Companions of the Night
Copyright © 1995 by Vivian Vande Velde
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to:
Permissions Department, Harcourt Brace & Company, 6277 Sea Harbor Drive,
Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
Illustration copyright © 1995 by Cliff Nielsen
"Unchained Melody"
Lyric by Hy Zaret
Music by Alex North
Copyright © 1955 (Renewed) FRANK MUSIC CORP.
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vande Velde, Vivian.
Companions of the night/Vivian Vande Velde—1st ed.
p. cm.
"Jane Yolen Books."
Summary: When sixteen-year-old Kerry Nowicki helps a young man
escape from a group of men who claim he is a vampire, she finds
herself faced with some bizarre and dangerous choices.
ISBN 0-15-200221-9
[1. Vampires—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.V2773Co 1995
[Fic]—dc20 94-30106
Designed by Trina Stahl
D F G E C
Printed in the United States of America
Dedicated with love to
Allan and Barbara
Gretchen and Bruce
Herb and Donna
Oh, my love, my darling,
I've hungered
for your touch
a long, lonely time.
Time goes by
so slowly
and time
can do so much....
—"Unchained Melody"
(A. North / H. Zaret)
W
HEN
I
AN CAME
into Kerry's room to ask for a favor, it never occurred to her that her four-year-old brother could ask her to do something that might get her killed.
"What kind of favor?" she asked, sticking a finger in her book to keep her place. It was almost eleven o'clock at night, her second period literature teacher had promised a test tomorrow, and she still had fifty pages to go, with the author seeming in no hurry to wrap things up.
"I left Footy at the laundry," Ian said. Footy was Ian's stuffed koala bear.
"Ian," Kerry pointed out—the same thing she'd pointed out the instant he'd entered her room—"it's the middle of the night. You're supposed to be asleep in bed, I'm supposed to be asleep in bed, Dad
is
asleep..."
Ian's bottom lip began to tremble, and Kerry rested her forehead in her hand.
"Don't cry," she said. Ever since Mom had left, Kerry couldn't take it when Ian cried. "Maybe you forgot him at Greg's"—Ian started shaking his head—"or in Daddy's car?"
"No," Ian said. "I was playing under the counter where you fold your stuff. You know the pink stripy one that doesn't match the others?"
Kerry didn't know, but she nodded to keep him going.
"I was using the laundry cart as a fort. I know that's where I left him, under the pink stripy counter. Can't you go and get him?"
Kerry shook her head. "I've only got a learner's permit, so I'm not allowed to drive unless there's somebody who has a license with me," she explained. "I'd get in trouble with Dad
and
the police. Footy will be fine one night without you. It'll be like a campout for him."
If Ian had thrown a tantrum, he would have been easier to resist. But he stood there silently, tears running down his face. Then, very quietly, he said, "It won't be like a campout. Somebody will steal him."
"Ian, munchkin, the kind of people who go to laundries in the middle of the night are not the kind of people who steal ragged little koala bears."
"Footy's not ragged," Ian said. "And if it was Corny, you wouldn't leave
her.
"
Kerry looked to her dresser at the unicorn she'd had since she was two. Now that Kerry was sixteen, Corny rarely traveled farther than from the bed to the dresser, but Ian had made his point. "All right, all right." Kerry took her finger
out of the book. "But you stand by Daddy's door and make sure you hear him snoring, or I'm not moving. And if Dad wakes up, tell him..."
Tell him
what?
What story would he possibly believe? And what am I doing coaching a four-year-old to lie? Hadn't there been enough lies in this family in the year before Mom moved out?
"Tell him I'll be back soon," she finished.
She shooed Ian out of the room and pulled her jeans on, tucking in her If It's M
ORNING
D
ON'T
T
ALK TO
M
E
nightshirt. She'd be wearing her jacket, and anyway, she thought, if anybody stopped her, she was going to be in too much trouble to be embarrassed by what she was wearing. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail without even checking in a mirror.
This was all her mother's fault They wouldn't even have to go to the laundry if her mother hadn't abandoned them, moving from Brockport, New York, to Somewhere-or-other, Florida, to study to be a private investigator—and only one postcard since. She had left the car because the man she went with had a better one, but she'd taken the washer and dryer.
What kind of mother leaves her family, letting her kids run the risk of losing their koala bears in laundries?
Kerry asked herself. It was a dangerous question, because the answer was easy:
a mother who doesn't like her kids.
Still, once Kerry had tiptoed out of the house—and not counting the fear of getting stopped by the police—it seemed such a simple, safe little task.
