Lust for Life (17 page)

“They were making an example out of you,” I remind him. “They have to punish every
instance of anti-vampire violence, even when it’s justified.”

“And they should. If someone whacked me the way I whacked—” His chin twitches as he
tries to force out Jim’s name. “The way I—the way it happened, I’d want that person
put on trial.”

“Even if you were a homicidal maniac who deserved to die?”

“Yep.” He picks up the holy-water pistol, then aims along the sight at our two-dimensional
Eric Clapton. “Justice isn’t only for the good guys.”

16

New Slang

The following Monday evening (Tuesday morning, really) I’m heading toward the DJs’
apartment for a quick snack, when I see Adrian in the booth. I wave to him through
the glass and he beckons me inside.

Entering the studio always gives me a thrill. Most of the DJs other than Shane are
territorial about the space.

Golden Earring’s “Radar Love” is thumping out of the speaker. “I love this song,”
I tell him. “But wait, it didn’t come out until nineteen . . . seventy-three, was
it?”

He beams at me. “Good call. Yeah, it’s harder for me to play the newer stuff, but
I had to learn. Classic rock stations insist on lots of seventies music, sometimes
even early eighties these days.”

“That’s great that you could adapt. A lot of vampires can’t.”

“We do what we must to survive.”

“Hmph.” That’s a line I’ve told myself a lot the last several months. “Hey, how was
Hair
? Did Franklin love it?”

“He hated every minute. The food was terrible, too.”

“That sucks.”

He shrugs. “We left early and went back to my place.”

“Oh, that doesn’t suck.”

Adrian lets out a warm, melodious laugh. “It’s not what you think. A long talk and
a kiss good night is all we had.”

“That’s a start. I guess he told you about Aaron.”

“Yeah. I can relate. After almost fifty years as a vampire, I’ve had to watch a lot
of loved ones die.”

“I’m sorry.” I think about this for a moment, wondering if I’ll even outlive my parents,
much less Lori and David and other friends my age.

“Speaking of passing on,” Adrian says, “Regina told me that Jim’s memorial service
is a week from tonight.”

“Yep, the twenty-second.” We thought the anniversary of JFK’s assassination would
add a macabre appeal that Kashmir and Company couldn’t resist. “We’re holding it at
Crosetti’s Monuments, the headstone maker off Raleigh Avenue.”

“The place with the little fake graveyard, across from the church with the little
real graveyard?”

I nod. “Mr. Crosetti used to be one of Jim’s donors. He’s probably looking for a new
vampire to donate to. You should talk to him while you’re there.”

“I don’t know if I’m going.” He traces the stack of LPs on the table, which I just
realized are Jim’s. “It might be too painful.”

“I think it’ll be a good way for us all to get closure. I’m sure there’ll be lots
of music, especially the psychedelic stuff he loved so much.”

“That music was a lot like him.” Adrian’s brown eyes droop at the corners. “He was
always on the edge of madness. That’s why he was so brilliant.”

“No. He was brilliant in spite of his madness. Think of
what he would’ve accomplished if he hadn’t had to battle that.” My ire rises at the
thought of Jim’s instability. “I can tell you, his so-called madness wasn’t inspiring
or romantic. It was terrifying and destructive. And annoying. That’s the reality of
crazy. You can dress it up any way you want, but in the end it’s a sickness, and most
sicknesses are gross.”

Adrian stares at me, looking much younger than his twenty-seven years. I’ve struck
something soft inside.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “Sort of.”

“It’s all right.” He lowers his gaze to the Jefferson Airplane record in his hands.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way. I guess we all want to believe that our heroes are
better than perfect.”

Better than perfect.
I’ve never heard that phrase before. I think I like it. Either that or it frightens
me.

“Yeah” is the best I can offer. “So, do you have a signature sign-off song? Monroe’s
is ‘Never Get Out of These Blues Alive.’ ” I don’t mention that Jim’s was “It’s Only
Rock ’n Roll (But I Like It)” until the very end, when he changed it to “Gimme Shelter,”
the song I can never hear again.

Adrian nods. “I do have a signature sign-off song.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see, at five of six.” Adrian gives me a sweet, gentle smile. “It’s a message.”

“For who?”

