Fatal Bargain Read online

  “We had a good time, didn’t we?” said Kevin. He felt confused saying that because he could no longer remember what kind of time they had had. But Mardee squeezed him tighter and he no longer cared, either. He was happy. He didn’t look back. He didn’t remember the building only yards behind him, he didn’t remember the screams only moments earlier, and he didn’t remember the threat that had nearly peeled Mardee from his side.

  He didn’t remember his sister, Lacey, at all.

  The vampire saw movement deep in the dead trees. A car door opening, and a head peering out. Another human. A human who had previously been hidden in the shadows. Another human caught in curiosity, that strange human weakness.

  The vampire knew immediately that this human was different. This was a human who used the dark. This was a human within whom there was also an element of darkness. The vampire enjoyed the innocence of some of his victims, but there was a certain pleasure, also, in a victim who had had victims of his own.

  This was not a clean nor an attractive human.

  But the vampire of the shutters had no standards in that regard.

  Slowly his black folds enveloped the car thief.

  In the starless, moonless night there was no sound, no sight.

  Only a slow suffocation.

  Chapter 15

  LACEY HAD NOT BEEN thinking of Randy when she put her arms around him. She had been interested exclusively in the contents of Randy’s shirt pocket. The little toys with which Randy had played all evening. The objects he had caressed, like worry beads, to pull himself together. In the end, all six teenagers had pulled together, but memory would defeat them.

  Loss of memory, that is.

  Lacey, however, would suffer no such loss. Not until afterward.

  Right now, in this tower, facing this vampire, the situation was all too clear.

  One by one, the vampire dismissed her five companions. Soul by soul, the room contained less humankind, and more evil. How reluctant the vampire was to let them go. After all, when would he again have such a lovely situation? The rules by which he lived were not simple.

  But the rules by which I live, thought Lacey, are not simple, either.

  I refuse to be his next “event.” And that’s it. I will direct my life and it will go on the way I choose. Not the way he chooses. So there!

  The vampire was too busy playing games with the other five to pick up on her thoughts. Lacey took a small slow step to the center of the room while the vampire was busy collecting Zach’s notes. She took a second, slow step while the vampire was tossing the car keys out the window.

  Her hand was tight on the tiny object she had taken from Randy’s pocket.

  The timing had to be exact.

  Her feet were at the edge of the nest that Roxanne had exposed. She did not change position again. Instead she inched her foot forward, until she could tell that half her foot was in the air, poised over the vampire’s lair.

  The vampire took his time. His eyes glittered as each potential victim passed, untouched, through the door.

  Lacey never took her eyes off the vampire.

  There was no point in watching the others. There was no point in anything now, except her plan.

  For Zach had been right, after all, when hours ago he had called for an analysis of the vampire’s weaknesses. Lacey knew one. Roxanne had exposed it.

  Whatever this opening was in the floor…this cell…this tomb…this grave…he had to have it. When Roxanne had invaded the nest, the vampire’s power had vanished. He had disappeared from the room and from their hearts and souls as if he had never been.

  Zach was correct. There was weakness. The vampire had to have his nest. If Lacey destroyed it, he would have to waft away, or dematerialize, or whatever it is that vampires do.

  The other five teenagers were gone. The sound of their footsteps dwindled away. The sound of their guilty voices disappeared.

  The vampire turned with a sweet smile. His teeth were not showing. He said, “Do not be afraid, my dear.”

  “I’m not,” said Lacey loftily. But she was.

  “And do not waste time tipping yourself over into my home. I will merely join you.” His cloak came first and she shuddered. That made him smile. Now his teeth sprouted.

  How pathetic and unlikely her plan seemed in sight of those teeth.

  “You could scream,” said the vampire.

  She remembered that he liked screams. Perhaps if she screamed, the others, who must by now be climbing out the dining room window, would remember her long enough to do something.

  “No,” said the vampire courteously. “That is not a possibility. The human brain is shallow. It retains nothing for long. No lesson, no experience leaves a human with lasting knowledge. Sad,” whispered the vampire, coming closer, “but true.” His breath encircled her and she could not breathe.

  “However,” said the vampire, “it works to my advantage.”

  Lacey fell into his nest.

  The stench of it, the oily horror of it, nearly ate through her mind. I won’t be able to finish! thought Lacey. I won’t have enough oxygen to finish.

