Never Bite a Boy on the First Date

Wilhelm glared at me with beady, bloodshot eyes. He wasn’t bitten until fairly late in life, so he’s kind of grizzled and grey for a vampire. Plus he’s had the same moustache since the 800s – long and droopy and fluffy. Apparently it keeps going in and out of fashion, so he sees no need to shave it. Personally I think it’s really distracting to talk to someone who looks like he has giant fuzzy caterpillars crawling out of his nose.

“It might be true,” Olympia interjected. “We can’t be sure she did it.”

“We can’t be sure she didn’t,” Wilhelm snarled. “We should move again, and quickly, before they come to hunt us down.”

“Oh, no,” I said, remembering the long weeks of car travel and switching cities and identities. It was bad enough after my death; after Zach’s it was even worse, because he was there pestering me the whole time and there was no way to get away from him. I was kind of hoping we’d stay here in Massachusetts for a while. “Please don’t make me start junior year all over again.”

“I hardly think relocating is the worst of your problems,” Olympia pointed out.

“There could totally be other vampires here,” I said. “We saw this way suspicious guy at the school, didn’t we, Olympia? And it’s a pretty big town, right? There could be vampires all over the place!”

“Most vampires are not as foolish as you are,” Wilhelm growled.

“Let me find the vampire who killed Tex,” I said. “If I can figure out who did it, will you believe me? Can we stay?”

Olympia and Wilhelm looked at each other for a long moment. Sometimes I think they’re actually talking to each other when this happens, which is fully creepy. Nobody wants parents with telepathy.

Finally Wilhelm snorted, which made his moustache flounce up and down. “I am not happy about this,” he said. “I want that to be clear.”

“All right, we’ll let you try,” Olympia said to me. “But if you haven’t figured it out in one week, we’re moving again.”

“And then there will be consequences,” Wilhelm warned. I didn’t need telepathy to know he had locked coffins and feeding tubes floating through his head.

“Be careful,” Olympia said. “Not all vampires are as civilised as we are.”

Really? Less civilised than medieval Romanians? I bet.

Finally I escaped upstairs to my room. Zach and I are the only ones who use the upstairs; we don’t quite hate the sun as much as the others do, and it occasionally manages to sneak in through the blinds on the top floor. Our deal is that I get the rooms to the left of the staircase and he gets the rooms to the right. He’s not supposed to come over to my side, although you can imagine how well he obeys that rule.

Bert and Crystal have a room on the first floor. They’ve both been vampires for less than a hundred years, so they still do some human things like sleep in a bed, although their mattress is rock hard. I guess one day they’ll switch over to coffins, like Olympia and Wilhelm, who sleep behind a hidden door in the basement in parallel caskets of ancient stone. Allegedly one day I’ll want to sleep in a coffin too, but I am highly dubious about that theory. I like my bed to be as fluffy as possible, with about seventeen pillows and a down comforter. Wilhelm thinks this is a sign of my “moral decrepitude” and “debilitating laziness”. I think it’s a sign of I just like sleeping, dude.

In fact, when I got upstairs, that’s exactly what happened – pretty much right away. I mean, I tried to start my investigation. I got as far as Googling Tex Harrison and finding out that he kept a blog on his My Space page. But it turned out to be all about sports and how awesome the Luna Tigers are and what an awesome quarterback he is and blah blah Patriots and Red Sox, plus a detailed rundown of his daily workout regimen and everything he’s ever eaten. Ever. Can you really blame me for falling asleep?

When I woke up, I was lying across my bed in a mountain of pillows. My vampire instincts told me that it was dark outside. I rolled over and saw Zach standing in my doorway. Really “lurking” is the most appropriate description.

“Go away,” I said, throwing a pillow at him.

“You forgot to lock your door again,” he said.

“You forgot to not be an ass again,” I said. “Stay on your side of the house.”

“I hear you’re going to solve Tex’s murder,” he said with a smirk. “Looks like it’s going well so far.”

“Um, hello? All the best detectives do their work in the dark,” I said.

“I can think of better things to do in the dark,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

That was my cue to leave.

“Have some blood before you go out!” Olympia called from the kitchen as I stomped past.

“No thanks!” I called back, grabbing my keys. I slammed the door behind me and started running. I never used to like running, but it turns out it’s a lot more fun when you’re nearly as fast as a car. And it doesn’t make me tired any more, at least as long as the moon is out. Plus it’s a lot safer to run unnaturally fast at night – not so many people out on the street.

