Welcome to Bordertown (33 page)

“You barely know each other,” I sputtered. “Maybe you should—go to a movie first.”

Lankin laughed, the sound at once musical and harsh. “A movie. How very … human.”

“Go find your wolf, Miranda.” Analise’s voice sounded far away. Together she and Lankin glided from the room, disappearing through another door at its far end, one that slowly swung shut behind them.

How could she leave me here alone?
Magic
, I thought. Maybe it was only vampire magic making Analise forget her best friend. I shivered beneath the flickering chandelier. What if that wasn’t true? What if Analise understood, better than I did, how this story was supposed to end?

“You may leave now,” one of the elves said. He wasn’t a statue after all.

I ignored him, walked up to the door, and turned the glass knob. Its bright surface reflected my dark hair and dark eyes back up at me, but the door didn’t budge.

“You are not permitted to pass that way,” a second elf said, his voice identical to the first. “Not unless you’re prepared to offer the master your blood.”

I didn’t want to offer up my blood. Just then, I didn’t want the warmth of a wolf’s fur, either, or not only that. I wanted my best friend back. Tears stung at the corners of my eyes, and the room blurred the way my sketches had. I blinked hard, and the room
disappeared entirely, leaving me alone on a deserted city street, one hand on the ruined wall where a door had been.

The guard elves had disappeared with the rest of the mansion—none of it was real. Maybe that meant Lankin wasn’t real, either. Maybe any second Analise would come back, laughing at how she’d fallen for some stupid illusion, and together we’d go back down Ho Street, find a place to crash, and continue searching for true love in the morning.

From beyond the wall, Analise screamed, a wild, animal sound.
That
was real. Fear shivered down my spine. I heard a muffled sob, then silence. I tried to move, but my feet were frozen to the ground, and not by magic. My hands trembled, my chest pounded, and I wasn’t sure I had the courage to take a single step.

But I did. It sounds like a small thing, when I say it like that, but that’s only because there was no magic for this, no instant when everything changed. First I stood alone on the street, too frightened to move. Then somehow I was making my way through the broken city wall. I searched the rough stones, found a gap among them, and—I crawled through. Not right away, but eventually. I just did, okay? I can’t explain any better than that.

There were ruins on the other side of the wall, cracked stones surrounding a circle of bare dirt. At its center Analise lay on a gray slab, her shirt torn, her arms tied to her sides and her ankles bound. Lankin knelt beside her, next to a guttering oil lamp, but it wasn’t vampire fangs that pierced her shoulder—it was the small silver knife he held. Analise’s blood flowed slowly down a narrow channel in the stone and dripped from there into a silver bowl on the floor. Her eyes met mine, begging me to do something. She must have forgotten I was a coward.

That meant I had no choice but to forget it, too—no, that isn’t right. My hands still shook, my stomach heaved—I didn’t forget
at all. I was afraid, but I didn’t let that stop me from walking toward them.

Lankin laid the knife gently on Analise’s chest, where her tied arms couldn’t reach, then stood and turned to face me. His silk shirt and velvet jacket seemed out of place among the broken rocks. “May I help you, human?”

“Let her go.” My whisper barely squeaked out into the air.

Lankin laughed, and as if in response, the space around us shimmered. A bedroom with black silk draperies came into focus. Candles were set on the floor all around us, and a canopy bed stood where the stone slab had been. Its hangings were drawn aside so that I could still see Analise, lying in a satin nightgown on crimson sheets. The blood was gone now, and the ropes as well. My best friend smiled, and I knew Lankin’s magic had taken hold of her once more. I remembered how the
Tough Guide
said magic was unreliable in Bordertown. No one could make an illusion work here all the time.

Lankin shrugged, an eloquent gesture. “She came to me of her own will, looking, as all humans are looking, for a story—in her case about love and vampires and thirsting for blood, all of which have grown quite trendy in your Bordertown. I gave her what she asked for, nothing more.”

“But your story isn’t true.” Even his being a vampire was an illusion; real vampires didn’t need knives to draw blood.

“All stories are lies, outside the One True Realm.” The tips of his unreal fangs glinted in the candlelight. “No human wants a story that tells the truth.”

