Vampire High Sophomore Year

10



I was seeing Ileana that night. We had a date to go to the library.

This was not quite as bad as it sounds. The library had a small art gallery attached to it. It was open at night when there was an exhibition, which there was just then. And while I could have given it a pass, Ileana wanted to see it.

That was okay with me. Ileana could look at the art and I could look at her. Win-win, right? But Mom couldn’t think of a nicer thing than for me to ask Turk to come along.

I wanted her with us like I wanted a pet scorpion following me around, but I knew Ileana would agree that I should at least ask. “She is your cousin, blah, blah, blah.” And I was going to do the right thing.

So I went up to her attic and I said, “There’s an art exhibit at the library tonight. Pretty lame. You probably don’t want to go, right?”

And Turk said, “Sure. I’ll check it out. What time?”

I told Ileana Turk was coming. She sighed and said, “Oh, good.” Pause. “We are doing the right thing, my darling.”

“You might just as well ask Justin, too,” I said. “Darling.”

It felt weird and good at the same time to say it.

“Justin has a Mercians meeting,” Ileana said. “They always meet Fridays.”

“You know, I was reading about those guys,” I said. “They used to be the jenti militia. What do they do now?”

“You had better ask Justin about that,” Ileana said. “They keep very much to themselves. The rest of us know little about them.”

“Well, he can tell me about the old days, anyway,” I said. “Maybe I’ll impress him with how much I already know.”

“Perhaps,” Ileana said.

About seven-thirty, Ileana, Turk, and I got out of Ileana’s limo in front of the library.

The New Sodom Public Library was over a hundred years old. It had granite walls and marble steps that were slippery as grease when it rained or snowed. Which may have been why, instead of a couple of stone lions guarding the front entrance, there were two huge, coiled rattlesnakes.

The snakes had their heads turned toward each other. Their mouths were open and their fangs were about a foot long. Under one were the words DON’T TREAD, and under the other it said ON ME. Officially, they were a tribute to New Sodom’s Revolutionary War heroes, but a lot of people thought it was a warning about the steps.

The art gallery was a small wing off the main building. Inside, the walls were white and the floors were dark polished wood.

Gadje and jenti were walking up and down, stopping in front of the paintings, which were mainly squares and oblongs of canvas that had been dipped in industrial sludge, I guess. They had titles like The Third Time I Become the Sea, and Mourning of the Aesir. Apart from Ileana, Turk, and me, everyone in the gallery was formally dressed, and at least forty years old.

Ileana set the pace for us. She cruised down one side of the exhibition and up the other. Then she stood in the center of the room and slowly turned around. I could tell she was really interested in all that canvas.

I was really interested in Ileana. But hand-holding was all we were going to be doing tonight. Still, her strong little hand gripped mine like our skins were fused.

Turk didn’t seem to see the paintings at all. She was looking at everything else, checking out the height of the ceiling, measuring the walls with her eyes.

“Who do you have to know to get an exhibit here?” she said finally.

“Oh, there is a committee,” Ileana said. “My mother is on it.”

“Great,” Turk said. “What are my chances of getting a show?”

“I am afraid you would have to be famous, Turk,” Ileana said. “And it would be very helpful if you were dead. That is the sort of artist the committee prefers.”

“Dead? I’ll work on it,” Turk said. But then she said, “Damn it. Isn’t there anyplace in this town to get my stuff up?”

“There are a few private galleries,” Ileana said. “But this is the only public art space in New Sodom. It is too bad. It is such a small place for a town as large as New Sodom has become.”

I remembered again what Mercy Warrener had longed for. She’d wanted a place where the two peoples of New Sodom could get together. And then it hit me. One of those old mills could be that place. It would be more than an art gallery. There could be space there for everything people wanted to do. Whatever Mercy Warrener would have wanted. Whatever Ileana might like. I smiled.

“You know, Turk was talking about those old factories across the river,” I said. “Some towns have turned those kinds of places into art galleries.”

