Ellen Datlow - Teeth - Vampire Tales

“Eww! Do I look crazy? Who wants to be cooped up with a bunch of smelly, spotty, horny adolescents and the teachers who hate them, in a place built like a prison?”

“Is that what you’re thinking when you’re drinking my blood — about how spotty and smelly I am?” (Horny just didn’t come into that experience for Josh.)

“Oh,” she said, “let’s not go there.”

He decided to celebrate his new songwriting energy by getting rid of the pathetic jumble of projects from his arts center classes (the mobile made of hangers and beer tabs, a woodcut of crows fighting), which he had tucked out of sight in a tote bag on the floor of his closet. He might even make a few bucks by farming all this junk out for sale in the mall with whichever dealers were willing to display it. (As they said, “There’s a buyer for everything .”)

When he walked in, two cops were asking for Ivan at the register. Josh made a business of tucking the tote, with a sweatshirt stuffed in on top to keep everything from falling out, into one of the lockers by the front door, so he could listen.

They asked about a well-known local meth head who had come in the day before trying to sell some old coins.

“Stolen, right?” Ivan said.

They nodded, looking meaningfully around the nearby booths.

Ivan braced his thick hands on the glass countertop. “That’s why I never buy off the street — it’s always stolen goods. You won’t find any valuable jewelry for sale by any of my dealers, either; too easy to steal. That kind of thing just attracts thieves.

“So,” he said, relaxing now that he had declared himself totally honest, “did something happen after I kicked that kid out of here?”

“Read the papers,” one of the cops said.

The Journal reported that the kid had been found early that morning out by the old airport, with his throat slashed and the coins gone.

Josh, shivering, ducked into the corner reserved for books and DVDs. “Throat slashed” sounded suspiciously like “disguised vampire bite” to him. He calmed himself down with half an hour of looking at psychedelic sleeve art for old long-playing records.

Crystal showed up at midnight with a puffy, teary look and a bandage wrapped around one hand. He asked if she was okay, but she disappeared into the shadows of the nighttime mall without answering.

In the office, Odette explained in a pissed-off tone.

“A boy accosted us in your parking lot last night, trying to sell us some coins, or mug us, or both. I turned him away. Crystal was in one of her moods; she followed him. I’ve told her a thousand times, we do not drink people dry and then toss them aside like juiced oranges. It’s stupid.”

“She drained that kid?”

“She has a teenager’s appetite,” Odette said. “And poor impulse control.”

“She told me she’s seventy-five years old!”

Impatiently Odette swung the swivel chair around (with Crystal temporarily incapacitated, Odette had to find sites on the computer for herself, which made her cranky). “Years don’t come into it. Crystal isn’t alive the way you are, Josh. She doesn’t mature with time. The parts of her brain that hadn’t developed when she was turned never will. She’s between thirteen and fourteen forever, in her mind as well as her body.”

Imagine never being able to shed your baby fat, your zits, or your adolescent mood swings.

“Wow,” he said.

“Wow indeed.”

“So. did the guy have a knife or something? Her hand — ”

Odette said, “You need to understand that I provide the only structure she has in her life, and the only security. Sometimes I must be a little harsh with her, but it’s for her own sake. She doesn’t survive by being a clever adult in a permanently childlike body. She’s a child who survives because I protect her.”

“Protect her?” Crystal, who was clearly injured — but who had also just killed someone. “From who?”

“Her own rash nature,” Odette said tartly, “but also older vampires. The Quality don’t like the young ones, for reasons that should be obvious. Recklessness puts us all at risk. Correction helps in the short term, but there is no curing persistently childish behavior in someone who is, essentially, a permanent child.”

Crystal’s prickliness began to make more sense. “Why do you keep her around, then?”

Odette jabbed irritably at the keyboard with one long, iridescent fingernail. “Youngsters are adaptable and good at modernity. She can be very helpful.”

Useful, she meant.

“Well, well!” Odette’s attention was caught by something on the screen. “Axel Hochauer has sold off his Grande Armée figures for a tidy sum, I see.” She smiled. “Goretsky must be livid .”

Josh knew he was dismissed.

He found Crystal crying in the bathroom. Clearing his throat nervously, he asked, “Crystal? Did she do something to you?”

“Made me hold my hand in sunlight,” she blubbed, glaring up at him through her tears. “Look!”

The skin on the back of her hand was scabby and blotched with raw pink skin. She wrapped it up again quickly. “It was worse before; we heal fast. That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. I hate that mean old bitch!”

She had killed the meth head, but her own situation was pretty dire. He couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Not enough to hug her or anything like that, but sorry.

“Hey,” he said, propping his hip against the sink. “Want to hear a new song? It’s not exactly finished yet — I mean, I’m not through working on it — but I think it’s a pretty good start. I’m calling it ‘Love Birds.’”

He sang, mezza voce: “Raven hates her own harsh tone.She hacks and hawks to spit it out.Swallow down her razor kissSalty, icy, light as bone,To sweeten Raven’s song.She’ll be your love, your turtledove,If you sweeten Raven’s song.”

“‘Turtledove?’” Crystal mimicked scornfully. “What century do you come from? Makes no sense, either. Well, that’s cool. You can’t eat music, and I’m starving.”

She was always hungry, and she always had to be reminded to stop.

Next time things seemed back to normal. Crystal, Grand Theft Auto champion with a stuffed arcade bear to prove it, was on the monitor again, checking for comparables to Odette’s latest find: a rare Chinese pipe, all delicately curved brass tubing and carved wood. Josh, already tapped by both vampires, dozed in a beat-up armchair on the other side of Ivan’s desk.

“Oh, shit!” Crystal leaned back and yelled, “Odette! MacCardle’s in Dallas!”

Odette swept into the office and tilted the monitor around to see the news photo. It featured a scrawny, self-satisfied-looking guy with suspenders holding up his pants, shaking some fancy suit’s hand in an auction showroom.

Odette snarled silently, showing a gleam of fang (Josh looked away; he hated thinking about where those teeth had been). But all she said was “Fine. He’s there, we’re here.”

She went back to inspecting the Chinese pipe.

Crystal whispered fiercely, “Fine my foot! If MacCardle comes sniffing around here, we are so gone.”

Josh was jolted by a stab of realization: He didn’t want them gone — not without him. (God, could he really be thinking like this?)

“He looks harmless,” he observed cautiously. “Not exactly a Van Helsing type.”

“He’s Quality , dummy. He comes sneaking around after Odette trying to snag the good stuff first, which makes her so mad ! You won’t like her when she’s mad,” she intoned, wiggling the fingers of her now-unblemished hand.

“What, she turns green and smashes the place up?”