The Eternal Kiss: Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire

Undead Is Very Hot Right Now by Sarah Rees Brennan

“SO DID YOU come all the way from Transylvania to join this totally awesome band, Chris?”

“Er,” said Christian. “I’m from Birmingham.”

The lights in the studio hurt Christian’s eyes, and their interviewer was blowing a pink, bobbing balloon of bubblegum while she interviewed them. Every time she blew up the bubble a vein in her neck jumped under her makeup.

She’d introduced herself as Tracy. Christian didn’t like to think such filthy things about a girl he’d just met, but he couldn’t help suspecting she spelled it with an “i.”

“So tell me, boys,” said Traci, swallowing the bubble, which collapsed and folded neatly into her mouth. “Any of you found that special girl yet?”

Bradley, who Christian might well have hated the most of all, gave her his best smile.

“Still searching, Traci,” he said, and looked bashful. “It’s hard to find someone really real in the music biz, you know? I just want a normal girl. Someone who gets me.”

Christian knew for a fact Bradley had been sneaking off with Faye, which was a bad idea both because she was their manager and because she was possibly Satan’s emissary on this earth.

“How about you, Chris?” Traci chirped, turning her eyes on Christian like two blue helicopter beams. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Christian,” said Christian. “And, um, of course I don’t.”

“Of course you don’t?” Traci asked with sudden, terrifying intentness. In the shadows Christian could see Faye uncoil like a viper about to strike. Traci leaned toward him, her smile inviting honesty and her breath smelling of Bubblicious watermelon. “And why is that, Chris?”

“Uh,” said Christian. “Because I’m undead?”

“Do the girls not get the real you, Chris?” Traci drawled, leaning back and looking a little disappointed.

“I think they probably do, to be honest,” Christian said. “I think that’s sort of the problem. I mean, they’re aware of the fact that I drink blood, so I can’t take them out for dinner, plus understandably they worry about getting all the blood drained from their bodies. And if they asked me on a date to a barbecue, I might wind up on the end of a chargrilled stake. The prospect isn’t exactly appealing.”

Faye was pacing like a caged leopard, which alarmed Christian extremely. She’d said “just be yourself,” before the interview, and this was the only self Christian knew how to be, even though Faye seemed intent on redesigning him.

Bradley laughed far too loudly in Christian’s ear. Christian jumped.

“Good thing you’re cute, am I right, Traci?”

Traci winked back at Bradley. “How right you are, Bradders. So, Josh and Pez,” she said, turning to the rest of the band. “Do you two have girlfriends?”

Josh looked terrified. Pez looked distracted by Traci’s shiny earrings.

Christian wondered what having girlfriends had to do with music. They’d just come in from recording the last song for their first album—why hadn’t Traci opened the interview by asking about that?

It wasn’t like Christian had enjoyed much success with girls when he’d been alive anyhow. He’d been shy, and he’d had all that acne. Whenever he liked a girl she’d claim she valued their friendship too much, and in the name of said friendship she’d be forced to make out with rugby players while Christian held her purse. His mum had always said that there was plenty of time, that soon he’d be in college and there would be a thousand different paths for him to choose.

There had only been one path, though—the alley Christian had used as a shortcut home from school. It had been dark and cold, Christian stumbling along with his hands in the pockets of his thin school-uniform trousers and being glum that he’d forgotten his gloves. There was the huddled form of someone he had thought was homeless, who he’d stopped to help, and then there was the bloody attack that Christian didn’t remember clearly. It had been so fast, the brutal snarling creature leaping on top of him. He’d managed to open the blade on his Swiss Army knife and score a long line up the vampire’s face. The wound had opened, dark and dripping blood into Christian’s mouth.

And then there were no more choices.

Christian was roused from the memory of that dark alley by Bradley’s loud laugh and the terribly bright television lights.

Why they had made the vampire with the super-hearing sit next to the man with the laugh of a hyena on speed, Christian didn’t know.

“I’m sweet seventeen,” said Bradley, who was a liar and a fiend and at least twenty. “And never been—”

He waggled his eyebrows without finishing his sentence and Traci laughed uproariously.

“Oh Bradders, you are so bad! How about you, Chris?”

Christian blinked. “Me?”

“How old are you?” Traci asked. “Two hundred? Three hundred?”

“Er,” said Christian. “I’m nineteen.”