“Yes. I am aware of that,” Ileana said.

“I was thinking that a big building like that might be good for all sorts of things. You know, plays and stuff. Poetry readings, maybe.”

Ileana didn’t say anything for a minute. Her beautiful face was like the sky on a day when the clouds are flying by, and the sun comes and goes behind them, and the light and shadows are changing every second.

Finally, she said, “That would be very, very difficult here.”

“Sure would be great, though,” I said. “It could be a place for the jenti to sort of—you know—show what they can do.”

“Not just jenti, Cuz,” Turk said. “I have to get my stuff up, too.”

“Kind of like Illyria for real,” I said.

I figured this would be my best point. Last year, Ileana and Justin and I had spent time in Justin’s basement building a private world we shared. We called it Illyria. We all had our own kingdoms. Ileana’s had been all about the arts. Her two favorite characters were a couple of guys named Vasco and Anaxander, who were poets. If Ileana thought there was a chance to have something like that in the real world, she’d probably be on my side.

But Ileana shook her head.

“The jenti would never accept such a thing. Especially not in that place,” she said.

“Why not?” Turk said. “It’s perfect.”

“And there’s this,” I said. “If you back it, a lot of people will come. I mean, let’s face it. You’re the princess around here.”

“Let us go somewhere else,” Ileana said. “I have something to tell you.”

The chauffeur looked surprised when Ileana told him to take us to Crossfield.

“You must see something,” Ileana told me and Turk. “It will help you to understand.”

So we headed away from downtown and across the river. The limo bumped and thudded over the worn pavement of the bridge, and there were a couple of glints of light on the river below. But everything was dark in Crossfield.

“Stop here,” Ileana told the chauffeur, and opened the door.

The chauffeur got out with us. He kept a few steps back, but there was no way he was going to let Ileana wander around by herself in Crossfield at night.

She led us to an open area between two of the old mills.

“One of these buildings would be right for your plan, I think,” Ileana said.

“Yeah,” Turk said. “I had that one on the left picked out.”

“Now look down,” Ileana said. “See where your feet are standing.”

Her voice was funny. I didn’t know if she was going to scream or cry.

We were standing on a bit of one of the narrow cobbled roads.

“Count the crossroads you can see from here,” Ileana said.

“Twenty-three,” I told her when I had done it.

“Twenty-five,” Turk said.

“There is a jenti under every one of them. In some cases, more than one,” Ileana said.

Turk and I looked at each other.

“The factories were built on top of these little roads,” Ileana said. “It is as if the gadje of New Sodom tried to wipe us out twice.”

“Did they know?” I said.

“Of course they knew,” Ileana said. “In New Sodom nothing is ever forgotten.”

“It was a long time ago,” Turk said quietly.

“Not for the jenti,” Ileana said. “Remember, we live a long time, when we are allowed to do so. Those who lie here might have been grandparents to our oldest. If they had not been killed, and buried here at these little crossroads with stakes through their hearts.”

The way she said it made me want to cry.

“So now you know, dear Cody, why your beautiful idea is impossible,” Ileana said. “The town of New Sodom wants to let Crossfield return to the dust. For the gadje it is a place of shame. For the jenti it is one of grief.”

Turk nodded. Then she did something I never would have thought she’d ever do. She went over to Ileana and put her arms around her.

Why hadn’t I thought of that?

And Ileana put her head on Turk’s shoulder and sobbed.

I went over and put my arm across Ileana’s shoulders. But it wasn’t the same as holding her would have been.

When Ileana stopped crying, she hugged Turk. Then she hugged me so hard I couldn’t breathe for a second. Jenti strength. Ileana was so tiny it was easy to forget that she was made of steel.

We got back into the limo and headed to New Sodom. The lights gleamed on its civilized, careful, historical streets.

But Crossfield was history, too. Mercy Warrener was history. Maybe everybody in New Sodom wanted Crossfield to sink back into the rocky dirt, but something was going to grow out of that dirt, sooner or later. Something always did.