Page 85 of So Thirsty

I’m nauseous, but I don’t know if I can puke with only blood in my system. I want to expel whatever’s inside me, be rid of it all. Eradicate this horror. This guilt. This fear.

“Such brats. You should be thanking us,” Tatiana says. She whispers in my ear, “We cleaned up your mess.”

“You just set a gas station on fire,” I say. “I wouldn’t call that cleaning up a mess.”

Naomi giggles in the back seat, still buzzing on that guy’s bourbon-laced blood.

“No evidence, only ash,” Henry says.

I won’t look at him. I won’t look at any of them. I stare down at my hands, shaking in my lap. There’s a second explosion, and I think of the Texas City disaster, the worst industrial accident in US history. In 1947, two ships carrying ammonium nitrate exploded at the port, first the SS Grandcamp and later the SS High Flyer. The damage leveled almost a thousand buildings, killed more than four hundred people, injured many more. The second explosion was caused by the first, which was caused— historians think—by a discarded cigarette.

“It was an accident,” I say to myself. “It was an accident.”

“Don’t be sad,” Ilie says. “These things, they come up. We get in pickle; we get out. We move on. It is life.”

“What just happened was always going to happen,” Elisa says, again turning around, this time putting her hand on my knee. I pull away. “When you’ve lived as long as we have, you come to understand there are greater forces in the universe. Someday you will look back on this night and be grateful, know it was necessary.”

“If I’m ever grateful for tonight, I hope someone kills me,” I say.

“Sloane likes to think about death,” Naomi says, hiccuping. “Because she came so close. She took the rejection pretty hard.”

It’s the meanest thing she’s ever said to me, and I doubt she’ll even remember in the morning.

“What do you think, Drago?” Ilie says. “We go to the castle and get the bus?”

“Yes,” Henry says. “To the castle.”

“The castle,” Naomi sings. “Sounds fucking magical.”

“Yeah,” I say to the van door. “Happily ever after.”

27

T he castle isn’t really a castle. It’s a Renaissance fair, closed for the season. The entrance to the fairgrounds was made to look like a castle gate, and through the gate there’s a fake medieval village. The snow lends the place some legitimacy, concealing the modern, like utility boxes and signs for restrooms.

Naomi snores in the back seat. She passed out shortly after the second explosion and slept through the forty-five-minute drive, slept through Ilie putting the van in park, getting out, floating over the gate, and opening it for us so we could drive in. She slept through Elisa closing the gate behind us. She slept through us pulling up to the King’s Tavern, a large Tudor-style building.

I envy her. I’d love to be asleep. To be unconscious.

“Home,” Elisa says. “For now.”

“Wake up, terrible creature,” Tatiana says, tugging on Naomi’s hair.

“Wha-what? Where are we?” Naomi says, blearily.

Everyone gets out of the van, stepping into a few inches of wet, slushy snow. Elisa goes up to the tavern door and picks the padlock. I’d be impressed by how fast she does it if I weren’t so preoccupied with horror and hopelessness.

Elisa goes inside, her footsteps echoing. “Barely any cobwebs.”

The rest of us follow her in.

I’d expected the building to be only a pretty shell, but the interior is just as detailed as the exterior. There’s a giant stone hearth at the back, a built-in bar with decorative molding, crests hung up on the walls—intricately carved and painted. Of course, none of it is authentic, but it looks good enough. There are exposed beams overhead. Elisa was wrong about the cobwebs. They’re everywhere. And dust. There are tables and chairs and benches pushed up against the walls, all covered in a thick layer of dust.

Tatiana strolls in with a blanket tucked under her arm. She unrolls it on the floor and lies on it, stretching her arms, her legs wide. Making herself right at home.

It’s cold in here, but it’s manageable. There are no windows. I couldn’t think of a better hangout for a bunch of unhinged ancient vampires.

Ilie pulls out the chairs and benches, and I look for a place where I can be alone. I go behind the bar and sit on the floor, pulling my knees to my chest.