She shook her head. “I bet sedation's already a hot topic of discussion. I doubt I'd be telling them anything they don't already know"
He laughed, but it was a bitter laugh. “Then there's all the people who want to be vampires. The websites reminding all the corpsebait out there that being bitten by an infected person isn't enough; it has to be a vampire. The ones listing gimmicks to get vampires to notice you."
"Like what?"
"I dated a girl who cut thin lines on her thighs before she went out dancing so if there was a vampire in the club, it'd be drawn to her scent.” Dante didn't look extravagant or affected anymore. He looked defeated.
Matilda smiled at him. “She was probably a better bet than me for getting you into Coldtown."
He returned the smile wanly. “The worst part is that Lydia's not going to get what she wants. She's going to become the human servant of some vampire who's going to make her a whole bunch of promises and never turn her. The last thing they need in Coldtown is new vampires."
Matilda imagined Lydia and Julian dancing at the endless Eternal Ball. She pictured them on the streets she'd seen in pictures uploaded to Facebook and Flickr, trying to trade a bowl full of blood for their own deaths.
When Dante passed the bottle to her, she pretended to swig. On the eve of her fifty-eighth day of being infected, Matilda started sobering up.
Crawling over, she straddled Dante's waist before he had a chance to shift positions. His mouth tasted like tobacco. When she pulled back from him, his eyes were wide with surprise, his pupils blown and black even in the dim streetlight.
"Matilda,” he said and there was nothing in his voice but longing.
"If you really want your sister, I am going to need one more thing from you,” she said.
His blood tasted like tears.
Matilda's skin felt like it had caught fire. She'd turned into lit paper, burning up. Curling into black ash.
She licked his neck over and over and over.
The gates of Coldtown were large and made of consecrated wood, barbed wire covering them like heavy, thorny vines. The guards slouched at their posts, guns over their shoulders, sharing a cigarette. The smell of percolating coffee wafted out of the guardhouse.
"Um, hello,” Matilda said. Blood was still sticky where it half-dried around her mouth and on her neck. It had dribbled down her shirt, stiffening it nearly to cracking when she moved. Her body felt strange now that she was dying. Hot. More alive than it had in weeks.
Dante would be all right; she wasn't contagious and she didn't think she'd hurt him too badly. She hoped she hadn't hurt him too badly. She touched the phone in her pocket, his phone, the one she'd used to call 911 after she'd left him.
"Hello,” she called to the guards again.
One turned. “Oh my god,” he said and reached for his rifle.
"I'm here to turn in a vampire. For a voucher. I want to turn in a vampire in exchange for letting a human out of Coldtown."
"What vampire?” asked the other guard. He'd dropped the cigarette, but not stepped on the filter so that it just smoked on the asphalt.
"Me,” said Matilda. “I want to turn in me."
They made her wait as her pulse thrummed slower and slower. She wasn't a vampire yet, and after a few phone calls, they discovered that technically she could only have the voucher after undeath. They did let her wash her face in the bathroom of the guardhouse and wring the thin cloth of her shirt until the water ran down the drain clear, instead of murky with blood.
When she looked into the mirror, her skin had unfamiliar purple shadows, like bruises. She was still staring at them when she stopped being able to catch her breath. The hollow feeling in her chest expanded and she found herself panicked, falling to her knees on the filthy tile floor. She died there, a moment later.
It didn't hurt as much as she'd worried it would. Like most things, the surprise was the worst part.
The guards released Matilda into Coldtown just a little before dawn. The world looked strange—everything had taken on a smudgy, silvery cast, like she was watching an old movie. Sometimes people's heads seemed to blur into black smears. Only one color was distinct—a pulsing, oozing color that seemed to glow from beneath skin.
Red.
Her teeth ached to look at it.
There was a silence inside her. No longer did she move to the rhythmic drumming of her heart. Her body felt strange, hard as marble, free of pain. She'd never realized how many small agonies were alive in the creak of her bones, the pull of muscle. Now, free of them, she felt like she was floating.
Matilda looked around with her strange new eyes. Everything was beautiful. And the light at the edge of the sky was the most beautiful thing of all.
"What are you doing?” a girl called from a doorway. She had long black hair, but her roots were growing in blonde. “Get in here! Are you crazy?"
In a daze, Matilda did as she was told. Everything smeared as she moved, like the world was painted in watercolors. The girl's pinkish-red face swirled along with it.