  Was there even enough oxygen to do what she needed to do?

  Lacey stared up into the descending folds of the vampire’s cloak and, with her hidden hand, flicked the lighter. There was enough oxygen.

  The vampire could control many of the laws of nature.

  Gravity could be his, if he chose.

  But not fire.

  The house was old. Very old. And very dry.

  The wood was tinder, waiting for fire. The splinters Roxanne had torn up turned into leaping, screaming golden flames. The vampire retreated. He screamed, “You’ll burn yourself up!”

  Lacey got out, fanning the fire with the edge of the vampire’s own cloak. “Burn!” she shouted at the fire. “Burn!”

  The flame ate the nest and moved forward, as if to begin to burn the hem of the vampire’s cloak.

  The vampire put out his crinkled hand, like used aluminum foil, and retreated to the corner of the tower. “You can’t do this!” he screamed.

  “I already have,” she pointed out. “Go ahead and scream. I don’t mind. I like the sound of a vampire screaming.”

  The vampire’s mouth was wide open, wide, wide, wide. And yet its teeth were of no consequence. It could only scream. “My home!” it screamed. “You can’t destroy my home. I will have nowhere to go when dawn arrives.”

  “Your weakness,” said Lacey. She bared her own teeth: her small, square, even, white teeth. Her human teeth. She turned them into a smile of triumph.

  “You’ll suffocate!” he warned.

  “I’d rather take my chances with smoke than teeth.”

  Whatever nesting material lay in the hollow between the floor joists had turned to ash. The room filled with smoke.

  Lacey could not go out the windows, because the flames, desperate for oxygen to eat, the way the vampire had been desperate for blood, were reaching through the windows.

  In school, home of the frequent fire drill, they told you to get down on the floor in case of fire: There you would find better air.

  How laughable.

  Down on the floor was the swamp gas of the vampires.

  But she obeyed the school directive she had heard three or four times a year since kindergarten.

  Stop, drop, and roll!

  How many times had they made posters for Fire Prevention Week?

  Stop, drop, and roll!

  Lacey heard the vampire screaming. Her own lungs were starved for air, her eyes burning with heat. She crawled to the door. Would it be blocked? Would the vampire have taken possession of it again, once the other five were safely out?

  Stop, drop, and roll.

  Lacey rolled to the door. The flames engulfed the floor as if the fire were chasing her feet.

  The doorway was open.

  The vampire had not taken possession of it.

  He had trusted her.

  Lacey actually smil
ed.

  A creature that dealt in evil trusted a human who dealt in good. The vampire had believed in Lacey’s volunteering. The vampire had assumed along with volunteering would come cooperation and an assortment of screams.

  He had not expected any double-dealing from Lacey James, who was good.

  But sometimes, in tight corners, when your back is against the wall and the world is against you, you have to fight back in unexpected ways.

  Lacey rolled down the stairs to get away from the smoke and the flames and felt nothing on the way down: no pain, no bruises, no fear. And most of all, no pursuit. For the vampire could not get through the sheet of flames that rose up between his victim and himself. She got up and ran down the lower flight, found the abandoned dining room, felt along the walls until she found the window.

  Coughing, lungs hurting, she climbed out onto the porch and staggered onto the lawn.

  There was nobody there. No Bobby, no Zach. No Sherree, no Roxanne. No Randy. No friends at all.

  A car was driving away. In the fading darkness she saw its red taillights.

  Ashes from the burning tower flew into the air and spun in circles, like tiny tornadoes. The wind carried them, and dropped them into the huge pile of dead trees. The dry hemlocks caught fire and became a ball of flame as big as the Mall House itself. So much for the Land Rover, thought Lacey.

  She ran across the yard. Out what had once been a gate, what had once been a driveway.

  She raced across what was still a road.

  The house screamed. Or was it the house? Could a house scream?

  Lacey turned to stare. The Mall House was caving in.

  For one moment the tower was a complete circle of fire, and then it fell, tumbling over the rest of the roof and falling to the ground. Lacey put her hands over her hair, as if it could shield her from catching fire, and ran farther, putting the firebreak of pavement between herself and the inferno.

  On the other side of the street stood her brother. Her little brother, Kevin! “Kevin?” said Lacey, astonished. “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?” said Kevin, of course.

