Voice of the Undead (18 page)

Chapter 29

Anyone on the promenade deck who cared to look might have picked out the bright yellow WaveRunner approaching at a steady clip, but no one did. As he got closer, Alex heard calypso music streaming from above. There were teens and adults on the deck, arm in arm, looking at one another more than at the dark water.

Alex came up along the starboard side, hugging the side of the ship, scanning the white metal for any kind of access. The water was churning and he had to keep about two yards away to avoid getting swamped and sucked under. The ship was not moving fast, but it was kicking up a dangerous spray.

The
Allimarc
was not as large as a typical cruise ship—it was more of a giant yacht—but for a landlocked (if enormous) lake, the ship made a fantastically opulent statement. It was clearly very new, and Alex felt certain it would be outfitted with every geegaw a self-impressed ship owner would want, from HD screens in every stateroom to marine compactors for recycling glass and aluminum waste down to handy little blocks, to water purifiers to bring in lake water for use in cooking. Like the cars they were driven in, the ship was a symbol of the power of the parents of these schools' students. The students themselves might be just kids, the ship was saying, but we the parents are powerful, even dangerous.

As he came around the curve of the hull he saw that the
Allimarc
had a rescue ladder near the prow, going all the way down under the waterline, cutting its own groove in the lake. Alex came up alongside, letting go of the WaveRunner, and grabbed on to the ladder. The WaveRunner whipped past his feet as he scrambled up. He heard a heavy, chunky sound as the yellow craft got caught up in the churn and disappeared beneath the ship, and Alex mentally apologized to the rental manager. The Polidorium could replace it.

Xylophone music accompanied him up the ladder. When he reached the top, he peered over the edge, keeping his head behind a huge life preserver and stanchion.

The deck at the prow was deserted. Alex scanned, seeing the lights of the bridge up above, and the tops of a few crewmen's heads. No static. He grabbed the side and climbed, dropping onto the deck. As he hit the boards his dress shoes slid and he tumbled, crying out briefly as he fell in a mound of thick blue rope.

Alex stood up, breathing, taking in the calypso music and the cold wind leaching body heat through his jacket. He was dripping water. Okay. Now what?

The music shifted to a more orchestral number—a live orchestra, he could tell. Alex slunk along the deck, sticking to the bulkhead. The promenade, where the air-seeking partygoers were gathered, was above—he had to stay close in, to avoid being seen.

A pair of adults came around a corner up ahead. Instinctively Alex waved and they waved back. He saw a door and ducked through it.

The jangling, oscillating chirps and trills of a casino drowned out any hint of the orchestra from the ballroom above. Alex moved through the darkened, smoky cave, waving off the stale cigarette smoke, past a few more adults enrapt by the charms of the slot machines. Amazing that some parents would come all this way to see their kids, but would probably spend the next six hours right here, tugging at the golden arm.

Alex exited the casino and found himself at the center of the ship, facing a huge stairwell with brass railings and gilt-edged rugs and thankfully a guide plaque on the wall. This was level 1, and the ballroom was on 3, one up from the promenade deck.

Soaking or not, he had to just
go
. Alex ran his hands through his wet hair, slicking it back.

Two flights up he found a sign:
MINISTERS BALL AND BENEFIT
. As if there were anything else going on.

A woman was speaking, and the voice sounded full but older, probably in her sixties.

“. . . a tribute to these fine young people that they have weathered these events so well. Even now, a house is being refurbished where Glenarvon will continue its work. But that's not all: There is much more work to be done on the school's own grounds. This is why . . .”

Alex headed out onto the walk around the ballroom, taking his place next to some plants and peering in.

How was it going to work? In the woods, Elle had played Ultravox's voice, and that had been the cue. But how would they do it here? There was a PA system, of course. Should he go look for the PA?

In the ballroom the speech subsided, and Alex saw another staircase, leading up to a dining area. There was a crowd gathered up above, and he could see boys in tuxes and the girls in evening gowns. There was a woman, gray haired, elegant, in a head-to-toe sequined gown, standing next to a microphone with a stack of large, black index cards.

“And now the moment you've all been waiting for: our debuts,” the woman said.

