CHAPTER 22
I woke up, saw two pairs of eyes peering down at me, and sat up screaming. About half a second later, I realized that the eyes belonged to Jenny and Clayton.
“Time?” I muttered, still groggy.
“Just after sunset,” Clayton said. “We waited around for your mom to let us in, but we never saw her.”
“I used the key you hide under the tomato plant pot,” Jenny explained.
I didn’t care how they got in, I was just glad to see them. “Did you bring my homework? I’m going to be soooo far behind!”
They exchanged glances, and I decided not to press the point. Maybe they were right; maybe I had better things to worry about than falling behind in homework.
“Okay, never mind. But what happened at school?” I looked at Jenny since I’d e-mailed her the picture of Tamara from my phone. So far, I hadn’t had time to listen to the recording. But the picture was golden. “Any interesting gossip? Wild rumors? Anything?”
“A little of both,” Clayton said. “Ennis wasn’t around today.”
“Not that that’s any great loss,” Jenny said. “Except that Tamara and Stacy were acting all weird. And I saw Melissa in the bathroom by the band hall, and she looked like she’d been crying. Did something happen with him?”
“I don’t know.” I told them about the club. About how so many of the less-than-popular crowd had been there, and about how I’d seen Kevin’s brother come out, but not Ennis. “But what could have—”
“He staked him,” Clayton said. “Ennis is dust.”
I got a really queer feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Staked him! As in, he’s dead?”
“I’d bet my autographed Stan Lee number one Spider-man comic,” Clayton said.
“But—”
“My grandpa’s heard rumors,” Clayton said. “About some college guys coming in and hunting the local vampires. I think you may have met one of them.”
“Oh, God,” I said. “Do you think he—”
“Knows you’re one, too?”
I nodded, suddenly unable to form words.
“I doubt it,” Clayton said. “I mean, he told you to run, right? I bet he thinks you were just innocently there. You’d said it wasn’t your scene, right? And it wasn’t as if you were feeding . . .” He squinted. “Were you?”
I smacked him in the chest. “Of course not!”
“Well, then. I think you’re cool.”
“And maybe it’ll end up working out great,” Jenny said. “I mean, if they’re on to Stephen and kill him . . . well, then you’re no longer Stephen’s minion, right? I mean, this Kevin guy and his brother could be doing you a huge favor.”
“Maybe,” I said. But something about the whole Vampire Killers As My New Best Friends plan didn’t sound right to me. “I’m not sure . . .”
“Doesn’t matter right now anyway,” Clayton said. “They don’t go to Waterloo. They’re not our immediate problem.”
I perked up at that. The way he said “our,” I mean. “Our problem.” Yeah. That sounded nice.
“The Watcher heard about the bar, too,” Jenny said, which was a terrible conversational segue, but I forgave her since I was dying to know what she’d done with the pic.
“Yeah? Tell!”
Jenny’s eyes lit up. “Well, apparently the Watcher got ahold of some picture of Tamara at the club, leaning all over some college guy. And the Watcher posted it with a scathing commentary about how her little campaign to be the Voice of Waterloo didn’t seem to be meshing with reality. Everyone was talking about it today. And Tamara spent most of the day surrounded by cheerleaders and so totally not holding court.”
“It really was pretty awesome,” Clayton said. “Definitely took her down a peg or two.”
“The Watcher suggested that the students should look to someone a little more representative of the school at large.”
“Like you or me,” Clayton said, rolling his eyes. “Which was about the only stupid thing the Watcher said in the post.”
I fought a laugh and tried very hard not to look at Jenny. Considering my newfound creature of the night status, I didn’t think I could swing the television appearances. But I still appreciated her loyalty.
“But the biggest news is that we got the key to the school,” Clayton said, holding it up for emphasis. “Shelby didn’t even blink. She thinks we’re golden, you know.”
I almost corrected him on the “we” but decided not to. Honestly, it was true. And I really didn’t want to risk pissing Clayton off. Academic arch-nemesis or not, he was still the only person I knew who had any practical advice for my current quandary.
“So we go tomorrow,” he added.
I nodded, swinging my legs to the side of the bed and realizing I’d fallen asleep (passed out, really) in my clothes. I decided that was good. Clayton didn’t need to see me in my Hello Kitty jammies.
As soon as my feet hit the floor, though, I remembered. “I still don’t know how I can go to school. I pass out at the first hint of light. I mean, teacher’s pet or not, even I can’t get away with sleepwalking through class!”
“Stephen wouldn’t tell you how Chris was at school during lunch?” Jenny asked. She didn’t mention Ennis, but I saw the crease on her forehead. I understood it, too. Was I in line to get staked?
I shook my head, trying to focus. “He says if I can’t figure it out myself then I’m obviously not smart enough and he made a mistake making me in the first place.” I gritted my teeth. “He sure as heck did make a mistake!”
Clayton squinted at me. “He made you because you’re smart?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it, but I have to figure out this school day thing first. All he’d tell me to do was rely on caffeine. But I tried this morning. I drank a cup of coffee and ended up puking my guts out.” I shivered with the memory. That had been so not fun!
“But if you can’t drink coffee . . .” Jenny said.
“Yeah, I know. I need to figure this out.”
“Come on,” Clayton said, heading for my door. “If anyone knows the answer, it’ll be my grandpa.”
“The one who hunts vampires?” I asked.
“That’s the one,” Clayton said. He grinned. “But don’t worry. I told him you were one of the good ones. At least, for now you are.”
I wasn’t entirely sure that made me feel better. But I stood up anyway. I mean, what choice did I have? I needed help. And if I couldn’t have my own mom or dad or grandma or grandpa, then, well, I guess I’d take what I could get. And hope to heck the old man didn’t decide to stake me.
Considering that charming thought, I dragged my feet a little as we all schlepped to Clayton’s beat-up Buick Sky-lark, complete with a coat of primer, a Keep Austin Weird bumper sticker, and upholstery with more stuffing on the outside than the in. I didn’t complain, though. I had no mode of transportation and no heartbeat, so I wasn’t in the mood to dis other people’s belongings.
As Clayton drove, I told him and Jenny about the piece of paper Stephen had given me.
“Latin?” Clayton said.
“A photocopy,” I clarified. “But it looks like the original was really old.” I started to pull it out of my pocket, but he waved a hand. “Wait until we get to my grandpa’s. I can’t look while I’m driving, anyway.”
I almost offered it to Jenny, but considering she still had trouble with second conjugation verbs, I doubted she’d be able to translate it anyway. Besides, she didn’t seem too interested. Instead, when I swiveled in my seat to look at her behind me, I saw that she looked a little sick.
“Jenny?”
She shook her head. “It’s just so freaky. Vampires and weird Latin texts. And all those kids at the club with Band-Aids on their necks. And I bet not one of them will remember how they got it.”
“I know,” I said. I thought about my conversation with Elise. A bug bite, she’d said, and I really didn’t get the feeling she was lying. But why didn’t she remember?
The whole situation gave me the shivers, and I wished that it was all over. Done. And Stephen The Jerk Wills was a big, hairy pile of dust.
The thing was, I wanted revenge for me. But I also wanted it for all the students that Stephen and his crew had fed off of. All the geeks and so-called losers that these popular kids thought were lower on the food chain. They weren’t. And somehow, I was going to prove that.
I just didn’t know how.