Companions of the Night (14 page)

With that, finally, Kerry woke. It was only early afternoon, but she didn't dare sleep again.

The trouble was, awake, she kept thinking about her family: Was Dad okay? He wouldn't try anything brave and stupid, would he? And how about Ian? Did kidnappers routinely let little kids bring their stuffed koala bears with them? And where was Mom when they needed her?

Best to fill her mind with other thoughts, Kerry decided. Any other thoughts.

The flashlight seemed to be getting dimmer, so she turned on the backup flashlight, turning off the first to conserve the battery in case they got desperate. From her backpack she took out the book she was supposed to have read for literature class. With Regina's quilt wrapped around her, munching on boxed sugar doughnuts and potato chips and sipping Coke, which was as cold as if it had been refrigerated, she finished the story. She hadn't seen a major plot twist coming, and she automatically deducted fifteen points from her potential test score on the basis of an essay answer that made no sense in light of the way the story
had
ended.

Eventually she got bored enough that she not only did her math homework, she started the next unit's assignment as well.
Like I have much chance of ever making it back to school,
she thought.

Ethan woke with a sigh at 4:35.

Kerry would have been willing to bet that if she looked it up in an almanac that would have been the exact moment the sun disappeared beneath the rim of the world. She was about to say "Good morning," but that was ridiculous under the circumstances, and "Good evening" sounded too much like a cartoon version of a Transylvanian count. "Hi," she said.

Ethan sat up, exhibiting none of the slow, gingerly movements
she
had needed before she could move without stiffness. He did give a little stretch, putting his arms around his knees.
See what a couple hundred years' practice sleeping in graveyards will do for your physique,
she told herself.

"Still here," he commented. Hard to tell whether he was surprised.

She held up her arm to show it was still securely shackled to the track.

"I truly hope that wasn't a hardship," he said.

She had found she was most disinclined to believe him when he used words like
honestly
and
truly,
though in this instance she couldn't see what he had to gain by lying. "I was okay," she told him. Even in this light she could tell he was paler than last night, and she didn't want to say anything that might get him annoyed enough to see her as a meal. Not that she estimated he'd need much of an excuse. "What's the next step?" she asked.

He indicated her backpack. "Do you have a change of clothes in there?"

"My school clothes," she answered. "What I wore yesterday." She saw that the cuffs of her supermarket-uniform pants were muddy from their trek through the Bergen Swamp. How had Ethan managed to stay clean? When she sniffed at her blouse, she found that it stank of gasoline. Day-old clothes couldn't be worse than that.

He got the key from his pocket and came to unlock the handcuffs.

"Your hair is longer than yesterday," she said.

"Yeah." He sounded tired, or disgusted. "Our bodies have a tendency to revert to the state they were in when we first became vampires. My hair was longer then I have to cut it every day, or in two days it's down to my shoulders."

That could be recently,
Kerry thought. People wore their hair all sorts of lengths nowadays. On the other hand, she knew the 1960s were famous for boys wearing long hair. She'd seen movies set in the 1950s and was fairly certain short hair was in back then. The only other times she was aware of men wearing long hair were during the Civil War and in colonial times She really hoped Ethan was from no further back than the '60s.

She rummaged in her backpack and found a spare ponytail elastic for him.

"Thanks " This time he
did
sound surprised His hair was just long enough that he was able to pull it back into a tight tail.

Kerry thought it made him look like a drug pusher. "You cut it yourself?" she asked.

"Barbers notice things like people coming in every day." Perhaps in repayment for the elastic, Ethan started massaging her wrist to get all the feeling back into it The corpse coldness of his touch did more to stiffen her muscles than his attempt at being helpful relaxed them. "I was lucky to be well shaved at the time," he added, uncommonly talkative. "When vampires who have beards want to get rid of them, they have to shave two or three times a night."

"That's how your bodies heal," Kerry said, catching on, "by going back to the way they were."

"Which makes it impossible to maintain either a tattoo or a permanent." Ethan let go of her hand. "Not that I've had personal experience with either."

