The Vampire's Photograph (22 page)

“Haven't seen it,” said Sebastian, checking his pocket watch, “but we need to go.”

“Oh, well,” Phlox sighed. “Sorry, Ollie, there's no cayenne.” She popped open the long, sleek refrigerator mounted along the top of the wall. Its door yawned upward with a hiss, revealing orderly racks of blood bags. “What would you like to drink?” she asked. “Pig?”

“Sure,” Oliver replied.

“Sorry we can't take you along, Ollie,” said Sebastian, smiling warmly. “I know everyone would love to see you, and as we know, you could probably handle yourself just fine. It would also save my colleagues from hearing my bragging tales about you again.”

“
Tsss
,” Bane hissed.

“Charles,” Phlox warned, using Bane's real name as her hazel eyes flashed turquoise.

“But technically you're still too young,” Sebastian explained, “so you'll have to wait like every other kid.”

Oliver nodded, making sure he looked disappointed. Really, going to one of the Friday Socials was about the last thing he wanted to do. Everyone dressed up formally and met in the sewers. It was a big night for teens who had their demons, as well as adults. After some leisurely socializing (there were bartenders who set up stands in the sewers), the vampires would head up to the surface, to a large human gathering that had been chosen in advance, usually an all-night rave or a house party. Because the humans had been partying, they would be largely unaware. There would be some chaos, but once the humans were subdued, the vampires could feed fairly leisurely.

At the most elite gatherings, the humans were actually put into Staesys, freezing them in time, and then bartenders would draw the blood for the guests. Regardless of whether the humans were placed in Staesys or were simply out of it due to their own abuses, the New World vampire code remained constant: Humans were rarely killed. They would simply wake up feeling weak the next day, and maybe a little sick, which they would think was their own doing. They might find a strange cream substance on their neck, but the bite marks beneath would already be almost gone.… Oliver was supposed to be looking forward to going to the Socials once he got his demon, but right now he was more than fine with staying home.

“I hope we'll find you asleep when we get back,” Phlox said, kissing Oliver's head affectionately. “Maybe you'll have another dream tonight,” she added hopefully, referring to the demon dreams, in which a young vampire got to know the demon that would soon come to inhabit him in adulthood. Back in December, Oliver had told everyone that he was having those dreams to hide why he was having trouble sleeping. That lie had become the truth when he met Illisius. But he hadn't had another dream with Illisius since.

Sebastian ruffled Oliver's hair as he headed for the stairs. “Good morning, son.”

“See ya.”

Oliver listened as the heavy door to the sewers thudded shut. He dug into his dinner of Guatemalan Sepulcrit casserole (layers of brownie and fiery habanero peppers, a blood-and-cocoa mole sauce in between), then gulped down his goblet.

When he was sure that his family was gone for good, he slid off his chair and headed upstairs. He arrived at a steel door and pressed a red button. The door slid open silently. As it did, Oliver reached up into a hollow in the bare wall above the door. He felt around until his fingers found a power cord, which he pulled from a socket. This disabled the security cameras that had given Oliver away to his parents back in December. If only he'd mistrusted them before and thought to look for cameras, he might still have Emalie and Dean.

Oliver slipped around the carcass of an old human refrigerator and into the decrepit surface floor of an abandoned house. This house sat directly above the Nocturnes' underground home, concealing it from humans. He concentrated on the presence of the
forces
around him, then climbed up the wall. As he did so, he felt a dull ache in his side. He must have really aggravated that wound before. With each reach of his left arm, there was a pulse of pain. Still, he was able to move onto the ceiling and crawl to the center of the room, stopping beside a broken chandelier that hung crookedly. He flipped over and laid up against the ceiling, gazing down at the room below.

He waited and listened, but there was no sound in the dingy room except for the steady plinking of water, dripping from the ceiling into a murky bathtub in the corner. He could hear the echoes of cars through the broken windows, their tires churning in the steady rain. Now the light footwork of a rat behind one of the walls …

She's not coming back, stupid
, Oliver scolded himself.
She hasn't yet, and she won't
. But he knew that, didn't he? Emalie thought Oliver was a killer. “
How could you, Oliver?
” That was the last thing she'd said to him.

