Panic filled her. “No, no, no, you can’t stay. If you stay, you’ll let me out. I’ll beg and beg and you’ll let me out.”
“I won’t,” he said, shifting closer to her. “You didn’t ask me to let you out of Elisabet’s room, when you were cuffed to her bed. You broke out yourself instead of simply asking me. Remember that? You didn’t think I would free you then.”
“This is different. Besides, I was probably wrong.”
“Hush, Tana,” he said, petting her hair. “Oh, my sweet Tana. Remember that I’m still a monster. I can listen to you scream and cry and beg and I still won’t let you out.”
His voice made her shiver with a delicious combination of nerves and calm. She remembered the footage she’d seen of him long before they’d met, imprisoned and insane underneath a cemetery in Paris, drenched in blood and cut in a thousand places. If anyone knew what it was like to be alone and in pain, it was him. For the first time since he walked into the room, she began to believe she might not have to go through all this alone. “You can’t let me drink your blood. You can’t bite me. Even if I beg you, even if I plead and threaten and lie. You have to promise. It’s the only way I’m going to get better.”
“I swear it.” His red eyes held hers. “Solemnly, do I swear.”
She relaxed against him, inhaling the scent of smoke and bleach and the faint trace of gore. His shoulder was very solid against her cheek, the brush of his inky hair very fine. “You really won’t let me out?”
She felt his smile against her skin. “Allow me to explain how my whole life has prepared me for this moment. I am used to girls screaming, and your screams—your screams will be sweeter than another’s cries of love.”
She nearly laughed, because that was as perfect a thing to say as it was perfectly awful.
“Okay,” she said, drowsy and cold, feeling the shakes starting to return. “You can stay. I want you to stay. Please stay.” She closed her eyes and asked the one question she’d been afraid to ask all this long while. “And if I never change back? If I’m not human enough anymore?”
He smiled; she could feel it against her skin. “Then we’ll go hunt vampires together and you’ll drink their blood.”
“The Lady or the Tiger,” she said, thinking of the drinking game she’d played at the farmhouse, thinking of the story that never ended, of a coin spinning on without falling on heads or tails.
“My lady, the tiger,” he told her and got up to turn the camera back on.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is a love letter to all the vampire books I read over and over growing up. To Les Daniels for his Don Sebastian de Villanueva series; Anne Rice for her Vampire Chronicles; Tanith Lee for Sabella, or the Bloodstone; Poppy Z. Brite for Lost Souls; Nancy Collins for Sunglasses After Dark; Sheridan Le Fanu for Carmilla; and Suzy McKee Charnas for The Vampire Tapestry. Thanks also to Dudley Wright’s Vampires and Vampirism, which I got out of the library and was one of the first folklore books I read.
Thanks to Sarah Rees Brennan, Robin Wasserman, Cassie Clare for reading through the beginning of this book while we were all in Goult together. There is nothing quite like beginning a book in the South of France for feeling decadent.
Thanks to dinner companions Holly Post, Jeffrey Rowland, Jeph Jacques, Cristi Jacques, Elka Cloke, Eric Churchill, Elias Churchill, and Jonah Churchill for coming up with an excellent turn to the story—and also paying for my meal—despite my being late to the restaurant.
Thanks to Chris Cotter for making the Internet in Coldtown work.
Thanks to Bill Willingham for his generosity.
Thanks to the Clarion Class of 2012 (Carmen, Christopher, Danica, Daniel, Deborah, Eliza, Emma, Eric, Jonathan, Joseph, Lara, Lisa, Luke, Pierre, Ruby, Sadie, Sam, and Sarah) for putting up with my writing the end of this book while being half of their final two-week anchor team. Thanks also for that bottle of whiskey, buzzer, and octopus finger. I found them very useful during my own workshop.
Which brings me to thanking my workshoppers. Thank you, Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Sarah Smith, Cassie Clare (yes, she had to read it again), and Josh Lewis for giving me the confidence to show the thing I made to the world.
Thanks to Steve Berman for reading all of Coldtown in a single night so that he could talk to me about the ending the next morning.
Thanks to my fabulous editor, Alvina Ling, and her fabulous assistant, Bethany Strout, for catching all the things I thought I could get away with and insight into plenty of things I hadn’t considered at all.
Thanks to my agent, Barry Goldblatt, for believing in this book.
Thanks to a handful of participants in the Nevada SCBWI mentor retreat for letting me read the first few chapters to them.
And, finally, thanks to my husband for letting me read the whole thing to him. He said that ever since he met me, he figured I would eventually write a vampire book. Apparently he was entirely correct.