At that point Traci leaned in again, covering his hand with hers and not drawing back at the chill. She looked deep into his eyes and said, in a warm, understanding voice:

“Would that be nineteen in … vampire years?”

“You didn’t have to get so narky with her, Chris,” Faye said as she shepherded them back to the limo which was meant to take them to their concert.

“Vampire years!” Christian repeated.

“Like dog years, but in reverse,” Bradley explained helpfully.

Christian did not hit him because the pamphlet they had given him at the re-education clinic after his attack—The Responsible Citizen’s Guide to Vampirism—was very clear about the fact that he had the strength to knock Bradley’s head clean off his shoulders and into the bucket of champagne set in front of them. Bradley was the stupidest person Christian had ever met, but he didn’t deserve that.

Besides, Faye would have given him hell.

“Yes, I understood her horribly speciesist and insensitive point, actually. Thanks,” he said instead, and rubbed at his temples. When he was annoyed his fangs tingled, and it always ended up giving him a migraine.

“I can’t believe we’re going to do our first concert right now,” Josh said, avoiding Christian’s eyes as usual and bouncing nervously in his seat. The roof of the limo was making his fuzzy brown curls a little static.

“Nor can I, since we don’t even have fans yet. What with only finishing up recording our first album today and everything.”

Josh carefully pretended he hadn’t heard Christian. Vampire in the limo? his body language screamed. What vampire in the limo? I have no idea what you mean!

“We released the single and the photo-shoot pictures to all the best mags a month ago,” Faye pointed out cheerfully. “You guys already have five message boards dedicated to you. And the fan mail’s been pouring in, mostly for Bradley and Chris.”

“Oh ha ha ha,” said Christian, staring out of the darkened limo windows.

People were peering in as the car passed, curious and a little excited. Christian would have done it himself a year ago, presuming that the limo meant that those inside it had glamorous and interesting lives.

“Chris, Chris,” said Bradley, hitting him over the head to attract his attention as if Christian was deaf rather than, for example, a vampire with super hearing. “Are you really only nineteen? I thought vampires lived to be hundreds and hundreds of years old.”

“We do,” Christian said shortly. “And we get to be hundreds and hundreds of years old by living one year at a time. I’ve only been a vampire for a year.”

“That’s deep,” Pez told him.

They all stared at Pez who beamed benignly back at them. At last Faye cleared her throat.

“Right,” she said. “Let’s go through your program again, boys.”

They’d had it drilled into them for weeks. Christian looked out of the darkened windows again, and thought about how it had been at the first audition to become part of 4 The One, him desperately hoping to be chosen and hopeless about it, watching Faye’s eyes light up at Bradley’s careless, golden good looks.

“You’ll be the hot one,” she’d said calmly, then turned her eyes to Josh, who stared back beseechingly. “You can be the nerd. Geek chic is very in.”

“Lady, I think I got confused. I thought this was an interview for a job at a fast-food place,” said a guy with dreadlocks and crazy eyes who Christian would later learn claimed to be called Pez.

“You’ll be the drummer, obviously,” Faye told him.

Then she turned to Christian, who barely dared to hope in case she snatched it away from him and ground it to pieces under her scarily high heels. He’d had to leave home. Mum had told him that his little brother couldn’t sleep with a vampire in the house. He had no place else to go.

Faye smiled at him, almost as beautiful as she was terrifying.

“You’ll be the gimmick.”

It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

There was a screaming crowd outside the auditorium.

“Um,” said Christian. “Did we go to a Stephen King signing by mistake?”

“You read, Chris?” Faye asked. “That’s good. Make them think you have layers, that you’re deep and interesting. The kind of guy who will write them poetry—better yet, songs. Be sure to mention that in the next interview.”

“Come on, guys,” said Bradley, flinging open the door of the limo. “Our public awaits!”

He launched himself out of the limo and onto the red carpet, where he actually did a backflip. The crowd made a sound a little bit like applause and a little bit more like baying wolves, and Christian covered his eyes from the sheer shame of being associated with such a ridiculous person.

Faye jabbed Christian in the stomach with her pen.

“Get out there! And if you could possibly do that thing where you shield your face with your caped arm and hiss—”

“Faye,” said Chris earnestly. “I will never do that thing.”

Faye snorted and crossed her admittedly excellent legs with a rasp of silk. “At least get out there and flash them some fang.”

Pez and Josh had already climbed out of the limo, knocking shoulders as the crowds screamed. They huddled together. Christian drew his cape around himself.