But she left me that article
. The one that detailed his parents' death—
They named me Nathan
—and his abduction, long ago.
If she thought about me enough to find me that article, then maybe, when enough time goes by, she'll come back
.

But she hadn't yet.

Two weeks
, Oliver recalled. He'd only known Emalie and Dean for two weeks. In a vampire's existence, even one only sixty-four human years long like Oliver's, two weeks was still a blink of an eye. So how could he even call them friends?

It was how she treated me
, he thought. It had been so easy to be around Emalie. Things just
were
, around her. She'd been interested, rarely disappointed, and never worried about him, as he was used to feeling from others. Oliver had sensed something sad in her, too. Her mom had left without a trace two years ago. Her dad hadn't gotten over it. Emalie had to switch schools often, as they moved from one temporary apartment to another. Despite all that, she'd radiated this hopeful feeling. It was like she woke up every day still convinced that the world was somehow this amazing place, even though it kept letting her down.

Oliver hadn't felt all this about Emalie in those brief two weeks—these thoughts had taken lots of hours, alone in this room, to put together. Really, it all just boiled down to an embarrassing thought: He missed her.
If any of them could hear that thought
… Oliver mused. Pick anyone from the vampire world: They would think he was hopeless.

Suddenly, a sound broke into Oliver's thoughts.

Footsteps.

From where? Oliver glanced to the refrigerator, to the window—

The door. Someone was coming.
Is she back?

Just then, Oliver caught that overpowering scent of cayenne, sage, and rot that he'd smelled on the stairs.…

The door creaked open.

Chapter 2

A Return Visitor

A FIGURE PEERED WARILY
around the door, then stepped in. The smell was overwhelming, but beneath it, Oliver picked up some faint characteristics: male, and undoubtedly dead in some manner. He was tall, narrow, wearing a long coat and a black sweatshirt with the hood up over his head. He moved warily around the bottomless hole directly in front of the door, apparently not recognizing that it was really just a design trick to scare hapless humans. The actual hole was only a foot deep.

Getting past that, the figure trudged over to the bathtub. He knelt in front of it and started scrubbing at his hands. Oliver saw long, filthy fingernails, and the brown tub water wasn't helping. The figure looked at them and sighed. The sound was miserable.

He scrubbed a little more, then slapped at the water in frustration. Spinning away from the tub, he shuffled on his knees toward the wall. The figure sat down on a pile of moldy clothes, folding his long legs and then rummaging around in his coat.

Oliver crept across the ceiling to get a closer look. What had this creature been doing in his house? Now he pulled something from his coat. Oliver saw that it was a squirrel. A meal, he guessed, but the figure just gazed down at the animal's lifeless black eyes. Oliver thought he even heard a sniffle.

More rummaging in the coat, and now there was a dull flash of metal, a familiar whiff of musk—there was Sebastian's razor. What the figure attempted to do next made Oliver wrinkle his nose with pity. He seemed to be trying to skin the animal, but a razor was no match for hide and fur. It didn't go well. After a minute, he groaned in failure and hurled the razor across the room. It skittered into the shadows.

“Gah!” he growled, and hurled the squirrel as well. He started digging around in his coat again, this time producing a bag of tennis-ball-sized objects. He pulled one out. Oliver recognized the Gila monster heads taken from their refrigerator. There was a splintering crack as the figure broke open the skull to scoop out the insides. He tossed the skull aside, stuffed the bag back in his coat, then rummaged some more. Oliver wondered what he would pull out next—

And then he saw it.

In the figure's blotchy, grimy hand was a crumpled piece of newspaper. Oliver recognized it, because it was the secret item that he had been missing: a carefully clipped newspaper article, but not the one about his kidnapping that Emalie had given him. This one was more recent.

“That's mine,” Oliver hissed through the gloom.

“Whu—” The figure glanced up and spied Oliver. Their eyes locked, and Oliver couldn't believe what he was seeing.

“Dean!”

For a moment, Dean looked like he might run, but then he croaked: “Hi, Oliver.”

