End of Days (9 page)

I didn't think the regular rules were going to apply for me.

“This is a disaster.” She sat down again. “Suki is already a mess. If she finds out Charlie's missing . . .”

“He wanted to call her,” I said. “Maybe he managed it while we've been sleeping.”

She nodded. “She wants to come up, too. I think . . . I think she
wants to be turned. She's asked me to do it. I wanted to talk to Ophelia first. But I got the impression if I didn't get on it soon, Charlie would just go ahead and take care of it himself.”

This was crazy. “Her timing could be a little better.” I was going to mention that young vampires were an endangered species, but Luna knew this already. “What do your parents think?”

Luna shook her head. “They're helpless. Nothing is good right now. Suki has terrible nightmares. That's when she can sleep at all. Mom and Dad had to pull her from school this year, so she hardly spends any time around her old friends. She doesn't talk to most of them anymore. She says they don't understand her. And she's right. They don't. She sees a psychiatrist, but it doesn't make much of a difference.”

“Does she think becoming a vampire is going to help?”

Luna looked at me. Her eyes were watering. “Could it possibly make things worse? Most days, I'm the only one she talks to. And she's madly in love with Charlie—from the minute she saw him. I'm not lying. He walked into the sailing club, and that was it. You know the goofy grin he has? He made some wisecrack and it was game over.”

I'd heard this before. Charlie's version was much the same, only I seemed to recall his mentioning dimples and a pair of bronzed legs. I kept this to myself.

“So she knows you're a vampire?” I asked.

“Yeah. I know I was supposed to keep it a secret. But—I couldn't hide it from her. It just felt wrong.” Luna pulled her foot up on the swing and rested her chin on her knee.

“Do your parents know, too?”

She took a long time to answer. “Not really. My dad knows what's wrong. And he knows he can't fix it. He tried a full blood transfusion, but it didn't do a thing. I guess the infection gets right into the cells.”

I nodded. “Ophelia tried that with me. I used to have to get them every few months. God, I don't miss that.”

“No. It was terrible. And he was crushed. He was so hopeful it would make all of this go away. But there's no cure, is there?”

I shook my head. “If there was, would you want to take it?”

She took a deep breath. Her answer took a while. “I'm not sure.”

“But your father would want you to?”

“Definitely. My mother, too.”

“What about Suki?”

Luna's head tipped to one side. “No. She'd rather be like me. Like Charlie. We talk about it. Joke about it. She stays up like I do so we can spend time together. Then she crashes and sleeps twenty hours in a row. It's driving my parents crazy. They fight all the time now. My dad . . . I imagine it must upset him a lot, having two daughters with problems he can't solve. He spends his entire day helping other people and he can't even help his own family.”

I fell back into the swing and let my head slip down against the backrest. My stomach was a bed of thorns. It honestly felt as if I'd swallowed a cactus. I'm sure it was guilt. The mess Luna was describing came right back to me, and my decision to involve Charlie with my problems. If I'd stayed away, he'd be at Stony Lake right now, teaching sailing to kids with Suki and Luna. Instead of having to sell their cottage, Dr. and Mrs. Abbott would be up there, too, a picture-perfect American family.

“Is it serious?” I asked.

Luna took a deep breath. She put her fingers in her hair and combed it away from her eyes. Right away, it fell back. “I hope not.”

“I hope not, too.” I pushed my feet down against the porch to get the swing moving. I was hoping it might help unknot my stomach. It didn't work. I started feeling seasick.

“Are you all right?”

I didn't know what to say. With all the trouble I'd caused everyone else, it didn't seem right to say that I felt terrible inside, that I was feeling sorry for myself. Everyone else deserved sympathy, not me.

“I'll be fine,” I said, “just as soon as I get out of jail.”

Luna started to laugh. Our conversation had been so serious, I was a bit surprised to hear it.

“Of all the boys to fall for, I had to choose a vampire who ends up in jail. Boy, do I know how to pick 'em, or what?”

Time is deceptive. Chain a guy to a chair in the police station and five minutes feels like five hours. But put the same guy on a porch swing with the girl of his dreams, and five hours passes in a heartbeat. Before I knew what was happening or why, Luna started to disappear. I remembered what Ophelia had said about getting stuck. I panicked.

