CHAPTER 23
Clayton’s grandpa lived in a trailer park just off Barton Springs Road. One of those weird Austin things that you can’t quite figure out how it’s managed to exist even though Austin is more Silicon Valley than hippy-dippy these days. But there it was. A bunch of trailers on a large lot stuck between two popular restaurants. One of the “most coveted pieces of property in Austin,” as my mom would say.
Me, I thought it was kind of cool. I mean, it had character, anyway. Just like Leslie, the guy who stands on corners downtown wearing a gold lamé bikini in the middle of winter. I think he ran for mayor once. Or city council or something. I don’t think he won, but he could have. Austin’s a weird town, after all.
Anyway, the trailer park had lots of pecan trees, and the full moon cast shadows through the leaves. Clayton moved slowly toward the back, finally parking in front of a smallish trailer with a little wooden porch attached. An American flag flew from a pole stuck through the porch, and a Protected by Smith & Wesson bumper sticker was plastered on the door.
The door, I also noticed, was rimmed with garlic. I eyed it suspiciously, wondering if I was going to melt into a pool of goo if I touched it or pass out if I smelled it. Clayton saw me looking. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’ll only affect you after your first kill.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
Beside me, Jenny made a little sound. Honestly, I think this whole thing was getting to be too much for her.
Clayton knocked, and a few seconds later, the door opened a crack, revealing a grizzled old man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans. He ignored Clayton, but stared directly at me. “So you’re the vampire,” he said, his voice raspy from what had to have been a ton of cigarettes.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I am.”
“Grandpa,” Clayton said, “this is Beth Frasier. Beth, my grandpa, Arvin Greene.”
He looked me up and down, then finally turned to Clayton. “You’re sure she hasn’t fed?”
“I trust her,” he said. And then he reached over and took my hand. I felt that odd little tingle again, only this time it wasn’t in my teeth; it was all over my body. And it felt really nice.
“Hmmph,” the old man said. Then he stepped out onto the patio and stood right in front of me. “You turn out to be some evil bloodsucker who’s dragged my grandson into this and I’ll drive a stake through your heart faster than you can say Count Dracula.”
I blanched a little, but nodded, even as Clayton said, “Grandpa! Shut up, already!”
But Grandpa wasn’t listening. Instead, he held up a spray bottle and squirted me straight in the face!
“Ah!” I yelped. And whatever he sprayed me with itched like crazy. I scratched like mad with the pads of my fingers (because every girl knows that breaking the skin on your face can leave scars). “What is that stuff?”
“Holy water,” he said. Then he snorted. “And you didn’t burn.”
“I told you,” Clayton said.
“Told him what?” Jenny asked.
“That she hasn’t fed yet.”
“If she had,” Grandpa said, “she’d have welts burned all over her face. As it is, she’s just a little itchy.”
“A lot itchy,” I said. “Thanks a lot.” But at least now I knew what Kevin had been up to. He really was hunting vampires. And he’d been testing me at the bar. Since I hadn’t burned—and hadn’t scratched—I’d passed.
Grandpa looked at me now, all smiles. “You’re okay,” he said. “For now.” He headed back into the house, Clayton and Jenny following. I hung back, feeling a little stupid, then cleared my throat.
Grandpa turned around, smacked his forehead with his palm, and snorted. “Hmmph,” he said with a chuckle. “Never have invited a vampire in before. Well, come on there, girl. You’re welcome inside. At least until I find out you’re evil.”
Honestly, I didn’t have a warm, fuzzy feeling about this!
We got settled, and after Gramps had passed out sodas to Jenny and Clayton (both of whom shot me apologetic looks), I recited yet again everything that had happened to me. I ended by mentioning the weird Latin document and our problem with me going to school.
Grandpa snorted. “Thought you said you were smart, girlie.”
I glared. I was getting a little bit tired of that comeback. But before I could think of something to say, he got up and went to a cabinet over the sink in his tiny kitchen.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but when he returned with a box of Vivarin, I knew it wasn’t that. “Caffeine,” he said. “Just like the boy told you.”
“I can take pills?” My stomach cramped at the thought. I’d done the severe cramps and vomiting thing twice now. I wasn’t looking forward to a repeat.
“Crush one,” he said. “Mix it in the blood before you drink.” He nodded, making a little “hmmph” of satisfaction. “Don’t they teach you kids anything in school these days?”
“Not that,” I said.