Oliver dropped to the floor. “Hey.” This was amazing! Dean, back from the grave. Oliver offered him a smile, his anger forgotten. “It's okay.”

Dean looked sheepishly at him, then down at his own hands, at the blotchy, pale-and-purple skin, at the filthy long nails. When he spoke, it was barely a whisper: “What happened to me?”

“Well …” Oliver replied. “I'm pretty sure you're a zombie.”

“Zombie,” Dean repeated, and he almost chuckled. “Yeah, that sounds about right. So, I'm really still dead?”

“Yeah,” Oliver replied, “undead, really. You know, dead, but—not.”

Dean sighed. “I knew it.”

Oliver wondered what to say. Dean didn't sound too happy about this. Oliver thought about pointing out that, really, it was an improvement over being just dead. Then again, maybe Dean was missing being alive. Oliver could kind of relate to that.

“Come on,” said Oliver, patting Dean on the shoulder. “Let's get out of here.”

“All right.”

They ducked out the front door and walked down Twilight Lane, through the rain-swept dark.

“How long have you been back?” Oliver asked.

“About two weeks, I think,” Dean mumbled, his head hung low.

They headed steadily downhill until they reached the canal.

“Want to stop here?” Oliver asked.

“Sure.”

They sat on the grass, a high bridge arcing above them. Out on the black water, a long sailboat cruised by, lit with strings of golden lights. Warm silhouettes frolicked on the deck, laughing and talking.

“How did I die?” Dean asked quietly, staring into space.

“Don't you … remember?” Oliver asked tentatively.

“Not really.” Dean's brow worked. “I remember we were at school. You were there, after chorus practice, I think? Something happened.… Then it's all blank, until I woke up in my—” His voice got quiet. “In my coffin.”

Oliver couldn't help feeling a wave of relief. The truth of how Dean died was still a mystery, but at least Dean didn't think Oliver did it, like Emalie did. And Oliver didn't plan on changing that. “You were killed by a vampire,” Oliver said carefully. “My brother, or maybe one of his friends, I'm pretty sure.… I got knocked out in the craziness. I— I don't know exactly how it happened, either,” Oliver finished.
Nice job
, he thought darkly.
I managed not to lie, sort of
.

“Huh,” said Dean.

Oliver hoped he wouldn't ask
why
he'd been killed. That would be a longer trip around the truth, or would Oliver just say:
You were killed because of me?

Luckily, Dean didn't ask. “I had to dig my way out,” he muttered, looking at his hands again. “I can't get the dirt off.”

Oliver wondered at this. Vampire children didn't have to dig out of graves since they were born in labs. Sired vampires did, but Phlox and Sebastian had probably just buried Oliver lightly somewhere, maybe even in the house, since he had been so small. Still, a vampire would never sound upset about this kind of thing, like Dean did, but zombies didn't have the awareness that vampires had.

Most vampires, once they felt the power of the forces around them, thought of being undead as an improvement. Though zombies could use the forces, too, they didn't have that higher sense of the universe, of the many parallel worlds that mingled with this one. And zombies weren't inhabited by demons. Vampires used these reasons, and zombies' typically awful smell, as excuses to look down on them. They weren't allowed into vampire establishments unless as servants, and even then, as Oliver had seen in the Underground, it was frowned upon. Usually they were used at home, or in war. Some particularly powerful vampires had raised entire armies of zombies, or housekeeping staffs and gardeners and such. They made excellent help because they were mystically bonded to the will of their master—

Wait a minute. “Dean,” Oliver began, “who raised you?”

“What?” Dean looked up quizzically.

“Do you know who your master is?”

Dean just stared at him. “You mean somebody brought me back like this on purpose?”

“Well, yeah.”

Dean looked down at his hands again and chuckled darkly. “I don't know.”

Oliver felt a tremor of worry. He was pretty sure that, normally, a master would have immediately identified himself to his zombie servant. There would be no reason to let a zombie just wander around when he could be getting to work.
Unless
, Oliver thought,
the master didn't want the zombie, or anybody else, to know his identity
. Could a master control a zombie from afar? Oliver would need to find out. Was Dean being controlled right now? Oliver glanced at Dean warily. It didn't seem like it.…