“I miss my hoodie,” he informed Faye as a parting shot. “I know you stole it.”

“You’re talking crazy, you never had a hoodie,” Faye said. “Don’t let me hear you speak of it again.”

Christian climbed out onto the red carpet. He’d thought that the studio lights at the interview were bad, but the dozen clicking, flashing cameras were so much worse. He lifted his hand to cover his eyes, then realized Faye had glued his cape to his sleeve somehow and now he was doing that thing. That vampire thing.

When he lowered his hand he saw Bradley was blowing kisses to the yelling girls, pretending to move forward on the carpet and then doing a little backward walk to blow more kisses.

Christian gave up and shielded his eyes, even though it meant he was doing that thing again. He felt so cheap.

Pez and Josh, at this point shamelessly clinging to each other, were making a rush for the door of the auditorium. Chris started to flee after them, picking up speed even though Faye had made it very clear that specific and terrible things would happen to anyone who ran, hid behind someone else or—and this was directed specifically at him—used supernatural powers to evade a camera.

Even Christian’s hearing could barely make out all the sounds as he passed the crowd. There was so much screaming it was making his migraine worse, his fangs stabbing into his lower lip as his head pounded, random shrieks interspersed with shouts of their names coming from the mob.

“Bradley, Bradley, look at me!”

“Bradley, I want your babies!” yelled a guy who looked about forty years old and was wearing a purple feather boa. Bradley winked and blew him a kiss.

“Chris!”

“Pez!”

“Josh!” Josh looked around, his face puzzled and a little pleased by the sound of his name, and Christian almost walked into his back. Josh looked terrified and backed sharply away.

“Chris, bite me!”

“I love you, Bradley!”

“Chris, I wanna be your queen of the night!”

That was the feather boa guy again, Christian couldn’t help but notice.

“Christian! Christian, help!”

That turned Christian’s head. It wasn’t only that the girl had used his real name, which nobody had done since he’d left home, but there was a pitch and urgency to her voice that said she was in real trouble.

He could see a particularly dense part of the crowd, a nexus where there were too many bodies crammed and things had become frenzied, people shoving too hard. In the midst of the crushed bodies Christian saw a hand waving, going down, as if there was a girl drowning in that human sea.

Christian grabbed hold of the rail on top of the barricades and vaulted over it in one easy vampiric movement. He spread out an arm to clear the space before him and watched people scattering in panic.

That was when he realized that when he’d spread his arm his stupid cape had flared out, a swathe of billowing darkness, and he’d exposed his face, lips curling back from his teeth.

How embarrassing. Faye was going to be thrilled.

He knelt down and lifted the girl up gently by her elbows. She was pink and breathless, with red pigtail braids that had gone wispy and eyes that had gone big. Christian could hear her heart racing with the speed and strength of a charging rhinoceros. He was worried she was going to faint.

“Are you all right?”

“I—um—yes?” said the girl.

Christian smiled. “Are you not sure?”

“Um,” said the girl.

“Come on, you should get …” Christian paused and tried to think of something that might persuade a girl not to faint. All he could think of were smelling salts, which just went to show he should never have started reading Mum’s Mills & Boon novels. “A glass of water? There are probably chairs backstage. Or boxes to sit on. I mean, I hope you can have a chair, but I want to prepare you for boxes.”

The crowd was no longer screaming, but they were drawing in. Christian wrapped an arm protectively around the girl’s fragile shoulders, his cape settling around her like a blanket.

“Thank you,” she said, low into his ear, her heart still pounding. “My name’s Laura. Thank you.”

Christian led her back to the barricades and then boosted her over them. She was light and he could throw her like a tennis ball. She had to grab the rail as she passed over it to slow her trajectory, and she landed kind of hard.

“You’re welcome,” said Christian, leaping after her and steadying her as she wobbled from the impact. “Sorry about that. I’m a bit—” terrible at being a vampire “—strong.”

“That’s okay,” Laura whispered, warm against him. She was underneath his cape again somehow.

He walked her toward the door of the auditorium, slipping out of the night full of mysteriously screaming people and into a cool concrete refuge.

At his side, Laura spoke. “I’m really sorry for bothering you on your big night,” she told him. “I was just scared and I panicked. I knew you’d come to save me.”

Christian looked down at her, startled. She wasn’t red and breathless anymore, but pale with golden freckles. Her eyes were summer-sky blue and still wide, and she was looking at him like he was a hero.