The attendees of the ball had gathered along the edges, and the woman began reading names.

“Miss Millicent Deveraux.” Alex saw a stunning seventeen-year-old come forward, at the hand of a gentleman in a tux. He stepped forward and handed her off to her escort as the woman went into Miss Millicent's many swell-sounding accomplishments. Apparently wintered in the Alps, where she was teaching ice sculpture on the side. Did they make this stuff up?

Alex caught a glimmer of green in the waiting room above—Vienna. She was standing next to a man who must be Mr. Cazorla.

And there was Minhi—next to a tall, olive-skinned woman who looked like her, but with a pixie cut and a little more fullness. And now as he scanned he saw the rest—Ilsa behind them, Paul and Sid, waiting in the wings, and next to them a boy Paul was talking to. Javi, the RA from school. An escort in a pinch for Vienna. They both spoke Spanish. What luck.

The wet coat was bulky and annoying and he stripped it off, letting it fall at his feet, his lapel pin clacking on the boards.

The woman announced that each debutante would be met with a gift, a pen—a gleaming platinum Montblanc, in fact, commemorating the upcoming international meeting this ball was intended to kick off. Although of course Glenarvon was accepting offers of support, Alex figured that one of those pens could pay for most of the books in the library.
What are you doing, Alex? You're here on a hunch. You should be here for real. You should be up there. The mission was a fake and Elle was just playing along when you stretched it out into a threat against the ball. You're as much a chump as the Merrills.

He thought all of this with a blistering honesty. No, wait. He
thought
that he thought that.

The man standing behind him had said it.

Alex felt static, finally, far away and muffled.

“Let's take a walk, Alex,” said Ultravox. “There's something you'll want to do.”

Chapter 30

Minhi received her Montblanc from Paul and held on to it as she took his hand and they stepped down the rest of the stairs.

They began to dance as the announcements went on, and she watched the crowd. Her mom was on the side, talking to Mr. Otranto, and she was nodding in a way Minhi had seen before: It was the serene look of a woman hearing a pitch. There were stations around the ballroom where people gathered for fun or for paying a lot of money. Not far from the bar near a side door, there was a table where Ms. Daughtry was taking pledges for the rebuilding of Glenarvon. The punch bowl (for the students) was on the other side of the room where a representative from the upcoming Ministers' Conference was working the same angle. Minhi's mom would stop at one or the other soon, probably just to shut Otranto up.

The orchestra segued into calypso again. Javi and Vienna came into view over Paul's shoulder, Vienna looking charming, smiling as any deb should, but not all the way to her eyes. “You have to admit, this is better than the cages down in the Scholomance,” Paul said.

Minhi laughed. They were swaying, dancing about as much as Paul could manage. “And I got a pen,” she said.

She dropped the pen into her tiny handbag before taking his hand again. That was better.

“What?” Paul asked, looking at her.

“Just . . . enjoying the music,” she said. The dancing was to go on for a few numbers and then there would be a switch; the hostess would announce that they should each dance with their parents, which was charming except that Minhi was there with her mom and she wasn't sure if they could just sit it out or decide who should lead.

“Damn cell phone,” she said aloud, not intending to.

“Yeah,” Paul said as kindly as he could. He looked around. “You want me to get you some punch?”

She smiled. “Sure.”

Paul gallantly bowed and she curtsied, and he was off, showing some measure of relief. None of this felt quite right.

For a moment she did listen to the music, the rhythmic xylophones and bongos thrumming in her head. She turned around and looked at Ms. Daughtry, who smiled back and waved.

Behind Ms. Daughtry she saw a glint of metal on the floor, shimmering like a jewel in a mound of dark cloth. She waited for Paul and studied the ballroom banners for a moment.

She shot her eyes back to the glint.

Minhi found herself walking toward it and coming around the open doorway, staring at the jewel. Her heart began to thump against her chest as she knelt, reaching out to touch a soaking tuxedo jacket that had been tossed on the floor, water streaming around it.

It was Alex's lapel pin.

Minhi stood up as the hostess started to announce the parental dance. She followed the stream of water with her eyes and began to run.