“And not Latin, either, I’m guessing,” he said, holding out his hand. “Let’s see the document.”
He’d changed the conversation so fast that I handed it over without sticking up for my skills in Latin—which were A+ quality, thank you very much!
He opened the sheet, then settled in the ratty recliner. I got up off the couch so I could stand beside him as he unfolded the paper.
The print was old-fashioned. That annoying calligraphy that makes it so hard to read documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Gutenberg Bible and stuff. I made out a few words—sun, freedom, night—but I wasn’t exactly zooming along. It wasn’t just the handwriting, either. A lot of the words were unfamiliar, and the endings and stems that had been so familiar on our last pop quiz now looked like a bunch of squiggles.
Apparently an A+ in second-semester Latin isn’t all that useful in the real world.
I was about to say that we needed to carefully type it up so that we could look at it with a dictionary handy when Grandpa Greene started reading.
“Draw close, dark apprentice,” he read, “and learn the truth. The path out of the darkness and into the freedom of the sun has been forged.” He frowned. “Or maybe that means ‘paved,’ I’m not quite sure.” A quick shake of his head, and he was off again, his finger moving over the document as he squinted through narrow half-glasses. “The secret rests with the first of us, whose blood intoxicates as wine, yet holds the truth for he who would reveal it. Ancestor and heir, self and same. We crave the secret and seek the knowledge. Locate the talisman and gather the light. To you, dark apprentice, I assign these tasks. Lift the night, and free us all.”
Arvin looked up. “That’s it. That’s all it says.”
I looked at Clayton, then Jenny. They both shrugged, clearly as befuddled as I felt.
“Um,” I finally managed. “So?”
“So obviously,” Arvin said, handing me the paper and then pushing himself out of his seat, “this Stephen character thinks you can figure out the spell that’s going to let all you vampires walk around during the day.”
“What?” I’d gotten really great reading comprehension scores on every standardized test I’d ever taken, but I was so not following him.
“The secret. The talisman. Some sort of spell or something for letting vampires walk in the sun.” He tapped the paper I was still holding. “It’s all right there, girlie. Or weren’t you paying attention?”
“But . . . but . . . but!” I was sputtering, so I took a deep breath and tried again. “I can’t figure that out!” I started to panic. I mean, I do okay in school. And, yes, I’ve won the science fair a few times. And, yes, I have a part-time job in a hospital at a medical lab. But come on! I wouldn’t even know where to start!
“We’d better figure it out,” Clayton said. “Because if you don’t start making progress, Stephen may decide you’re not so useful after all.”
“Oh,” I said, the truth of his words erasing the little flutter of happiness that his use of the pronoun “we” had caused. “Right.”
“You’ve got more problems than that,” Arvin said, and all three of us kids looked up at him. “Solve that mystery, and you’ll be loosing vampires on the world. Don’t, and you may find yourself erased by your master.”
“Great,” I said. “So glad I have options.”
Arvin snorted. “Don’t really see that you do. Not unless you want to stay a vampire.”
“So Clayton was right? I really can turn this back. I can be me again?”
“You can,” he said, then bit the end off a cigar and spat it into a corner. I wrinkled my nose but didn’t say anything. “And you better do it before he decides you’re no use to him. Or before you accidentally stumble across the answer to the daywalking mystery. Because you know you better look like you’re searching for the solution.”
“I know.” I’d already thought about that. Even if I didn’t want to find the answer, I still had to put on a good show of looking for it. “So what do I need to do?”
Arvin snorted again. “Ain’t it obvious? You got to kill him.”
“But I can’t kill him,” I protested. “I already told you!”
“I’ll kill him for you,” Clayton said, his jaw firm. “It would be my pleasure.”
I turned to him, feeling all gooey inside as I tried to imagine him up on a white steed.
“You can’t, boy,” Arvin said. “Has to come from her.”
“But I can’t,” I said. “I mean, I already tried. He even gave me the stake to try with!”
“You can’t stake him,” Arvin said, cutting me off. “Don’t mean you can’t manage to terminate the critter.” He looked me dead in the eye. “You just gotta figure out how. And it’s gotta come from you or else you won’t turn back to one of us. Bad magic’s got its rules, you know.”
I shivered, unsettled by the whole bad magic thing.
“And you better figure it out soon,” Jenny said. She’d been quiet through all of this, but now she looked deadly serious. “Because if Kevin or his brother kills Stephen first—”
“You’ll be shit out of luck, girlie-girl.”