“Er,” said Christian. “You need water! I know this because humans … need to drink water. For living.”

He stopped himself from adding, “this is just one of the many things that I know” and shaming himself further.

He led her up a steel flight of stairs into the labyrinth of corridors and curtains that counted as backstage, and then they went on a quest for a water cooler. Christian was beginning to get panicky over not finding one, so when Faye appeared and zeroed in on him like a manicured torpedo he actually felt a moment of relief.

But the usual paralyzing terror kicked in when she smiled at him, her white teeth like a row of tombstones. Christian suspected his name was written on every one.

“Chris, you have to go to your dressing room. Bradley and the others are already in makeup!”

“I want to get Laura some water,” Christian said decisively so that Laura would not think Faye bossed him around, and so that she might forget the mention of him putting on makeup.

“And of course Laura should have water, shouldn’t you, sweetheart?”

Laura looked at Faye with fear, which showed she was smart as well as pretty.

Faye clicked her fingers and her evil-twin assistants appeared, possibly out of the walls. Whenever Faye clicked her fingers it was as if she’d rubbed a magic lamp—her wishes were instantly granted. Christian had a theory that reality was scared of her too and so bent to her will.

“Water her,” said Faye. “Give her a place to watch the show. I love her. She’s news.”

Laura was led very firmly away. Christian cleared his throat and said: “I’ll see you after the show!” in a voice that cracked. She just stared at him with beseeching eyes, unable to escape from the custody of the dreaded Marcel and Marcy.

“Thanks very much, Faye.”

“Thank you very much, Chris,” said Faye, who was immune to all sarcasm but her own. She took his arm and started dragging him toward the dressing room. “You saved a girl’s life and you did the cape thing and you and she are going to be on the front of every magazine in this country. You even wrapped her in your cape. I love you today, Chris. I could kiss you on your stupid, fangy mouth.”

“Faye, please don’t. I’m scared of you,” Chris pleaded, terror making him blunt.

She stopped at the door of their dressing room, reached up and pinched his cheek between two pointy fingernails.

“I know you are, my little vampire cupcake. Now get in there.”

Christian’s dressing room was alarmingly large and had lights that reminded him of the lights in the TV studio, dazzling and oppressive.

He felt a lot more oppressed when he was tackled into a large leather chair by several women who looked at him with cold, dead eyes and wielded powder puffs with no mercy.

His first concert seemed like it was going to be as much of a nightmare as his first television interview by the time he was released by the powder-puff torturers and staggered with the others out toward the stage. His skin felt caked, and it shimmered under the neon lights.

“Lookin’ good,” Bradley drawled.

“Bite me,” Christian snapped, then shut his eyes and recited from the pamphlet. “Except do no such thing, because joking about biting from either side of the species divide is in poor taste, and also the blood would have long-term effects which might well prove detrimental to your health.”

“Okay,” said Bradley. “4 The One, are we ready to reach new heights of awesome tonight?”

“Er, yeah!” said Josh.

“Sorry, what was that?” asked Pez.

“I cannot believe you just said that,” Christian squinted at Bradley. “I am judging you so hard right now.”

“Okay, never mind,” said Bradley. “Josh, remember to pop your hips, we don’t want a repeat of what happened last week. Let’s go!”

They walked out onto the stage, which was bathed in purple and pink spotlights, the noise of screams rising to greet them from the pit and the sound of a loudspeaker blaring behind them. Christian winced.

“The moment you’ve all been waiting for, ladies and gentlemen. This is … 4 The One!”

Bradley strode over to the microphone as Christian was swinging his guitar strap over his head, settling the instrument against his hip, fingers touching the strings and getting familiar.

“I wrote this song myself,” said Bradley—a barefaced lie. He sounded just like he did when he was waggling his eyebrows. “It’s called ‘Lock Up Your Daughters.’ And to all the mothers out there, I suggest you do!”

There was a scream of approval. “All the mothers out there” seemed to be intending to lock up their daughters, so they could have Bradley for themselves.

Pez started in on the drums, and they swung into the song. It was a good song, catchy. Christian liked these songs best, when everyone was playing instruments and Bradley was actually singing, his voice improbably good for someone with such an annoying laugh. These songs made up for the ones where Bradley, Pez, and Josh did a weird synchronized dance with enough hip-popping to cause injury, or at least induce high blood pressure in the crowd.