“Quickly! Take us back to school.”

Luna's eyes were starting to close. She was like a ghost now, slowly fading. I shook her shoulder gently. “Look at me,” I shouted. “Take me back to your classroom.”

Her eyes fluttered open. I could see the swing right through her body. “Your test,” I said. “You still need to take your test.”

That hit a note. The cottage and lake faded. Luna and I were sitting on a desk. She was reclined and falling asleep.

“Young man,” said a voice. “Just what do you think you're doing?”

I felt something poke my shoulder. I turned. The teacher with the vest and thinning hair was jabbing me with a ruler.

“You make a mockery of the education system.” He poked me again.

“Ah, sorry, but you managed that on your own.” I reached past him to the window—the small shimmering patch I had left in the wall. The rest of the room was blurring. I pulled the window open as Ophelia had done in my dream, and I slipped through just as the teacher jabbed me one last time in the shoulder.

I woke up. Officer Lumsden was prodding me through the bars of my cell with a baton of some kind.

“Oh. I thought you were dead.” He said it as if he was disappointed to learn otherwise. “On your feet.”

I asked him why I had to get up, but he didn't answer. My wrists and ankles were still chained to my waist. My hands had fallen asleep and were starting to hurt. After moving unfettered through my dream, and Luna's, it was frustrating to be inhibited in this way and was a reminder of how much trouble I was in. I rose awkwardly and looked around. My fingers went all pins and needles. I clenched my teeth and waited for the feeling to pass.

A young boy about my age, maybe a little younger, was being admitted. I don't know why I had to be awake for this—maybe they didn't want me snoozing. I felt that I was on display. I probably was. The boy looked as if he was ready to have a nervous breakdown. I wondered what he'd done to get himself in trouble. I listened carefully to what the men were saying. All I caught above the rattle of my chains was that he'd stolen his neighbor's Porsche. Then Officer Lumsden signed him in, and an older guard with a mustache led him down the hall. His eyes were so wide and frightened, you'd think he was being marched to the electric chair. He slowed a bit as he walked past and looked in at me. The moment we made eye contact, the guard prodded him gently with a short baton.

“Hey! You keep your eyes to yourself, understand?”

I'm not sure which of us the guard was talking to.

The boy was taken to the farthest cell in the row. The officer waved him in, then locked the door.

“That kid down there is dangerous,” he said in a quiet voice. “A cop killer. He's going away for life. You're lucky. You could have killed someone tonight. Then you'd be in the same boat.”

I heard the boy swallow. He glanced my way again.

“Don't even look at him,” the officer hissed. “Understand?” The kid nodded. Then the guard walked back with his baton out. It clacked
against each bar in the row of cells. When he reached Officer Lumsden, he stopped.

“What is it with these rich kids?”

“Boredom,” said Officer Lumsden. Then the phone rang. He picked it up and pressed a button next to the display. “Lumsden here.” After a few seconds, he said, “Okay . . . sure thing.” After hanging up, he looked straight at his colleague and made a face as if he'd just been canned. “You won't believe it, but that kid has a visitor already.”

“Are you surprised?” the older officer asked. “The way parents bubble-wrap their kids these days. Mommy and daddy to the rescue. It makes me sick. Like they don't want him to be accountable. They probably have a high-priced Toronto lawyer who makes my salary in a day. So he gets off with nothing.” The guard followed this up with a thorough description of where, exactly, he wanted to place his foot.

“So the kid's spoiled. He's still a saint compared to this other one.” Officer Lumsden nodded in my direction.

“Yeah, keeps things in perspective, doesn't it?” The older guard scowled, stroked his mustache, then buzzed himself out. As he turned, I noticed he had a gun holstered to his waist. Officer Lumsden didn't have one. I wondered why.

Officer Lumsden went back to his seat and picked up his clipboard. A minute or so later his phone rang and he pressed a button. I heard footfalls coming from around the corner. The older officer reappeared with the kid's visitor a step behind. I rose and stood at the bars of my cell to get a closer look. Something about the smell wasn't right.