“Everybody. It’s one we all need to hear these days.”

The cynic in me wants to roll my eyes, but he’s so earnest. I never got the feeling
that Jim believed in the hippie philosophy. Like the temporary sixties’ DJs we’ve
had working over the summer and fall, he was more infatuated with the trappings of
the times. The openhearted acceptance was an excuse for excess and hedonism.

But Adrian really believes. Either that, or he’s a better actor than all the others
combined.

I wish him luck and head to the apartment for breakfast.

That night I keep the radio turned up while I work at my desk, studying market share
reports and choosing a new merchandise producer. (Sometimes I wonder if they wonder
why all our swag orders are placed in the middle of the night. They must think we
are very dedicated workers.)

Adrian’s show shares none of Jim’s lurking, psychedelic darkness. It’s all peace,
love, and flowers in rifle barrels. The music has a purity of belief and faith in
the goodness of human nature and the future of the world. How can a vampire be the
source of such sunshine and delight?

At 5:55 a.m. he signs off his show with a farewell message: “Thanks for hanging out
with me on this beautiful November morning. I appreciate all the calls with your requests
and good wishes. It’s nice to know I’m not just talking to myself. So, everyone out
there: Today, be good to each other. ’Cause we’re all we’ve got.”

A distinctive, languorous guitar and soft drum trickle from the speaker. The gentle
harmonies of the Youngbloods’ “Get Together” implore us all to love one another, not
tomorrow or next week, but right now.

Can it be that simple? Can a bunch of mutual smiles change the world? My twenty-first-century
sensibility says no way.

But I know the power of music in all its forms. It’s sustained me and so many others
in our darkest hours. Shane’s voice singing my song brought me back from the dead,
and it kept me free when Colonel Petrea tried to control my mind.

So I suppose, for five measly minutes every other day, I can believe.

•  •  •

“Now, to send a text, simply open your flip phone . . .”

I stare at my Contemporary Awareness instructor, then at the sample phone on the desk
in front of me.

“This has to be a joke.” I pick up the phone, feeling whisked back to 2001. Admittedly,
it is nice and light compared to my current phone, a portable computer that doubles
as a people-calling device and can triple as a blunt weapon, especially with the oversize
long-life battery strapped to the back.

Agent Detwiler has us open a new message to her. Then she demonstrates how to press
the phone-pad keys multiple times until we find the letter we want. It takes most
of the class nearly a minute to write
Hi!

I raise my hand. She calls on me.

“Yes, Agent, um . . .”

“Griffin. I’m new. Really new. I just wanted to point out that most smartphones these
days have QWERTY keyboards.” I hold up my own and slide out the hard keyboard. “See,
it’s like a mini-typewriter for your thumbs. Faster and more accurate than scrolling
through three letters, then pausing before going to the next.”

“Ooh, can I see that?” asks the teenage-looking agent next to me. I hand it to her,
wondering which decade she’s from. It’s hard to tell with Control vampires, since
CAD training keeps them current on today’s fashion and slang. “Wow, that’s, like,
totally gnarly!”

Current, except when they get excited.

The other six vampires in the class gather around. Agent Detwiler tries to control
the chaos.

“This is, of course, the latest in technology,” she calls out, “but I thought we’d
start with something more basic for training purposes.”

“Why, if this is easier?” asks Valley Girl Vamp. “Oops, I think I just messaged a
text.” She hands the phone back to me. “Sorry.”

I check my screen to discover she just sent
duuuuuuuuuuude
to Colonel Lanham. Fabulous. “You guys should know, a pullout keyboard like this
is getting rarer. Most phones now have it only on the screen. But they’ll have to
pry my hard keyboard out of my cold, dead hands.”

That sounded funnier in my head. Also, less pathetic. Only six months old and already
I’m attached to the technology I’ve been using for the past two years. I resolve to
start using the touch-screen keyboard.

The class finally ends, after much thumbing and clicking and cussing.

“That’s all the time we have.” Agent Detwiler slaps shut her ancient phone. “For homework,
I want you to text me once a day telling me about a story you heard on the news. This
will enhance not only your technical skills but your comprehension of current events.
Next week we’ll continue our discussions of twenty-first-century technologies. I’ll
also introduce you to something called ‘reality television.’ And yes, it’s as oxymoronic
as it sounds.”