Christian was deeply thankful that Faye had told him he didn’t have to dance, though his role of standing in front of the wind machine with his cape blowing and his hair falling into his eyes as he leaned in and murmured into the microphone was not significantly better.

He was even more thankful for an opening song like the one they were playing now, the crowd singing along, Bradley’s voice convincing them that they all knew the words. Christian could be a little quiet at times like these, sink into the background, once again be the shy boy who loved his guitar and dreamed of being a superstar.

He liked it when that boy stirred briefly back to life.

Between the curtains to the left of the stage he saw Laura dragging a box as close to the stage as she could get without being revealed. She dusted off her hands and perched herself on top of it as he watched her. She noticed him watching and shot him a smile, blushing, giving him a sidelong glance as if they had an in-joke.

He looked at the box she was sitting on and realized they did. He smiled back at her and then turned his smile to the audience, loving them all, loving the band, loving the girl watching him from the side of the stage. His heart beat as theirs did for a minute, all of them swept away.

Euphoria carried him through the concert and the dash back onstage to play that first song again as an encore. Safely backstage, the band members were all laughing and breathless, the humans’ skin warm and sweaty. Bradley put his arm around Christian and Christian let him, even leaned against him. Bradley’s other arm was around Pez, and Josh was not keeping his distance from Christian like he usually was. They were a team for an instant, victorious.

Then Pez said: “That was an awesome rehearsal. When are we having the concert?” and Bradley let out a crack of laughter. Christian pulled away and turned to Laura.

She was still sitting on her box, face turned up to him like some pale flower turned up toward the sun.

He reached out a hand to her and she took it.

He said: “Do you want to go for a walk with me?”

“I love walking in the night time,” Laura told him shyly. “Do you?”

“It beats walking in the day time. I barely get any exercise done before I burst into flames.”

Christian regretted that as soon as he’d said it. Here he was with a beautiful girl on a nighttime stroll and he’d said something that roughly translated to, “Yes, the scenery is very nice, which reminds me that I am the blood-drinking undead. Check out the teeth!”

He tried to look at the night as she was seeing it, deliberately crossing his eyes so his vision blurred a little, so that what was clear and rather dull became mysterious shadows. A tree heaped with dead leaves at the end of the road became a towering oak wearing a bright crown. The moonlit road became a silver path of infinite possibilities.

“It’s a beautiful night, though,” he said softly, and almost believed it.

He was rewarded by Laura slipping her hand in his. Her hand was warm, and he curled his fingers around it, hoping at least to shield it from the night air and keep her warm, even if he could not share any real warmth with her.

“I write poetry,” said Laura.

“I’d like to read some.”

“I write poems about … the night. And death.”

“Um,” said Christian. His own death hadn’t been particularly poetic, but deaths probably varied. “Okay.”

“I never let anybody read them,” Laura continued. “But I would. I think I could let you.”

She gave him that look again, as if he was a shining hero. It warmed Christian through and through.

“Yeah?” he asked. “Thanks.”

She swung his hand a bit, companionably, and he wasn’t a shining hero—they just seemed like an ordinary boy and girl alone together. That was better.

When they reached the tree at the end of the road, she stopped and looked up at him.

“I saw your picture in Bubbly,” she said. “It was an interview with the band. You were wearing a dark-green cloak with a sort of metal clasp at the throat.”

Christian remembered that Faye had stabbed it into his throat when she was putting the cloak on. He still wasn’t convinced that had been an accident: she’d been very annoyed with him for rebelling against the public-relations orders she’d given and showing up in jeans and a football shirt.

That was the last day he’d ever seen his hoodie, too.

“I was wondering,” Laura said. “How were you feeling that day?”

He’d felt like a total idiot. He was living in a house with strangers, he hadn’t understood at the time that Bradley was a moron (he’d seemed golden and perfect, able to answer every question the interviewer fired), or that Pez wasn’t constantly mocking him. He had understood that Josh—shy, nerdy Josh—the boy who was most like him, and who he would have chosen for a friend out of them all, was so scared of him that he felt sick every time they were in a room together.

“Lonely,” said Christian.

“That’s what I thought,” Laura told him, hushed. “I could just tell.”

“Really?”

“I came to the concert to see you,” Laura continued, looking up into his eyes.