"So when you said that Regina made you a vampire to save your life, even if that
had
been true, it couldn't have been true." She paused, considering whether this had come out making any sense at all. Suddenly she wished she hadn't said it at all. It was too vivid a reminder of her dream.

Ethan seemed to grasp what she'd meant. "It couldn't have happened that way, no. Vampire blood can heal vampires, and our saliva has healing properties, though hardly enough to cure the dying. It's just enough so that if a vampire is careful where and how he bites, somebody might not even know he's been bitten."

Kerry touched her neck, wondering again if he'd taken some of her blood last night when he'd carried her in here.

Ethan grinned at her. "Present company excluded, of course."

Only the paleness of his skin convinced her he was telling the truth. "Do you plan to?" Stupid question. Of course he'd deny it.

"Take your blood? No." He sat back on his heels and looked at her appraisingly "Why? Are you intrigued? Do you want to know what it feels like?"

"No," she told him in a voice that she hoped sounded more firm than panicked. She tried to shove the sensations from the dream behind her. "I just want to know what to expect. I figured you probably didn't have time. Yesterday. To"—it was hard to say and he wasn't jumping in to help her, though he must know what she meant—"feed. Before we met."

"I didn't," he said.

When he didn't say anything else, she said, "I didn't think you did."

He flashed another smile at her. "As with living as a human, there's more to being a vampire than feeding," he said. "Surely you can survive a day without food? You probably wouldn't like it, but you could do it."

"Without turning into a beast?" she asked.

"Ah," he said in an adult-to-a-child So-that's-what's-been-worrying you? tone. "That's after much longer than a day," he assured her. "Besides, if I fed on you, I don't think you'd ever forgive me."

Kerry found it hard to believe he would really be concerned about that.

"And if I did something for which you didn't forgive me," he finished, "I could never trust you again." He stood, one of those disconcertingly fast movements that was hard to follow. "Hurry up and get changed," he said. "There's no reason for both of us to go hungry."

***

A
FTER A CONSIDERABLE
hike over rubble, they eventually came out at a spot near where the Genesee ran into Lake Ontario. Kerry was amazed to think of Ethan hauling her over all that the previous night, and how she'd slept through it. They left behind Regina's quilt—"In case I ever decide to bring another date here," Ethan told her—but carried out Kerry's backpack and what was left of the groceries.

He took her to a Greek-style family restaurant because, he said, the Greeks generally served breakfast all the time, day and night.

"Why is that?" she asked. "Are there a lot of Greek vampires?"

He just smiled in that way that might mean she'd hit on something he wanted to hide, or that might mean she'd just said something really dumb.

In the restaurant she came back from using the rest room to find Ethan sitting at their table reading a newspaper. "Anything interesting?" she asked when he didn't put it away.

"
Mmm-hmm,
" he said in the same distracted way her father did at the breakfast table. Thinking of her father made her eager to be doing something, and she found herself getting furious at Ethan's slow pace.

"Reading the personals for secret messages from your friends?"

He gave her a dirty look.

She wanted to shake him and scream,
Do something!
but suspected that if she annoyed him too much, he would start moving even more slowly. Determined not to ask any more questions, figuring he wouldn't answer them anyway, she concentrated on her cheese omelet. When she finally looked up, she saw Ethan drinking from the glass of orange juice that was all he'd ordered. "Are you really drinking that?" she asked.

"No, it's all done with mirrors," he answered, still not looking up.

"I didn't think you could."

He did look at her then, peeved. His glance darted about the practically deserted restaurant. "Are you talking about that special diet my doctor has me on?" he asked tightly.

She nodded, delighted to be an irritation to him.

"I
can
have liquids," he told her.

She smiled brightly, but a second later he turned his attention back to the paper.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you it's rude to read at the table?" she asked. It got her wondering if his mother had known he was a vampire. How would her own mother react if she knew what Kerry had done in the last twenty-four hours? If Kerry had been a disappointment before—and she had to have been, or Mom wouldn't have left—the opposite coast wouldn't be far enough should she find out about this.