I’m the first one out the door, and not just because the class is causing me physical
pain from all my eye rolling. I don’t want to be late for coffee with Anca Codreanu-Petrea.

This time of night, the café in the Control headquarters building is always crowded.
The human agents working night shift need the caffeine to keep going, and the vampire
agents starting their own “day shift” need the camaraderie to remind them why they
work here (and the caffeine doesn’t hurt).

I find Anca near the coffee’s condiment stand. She’s coating the foam of her cappuccino
with cinnamon that matches the color of her hair.

“Agent Griffin!” She sets down the shaker, then reaches for the nutmeg. “I was worried
you wouldn’t come.”

Way to set me on edge from the beginning. “I’m not late, am I?” I take a cup from
the dispenser and pour myself a large French roast. I drink it black, since I can
no longer taste milk and sugar.

“No, I just worried you wouldn’t accept my invitation, after . . .”

I keep my face impassive. Does she mean “after my daughter raised the zombies who
spread the disease that killed you”? Or does she mean “after you staked my husband”?

“I know you had nothing to do with Tina’s wayward behavior.” That’s a lie—I don’t
know that, and in fact I suspect the opposite. “How is she, by the way?”

“Penitent.” Anca heads for the cashier and I follow. “She’d like to see you and your
friend Lori.”

“I didn’t know she was allowed visitors.”

“Short, supervised visits are permitted.”

We fall silent as we pay for our drinks. No need for the cashier to hear any more
than she already has.

Heading for an open table next to the wall, I stay a
step ahead of Anca so I can sit facing the door. She looks disappointed when I take
that seat.

“Do you think I should go see Tina?” I have no intention of doing so, and I’m sure
Lori feels the same way, but I want Anca to keep talking about Project Blood Leash
in an oblique, nonthreatening way that doesn’t implicate herself. And by doing so,
maybe she’ll implicate herself.

Anca pats the top of her foam with the bowl of her spoon, testing its thickness. “It
would mean a lot to her. She never intended to hurt anyone.”

“Maybe not explicitly, but raising the dead? Tends to have negative consequences.
Which you as a necromancer would probably know.”

“My work is strictly limited to speaking with the dead, not bringing them back to
life. It is against the laws of God and nature for a human like me to undo death.”

But it’s okay for vampires, I guess.

Anca continues. “Tina was distraught when the Control assigned her to Enforcement
instead of letting her join us in the Immanence Corps. And angry that her father and
I couldn’t pull strings to give her the placement she wanted. But she is mundane,
and IC is only for those with paranormal abilities.”

“Which can be faked.” By psychic-hotline workers, for instance, or my parents and
their “faith healing.”

“They can be faked to fool civilians, but not the IC.”

“Do you have supernatural detection tools? Like a wand you wave through someone’s
aura or whatnot? If it beeps a happy tune, they’re paranormal, but if it buzzes, they’re
mundane?”

Anca laughs. “I wish we did. It would make our jobs so much easier.” Her smile fades.
“Tina’s anger, I think,
was what drove her to speak so awfully of her father.”

“That, and she got a reduced sentence for being so cooperative.” She’s not the only
one. Rumor has it that Anca herself threw her late husband under the bus, so to speak,
to protect her own hide. “Do you think she told the truth?”

“Sadly, yes.” Anca sips her cappuccino, staring through the wall next to us as if
it’s a window. “Stefan always hated the demon inside, as he called his vampire aspect.
I think he thought if he could control other vampires, he could control the monster
within.”

I remember Petrea telling me how his maker took him home after he turned him, how
they slaughtered Petrea’s own parents, wife, and daughter. How he staked his own maker
and barely survived. Assuming all that was true—a vampire never tells the complete
story of his turning—I could understand his self-hatred. But it doesn’t excuse creating
zombies to use as guinea pigs for vampire-control methods.

I voice my sympathy to lead her on. “After what happened when he was turned, I could
see why he’d want a way to corral rogue vampires. They’re dangerous, not just to humans,
but to our whole way of life. They risk getting us discovered with their reckless
behavior.” That sounded a little too party line–ish, so I add a personal touch. “I
was almost killed by one.”