Extraordinary<li> (18 page)

Fred wasn’t nearly as big a jerk as I’d always thought. He still seemed mopey and unhappy, but that was understandable. I wouldn’t want to be a teenager a minute longer than I absolutely have to be. If you’ve got to live forever, you
should do it in, like, your mid-twenties or whenever it is that you hit your prime.

Mutual didn’t say a word the whole trip.

Fred directed me past downtown, into the east side, and down a side street into a neighborhood so bad it looked like a set from
Drugs: The Movie
.

I would have been a bit nervous, but it wasn’t like anyone was going to mug me or rape me or whatever while Fred was around. They could try, but no gang of toughs could beat a vampire in a fight.

“So, what’s this place?” I asked. “One of those new vampire bars?”

“Nah,” he said. “This one was a post-human bar even before we came out of the coffin.”

“I didn’t know there were any of those,” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “We still keep quiet about it, though, so keep your traps shut.”

I followed his directions to a place that looked like a feed store. In fact, it actually said “Feed Store” on the sign, even though I couldn’t imagine any farmers living in the neighborhood. The windows were all boarded up, and one of the boards had an Out of Business sign spray-painted on it. The paint on the sign was badly faded and chipped. Weeds sprang up through the cracks in the ground, and even out of the cracks in the paint on the walls.

“Do people from the neighborhood ever try to sneak in?” I asked. “Looks like it would be a nice place for taking drugs.”

“They probably try,” he said. “But they’d never get past the threshold.”

We got out of the car, and Fred walked us around to the
back door and knocked. A little slot in the door opened, and a pair of red eyes looked out at us for a second before letting us inside.

The place looked like any crummy bar I’d seen on TV—dimly lit, with a couple of neon signs, a jukebox, and a pool table. There was a whole lot of sawdust and scattered pieces of rubbish on the bare concrete floor. A tinny speaker overhead was playing an old song with a violin and an accordion. I couldn’t tell what song it was, because the lyrics were in German.

It looked like a group of regulars had gotten together to clean up in about 1974, and they hadn’t left—or cleaned again—since.

“This is life as a post-human,” said Fred. “Dark, dismal, and depressing.”

In front of the bar sat three guys, all hunched over. Two of them had their heads down. In the middle sat a much shorter guy. His face was shadowed under a fedora and he didn’t turn to look at us, but I assumed it was Gregory Grue. I figured it was best not to try to get his attention.

Just knowing he was there gave me chills, though.

He was
not
going to wreck this for me.

Fred sat down at the edge of the bar, and I sat on a stool next to him.

The bartender gave him a nod.

“What’s this, some kind of Nazi music?” Fred asked, tilting his head toward the speaker in the ceiling.

“The Nazis burned this guy’s manuscripts in the town square, you dumb punk,” said the bartender. “Got some new wannabes?”

“Just one, I think,” said Fred.

He ordered a drink, then turned back to us.

“This is the only bar I can get into without a hassle,” he said. “I’m actually old enough that most of the kids I grew up with are grandparents now, but as far as most bouncers are concerned, I’m still a teenager. They always think my ID is fake. And, technically, I am still seventeen. My brain hasn’t really matured at all since I converted—I’m
just
mature enough to know that I’m stuck being young, dumb, and ugly forever. Believe me, you don’t want this.”

“I know I don’t,” said Mutual.

Fred looked a bit surprised. “You don’t?”

“Yeah,” Mutual said. “I don’t
want
to convert. I was hoping for help with getting through a diciotto.”

Fred shook his head and swore a little bit.

“Well, this is a new one,” he said. “Most of the people I have to talk to are desperate to convert.”

“I just want help dealing with my parents,” said Mutual.

Fred took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to tell you, man,” he said. “I’ve never heard of anyone not converting after a diciotto.”

Mutual looked like he was about to cry again.

“Mutual can probably handle it,” said Jason. “He’s tough.”

“No one’s
that
tough,” Fred said. “I’ve even seen people pull all kinds of tricks to get out of it, like planting people who don’t really want them to convert in the diciotto party, giving them drugs to make them sleep through it, whatever. Nothing works. Nothing. Everyone converts at the end.”

