's blood to perform the master location spell, but Elizabeth hadn't exactly warmed up to Oliver yet, or to Dean, for that matter.

“Looking good, honey!” Dean's mom, Tammy, popped up from behind the counter, holding a large chocolate cake on a glass plate. “Hey, brother,” she said to Cole in her usual half-out-of-breath way, giving him a quick, one-armed hug. “Hi, Oliver.” She slid the cake down on the table. “Boy, it's been so long since I've made a normal cake. I almost forgot how!” Tammy looked over at Dean and smiled. “Just good old-fashioned sugar, flour, and butter.”

Dean smiled back. “Sounds boring,” he quipped. Oliver watched the interaction, and felt glad for it. Dean being undead was still hard on everyone, but there were moments, like right now, when it seemed to be going fine.

Tammy checked her watch. “Now, if Mitch would just get here—”

“Got 'em!” Mitch popped into the kitchen, holding a small box of birthday candles and removing a yellow hard hat as he did so. Mitch used to be an accountant. Now, in order to be on a nocturnal schedule with Dean, he was a night technician installing fiber-optic lines beneath the city.

“How was work, Dad?” Dean asked.

“Hah, funny night,” said Mitch, shaking his head. “Alvarez and I were putting in lines under Denny Way, and we ran into a cranky zombie pod by the new Whole Foods.” Mitch popped open the fridge and grabbed a beer.

“Was everything all right?” Tammy asked, pausing in her candle placing to give Mitch a concerned look. She still worried about his new line of work.

“Fine, honey, fine,” said Mitch with a smile. “Alvarez didn't get what was going on, as usual. He still thinks the zombies are homeless people.” Mitch rolled his eyes. “Anyway, once the pod calmed down, I showed them your picture, son,” he said to Dean. “They wanted to know how you kept so much of your hair.” He turned to Tammy. “You could go into business with zombie care, honey!”