  Lacey did not know the girl with him. What an odd world it was. She had never dreamed her brother liked girls. But then, she had never dreamed that vampires really existed, either. Let alone in her town. In her life. Among the houses and streets of her world.

  From far away she heard a siren.

  Somebody had alerted the fire department.

  Lacey looked back at the flames and the collapsing walls. Sirens screamed louder than victims. Sparks shot into the sky, and fell back, and the rest of the house turned into one vast bonfire.

  The only smell in the night was the rich smoky burning of wood.

  “Keep walking,” said Lacey, and the three kept walking. Whatever mechanism had taken memory from the others had not worked on Lacey. Not yet, at least. In her mind, she turned over what had happened.

  The road was full of shadows, but none of them descended. They were shadows of other trees, other buildings. But not shadows of other worlds. The vampires had lost their nests: lost their floors and ceilings, shutters and towers and mansion.

  Had they lost their power, too?

  Or could they drift, unseen, through the sky before the coming of dawn?

  Could they find another hole? An open coffin? A mausoleum with a broken door?

  Or had they been destroyed?

  They were evil, thought Lacey. I don’t think evil can be destroyed. Only subdued for a time.

  “Hi,” said the girl with Kevin. “I’m Mardee. Bobby’s sister. I’m glad to meet you.”

  Lacey said hi.

  A squad car driven by a policewoman took the corner at top speed. The tires screamed. The night, in fact, was full of screams.

  But not mine, thought Lacey. I did not scream.

  I won.

  And instead of screaming, Lacey James laughed.

  For she had looked at her watch. It was not even midnight. All this had happened in so few hours it was not even a new day.

  “Thought you were spending the night with somebody,” said Kevin.

  “Changed my mind,” said Lacey.

  Memory faded. Lacey and Kevin and Mardee walked along the road, and turned up the hill, and forgot the mansion behind them, the shadows, and the screams.

  The hard-learned lessons, the heroism, and the sacrifices were gone as if they had never been.

  And the shadows that were the vampires hung in the sky, and departed, desperate, for they had only a few hours until dawn, only a few hours in which to find another nest.

  But usually, for a vampire, a few hours is enough.

  A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney

  Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller The Face on the Milk Carton. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

  Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life.

  Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

  Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book, Safe as the Grave, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

  Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

  Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning The Face on the Milk Carton, about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in Whatever Happened to Janie? (1993), The Voice on the Radio (1996), and What Janie Found (2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book, Janie Face to Face, will be released in 2013.

  Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the Mayflower.

  The house in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where Cooney grew up. She recalls: “In the 1950s, we walked home from school, changed into our play clothes, and went outside to get our required fresh air. We played yard games, like Spud, Ghost, Cops and Robbers, and Hide and Seek. We ranged far afield and no parent supervised us or even asked where we were going. We led our own lives, whether we were exploring the woods behind our houses, wading in the creek at low tide, or roller skating in somebody’s cellar, going around and around the furnace!”

  Cooney at age three.

  Cooney, age ten, reading in bed—one of her favorite activities then and now.

  Ten-year-old Cooney won a local library’s summer reading contest in 1957 by compiling book reviews. In her collection, she wrote revie
ws of Lois Lenski’s Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison and Jean Craighead George’s Vison, the Mink. “What a treat when I met Jean George at a convention,” she recalls.

  Cooney’s report card from sixth grade in 1959. “Mr. Albert and I are still friends over fifty years later,” she says.

  Cooney in middle school: “I went through some lumpy stages!”

  In 1964, Cooney received the Flora Mai Holly Memorial Award for Excellence in the Study of American Literature from the National League of American Pen Women. “I always meant to write to them, and tell them that I kept going!” Cooney says. “I love the phrase ‘pen woman.’ I’m proud to be one.”

  Cooney at age nineteen, just after graduating from high school. (Photo courtesy of Warren Kay Vantine Studio of Boston.)

  Cooney with Ann Reit, her book editor at Scholastic. Many of the books Cooney wrote with Reit were by assignment. “Ann decided what books she wanted (for example, ‘entry-level horror, no bloodshed, three-book series,’ which became Fog, Snow, and Fire) and I wrote them. I loved writing by assignment; it was such a challenge and delight to create a book when I had never given the subject a single thought.”

  Cooney with her late agent Marilyn Marlow, who worked with her on all of the titles that are now available as ebooks from Open Road.

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