Ellen Datlow - Teeth - Vampire Tales

“No joke,” Crystal said.

“Okay, this is for real, right? People who live forever by drinking human blood spend their time fighting over high-priced junk?”

Crystal snorted. “Are you kidding? They love to feud over scraps — ugly old vases, souvenir ashtrays from Atlantic City, dried-up baby shoes. Some of them are addicted to anything from their own time. Mostly, though, it’s about personal pride and protecting their investments.”

“They hunt down enameled kitchenware, just like some retired bus driver desperate for something to do, and that’s about pride and investment?”

“Hey, look around you,” she said. “Even mass-produced trinkets get valuable if they survive long enough. A vampire can wait a century for his tin plates to become rare and then sell them for a bundle. Then there’s the thrill of spotting a trend first and getting in there before anybody else. Odette’s amazing at that. Timing the market is a real competition for them; they bet on each other. Gambling’s always been the favorite pastime of the upper crust. Well, crust doesn’t get any upper than the Quality.”

An idea sparked, then glowed. “Crystal? What does Odette collect for herself?”

“What you want to know for?” She stared at him suspiciously. “Anyway, you’re asking the wrong person.”

“It can’t all be just merchandise to her,” he insisted. “What does she find in a place like this that she won’t resell?”

Crystal absently twisted the ears of the trophy bear as she thought this over. “Odd stuff. One-of-a-kind things: snapshots, carvings, pictures.”

“Art,” he said.

“Art, and artists. If she thinks you have what she calls ‘real creative talent,’ you get a vampire godmother for life — whether you want it or not.”

Odette hadn’t asked to see his drawings again, but. “What about my songs?”

“The last music Odette liked was a minuet ,” Crystal said, rolling her eyes. “And plus she has the tinnest ear ever and hates poetry.”

He pressed on. “Well, what else? What does she love?” If he could find something special, something to show that he was on Odette’s wavelength — that he was too useful to leave behind —

“Well, there’s this quilt,” Crystal said. “Grubby old thing; pretty hand stitching though — little strips of silk from men’s ties, kimonos, and like that. She paid a lot for it. She still has it.”

“But why? Why that?”

“How should I know?” Crystal scowled, then softened slightly. “I did hear once that her brother was a famous goldsmith, couple centuries back. He had a stroke, so she got to design jewelry, under her brother’s name, for the rich people. It could be a true story, but who knows? She’s not the kind who runs her mouth about her first life, like some of the Quality. Specially the really old ones, trying to hang on to their memories. Anyway, maybe she was talented herself, back in the day.”

Josh nodded, thinking furiously. He was not going to be left behind in flyover country if he could help it.

Two more of the Quality showed up at Ivan’s at the next open evening. One looked the part — tall, pale, and high shouldered like a vulture (an effect undercut by his cowboy boots, ironed jeans, and Western shirt with pearl-snap buttons). There was no mystery about what he was after: Several pounds of Indian fetish necklaces decorated his sunken chest.

The other, a chunky Asian-looking woman with a flat-top haircut, wore chains and bunches of keys jingling from her belt, her boots, her leather vest.

“What’s she looking for, whips and handcuffs?” Josh whispered.

Crystal smirked at him. “Dummy. That’s Alicia Chung. Odette says she has the best collection of nineteenth-century opera ephemera in America.”

“She’s looking for old opera posters around here ?”

Crystal shrugged. “You never know. That’s part of the challenge.”

In the workroom after closing, the first thing Odette said was “If Chung is here, it won’t be long before MacCardle arrives. We pack up tonight, Crystal.”

Josh broke an icy sweat. He had no time for finesse.

“Odette?” His voice cracked. “Take me, too.”

“No,” she said. She didn’t even look at him.

“Crystal travels with you!”

“Crystal is Quality, and she has no living family. Shall we kill your mother and father so they won’t come searching for you?”

With Crystal’s voice in his ears (“Ooh, that’s cold , Odette!”), Josh ran into the bathroom and threw up. He drove home without remembering to turn on his headlights and fell asleep in his clothes, dreaming about Annie Frye biting his neck. Later he sat in the dark banging out the blackest chords he could get from his keyboard.

His band was gone, nobody from school wanted to hang with him, and now even the vampires were taking off.

His mom knocked on the bedroom door at seven a.m. and asked if he wanted to “talk about” anything. “Your music sounds so sad, hon.” Like he was writing his songs for her!

“It’s just music.” He hunched over the Casio, waiting for her to leave. How could he stand to live in this house one more day?

She stepped inside. “Josh, I’m picking up signals here. Are you thinking of leaving town with your new friends?”

He panicked, then realized she only meant his imaginary musician pals. “No.”

“All the same, I think it’s time I met them,” she said firmly.

“Why can’t you leave me alone? You’re just making everything worse!”

“You’re doing that brilliantly for yourself,” she retorted. They yelled back and forth, each trying to inflict maximum damage without actually drawing blood, until she clattered off downstairs to finish crating pictures for a gallery show in San Jose. The hammering was fierce.

She was going out there for her show’s opening, naturally.

Everybody could leave flyover country for the real, creative world of accomplishment and success, except Josh.

He slipped into her studio after she’d left. As a kid, he had spent so much time here while his mom worked. The bright array of colors, the bristly and sable-soft brushes, and the rainbow-smeared paint rags had kept him fascinated for hours. There on the windowsill, just as he’d remembered during their argument, sat something that just might convince Odette to take him with her.

Ivan had belonged to a biker gang for a few years. Later on, he’d made a memento of that time in his life and then asked Josh’s mother to keep it for him (his own wife wanted no reminders of those days in her house).

What Ivan had done was to twist silver wire into the form of a gleaming, three-inch-high motorbike, with turquoise-disk beads for wheels. The thing was beautiful as only a lovingly made miniature can be. It looked like a jeweled dragonfly. Visitors had offered Josh’s mother money for it.

Value, uniqueness, handcrafted beauty — it was perfect.

Josh quickly packed it, wrapped in tissues, into a little cardboard box that used to hold a Christmas ornament. At work, he stashed it in a drawer of the oak desk in the Victoriana booth, where he sometimes went for naps when the vampires’ snacking wore him out. Odette would come tonight, after her final antiquing run through town, before she took off for good. This would be his one and only chance to persuade her.

After closing time, he dashed out for pizza. When he got back to the darkened mall, he was startled to find Crystal sitting at the oak desk with the little brass lamp turned on.

“How’d you get in?” he asked.

She gave a sullen shrug. The package sat open on the desk in front of her.

“Where’s Odette?” The silent mall floor had never looked so dark.