I remembered Smollet’s offer. “So if I volunteered to help
out at the diciotto, and warned him right now not to listen to me there, it probably wouldn’t help?”

“I guarantee you’d just make it worse,” said Fred.

“So I’m screwed?” asked Mutual.

Fred inhaled sharply and looked uncomfortable.

“Probably,” he said. “I mean, there are exercises you can do to keep them from sending thoughts into your head, which they’ll try to do, and that
might
help a little. You know anything about that?”

Mutual shook his head.

“Come on,” said Fred. “I can’t teach you in here with this accordion racket. Let’s go out back.”

Mutual nodded and followed Fred out behind the bar, leaving me alone with Jason and Amber—with Gregory Grue still drinking and not acknowledging that I was even there.

“I don’t like the sound of this,” I said.

“Relax,” said Jason. “Mutual can take it.”

“I don’t know if I
can
relax,” I said. “I’m just getting more and more scared about the diciotto, and I don’t think I’m any closer to getting Fred to kiss me at homecoming, which means I’m going to freaking
die
on Saturday.”

“Not necessarily!” said a growling voice from down the bar.

Gregory, of course.

He hopped down from his barstool and walked over to us.

“Hoo hoo!” he said. “In the dim light of the dusty bulb, purple hair looks black as ebony. You two lovebirds mind if I speak with Miss Van Den Berg alone?”

“Is this him?” asked Amber.

Gregory bowed deeply.

“Rolled into town on Halloween night,” he said, “and thought I’d give Iowa a try. I’ve been helping your friend here reach her full potential.”

“And threatening to kill her,” said Amber.

Gregory ignored her and motioned for me to follow him. I hopped down from my stool and followed him across the floor, toward the pool table. He stepped to the wall and turned the volume knob next to the light switch, and the German music got loud enough that no one back at the bar could hear us.

He held a pool cue out to me.

“You play?” he asked.

“Never tried,” I said.

“It’s easy. You hit the cue ball toward the numbered balls and try to get them into a pocket. Any boob can do it.”

He set the balls into a triangle, picked up a smaller cue of his own, and shot the white ball toward the triangle, causing the balls to break up. They rolled around all over the table, but none went into a pocket. He grabbed a knife off a table and started using it as a toothpick.

“Your shot,” he said.

I found a ball that was sitting right by a pocket, hit the cue ball toward it, and knocked it in. Nothing to it.

“Nice,” he said. “Shoot again.”

I shot at the nine ball and missed. He took his turn and started sinking ball after ball.

“Now,” he said, while he shot at his fourth ball, “why don’t you explain to me how you got Fred to take you into a place like this?”

“Because if I tell you, you’ll probably just do something to screw it up.”

“Smart,” he said as he sank another ball. “I certainly will.”

He finally missed one, so I took a shot at the four ball, which was purple. It went in, so I took a shot at a red striped ball and missed completely.

Gregory sank three in a row, then reracked the balls.

“I’m going to miss all this,” he said. “Saturday at midnight it’s back to normal for me. No more messing with humans with magic. We’ve got it rough, my people. We get one year out of twenty to live in the world, and fifty-one weeks of that I just bum around from job to job like a regular McHobo. Then it’s back into the trees to hibernate for nineteen more years.”

“So you were never with the RSC,” I said.

“Not for three whole years,” he growled. “But I do know my Shakespeare. It’s hard to stay on top of things when you have to piece history together one year out of twenty at a time. But Shakespeare’s been popular the last several times I’ve been out and about. I saw John Wilkes Booth play Hamlet.”

“Did you really?” I asked.

He nodded. “McVicker’s Theatre, Chicago. June 28, 1862. Thought he was overrated, myself.”

He sank another ball, then paused to rub some chalk on the end of his cue.

“Now, if I overheard correctly, your little boyfriend is facing a diciotto.”

“He can take it,” I said.

Gregory finally missed a shot and went back to leaning on the cue.

“I’ve got news for you, kiddo,” he said. “No one can take a diciotto. No one. Ever. That boy is going to be a vampire by Thanksgiving—mark my words. If you want to go on being with him, I think you’d better let my vampire friend convert you while you still have a shot at doing it safely. Otherwise, he’ll be a vampire hunk and you’ll just get older and fatter till you croak.”