I made it to the high school in about ten minutes. It looked all gloomy and shadowy in the moonlight, the brick and concrete merging into silvery edges. Most of the glass had been swept up, but I could see a few tiny shards they’d missed, still shimmering on the steps. I guess the police had been busy, because even the crime scene tape was gone. They probably really wanted school to get back to normal the next day.

They’d done a pretty good job of cleaning up; only the smell of blood still lingered, a whisper of what had happened here, and I’m guessing that only a vampire nose would pick that up. Even the broken window above was covered with a black tarp, one corner flapping a little in the wind.

There’s another cemetery right beside the high school – not the one I usually go to. This one is smaller and older, with tiny, crooked gravestones. With that on one side and the football field on the other, the school has a lot of open space around it. Only a couple of houses have a view of the front steps, and that’s across the parking lot. I was guessing nobody could have seen anything, especially that late at night, without vampire sight. It was only eleven o’clock now and already all the houses were dark. Unhelpful day-dwellers.

I padded across the grass that edged the parking lot, staying close to the shadows just in case. Long trails of purple-grey clouds slid across the moon. A small piece of glass crunched under my sneaker as I climbed the steps. Tex must have landed with a lot of force; I could smell blood spatters on the front door. And blood was the only thing I could smell. The scent of the attacker was completely masked by the overwhelming scent of Tex’s blood.

The door was, of course, locked, which made me wonder how Tex and his killer had gotten inside in the middle of the night in the first place. Not that it’s hard for a vampire to get into places like this. We have to be invited into private homes, but everything else is wide open to us. For instance, I could have just pulled the door off, but I thought that might be a little suspicious. Probably not an approach Olympia would have approved of.

Instead I climbed the big oak tree that grows beside the school’s front steps. Climbing trees is another thing that’s more fun with vampire strength and speed. I was level with the top floor in about twenty seconds. I wriggled along the length of a branch until I could reach the flapping corner of the tarp. There was just enough space for me to squeeze underneath and flip through the open window. The broken panes of glass were gone. Only a gaping round hole was left in the wall of the school.

My shoes hit the tile floor with a tiny squeak. I was in a long hallway lined with metallic-green junior class lockers. Moonlight slanted through the windows in the classrooms on either side and the matching round window at the far end of the hall, facing the back of the school. Another hallway bisected this one in the middle, making a kind of plus sign. Or a cross, if you want to be all woooooo mystical about it. As it turns out, crosses don’t bother me. They freak Wilhelm out really badly though, so I think maybe you had to believe in them when you were alive to be bothered by them once you’re a vampire. I would test this theory by throwing a Star of David at Bert, but that would be mean.

Holy water does irritate my skin, and garlic makes me sneeze for about an hour. Neither of them can kill me though – so much for those theories. I’m afraid it’s a stake through the heart, an axe through the neck or a whole lot of fire, and that’s it. Not stuff I have to worry about much in my everyday life. Unlife. Whatever.

I circled the spot in the hallway in front of the open window, although I had no idea what I was looking for. Clues? Graffiti scrawled on the wall: “I killed Tex Harrison here”? The floor looked as scuffed and ordinary as it did every day. I crouched and ran my hand across the cold, speckled tiles.

My fingers brushed against something that rolled. I caught it and picked it up.

A small red bead.

Hmmmmm.

Of course, anyone could have dropped that here any time. Hundreds of kids went through this hall every day. My own locker was right around the corner, in the bisecting hallway.

Still, I slipped the bead into my pocket.

Although I knew it wouldn’t do any good, I inhaled, trying to see if any of the scents here were stronger than the others. As I expected, there was too much of a jumble to pick anything out.

Except…No, I was wrong. There was one unusually sharp scent. It’s hard to describe how vampire noses distinguish what they smell, but if it helps, this one smelled a little like mist and moonlight and jazz and tuxedos and antique books. (I know, I bet that was really helpful.)

As I separated it out from the rest of the muddle, I realised that it was surprisingly strong and getting stronger.

Or…closer.

I whirled around.

I wasn’t alone.

Chapter Five (#ulink_0d142ee1-715e-55f4-8dd3-ae34fcc31e27)

IF I’D HAD a heartbeat, it would have skidded to a stop.

He was standing in the doorway of a classroom, his hands clasped behind his back. The moonlight dappled the floor behind him, hiding his face in shadow. All I could see was his long, lean outline.