Holly Black - The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Maybe it’s crazy to think that I’m going to be able to tell anything significant just from watching a human girl become a vampire. After all, I will be far from the first to see it. Scientists have observed vampirism, even undergone it. But I still want to be able to look at this woman in the eye when she rises from the dead. I want to use something entirely different from instruments and monitors; I want to use my instincts. I want to see whether I believe I am looking into the same person’s eyes.

There’s something easy about the idea that vampirism is some kind of disease—then they can’t help it that they attack us, that they commit murders and atrocities, that they can only control themselves sometimes. They’re sick; it’s not their fault. And there’s something even easier about the idea of demonic invasion, something forcing our loved ones to do all manner of terrible things. Still not their fault, only now we can destroy them. But the third option, the possibility that there’s something monstrous inside of us that can be unleashed, is the most disturbing of all. Maybe it’s just us, us with a raging hunger, us with a couple of accidental murders under our belt. Humanity, with the training wheels off the bike, careening down a steep hill. Humanity, freed from the constraints of consequence and gifted with power. Humanity, grown away from all things human.

And so, dear readers, the answer I hope to have for you tomorrow will not be a scientific one. I hope to be able to decide for myself—when we turn, is there something shoved inside of us or is it more that something inside of us has been released?

CHAPTER 39

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

—W. Somerset Maugham

Tana walked out of the hall, pushing past Corps des Ténèbres guards and heading for the front door. She turned back once, to look at Gavriel standing in the center of the floor like a marble statue painted with red, but her head was pounding and her neck was sore and when she opened her mouth to speak, she found herself struck dumb. It was all too much. She had glutted herself on horror, and all she could do was stumble out of the house and fumble inside her leather dress for Jameson’s cell phone.

Cool air brushed over her skin.

Pearl. She had to find her sister, but if her sister saw her now, she’d scream and scream and scream.

Blood was so sticky.

Gavriel hadn’t called out to her, hadn’t moved.

But then, she’d nearly ruined his revenge before she’d stolen it for herself; maybe he was glad she’d left.

She walked through the streets of Coldtown and felt nothing. Come to the Eternal Ball , Jameson’s phone said. We got her.

It was easy to find, even as disoriented as she was. People didn’t mind giving directions, apparently not bothered that her face was spattered with blood, not minding that her hands were dark with it. Their casual demeanor was horrifying, but not as horrifying as how easy it had been to push a knife into a begging vampire’s heart.

She found the place, the domed church with stained glass windows painted black along the first few floors. Strobe lights lit the panes on the dome. The door, papered with pink-stenciled posters, was painted the same tarry black as the windows. Music thrummed from within, and a few people sat on the steps, smoking and talking. A girl with green hair in a dozen braids held up a video camera to interview an elderly woman with long white hair and gleaming red eyes. Tana recognized her with a dull pang of surprise as the old lady from the Last Stop.

The doorman pulled aside the velvet rope, waving Tana ahead of a small line of people waiting to pay the cover charge, not even bothering to take her pulse. Maybe the rules were different for people accessorizing their red dresses with a large quantity of bluish-red blood.

Then she was inside, among the dancing throng. Music pounded the air, and a carpet of people filled the hall, twirling and shaking to the music. Girls and boys danced in cages that rose and fell from the ceiling in sudden, heart-stopping, roller-coaster jerks, making everyone scream. And above it all, cameras like the ones she’d seen on Suicide Square, like the ones in Lucien Moreau’s house, watching everything with their pitiless eyes, broadcasting the whole thing live.

There was a bar all along one wall, which served alcohol from copper distilling vats. It spilled into mismatched mugs. On the outer edges, a few kids passed joints to one another, the heavy odor of hashish competing with a whiff of rot to spice the air.

In one corner sat the remainder of an old confessional; kids waiting in line to sit in it, draw their curtains, and tell their sins anonymously to a camera. A girl stood in line, tears running over her cheeks. Behind her, the dance floor was full of people thrashing and jumping and whirling. The cavernous Eternal Ball was oddly familiar; Tana had seen it before on the screens of friends’ computers and on posters in lockers. Now, moving with the crowd, it felt unreal, like being on the set of a movie.

She suspected that Pearl must love it.

A shiver went through her body, then a second one. She scanned the crowd, trying to pick out her sister. Her gaze snagged on a familiar figure, his back pressed against the staircase support beams. For a long moment, she studied his navy military jacket with the arms torn off, his garter belt with opaque white stockings and big black boots, his glittering blue eyeliner. He had something taped to his arm that looked like a shunt. It was Rufus, she realized, sweat tracing its way down his neck as he danced. As far as she could tell, he was alone. A red-eyed boy and a blond girl knelt in front of him, taking turns drinking from the tubing attached to his arm. Tana’s stomach lurched, half with disgust and half with hunger.

She staggered to lean against the rail of corrugated metal stairs leading to a cordoned-off second floor, taking breath after breath until she was sure she wasn’t going to be sick or attack anyone. She had to find Pearl, had to keep herself together long enough to take her back to the gate.

And horribly, in that moment, she thought of Gavriel watching her leave the glass ballroom. Gavriel, who had seemed utterly mad but who’d known exactly what he was doing the whole time. Gavriel, who’d put aside revenge for a little while to go on an adventure with her.

She shook her head, which was a mistake. It made her head throb worse than ever.

“Tana,” someone said, and then Valentina was there, beside her, pressing a mug into her hand. She’d changed her clothes, pulled back her hair, and washed off all her makeup. “Oh holy hell, Tana, you’re okay. You came back.”

She drank automatically, the alcohol burning down her sore throat.

“Look who we found,” Valentina said, and Aidan swung into view, smiling his innocent, fanged smile. Pearl was sitting on his shoulders, as though she were much younger, her gangly twelve-year-old legs dangling over his chest. Around her throat was the heavy garnet locket. She grinned at Tana, her expression dimming when she saw the blood staining her face and darkening the red of her dress.

“Hey, peanut,” Tana said softly, just as their mother used to.

“Don’t call me that,” Pearl said, dignity clearly offended. She was wearing a sparkly black shirt, jeans, and her favorite pair of blue cowboy boots. Her eyes were lined in black pencil.

Tana turned to Valentina, taking her hand and pressing it. “Thank you. I can’t thank you enough—”