Holly Black - The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

She didn’t want to grow up, and yet she knew there was not a single thing she could do to stop it.

CHAPTER 35

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

—Voltaire

Tana made her way dizzily down the hallway, her heartbeat loud in her ears, the scent of her own blood in her nose, a metallic taste in her mouth. Sounds came from rooms below as the household woke, crawling from their chambers, ravenous, the night stretching out in front of them with its glittering carpet of stars.

Tana didn’t want to be creeping down the hall alone, didn’t want to be sneaking out of Lucien’s terrifying manor without saying one last good-bye to Gavriel, but there was no safe way to say anything without being overheard. Better to leave him with the memory of his teeth against her throat and her teeth on his wrist. Better to leave him with the memory of their being a pair of monsters, wrapped in each other’s arms.

And after tonight—after tonight, she’d have to chain herself up behind a sturdy door and hope for the best. Self-quarantine was dangerous, and, even without the borrowed trouble of an excess of vampire blood chilling her veins, there was a good chance she wouldn’t survive.

You’re not even really human anymore , some part of her sneered, sounding a lot like Winter’s voice. Give it up. Just die already. It’ll be just like the dream you had—blood and forests and snow, girls with raven’s wing hair and rose red lips and sharp teeth as white as milk.

It worried her that it had gotten harder and harder to remember what it felt like to live her old life, even though she’d been living it mere days ago. Every memory had drowned in a sea of red.

She opened the door to Elisabet’s bedroom, intent on grabbing her phone and cash, then stopped abruptly when she saw Marisol waiting for her. The vampire was sitting on the high bed, one dagger-heeled boot against the brass footboard, twisting her silver tooth ring in her fingers, clearly bored.

“You took your time getting back,” Marisol said. Tana looked beyond her, to see the curtains in one corner of the room fluttering. The window was open and the white crow perched on the sill, looking in at her, its wicked curved beak opening to cry once. Something was attached to its leg—a little metal fastener where a piece of paper might fit if it was rolled up tight.

“What does Lucien want now?” Tana asked, forcing her gaze to Marisol. The vampire must have noticed the bird. Why was she acting so nonchalant about it?

“You don’t have to worry.” Marisol slid off the bed with a sigh. “Lucien’s not the one that sent me.”

The taste of Gavriel’s blood was still in Tana’s mouth, and she didn’t feel entirely sober. “Jameson,” she realized, speaking his name out loud. “You’re his—”

“Mother.” Marisol smiled, a cat with a canary it was resisting batting around. “He asked me to help you save some girl, so here I am, helping .”

“Oh,” Tana said, thinking abruptly of what he hadn’t said when he’d talked about growing up in Coldtown—nothing about his mother, nothing about his parents at all. And then she couldn’t help thinking of her own mother, of how her mother could have been very like this. “ Oh .”

Valentina was going to be so happy. Maybe happy enough to eventually forget the way Tana had ripped open a vampire’s throat with a screwdriver and blunt teeth right in front of her.

“Go ahead,” Marisol said. “The message on the bird’s leg is for you.”

Tana walked over to Gremlin. The bird was still, not pecking her fingers, letting her pull the thin piece of paper from the steel casing attached to its leg.

Trust her , it said. Trust me.

Tana sighed.

“There’s one other thing.” Marisol hopped off the bed, moving with unnatural grace. Her scarlet eyes gazed past Tana, taking in the room, as though looking for cameras. “Your friend wanted Jameson to pass on a message. Some girl from your hometown is here in Coldtown. Pearl. Does that mean anything to you?”

The world wavered in place. Blackness flooded the edges of Tana’s vision. She felt as if she were falling, as if she were falling and falling and would never stop falling.

No, it couldn’t be. No.

“I think her name was Pearl. Or Jewel? Some other friend of yours is trying to find her.” Marisol made a vague gesture of exasperation. “I don’t know. I don’t know why any of you come here.”

“That’s my little sister,” Tana said, some of her fury—at the universe, at herself, at Pearl—leaking into her voice. “She’s twelve. She came here because—”

She came here because of me. Because of that stupid message I sent her.

She came here because Lucien convinced her he was harmless and excitingly dangerous at the same time.

She came here because she wanted to be a part of the show.

Marisol looked momentarily taken aback at the mention of Pearl’s age and then resentful, as though Tana had forced her to feel something she didn’t want to feel.

Ignoring the vampire, Tana headed toward the bathroom for her phone, the pale crow hopping after her. Checking her texts, she saw a new one from Pauline: Jesus. Yr sister not home. She texted yr dad 1 hour ago says goigin to live with u & b on tv. I called her 16x but didt pick up. Phoned all ur friends.

Frantically, her hands shaking, Tana hit the button to call her sister. The phone didn’t even ring; it went straight to voice mail. Closing her eyes, she counted her breaths in and out, trying to find some way to calm herself.

WHERE R U RIGHT NOW???? , she texted her sister, but time slid by with no immediate reply. Shoving her phone into her borrowed bra where she could feel the vibration against her skin if something came in, she resisted the urge to pound her fists against the counter.

If Mom had been alive and in Coldtown, I might have come looking for her, too.

“I’m just helping you and the girl, Valentina, understand?” Marisol called. “None of the guards or staff are going to be in their usual places tonight, but that doesn’t mean we can be stupid.”

“We’re freeing every prisoner down there who’s willing to come.” Tana wasn’t sure she recognized her own voice, all iron filings and ice. “Everyone we can find. And we’re doing it fast.”

Fast, fast, so that she could make it out and get to her sister.

“I’m risking a lot for you already,” Marisol said. “You will do exactly what I tell you or else I’ll—”

“You’re not my mother,” Tana interrupted, walking to the bed. Picking up her purse, she dumped everything out onto the blankets. She tucked cash into her bra beside her cell and abandoned the rest. “And you don’t have to help, if this is too much for you. I’ll tell Jameson that you were awesome. He doesn’t need know that you couldn’t be bothered.”

Marisol’s gaze sharpened. “I wasn’t always—I wasn’t a very good mother. So if my son asks me to do something, I do it, no matter how stupid it seems to me. Jameson says to help get out this girl he likes, so I’ll help. Jameson says meet by the gate, so that’s where we’ll meet. If we get separated, he suggests we meet at the Eternal Ball, and that’s fine by me, too. He thinks that we can blend into the crowd and that the cameras will keep Lucien’s people from being too awful.”

Marisol didn’t sound as if she agreed with him, but the words passed through Tana without really mattering. Her thoughts had drifted back to Pearl wandering through the nighttime streets. For a single hopeful moment, she recalled a day in third grade, when her whole class had sat in the grass just beyond the jungle gym and Ms. Lee had whispered “It’ll be time for lunch later” to Rachel, who’d whispered to Lance, who’d whispered to Courtney, who’d whispered to Pauline, who’d whispered to Marcus, who’d whispered to Tana. “It’s time lambs ate hair,” Marcus had said, his breath smelling of spearmint gum, and Tana had been proud, because she was sure she passed it on perfectly. By the time it got to the other end, though, it was even more garbled.