It was obvious the house had once been grand, but it looked like it'd been abandoned for a long time. Graffiti covered the peeling wallpaper and couches had been pushed up against the walls. A boy wearing jeans but no shirt was painting make-up onto a girl with stiff pink pigtails, while another girl in a retro polka-dotted dress pulled on mesh stockings.
In a corner, another boy—this one with glossy brown hair that fell to his waist—stacked jars of creamed corn into a precarious pyramid.
"What is this place?” Matilda asked.
The boy stacking the jars turned. “Look at her eyes. She's a vampire!” He didn't seem afraid, though; he seemed delighted.
"Get her into the cellar,” one of the other girls said.
"Come on,” said the black-haired girl and pulled Matilda toward a doorway. “You're fresh-made, right?"
"Yeah,” Matilda said. Her tongue swept over her own sharp teeth. “I guess that's pretty obvious."
"Don't you know that vampires can't go outside in the daylight?” the girl asked, shaking her head. “The guards try that trick with every new vampire, but I never saw one almost fall for it."
"Oh, right,” Matilda said. They went down the rickety steps to a filthy basement with a mattress on the floor underneath a single bulb. Crates of foodstuffs were shoved against the walls, and the high, small windows had been painted over with a tarry substance that let no light through.
The black-haired girl who'd waved her inside smiled. “We trade with the border guards. Black-market food, clothes, little luxuries like chocolate and cigarettes for some ass. Vampires don't own everything."
"And you're going to owe us for letting you stay the night,” the boy said from the top of the stairs.
"I don't have anything,” Matilda said. “I didn't bring any cans of food or whatever."
"You have to bite us."
"What?” Matilda asked.
"One of us,” the girl said. “How about one of us? You can even pick which one."
"Why would you want me to do that?"
The girl's expression clearly said that Matilda was stupid. “Who doesn't want to live forever?"
I don't, Matilda wanted to say, but she swallowed the words. She could tell they already thought she didn't deserve to be a vampire. Besides, she wanted to taste blood. She wanted to taste the red, throbbing, pulsing insides of the girl in front of her. It wasn't the pain she'd felt when she was infected, the hunger that made her stomach clench, the craving for warmth. It was heady, greedy desire.
"Tomorrow,” Matilda said. “When it's night again."
"Okay,” the girl said, “but you promise, right? You'll turn one of us?"
"Yeah,” said Matilda, numbly. It was hard to even wait that long.
She was relieved when they went upstairs, but less relieved when she heard something heavy slide in front of the basement door. She told herself that didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was getting through the day so that she could find Julian and Lydia.
She shook her head to clear it of thoughts of blood and turned on Dante's phone. Although she didn't expect it, a text message was waiting: I cant tell if I luv u or if I want to kill u.
Relief washed over her. Her mouth twisted into a smile and her newly sharp canines cut her lip. She winced. Dante was okay.
She opened up Lydia's blog and posted an anonymous message: Tell Julian his girlfriend wants to see him . . . and you.
Matilda made herself comfortable on the dirty mattress. She looked up at the rotted boards of the ceiling and thought of Julian. She had a single ticket out of Coldtown and two humans to rescue with it, but it was easy to picture herself saving Lydia as Julian valiantly offered to stay with her, even promised her his eternal devotion.
She licked her lips at the image. When she closed her eyes, all her imaginings drowned in a sea of red.
Waking at dusk, Matilda checked Lydia's blog. Lydia had posted a reply: Meet us at the Festival of Sinners.
Five kids sat at the top of the stairs, watching her with liquid eyes.
"Are you awake?” the black-haired girl asked. She seemed to pulse with color. Her moving mouth was hypnotic.
"Come here,” Matilda said to her in a voice that seemed so distant that she was surprised to find it was her own. She hadn't meant to speak, hadn't meant to beckon the girl over to her.
"That's not fair,” one of the boys called. “I was the one who said she owed us something. It should be me. You should pick me."
Matilda ignored him as the girl knelt down on the dirty mattress and swept aside her hair, baring a long, unmarked neck. She seemed dazzling, this creature of blood and breath, a fragile manikin as brittle as sticks.
Tiny golden hairs tickled Matilda's nose as she bit down.
And gulped.
Blood was heat and heart running-thrumming-beating through the fat roots of veins to drip syrup slow, spurting molten hot across tongue, mouth, teeth, chin.