Ethan brought Kerry back to the East Coast when he answered, "I figured it was all right since I'm reading about you.

"
What?
" She grabbed for the paper, but he smacked her across the knuckles with it. "What's it say?" she demanded, lowering her voice, suddenly convinced that people
were
listening.

"'...disappearance last night of Kerry Nowicki, sixteen, described as having brown hair, hazel eyes, standing about five feet, three inches, and weighing a hundred and twenty pounds.'"

"
A hundred and twenty!
" Kerry squeaked.

Ethan grinned at her outburst but shushed her "There's a picture."

He flashed the newspaper in front of her, and she winced It was from last year's school yearbook, taken shortly after her mother had left, when—in a fit of depression—she had let her friend Nelle talk her into a home perm.

"'...last seen in a pink jacket, white shirt, black pants, and purple apron—'"

Yeah, right, like she'd wear the apron out of the store. She hoped they at least mentioned it was a uniform. "Who reported me missing?"

He motioned her to wait and continued reading. "'It is not clear whether Kerry ever arrived home after leaving the store parking lot at about eight forty-five in the company of a young man named
Evan,
'"—he gave her a significant look—"'described as being in his late teens or early twenties, having dark hair, dark eyes, and wearing a vinyl jacket.'
Vinyl,
" he scoffed, rolling his blue eyes. "Wonderful witnesses. One of your friends describes you here as 'quiet but friendly' and always having 'a friendly word for everyone.'"

"Who said that?" Kerry asked.

"Craig McDougal, night manager."

"Oh, puke," Kerry said.

"That doesn't sound very friendly."

"What do they say about Ian and my father?"

Again he hushed her.

"What?" she said, seeing him frown. "Ethan!"

"
Shh
."

She repeated his name in a whisper.

"What bus do you take?"

"What?"

"School bus. Is your driver Cindy Dickerson?"

Kerry shivered. "What happened?"

"An accident that wasn't an accident, involving the bus and a nineteen eighty-five white Skylark registered to Stephen Nowicki of Fawn Meadow Circle."

"My father?" she asked incredulously, not knowing whether to be relieved or if this was further bad news.

"Your father's car," Ethan corrected. "Is your father in his mid-to-late fifties with a receding hairline and a tendency to wear flannel shirts?"

"No."

"Good." Ethan read, "'Witnesses say the Skylark sideswiped the bus, driving it off the road near the corner of Brockport Townline Road and Route Thirty-one. The bus skidded along the guardrail for a hundred and fifty feet, with the Skylark remaining in position alongside the bus so that Dickerson couldn't get the vehicle back up on the shoulder. At the point where the guardrail ended, the bus's right front wheel went up over the concrete divider, causing the bus to tip over onto its side and fall into the drainage ditch along the side of the road Meanwhile the Skylark came to a stop after hitting a fire hydrant.' There's a diagram."

He held the paper up so she could see, but it was hard to focus. "Was anybody"—she couldn't say
killed
—"hurt?"

His blue eyes moved rapidly back and forth as he skimmed the article. "Cuts, bruises, a couple broken arms and cracked ribs. Most of the people were treated at Lakeside, then released. One kid, Kurt Wilmier"—Kerry nodded to show she knew who he meant—"was hit by flying glass and he was taken to Strong Memorial in Rochester. The rest all seem to be in satisfactory condition at Lakeside. They say the bus normally transports forty-five students but most had been dropped off already, so there were only seven still in the bus. The driver of the Skylark took off on foot during the confusion."

"They're saying," Kerry asked, "that it was intentional? The driver of my father's car purposefully ..."

Ethan was nodding.

Kerry sat back in her seat, stunned.

"The police checked the registration on the car," Ethan said, "and when they went to your house, they found it as we found it. Your neighbor"—he glanced again at the paper—"Mrs. Armendariz thinks your father and brother may have been missing since Friday evening, based on a phone call from you."

Kerry nodded.

"Either they haven't caught on yet—or they just didn't mention—that that's your bus."