“You've done very well,” said Ultravox, who still wore a peasant shirt and casual pants, no slave to fashion. Down in the bowels of the ship, in a hold about the size of a two-car garage, the man's voice echoed off metal walls as they strolled past pallets of cardboard and bins of glass and aluminum. They were walking through a hold where trash and recyclables would be processed, Alex dimly realized. Then the realization drifted away.

“You're probably wondering why I don't have an army,” Ultravox said. “The Scholomance is so obsessed with making its point with droves of soldiers, but I find a little bit of leadership can go a long way.”

The vampire was just behind Alex and to the side. Alex started to break free of the voice, when Ultravox said again, “No, you don't want to raise your hands. You're tired of all that. Look what it's got you.”

They were approaching an open door at the end of the room. For a moment it looked strange and unfamiliar, and then Alex blinked and saw that it was a bunk, not full-size, but the kind you'd find on the train from Munich to Rome, decent enough to doze for a few hours after you've been walking all day. Ultravox's voice went on, outside yet somehow inside his head.

“Alex, I told you before that this was as good as it's going to get, but you've only made it worse. Isn't that just terrible? You have all of these opportunities around you, but you'll bungle them. The young ladies around you, you can't seem to decide what to do about them. And I'll tell you,” the man with the scratchy face and liquid voice continued, “that's really just as well. You can believe that you would have found happiness, but most people don't. You won't; at this rate you'll be a slave to what you really want to be doing, running around playing cops and robbers. It's not going to get any better, and it will only get worse. But that's all right. Tomorrow you can think about it some more.”

Ultravox came around and patted him firmly on the shoulder. “What you want to do now is get some rest.”

It was true. Ultravox was working for the Scholomance but you had to hand it to the guy, what he said always made sense. Alex had allowed Steven to be hurt, had allowed both Merrills to become vampires. He hadn't prevented his school from burning up. He had disappointed his friends tonight, and for what? There wasn't any stopping beings that were always going to be stronger and smarter and . . .

Ultravox stepped ahead of him and reached into the bunk. A block of shiny metal sat on the bed, and then as Ultravox spoke Alex realized he had been wrong. “Someone left some bedding here,” said Ultravox. The block of metal shimmered and Alex blinked, and it was just a pile of blankets and pillows. “Let me get it out of the way.”

Ultravox picked up the bedding and set it aside—Alex saw it shimmer, flashing with metal and then smoothing over again—and the vampire put his hands in his cotton pockets.

“It's a universal feeling, you know. We all ruin our lives in our own ways. I myself had the greatest voice ever known, and I squandered it quietly, living in the shadows. Letting people like Icemaker take all the glory, letting people like your various relatives—few of whom were nearly as resourceful as you, by the way—disrupt any little plan I had going. Your family has certainly been . . . a constant joy, to me and to the Scholomance.

“Six months ago I was offered the ball project. Big targets, and a noble cause. The Scholomance didn't want the treaty and they knew I'd be the best choice for finding a way to eliminate the key players. And this will come to pass. But a month ago, the richest target of all came along: another Van Helsing. An active one.” The vampire came closer and spoke in his ear. “I can do with my voice what Icemaker couldn't do with an army of thousands: eliminate you. The Scholomance will have no choice but to finally give me the recognition and authority I deserve.”

Ultravox patted Alex on the shoulder. “Bury all that now. Rest,” he said. “Your limbs are heavy and none of it matters anyway.”

The mellifluous voice dripped through Alex's body, moving him, of course. He stepped forward, grabbed the inside of the bunk, and hauled himself up, lying down. He wanted to sleep. Otherwise he would just keep thinking about how it wasn't going to get any better.

“I had heard that you might be the exception,” Ultravox was saying. “The only one of your family in generations who had that extra something that your ancestor and his mad son had. But no, you're just another adventurer, like your father. Not unimpressive—but hardly my problem.” He sighed. “If you think about your life, you will see a fog crossing, enveloping you. It's better in the fog, where you can rest, and all of this goes away. It should be just a moment.”

Alex barely heard Ultravox say, as he was walking away, “Good night, Van Helsing.”