“Analise and I do.” We’d come here looking for true love, not illusions and lies.

“Do you believe so?” He smiled, and I wished I’d brought a stake instead of my useless silver cross. You didn’t have to be a
vampire to die of a stake through the heart. “How much are you willing to risk for that, human girl?”

Candles flickered around us. I’d risk everything for Analise, just like she would risk everything for me. I didn’t say that, though. I feared if I offered Lankin everything, everything was what he would take. I lifted my chin to meet the elf’s silver eyes, pretending I was like Analise after all. “What are you asking for?”

Lankin smoothed his velvet cuffs. “A true story, nothing more. I will tell your friend my story, and then you will tell her yours, and she will choose between them.”

“That’s all?”

The wall hangings rustled at some breeze I couldn’t feel. “That is not all. If she chooses your story, I will let her go. If she chooses mine, I will take your blood as well. That is fair, is it not?”

A shudder ran through me. Vampires needed blood to keep them alive. “What do
you
need blood for?”

“Accept this offer, or leave this place. Consider yourself fortunate. I offer you a choice.” Lankin knelt and stroked Analise’s cheek. She shivered, with pleasure or fear, I couldn’t tell.

I wouldn’t leave her. “I accept.”

“Very well.” Lankin brushed his lips against Analise’s, and when he drew away her lips seemed a deeper shade of red. “Long ago and far away, there lived a girl who dreamed of escaping her dreary human life, of finding a place where true love was real, where her lover could see beyond the surfaces humans are limited to, through to all the thoughts and longings that lay hidden beneath her skin.” His voice grew soft as wind over silk. “The girl knew she would pay any price for this thing, and when the chance came, she seized it, wasting no time on hesitation or regret, human failings she had little use for. And so she lived happily ever after,
beautiful and young, loved and in love for all her days. You like that story, do you not?”

“Yes.” Analise’s dreamy smile reminded me of when she was rereading her vampire book. But even in her vampire book there was hesitation—the vampire waited to turn the girl, after all. And my werewolf book had regrets—the boy missed being a wolf sometimes, though never enough to try to change back. I had hesitations and regrets, too, when I ran away and left my parents nothing but a note, beneath another batch of brownies, saying I loved them.

“Go on.” Lankin stepped back. “Tell her your pitiful human story.”

Stories weren’t pitiful for their hesitations and regrets. That was part of what made them true. Even true love wasn’t perfect—but Analise wouldn’t want to hear that now. How could I possibly compete with Lankin’s story? It would be like trying to compete with Analise’s vampire book. Until we’d come here, Analise hadn’t cared about anything more than that book.

No—that was the least true thing of all. There
was
something Analise cared about more than vampires, just like there was something I cared about more than werewolves. We’d known it the day we came up with our plan. I knew it still, but what about Analise?

“Hey, Lise.” I drew a deep breath as I moved to her side. “Want to hear a story?”

“Is it the one about the werewolf?” Analise giggled. “That one’s not as good as the vampire one, you know.”

“No. This is a different story.” I squeezed her hand, feeling what I couldn’t see, the ropes that bound her. “Not so long ago and not so far away, there were two best friends, and they were both afraid. One was afraid that if not for her, her parents would never have fought and would still be in love. The other one knew
that wasn’t true, and she kept saying so until the first friend believed her. Today that first friend isn’t scared of
anything.
”

Analise furrowed her brow, and I couldn’t tell if she remembered or not. “What happened to the second friend?”

Who could blame Analise if she didn’t want to remember this story? “The second friend was afraid, too, because everywhere she went, someone told her she didn’t belong.” My throat tightened around the words. “She wondered deep down if maybe they were right, if something was wrong with her after all. It was the first friend who told her that wasn’t true.”

Analise nodded slowly. “And so the second friend also found her courage, right?”

The candles dimmed, leaving us in a shrinking circle of light. “No. The second one never became brave. But her friend’s words were still a comfort to her, because she knew what they really meant: that they would always be friends, forever and ever.”

“Forever and ever …” Analise’s eyes searched my face, looking for—I don’t know what she was looking for, and it’s too late to ask now. But her gaze focused on me, and her eyes filled with tears. “Miranda?” she said.