A cold breeze cut through the dead leaves over their heads. Laura shivered and Christian drew off his cape, using his vampire strength as sneakily as he could to break the thread that Faye had used to sew the ends of the cape to his sleeves. He wrapped Laura in his cape, tilting up her face to tie the ribbons under her soft chin.

“Well,” said Christian. “You’re seeing me.”

Her heart was beating too fast again. Christian could hear it, warm and pounding fast, over all the distant noises of the night.

“This is going to sound silly,” Laura whispered. “But I think I knew then, when I saw the picture. That we’d meet. That we’d be … together.”

“Here we are,” said Christian.

She was standing very close. He didn’t think she was scared.

He leaned in a little, and Laura reached up to sweep his stupid black bangs (that Faye had insisted on) out of his eyes with a small, gentle hand.

That was a good sign, he thought, and he leaned in closer to catch her soft lips with his, her breath in his mouth strange and sweet. He drew his arm around her and held her more carefully than he had ever held anything. She shut her eyes and kissed him back. For a while, it felt like he was breathing too.

When her breath stuttered against his lips, he stopped. He didn’t want to hurt her.

She didn’t live far away. He walked her to her door, one of many similar doors in a trim little suburban street. There were begonias in her front garden. His mother had grown roses along a crazy-paving path just like the one he walked Laura down. They said good night, and she went inside.

Christian knew it was wrong and intrusive and incredibly creepy, but being a vampire meant you kind of lost touch with boundaries. Super senses meant he knew whenever Bradley and Faye were kissing in the kitchen even if he was clear across the house. He knew when Josh was about to have an asthma attack before Josh did, though the last time he’d handed him his inhaler, Josh had screamed and dived under the table. So, although looking up at a lit window was a perfectly normal thing to do, with vampire vision it meant he could see right through the gauzy curtains to Laura’s pink-decorated bedroom which had a poster of …

Christian cut his eyes away from the horrifying vision of himself on the poster, wearing the terrible green cloak, and instead looked to Laura’s full bookshelves and then to Laura herself, spinning in the center of the room.

She looked happy and beautiful, skirt flaring around her like a flower. She must have spun until she was dizzy, because just then she collapsed backward onto her bed with hands clasped over her heart.

Outside in the darkness, Christian smiled.

He woke up the next evening to the sound of Bradley singing off-key in the kitchen, an annoying sound that brought his head up so sharply that he thumped it on his coffin lid.

He threw the now-dented lid off, said a word his mum would not have liked, and stormed up the basement stairs to the kitchen.

“I know you can sing in tune because that’s your job!” Christian called as he came toward the kitchen.

Bradley was filling mugs of tea.

“Not my whole job,” he said calmly. “There’s also my fantastic dance moves, and being dead sexy.”

“I think you take my point.”

“Well, I like variety, it appeals to my artistic soul,” Bradley said. “Sometimes I dance badly too. Can’t seem to do anything about the sexy. Nothing puts a dent in that.”

Christian was tempted to bash his own head against the cupboard, but he already had a headache and besides that his pamphlet said that wanton destruction of property was socially irresponsible.

“Augh,” he said instead.

“You’re cranky when you get up,” Bradley observed and winked. “How was the groupie?”

“Her name is Laura,” Christian said coldly. “And she’s not a groupie.”

Bradley waved a kitchen mitt at him in what seemed to be an entirely random gesture. Christian stared, and then Bradley grinned.

“She came to your concert and threw herself at you because you’re famous. Kind of the working definition of a groupie, dude. Your first one. Nice.”

“She did not throw herself at me!”

She understands me, Christian wanted to say. She knew from seeing a stupid picture that I was lonely. But he wasn’t going to tell Bradley that.

“Okay, Chris,” Bradley said, rolling his eyes. “You’ll learn to be at peace with your new undead-stud identity in time. There’ll be more groupies at the party later.”

“I invited Laura to the party,” Christian informed him stiffly.

“Aw,” Bradley said. “Aw, man.”

Christian raised a sardonic eyebrow.

“I’m not really cut out to be a mentor,” Bradley said. “Charismatic leader, yes. Idol of millions and object of crazed lust, sure. But Josh is a baby, and Pez is a registered citizen of la-la land, so that leaves me, and I thought you were older and we had an understanding.”

“An understanding?” Christian echoed. “Bradley, I hate you.”

“Yeah,” Bradley said. “That’s our thing.”

“No, Bradley, I actually hate you.”

