Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [56]
Rebecca smiles wanly. “No, you go upstairs,” she says damningly. “I’m sure we can talk some other time.”
“Come on,” Lolli demands, pulling on my arm. “The night’s still young.”
And I’m being pulled away through the crowd, the others staring after me, Jerk with his mouth actually open, Tom shaking his head in disbelief.
“That was . . . ,” I start to say angrily. But I’m supposed to be convincing Lolli to take me back to the convocation of vampires. So I shut up and climb the stairs between slumped, beer-stinky figures.
Bat is sitting at the top of the stairs, grinning a lazy grin and playing with a light-up yo-yo.
“Heya, sucker,” says Lolli. “How’s the thing?”
“’T’sup, suckers,” says Bat. “It’s a good thing. Good time. Good party. I’m getting a little parched. Tell me when you’re ready.”
Lolli leads me by the hand down the hall, as if we were going to our bridal bed. The hall is low and badly lit and reeks of pot smoke. There’s a line of girls outside the bathroom. After we go past them, I can hear them saying, disgusted, “Wasn’t that Christopher what’s-his-name? From, like, the freshman class or something?”
Now, I think, is the time to be evil. Now is wickedness time. I must agree to worship the Dark god Tch’muchgar, and Lolli must not suspect anything. Once again, I am struck — the cosmic damage I may have caused dropping the Arm into Tch’muchgar’s world — for who knows what Chet has in mind. Undo what you have done, that is what I’m thinking. Undo what you have done.
Everything hangs on this.
We step into what must be Kathy’s bedroom and Lolli shuts the door behind us.
Because Kathy has been away at college, her room still has all the artifacts of girlhood in it, and some of the artifacts of womanhood. Plush bears and birds and moose are piled in a big googly-eyed Peaceable Kingdom on the bed, and awkward drawings of horses are pinned to the walls. Some bras hang on the closet door handle. There’s a lot of lavender around.
“I’m, like, so glad you are coming,” says Lolli, hugging me quickly.
“Let’s go,” I say. “We don’t have long until they start the spells out on the lake and in the White Hen Pantry.”
“Chris, this is, like, so great! We were so worried you were gonna ditch!”
“Lolli, I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
“Okay! Let’s go!”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“Outta here, boy!”
“Let us,” I say with some conviction, “burn some rubber.”
“First thing. Right, just one thing.” She taps me naggingly on the shoulder. “You got to make a kill, brute.”
I back one step toward the door. I can’t think. “We don’t have time,” I say.
“No, man. You want to be part of the game, you have to be blooded.”
“Blooded?”
“The blood from your first kill. Like, smeared on your cheeks.” She raises her hand, and caresses first one of my cheeks, then the other, looking, the whole time, into my eyes. I look helplessly at her tan neck and the seamless way it fans out into her chest and breasts beneath the straps of her tank top. “You have to drink,” she says.
“Oh?”
“Chet said. He said we couldn’t trust you ’til you made your first kill. Chow time.”
“Chet?”
“Chet. You know, Chet. Like, Mr. bad-ass-cool agent of Hell.”
I am aware that this confirms my worst suspicions.
“We have to kill someone now?”
“Ding ding, soup’s on.” She snaps her fingers and sways her slim hips.
“You and Bat will help me? And . . . what’s-her-name you came with? Asheleighe?”
Lolli looks at me for a moment impatiently. She is trying to decide whether I am worth the effort. She explains, “No. No, we will not be, like, aided and abetted by Hors d’oeuvre Asheleighe. We have imported Hors d’oeuvre Asheleighe specially from Pepperell, Mass., to be your victimo supremo. I made friends with her like a week ago. We shipped her in so she won’t be traced. Jenny Whatsit hardly knows us and won’t think to look when we hit the road.”
She waits for me to reply. I am looking at her, but fidgeting with the belt loops on my jeans. I hike them up, then down. Up, then down. Panic. Quickly through my head flit squabbles — Better to kill one girl and