“Yeah, Lise.”

“Miranda, you are the bravest person I know.”

I meant to explain she was wrong about that, too, only then the illusion around us melted away, and I saw my best friend, shirt torn, blood trickling from her shoulder and staining her lips, the little bowl beside her half full. The silver knife lay on her chest where Lankin had left it. I used it to cut her bonds, one by one, and the elf didn’t try to stop me.

Fear crept back into Analise’s eyes as I drew her to her feet. It’d been years since I’d seen her afraid. “Where are we?”

“Together,” I said. “Just like always.”

“You have made an enemy this day.” Lankin’s silken voice remained soft. “Not only of me, but of all my house. We will meet again, human child.”

His words sounded exactly like what someone in a story would say. Did that make them less true, or more? I urged Analise across the room. She stumbled, whispering my name. “Miranda. Oh god, Miranda.”

I led her through the shattered stones, back to the cobbled Soho streets and into the Bordertown night.

*   *   *

We’d gone only a few blocks down Ho Street before Analise tripped, fell, and wouldn’t get up. I sat beside her, using Lankin’s knife to cut strips from my fleece to bind her shoulder, terrified all the while he’d find us there. Somehow I got Analise sitting up. She was dizzy from losing all that blood, but I still had my backpack, and I fed her brownies until her dizziness eased.

Analise screamed for a while after that, and then she cried, and then she fell silent and wouldn’t say anything at all. That was when the strange half-bus half-coach came clanking by again, heading west this time. I helped Analise inside and onto a red cushioned bench. I was out of brownies, but the driver didn’t ask for payment. I heard the steady
clop-clop
of hooves outside, at odds with the uneven way the vehicle jerked along.

Only after we got off by Taco Hell did I remember there wasn’t any horse to make the clomping sound.

*   *   *

It’s been six weeks since Analise and I met Lankin, and in all that time Analise hasn’t spoken again. Ms. Wu, the healer who looked at her, said it wasn’t just fear keeping her silent. She said it was good that I’d taken Lankin’s knife, but that I should have taken Analise’s blood, too. “All the Lankins use blood for their magic,”
Ms. Wu explained. The last one had preferred infants, but this one liked girls. The healer didn’t know what Lankin had done with Analise’s blood, but it had broken something inside her, and only he could tell us how to fix it. No one’s seen him or his mansion again, though, not even the Silver Suits who went to investigate, when my report matched some of those coming down from the Hill.

I found a squat and got Analise and me settled there, then wrote to Papá and Mamá and found a trader to deliver my letter. My parents hadn’t left yet, and Papá tried to come to Bordertown himself to talk to me. The washes only led him out into the desert, though, so he and Mamá wrote back instead, saying I should come home and leave with them. They said we’d get by somehow, and that at least we’d all be together. Writing back to tell them why I couldn’t was hard, too, almost as hard as writing to Analise’s mom. I hope they get my letter. I hope they understand. I miss them, I do, but I
can’t
leave.

I run with Janet’s Bards now, telling this story to whoever will listen, but especially to other newbies like you. I don’t know what you came to Bordertown looking for, but I hope that you find it. I hope that it’s real, and that it works out how you planned. I hope that you’ll let me hear your story, too, but that’s up to you. I understand, better than anyone, that some stories are harder to tell than others.

Every time I tell mine, though, it becomes easier to believe what Analise said, that I’m brave after all. That’s a sort of magic, too.

Analise mostly stays inside now, especially since the weather’s gotten so cold. She stares at the walls of our squat, day and night. Sometimes I think she only sees peeling paint and dripping water, but other times her gaze goes soft, and I wonder if she sees another,
grander room. Once in a while she manages to sleep, and when she does, she wakes screaming. I hold her until her sobbing and shaking ease—until she looks up at me, sees me, and silently mouths my name. I know what she’s asking for then.

So I give it to her. “Long ago,” I say, my storyteller’s voice steady and sure, “there were two best friends who had a plan for their future: one of them would marry a vampire, and one would marry a werewolf, and they would all live happily ever after. But even if that didn’t work out—even if the werewolf had a girlfriend, even if the vampire’s stories were all horrid illusions—they knew one thing most of all.”