“Mmm, sure,” said Bradley dismissively. “The thing is, you’re kind of a baby, too, aren’t you? New to the business. These girls, right, they all want to have a special connection with you, but that doesn’t mean they do, you get me? This girl doesn’t know you. You don’t know her. There’s no way to get to know each other either. There’s this great big technicolor picture of your, like, image in between you. You’re better off sticking with your band-mates. We’ve got each others’ backs, know what I mean?”

He punched Christian and his fist rebounded off Christian’s arm. Bradley stared at his hand for a moment and then shrugged philosophically.

“You think I’m better off sticking with Josh?” Christian asked. “He won’t even talk to me.”

Bradley shrugged, leaning against the shiny, black marble countertop and taking a sip of chai tea. He looked rumpled and perfectly at home in his white cashmere sweater, in this overly-expensive house, among glass-fronted cupboards with crystal glasses and matching plates inside them.

“I know things are a bit rough for you, man.”

He took another sip of tea, then spat it out and dropped the cup when Christian pinned him up against the wall, one arm against his throat. He certainly knew his own strength: the pamphlets had informed him of it painstakingly and at length. He knew his arm must feel like an iron bar to Bradley, unyielding, cutting off his supply of air.

“What do you know,” he hissed through bared teeth, “about how rough things are for me?”

Bradley made a strangled sound and clawed at Christian’s arm.

Christian tilted his head the way Faye had taught him so that his fangs glittered, long and sharp, hovering far too close for comfort.

“You have no idea! You people are not my friends. I don’t have friends, and I don’t have a family anymore, because I am no longer human. But I do have the ability to rip out your throat and drink you down like a milkshake, so I suggest you shut your mouth and stay out of my business!”

He let Bradley go, shoving him backward so he hit the wall, but not as hard as Christian would’ve liked. Bradley staggered but stayed upright.

Christian let his lips skin back over his fangs.

“She said that we were going to be together,” Christian said tightly. “And I—I want to believe her. So just leave out the groupie talk.”

Bradley nodded, slowly, and they stared at each other until Faye came in, stilettos tapping. Christian couldn’t help but notice she’d bought a lot of shoes with pointed wooden heels since they’d first met.

He was pretty sure it was just a scare tactic.

“What is going on here?” Faye inquired sharply. “If you boys feel the urge to wrestle, you will do it under my supervision, in a fountain, with key members of the press present!”

The microwave pinged. Bradley popped it open and took out a mug. He pushed it along the counter in Christian’s direction.

It was a mug full of heated blood, a smiley face with tiny fangs on the front. Written underneath it were the words: WE’RE FANG-TASTIC!

Christian picked up the mug, curling his cold fingers around its warmth and feeling simultaneously guilty and overcome by how ridiculous Bradley was.

Eventually he muttered, “Thanks,” into the cup. Bradley just nodded.

He had arranged to meet Laura under the tree from last night. He had it all planned. He had left his stupid cape at home, though if Faye found out she’d probably stake him and put his ashes onstage in an urn. And the cape.

He’d thought Laura might be standing under the tree, her back to him, and her hair might be loose and rippling red. The leaves would frame her, moonlight gilding them and her alike, and she’d turn around and smile.

It all happened exactly like that, aside from the two other girls. They were a rather big difference, and sort of spoiled the vision. One of them had wild bright-blonde hair and the other had wild pitch-black eyelashes, and they reminded Christian of the girls at school who’d either sneered at him or seemed honestly unaware he existed.

He disliked them both on sight. The fact that their presence interfered with his plans to kiss Laura “hello” might have had something to do with it.

“Oh my God,” said the wild blonde. “It is Chris. Oh my God!”

“He’s not wearing the cape,” said the wild eyelashes. She sounded extremely disappointed. “And he’s not—” She gestured to her face.

“That was makeup,” said Christian. “I don’t wear it every day.”

“You should,” Eyelashes told him seriously. “It makes you look much better.”

“I can’t believe you were telling the truth!” Blondie exclaimed.

“I was,” Laura said.

Laura looked small and uneasy. Christian felt the impulse to rescue her, put his arm around her and fold her tight against him, but she was lingering close by the other girls as if drawn in by the pull of their gravity. They towered over her, shimmering and confident.

“Of course she was telling the truth,” Christian said.

Laura threw him a smile, grateful and sweet. “These are my friends, Haley and Rochelle. Um, I said that they could—maybe—I mean, can they come to the party too?”

Christian’s mum had raised him to be polite. “Um,” he said. “That sounds like—fun.”