The two stopped at the set of bars closing off the jail from the rest of the police station. Officer Lumsden buzzed them through and I got a good look at the visitor. He was tall, even without the top hat, and was tottering on his feet as if the ground were heaving beneath him. He looked half-alive. His face was covered in short stubble, and his long hair, a mix of black and white and gray, was tangled as if a bomb had just detonated in his face. He was wearing
a long, filthy overcoat. Worst of all was the reek of sweat and booze that preceded him into the hall. The older officer with the mustache started frisking him and had to turn his head away to breathe. The visitor seemed indifferent. He glanced around the jail. His eyes were pale blue, as if someone had bleached out most of the color.

I knew who he was.

I met John Entwistle last year when he stole a police cycle and crashed through the front doors of the Nicholls Ward. Then he helped me escape in a Ford Mustang—also stolen from the cops. This set off a series of unfortunate events that led to
that night.
He claimed to be the oldest vampire in the Western World—over six and a half centuries. It was hard to believe. He didn't look a day over two hundred. But he was supposed to be dead, firebombed by my uncle Maximilian. I realized when I saw him that he must have been the vampire from the river, the one Charlie and I had seen with the fence post.

He was plastered. He swayed on his feet as if he might collapse under the weight of his stovepipe hat. I felt as if I were looking at a ghost. I kept expecting him to acknowledge me in some way, to say something to dispel my shock, but he didn't.

“You here to see the Mowry boy?” Officer Lumsden asked.

“Yeah, I need to find a good car thief. I need a lift to Argentina. I hear they don't extradite.” The old vampire gazed to the far end of the hall where the young boy was being held. “Yeah, that's him.”

Officer Lumsden wrote something on his clipboard. Then he handed it to Mr. Entwistle, who put his signature on it. His hand was unsteady.

“You a relation?” Officer Lumsden asked.

“No. I'm his mentor.”

Officer Lumsden shook his head back and forth. The old vampire started forward. “Wait,” the officer told him. He reached out and stopped Mr. Entwistle with one hand. The other hand snatched a paper bag from the inside pocket of Mr. Entwistle's coat. “How did you get through with this?” Lumsden removed a bottle of whiskey
from the bag and whistled in surprise. Then he opened a drawer of his desk and put the bottle inside.

“Do you have a coat check?” Mr. Entwistle swayed forward. The two men collided.

Officer Lumsden pulled his head back from the horrible smell that erupted from Mr. Entwistle's mouth and snapped, “Watch it.”

Then he stood aside to make room for his colleague, the man with the mustache, who was to accompany the old vampire down the hall. I was still standing against the door to my cell.

The older officer had his baton out again and tapped it against the cell bars. He nodded for me to move away. “Back up.”

Mr. Entwistle starting backing up.

“Not you.”

The old vampire stopped. He was only a few feet away, but he pretended not to see me. Either that or he was seeing double and didn't know which version to look at. He took an unsteady step, then he fell down right outside my cell. His face crashed awkwardly into the bars. Something slid across the floor and hit the toe of my shoe. He was hacking too loudly for anyone else to notice. Without looking down, I stepped on it to keep it out of sight. It was thin. A coin maybe. Then he stood up. He was still swaying, but his eyes were clear and bright.

“I saw you trip me,” he shouted to the guard behind him. “That's police brutality.”

The older man just rolled his eyes. “Move along.”

But Mr. Entwistle didn't budge. He squinted, then pointed at me. “I know you. You're the guy who murdered Everett Johansson.”

“That's enough,” said the escort. “Keep moving.”

I looked over at Officer Lumsden to see what he was making of all this. He put his coffee down and grabbed the telephone on his desk. At the other end of the hall, the young boy was on his feet. Recognition was in his eyes. And fear. I would have bet my last night of freedom that he'd seen Mr. Entwistle before.

The old vampire started hacking as if he were going to drop dead. I wondered how he could be that drunk. Booze, I guess. He
cleared his throat and wiped his mouth with the back of a glove. It was filthy. He would have been better off using the bottom of his boot. Then he glanced at me and winked.