F
IVE MINUTES LATER
, Kerry pulled up in front of the Quick-Clean Laundry. The street was dark but not deserted. Next door the Strand Theatre was all lit up. The movie must have just ended because there were people still coming out. Down the other way was a pizza place where the college kids hung out. She could smell the tomato sauce and hear the music.
The laundry, of course, was always open. In a college town where half the kids lived off campus, there had to be a twenty-four-hour laundry.
Her dad hadn't taught her parallel parking yet, and Kerry ended up a good three feet from the curb and overlapping two parking places. That left half a space behind her car before the corner, and a parking space and a half before the last of the cars from the movie crowd, but she told herself she was only going to be here a sec and didn't need to worry about getting ticketed.
As she opened the door, she was greeted by the smell of warm wet soap. All the lights were on—she'd seen that from the street because the place was half windows—but nobody was there. Not even the little guy who ran the place, the one who made change and sold overpriced single-wash boxes of soap and fabric softener if you forgot to bring some from home, and yelled if he caught you leaving without cleaning out the lint tray. Kerry had known that the little guy couldn't be there all twenty-four hours that the place was open, but she was amazed there wasn't
some
body around to make sure people didn't come in and pry open the money boxes. She felt creepy being there all alone so late at night.
Grab Footy,
she thought,
and then get home.
Fighting a yawn, she realized she was way too tired to tackle her literature project. She'd just have to bluff her way through the test.
She glanced around the shop and immediately identified the counter Ian had been talking about. The counters were all white with gold speckles except that one, last remnant of a previous decor or an addition from somebody's leftover something-or-other. She thought,
Well, that was easy.
Except, of course, Footy wasn't there.
"Stupid bear," she muttered.
She crawled under the counter just to make sure There was a paper pamphlet—probably one of the owner's Bible tracts that he was always trying to pass out—and maybe Footy could be hidden behind it The floor was gritty with spilled soap that stuck to the palms of her hands and, when she tried to wipe her hands clean, stung where she'd bitten the skin near her nails. She poked at the paper, wondering what the chances were of mice lurking around a place like this.
No Footy, but at least no mice either. Only a razor blade, which someone had probably brought to open the boxes of detergent.
Idiot!
Kerry thought at whoever had dropped it, remembering how Ian had been crawling under here. Carefully she picked the blade up and backed out from underneath the counter.
Her good deed paid off, for it wasn't until she put the razor down in the ashtray on the desk with the cash register that she noticed Footy sitting on top of the pile of religious pamphlets.
"You, mister," she said, picking up the bear and shaking a finger at him. Then she dropped her voice to a whisper because the only other sound was the hum of the fluorescent lights. "You are in deep trouble, and you're grounded until you're thirty-seven. Whatever that works out to in bear years."
She hadn't even lowered her finger when the back door burst open.
The owner,
Kerry thought as she whirled around to face whoever it was that was making such a commotion coming in.
Mr. Quick-Clean.
He must have stepped out to get a cup of coffee or a slice of pizza and then realized how long he'd left his place unattended.
As she turned, Footy smacked against the cash register and slipped from her fingers to the floor Instinctively Kerry bent down to pick him up, knowing, even as she shifted her balance, that this was the last thing she should do. She should call out "Hello," step forward, let the owner see that she was here, look like a paying customer—or at least like someone who had a legitimate reason to be here and not like someone trying to hide or to break into the cash register.
But before she could straighten, she saw the people coming in through the door: four men, three of them dragging one who was—Kerry felt her heart stop, then start again at a frenzied pace—gagged and bloodied, with his hands tied behind his back.
Kerry dropped to her hands and knees under the desk.
A drug deal gone bad,
she thought. Or
a gang fight.
Not that there was much of that sort of thing in Brockport, but she'd seen enough cop shows to guess.
And she was caught right in the middle of it.
One of the men kicked the prisoner behind the leg so that he dropped to his knees and his face was momentarily on a level with Kerry's. Young, she saw, and scared, which was natural enough. It took a second for his eyes to focus on her, and then one of the other men jerked him backward by the hair so that his back was to one of the stainless steel laundry tubs. They began tying his already bound hands to the thick steel leg of the tub.
Then the one who was doing the tying looked up and saw her. "What the hell—," he started.
And in that moment, which Kerry recognized was probably her last chance to get to her feet and run to the front door screaming for help, she was too scared to move.
The prisoner tried to break away while their attention was diverted, but the man in front knocked him back so that his head cracked against the side of the tub. The third man reached over and grabbed hold of Kerry's arm while the one with the rope returned to tying.
Still holding on to Footy, Kerry was dragged out from beneath the desk and hauled to her feet.
"She one of them?" one of the men asked. "Or just a thief?"
