Ellen Datlow - Teeth - Vampire Tales

But Brandon’s group liked his lyrics, and sometimes his words and their music did awesome things together. Brandon’s girl Betts knew some people in Portland. They talked about heading up there to do a demo tape. Things were looking good.

Then Betts’s parents moved across the river, and Brandon’s house was repossessed after his whole family snuck away overnight. The others drifted away, and it was all over.

Josh holed up in his room, working on songs about wishing he was dead. He told his parents that he wasn’t going back for senior year.

After the inevitable meltdown, his mom got him the summer job at Ivan’s mall, no ifs, ands, or buts. Obviously his parents hoped that a microscopic paycheck for grunt work in “the real world” plus some “time to think things over” would change his decision.

As if! All he wanted was to get the hell out of Dodge and go someplace he could find new musicians to work with, someplace with a real music scene that went beyond country whining, salsa, and bad rock. He needed a fresh start, in Portland or Seattle — someplace . Once he got there, his nowhere origins wouldn’t be a problem. Colin Meloy was from Montana .

Basically, though, what he really wanted was for the world to stop for a while so he could make a really good musician of himself. He needed to make up all the time he’d wasted on science and arts.

The vampires’ arrival, of course, changed everything.

The first-look sale of old Mrs. Ledley’s estate ran till eleven p.m. on a Friday night. Josh was posted in a back booth, with orders to keep his eyes open. The crowd was mostly dealers, but you couldn’t be too careful in a huge warehouse space broken up into forty-five different dealers’ booths and four aisles.

Tired from schlepping furniture and boxes all day for Ivan’s renters (who all had bad backs from years of schlepping furniture and boxes), he sat at an old oak desk in booth forty-one (Victoriana, especially toys and kids’ furniture), doodling on a sketch pad. He’d have worked on song lyrics (“The day flies past my dreaming eyes. ”), but not with Sinatra blatting “My Way” from a booth up front that sold scratchy old long plays.

Hearing a little tick, tick sound close by, he glanced up.

A woman in a green linen suit stood across the aisle, tapping a pencil against her front teeth and studying the display in a glass-fronted cabinet. Josh sketched fast. She might work as a goth-flavored Madonna, being pointy faced and olive skinned with thick, dark hair.

Next time he looked, he met a laserlike stare. Her eyes, crow footed at the outer corners, were shadowed in the same shade of parakeet blue as the polish on her nails (good-bye, Madonna).

He closed his pad and asked if she wanted to see anything from the locked cases.

“Have you got any furs?” she said. Her English had a foreign tinge. “Whole fox skins, to wear around the neck in winter?”

He shook his head. “Some came in with the estate, but they’ve already gone to a vintage clothing store.”

She sniffed. “Then show me what you’re drawing.”

He meant to refuse but found himself handing over his pad anyway.

She flipped pages. “Jesus and sheep? Are you Catholic?”

“You can always sell a religious picture in here sooner or later,” he said, folding his arms defensively. “Minimum wage sucks.”

“This isn’t bad,” she said, tapping the top sketch, “but I would stay in school if I were you.” What was she expecting, Michaelangelo?

“I’m dropping out.” Not that it was any of her business.

“Then this is a good place for you,” she said, handing back the pad. “One can always make a living in antiques.”

“It’s just a summer job,” he mumbled. “I’m a musician, actually.”

“Oh? What’s your instrument?”

“Keyboards. But I’m more of a songwriter.” She had moved closer. Her perfume was making his eyes water.

“Can you sing something you’ve written? My name is Odette Delauney; I know a lot of people. Maybe I can put you in touch, ah.?”

“Josh,” he muttered, “and I’m a song writer .” He was not about to sing anything at a building-sized party of old farts zoned out on — Stevie Wonder, now. He avoided mentioning two blurry video clips, made with Brandon and Betts, on YouTube. He had to remember to take the stupid things down.

Odette Delauney’s beady stare was making him feel strange. His feet kept inching his chair backward, but his head wanted to lean closer to her.

She swiveled suddenly on her high heels and pointed at a toy display: “If the donkey works, I’ll take him.” Then she was walking away, carrying a wind-up tin donkey that sat back on its haunches with a pair of little cymbals between its front hooves.

The ambient sound of the wide dealer space roared in as if Josh had suddenly yanked out a pair of earbuds: conversation, Julie Andrews climbing every mountain, shuffling footsteps.

Odette Delauney? Was she somebody? Had he just blown a big chance?

Too late; she was gone.

Josh stayed late to sweep up and turn out the lights. It was after midnight. His gray Civic was the only car left in the lot.

By the glow of the floodlight outside, he saw that a plump, dark-skinned girl was sitting on the sagging slat bench by the front door. She had a mass of dreadlocks, shiny piercings in an ear plugged with a white bud, and a cigarette in her hand. Wearing jeans, a tank top, and pink plastic sandals with little daisies on the toe straps, she looked about fourteen.

“Hey,” she said as he locked the front door behind him, “think I could get a job here? I’ve got expenses, and my aunt is so stingy .”

“But she lets you stay out late and smoke weed,” he said.

She snorted derisively and took a puff. Ivan would disapprove of her on so many levels. The dealers and buyers at the mall — mostly old, white, and from the boondocks — didn’t run, as Ivan said, in progressive circles (har har, progressive circles , get it?).

“Is working here as boring as it looks?” she asked.

“Worse.” He gestured at her iPod. “So, who are you listening to?”

“Amy Winehouse.” She narrowed her eyes. “What’d you expect? The Jonas Brothers?”

Josh thought fast. “M.I.A.”

“‘Jai Ho,’” she drawled, but her expression relaxed. “You’re Josh? My auntie Odette met you inside.”

“She bought a musical toy, right? Funny, she sure didn’t strike me as the type for that kind of thing.”

“She’ll have a buyer for it somewhere. Those old animal-band sets are hot right now.”

Then auntie was just another antiques dealer, not a record producer’s best pal, surprise surprise.

“So — are you adopted?” he said.

Studying him with narrowed eyes, the girl blew another slow plume of smoke. “My Main Line mom ran off with a bass player from Chicago. The wheels came off and they both split and left me with a neighbor. I call her auntie to keep things simple. I guess ‘adopted’ works. You a musician?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, and that was enough about that. He didn’t want to come off as some dumb-ass poser. “You collect stuff, too, like your aunt?”

“Sure,” she said, shifting aside on the bench. “Sit down — I’ll show you what I found tonight.”

He had barely touched butt to bench when she grabbed him with steely arms, jammed her face down the neckline of his T-shirt, and bit him. His yell pinched down to nothing in seconds. Muffled panic surged through him as he slumped, unable to move or shout for help, staring over her head at the neon bar sign across the avenue.

Am I dying?

“That’s enough, Crystal.”