Holly Black - The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

“We’ll be right back,” Tana called, and despite trying to control it, her voice quavered.

Slinging her handbag over her shoulder and grabbing her boots, she walked steadily away from Aidan and the car until she got to the corner of the mart, then she ran the rest of the way to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her and locking it. Before she could help it, she started sobbing. She cried and cried until she choked on her tears. She slid down the wall, crying so hard she could barely catch her breath. She slammed her fists against the loose linoleum tile of the floor, hoping the pain would shock her into calming.

Shock , Tana thought, I’m in shock . But she didn’t really know what that meant, only that it was bad and that it happened in the movies. In movies, people got over it quickly, too, usually with a slap to the face.

Standing, she slapped her own cheek and watched it become rosy in the mirror above the grimy bathroom sink. She didn’t feel any different.

After long moments of standing there, staring at her reflection, she remembered that she’d said she was going to get cleaned up. She washed her arms in the sink, splashed water on her legs to rub off the blood. She couldn’t see the scrape on the back of her knee very well, but from what she could see, it looked not much different from her other scratches and cuts. It didn’t seem swollen or discolored. It didn’t seem deep. It didn’t seem like anything at all, much less something that could turn her into a monster. She cleaned it with the antibacterial soap in the pump and shaking fingers, hoping that could kill any infection before it spread. Then she stood up, leaning against the locked door, and started lacing up her boots, pulling the ties tight.

When she was done, she called Pauline.

Dialing the number was automatic, giving in to the temptation of momentary escapism. She couldn’t think as the phone rang; her mind felt empty of everything but the feeling that if Pauline answered, then she was going to be all right for a little while. Tana didn’t know what she was going to say, didn’t even know how to put together words to explain where she was or what had happened. She’d been operating on instinct and impulsiveness at Lance’s farmhouse—get everyone out and worry about the consequences later. But later had come. It was waiting for her outside the door. She could only forestall it.

“Hello?” Pauline’s voice was loud and in the background. Tana could hear music playing.

“Hey,” she said, like everything was normal. It felt good to pretend. Muscles along her shoulders relaxed minutely. “What are you doing?”

“Hold on, I have to go in the other room. So much is going on.” A door shut on the other end of the line and the music dimmed. Then Pauline started telling Tana the news about David, her kinda sorta boyfriend at drama camp. He had a girlfriend back home—a girl he’d been with since middle school—but he’d been giving Pauline mixed signals all summer. Intense conversations and made-up excuses to touch each other during improvs, followed by agonized hand-wringing. His girlfriend was coming to visit Tuesday, but just that night David had kissed Pauline. She was freaking out.

Tana felt relief wash over her along with the familiar drama. She sagged against the door frame, tipping her head back and closing her eyes. She could have interrupted Pauline, could have told her about the nightmare drive through the dark with the tire iron in her hand, told her about the vampires and the carnage and the scrape of a tooth. But if she did, she would have to think about those things again.

So she listened to Pauline tell her the story, and then they rehashed it a bit; and when Pauline asked her how she was doing, Tana said that she was fine.

She was fine and the party had been fine and everything was fine, fine, fine.

“You sound weird,” Pauline said. “Have you been crying?”

Tana thought about asking Pauline to find an abandoned place with a door that could be barred and lock her inside with a few gallons of water and granola bars. Pauline would do it for her; Tana knew she would. And a week later, when Tana begged and howled and screamed to be let out, maybe Pauline would do that as well. It was too big a risk.

So Tana insisted that she was really, really fine. Then Pauline had to go because she had a nine o’clock curfew and was leaving the common room to head back to her dorm.

For long minutes after Tana hung up and put away her phone, she tried to hold on to the feeling of normalcy. But the more she stood there, the more her stomach cramped with fear, the more she was aware of how her skin felt hot and cold at once.

She had to not be infected, that was all. She had to not be infected so she and Pauline could move to California after graduation as they planned. They were going to rent a tiny apartment, and Tana was going to get a boring, steady job—like maybe be a waitress or work the front desk at a tattoo parlor or at a copy shop, where they’d get discounts on head shots—while Pauline went to her auditions. They were going to do each other’s makeup like pinup girls from the fifties and wear each other’s clothes. And they were going to swim in the Pacific Ocean and sit under palm trees while the warm breeze off the water ruffled their salt-crusted hair.

Finally, Tana realized that she couldn’t stay in the bathroom any longer. She opened the door, braced for an attack, braced for one of the vampires from the house to have followed her somehow, but there was no one and nothing—just a concrete lot and woods, lit by the flood lamps over the gas pumps. The night was sticky warm, and in the distance she could hear the singing of cicadas. Not caring if it made her a wimp to hate the dark, she ran back toward the brightly lit mart, only slowing when she was at the door. She jerked it open, wishing she hadn’t left her tire iron in the car, even though she was sure they didn’t let people bring stuff like that into regular businesses.

From behind the bulletproof glass, a clerk grinned at her like a man who wasn’t too worried about his security. He had a mass of red hair sticking up from his head in gelled spikes.

There was a small television, mounted high up one wall, showing a feed from inside the Springfield Coldtown, where Demonia was introducing viewers to the newest guests at the Eternal Ball, a party that had started in 2004 and raged ceaselessly ever since.

In the background, girls and boys in rubber harnesses swung through the air. The camera swept over the dance floor, showing the crowd, a few of which had looping hospital tubes stuck to the insides of their arms. The lens lingered over a boy no older than nine holding out a paper cup to a thin blond girl. She paused and then, leaning down, twisted a knob on her tubing, causing a thin stream of blood to splash into the cup, red as the boy’s eyes and the tongue that darted out to lick the rim. Then the camera angle changed again, veering up to show the viewer the full height and majesty of the building. At the very highest point, several windowpanes had been replaced with black glass, glowing, but designed to keep out the kind of light that could scald certain partygoers.

Tana’s scar throbbed and she rubbed it without thinking.

“Hey,” Aidan said, touching her shoulder and making her jump. He was carrying a bottle of water, but he stared at the screen as if he’d forgotten about everything else. “Look at that.”

“It’s like the Hotel California,” Tana said. “Or a roach motel. Roaches check in but they don’t check out.”

All infected people and captured vampires were sent to Coldtowns, along with the sick, sad, or deluded humans who went there voluntarily. It was supposed to be a constant party, free for the price of blood. But once people were inside, humans—even human children, even babies born in Coldtown—weren’t allowed to leave. The National Guard patrolled the barbed-wire-wrapped and holy-symbol-studded walls to make sure that Coldtowns stayed contained.