Holly Black - The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

“Of course I like her,” he said, as though it was hard for him to imagine how anyone wouldn’t. “And if you tell her, I am going to make you very sorry you opened your mouth. Look, Valentina is… it’s hard to explain. She’s here for one reason and one reason only, the same reason most people give up their safe normal lives to come here—to be vampires. She isn’t looking for somebody like me. She might bring home a regular guy sometimes, if she’s lonely, but she’s not serious about any of them. She’s looking for someone like your friend out there.”

Boys were so stupid, Tana thought. “You should dance with her.”

He winced, as though she suggested he stab himself in the foot. “I don’t really dance, and she was just imprisoned —maybe she’s not really up for dancing.”

Tana shrugged, sliding off the stool. “Let’s go ask her.”

“Absolutely not,” said Jameson.

“Oh, so you’re just going to sit here in the shadows, watching her like a crazy person,” Tana said. “Making sure she doesn’t get in any more trouble.”

“If she does, there’s not much I can do, is there?” He took another gulp from the mug in front of him. It had a blue band around it and a crack down one side, which appeared to have been glued hastily because there was still a line of hardened clear material like a badly healed scar.

“She thought your mom was your girlfriend,” Tana said. She made a gesture to Valentina, vague enough to mean anything and then pointed to Jameson. He looked alarmed. “And she wanted to save her, because it was something she could do for you. That’s how she wound up imprisoned at Lucien’s. I bet she didn’t tell you that.”

“What are you doing?” he asked, grabbing her arm hard enough to hurt.

“If you knew what kind of week I’ve had and what kind of week I’m about to have, then you’d know you better just go along with me.” With that, she dragged him up off the stool and out into the crowd.

He gave her a murderous look, but he let himself be pulled. Valentina saw them coming and looked, if anything, more terrified than he did. Pearl ran toward Tana, though, eager for more dancing, waving up at the cameras overhead as though she was waving to all her friends back home.

“This isn’t going to change anything,” he said, under his breath.

And then they were dancing together, all five of them, sweat slicking their limbs and the music buzzing in their heads. Even Jameson was smiling as Valentina spun around him, his fingers lingering a moment too long on her hips and his gaze slanting down, shyness coloring his cheeks. Aidan whirled Pearl in his arms, lifting her into the air and making her laugh.

Tana danced until the pain in her head faded away, until her bare feet hurt from being pounded against the floor, until her body was gloriously exhausted and with every move she knew she’d won the day because she’d survived it. Valentina somehow persuaded Jameson to stay on the dance floor. He had his hands circling her waist and her head was bent toward him like a flower bends toward the sun. And Tana finally understood how the wildness of the Eternal Ball was the wildness of grief, the intoxicating dance of carnival, where one leaves oneself at home and becomes something else for a night, hoping that the old skin will still fit when one comes back to it in the morning.

The way they arranged things was that Pauline agreed to take off from camp, drive to the gate, and pick up Pearl on the outside. Tana and Aidan walked Pearl there, through the winding streets and the refuse, past the bodies and the swarms of roaches. Dawn didn’t yet blaze on the horizon, but the air had already changed, the wind bringing the warm smells of day before the daylight itself.

Tana held Pearl’s hand in hers. Her sister was getting sleepy, stumbling a little, eyelids drooping as the excitement of the night wore off.

“It’s my fault that you’re going to be stuck here forever,” Pearl said her in a hushed voice. “I messed up everything.”

Tana took a deep breath and then shook her head. “I might not make it out of here, but that’s because I might not beat being Cold. And if that happens, then I got to say good-bye to you in person. And if I get better, then I’ll figure something out, okay?”

Pearl looked very skeptical, but she nodded. “Okay.”

“And you’re going to say good-bye to Pauline for me. Give her a big hug and make her believe that I’m doing fine.”

“She’s going to see clips from the feed,” Pearl said, in the tone of someone who felt honor-bound to point out the obvious.

“Well, then,” Tana said, realizing that her sister was right. “It’s going to be even more important that you convince her that I’m fine. Don’t I seem fine?”

“I guess ,” Pearl said.

Tana shoved her shoulder, making her grin.

They walked awhile in silence. Then, as they passed the hand-drawn sign for A Shot of Depresso, Pearl looked up at Tana and blinked. “There was a vampire boy at the Eternal Ball who said he knew you.”

“What boy?” Tana asked.

Pearl shook her head, touching the garnet necklace. “He said, ‘It’s an honor and a delight to meet you and a tragedy you’re here’—he had a weird way of talking, but he seemed nice. He started giving me a message for you, but he changed his mind.”

Tana tried to convince herself that Gavriel’s deciding not to pass along a message didn’t mean anything, but since he hadn’t spoken to her himself, that was hard to believe.

Aidan raised his eyebrows at Tana, but he kept his mouth shut.

Then it was time to lean down and hug Pearl again, to tell her that she loved her, to drink in the warmth of her skin and listen to the thunder of her heart, before letting her go at last.

Watching Pearl walk into one of the swinging iron cages alone was the hardest thing Tana had ever done. But she did. And she made herself a promise.

She was the girl who went back to try to do the impossible thing. Outside Lance’s farmhouse when all she wanted to do was run, she’d forced herself to go back through that broken window. When she’d managed to escape from the room with the skylight, she’d still gone back for Aidan. She’d even gone back and killed Lucien Moreau. And if she could go and do all those crazy, impossible things, then maybe she could be crazy enough to save herself, too.

The next morning, Jameson locked her in the root cellar of an abandoned Victorian house, along with plastic milk jugs full of boiled water, some cans of food, a can opener, aspirin, a bunch of blankets, and whatever was left of the stuff she’d bought inside the walls. She’d attached a handcuff to one of her wrists and run the other through a chain she’d bolted to a pipe. When she handed over the key to the cuffs to Jameson, she was on the verge of telling him to forget the whole thing, to let her out, except that she was sure he’d break his promises and do it.

Eighty-eight days. Three locks on the door. Fifty-three links in the chain. One bare bulb swinging from the ceiling.

She slept for a while, fitfully, in her nest of blankets. Then she ate cold beans with a plastic spoon. Finally, she decided it was time she set up the camera before she wasn’t able to. Her hands were already shaking as she shoved the first of the battery packs into the back of Midnight’s old video camera. By the time she set it up on the tripod and plugged in the Livebox she’d bought off some kid Jameson knew, she needed to cut the heel of her hand with the jagged edge of a can and suck a little of her blood to steady herself for what came next. Then she turned on the camera and sat down, cross-legged, on the ground.

Looking up into the shining black lens, she started. “Hi, I’m Tana Bach. I’m seventeen, and a few days ago there was a party and—no, never mind that, if you’re watching this then you’ve probably already heard about what happened there. Look, I just want to thank everybody for all the nice e-mails and wall posts and stuff. Thanks, too, mysterious and maybe even legit production company that wants to film me killing vampires, but this is what I’m going to be doing for twelve and a half weeks, so if you want to broadcast something, broadcast this.