I sank a ball of my own and took aim at another.

“What does this guy pay you, anyway?” I asked.

“It’s more than just money,” he said. He put one end of the pool cue on the ground and put his chin on the other, leaning on it like a gnome on his cane. “Far more.”

I tilted my head toward the bums at the bar.

“Is it one of those losers?”

“No. Don’t worry. Someone more attractive. You won’t see him, but I’m sure you’d rather it be someone a little more dashing, right?”

I couldn’t help but think he might mean Wilhelm, but I knew that Wilhelm was dead, and for real. I wasn’t going to fall into the trap of believing in paranoid suburban myths.

“I’m not going to need him at all,” I said. “The two of you are out of luck.”

“You’re a failure as a human, anyway,” Gregory said. “Nothing unusual about you, other than the fact that you can buy a ten-dollar bottle of hair dye down at the drugstore.”

“Just shut up, will you?” I said. “I’m not that awful.”

“You’re a vengeful, spiteful, boring, stupid, ordinary little
girl,” he said. Every word was like a punch in the face. “At least if you become a vampire, you’ll have that going for you.”

“I don’t need to be dead to be interesting,” I said. “I’ll get there.”

“Heh,” he chuckled. “Yeah. You’ll be extraordinary, all right. Extraordinarily dull, unless you turn out to be a serial killer or something.”

I took another shot and totally missed.

“Maybe if you had a wooden leg,” he mused. “You want me to cut your leg off?”

“No thanks.”

He started to sing along to the German tune using English words: “Apples and peaches and pump-i-kin pies … I’s got the razor if you’s got the thighs.”

I cringed but tried not to look freaked out. I wanted the only points he scored on me to be at pool.

I was not some violent, horrible person. I had my dark side and all, but no more so than any other healthy person, probably. I simply needed to learn to indulge it less, which I figured would get easier if I just stopped having to be seventeen.

And having Mutual to inspire me to be better would help, too.

You almost never get to see what those charming weirdos in screwball comedies were like as teenagers, but I’ll bet most of them were just as miserable and stressed out as every other teenager.

“Just think it over,” he said when he finished singing. “You can either die a single loser, or live forever with the boy
of your dreams. Seems like an easy pick to me! Corner pocket.”

He sank the last ball, tossed his cue onto the table, then tipped his hat to the bartender and walked out the door.

I wandered back to my stool and sat down.

“So what’s going on?” asked Amber.

“He’s trying to convince me to become a vampire myself,” I said.

“You want me to chase after him and kick his ass?” asked Jason.

I shook my head. “He’d just make the whole thing worse for me,” I said. “We can kick his ass
after
the dance, when his magic has worn off.”

“Hell yeah,” said Jason. “Even
I’m
bigger than he is.”

I imagined riding the unicorn horn-first into him, then burying his body in a pile of unicorn crap.

Fred came back inside with Mutual, and they both looked discouraged. Apparently things hadn’t gone well.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Fred said to Mutual. “Diciottos aren’t easy, and neither is keeping vampires out of your head.”

“I’ll ask around at the alliance meeting on Friday,” I said. “There are some people there who are against diciottos altogether. I’ll make some calls tonight.”

“Wish I had better news for you guys,” said Fred.

Mutual gulped.

I gulped, too.

“My only advice now,” said Fred, “is to run like hell. Go someplace where they’ll never find you. It’ll at least buy you some time, and maybe you can be older when you convert.
Or maybe they’ll let you just sign a letter of intent to convert when you turn twenty-five so you won’t have to be a teenager forever. I wouldn’t wish being a teenage vampire on a flea on the back of my worst enemy’s dog.”

Mutual fixed his eyes behind the bar and didn’t say anything. His lower lip quivered, like he was about to cry.

God, I hated to see him like this.

“Well, where to from here?” I asked.

“Back to school to pick up my car, I guess,” said Jason.

Fred settled up with the bartender, we all piled into the Jenmobile, and I drove the five of us away.

“So, Fred,” said Amber, “that was weird about Cathy yesterday.”

“It wasn’t fun,” he replied. “You never get used to being dumped, no matter what the circumstances.”