Eyelashes and Blondie (he thought Eyelashes was Haley and Blondie was Rochelle) each grabbed hold of one of Christian’s arms.

“Sooooo,” said Haley, “will the rest of the band be at the party?”

Christian found himself disliking the fawning way she said band, like it was an entity apart from, and more important than, them as individuals.

“Yes.”

“Will Bradley be there?” Haley pursued, a sudden glassy look in her eyes.

“Yes, the whole band will be there,” Christian said patiently.

The entire walk back was like an interview, in which Haley-Eyelashes indicated she was deeply disappointed in him for not knowing basic and vital facts like Bradley’s favorite color.

Christian was massively relieved when they reached the house. Every window was shining, and the house itself appeared to be swaying gently from side to side, as if someone had got it intoxicated.

Haley squealed and dragged Christian by brute force toward the door, where Faye’s usual doorman Terence was standing outside, looking burly. He did that well.

“Hey, Chris.”

“Um,” said Christian. “They’re all with me.”

“Respect,” said Terence, and gave him two thumbs up.

Christian took a moment to be deeply thankful that vampires could not blush, and walked into the hall. The carpet was squishing oddly under his feet. A man wearing a papier-mâché elephant head dashed across the hall and up the spiral staircase. Somewhere upstairs people were applauding.

“Ah, I see Pez’s friends are here,” said Christian, as he and his strange and awful harem climbed the spiral stairs after the elephant-headed man.

“This is so cool,” said Rochelle. “Hey, do you drink the blood of the other members of the band?”

“What? No, I certainly do not!” Christian exclaimed, scandalized.

“Really?” Rochelle asked. “Not any of them? Not even Bradley’s?”

“Especially not Bradley’s!”

“You two are so funny,” Rochelle told him, laughing, and pressed his arm. “Like that one interview in Just Pretend We’re Twenty-One, when you were all asked to name your favorite person in the band. Bradley said you, and Josh said Bradley, and Pez said Bradley, and you said you just hated Bradley. That was so funny!”

“No, you see, I actually do hate Bradley,” Christian explained.

“So funny,” Rochelle repeated, shaking her head.

They were at the top of the stairs now, and witness to the conga line forming down the gallery. Someone had constructed Bradley a throne out of gilt-painted cardboard and he was drinking something out of a pineapple.

“Hey, Chris!” he called out, waving his pineapple.

“Bradley!” screeched Haley, in a voice that vibrated in weird and terrifying ways. She let go of Christian’s arm and barreled her way through the conga line.

Christian hoped Rochelle would follow her, but Rochelle stayed hanging onto his arm. Laura just stood on Rochelle’s other side, nervously hovering. Christian’s attempts to establish eye contact were foiled by Rochelle’s hair.

“Can I get you girls a drink?” he offered desperately at last.

“Such a gentleman,” said Rochelle, and Christian took that as a “yes.” He went downstairs and retrieved the cans of Coke that he always had hidden over the fridge because Josh had low blood sugar and sometimes required one right away.

He came back up holding the cans and met Bradley at the top of the stairs cradling his pineapple.

“Good call bringing that girl with the eyelashes,” he said. “She dived, but I ducked. Now I think she’s planning to make Josh a man. It’ll be good for him.”

“Er, that’s nice,” said Christian.

Christian’s pamphlet had advised that the correct way to deal with a vampire on the verge of going feral was to report him to the authorities and, in extreme cases, push him into some sunlight and watch carefully as he became a small pile of ashes.

At no point had the pamphlet suggested that smiling and waving a pineapple was an appropriate technique to subdue such a vampire.

“I’m sorry about before. I lost my temper,” Christian said. Apparently, pineapples were more powerful than he had supposed.

Bradley gestured with his pineapple in what seemed to be a peaceful manner.

“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m very zen about that sort of thing. You are young, my little fanged grasshopper, but you will learn.”

“Hi, Christian,” said a voice behind Bradley. Christian knew who it was at once because nobody else used his real name.

Bradley shifted aside to reveal Laura, who looked at him with wide startled eyes.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Quite all right, Laura,” said Bradley, waving his pineapple benevolently. “I have to go see if Pez has added something unfortunate to the punch again. It’s not his fault, he actually seems to like the taste of bubble bath …”

Before wandering off, Bradley gave Christian a significant look. Christian chose to completely ignore him.

Laura was haloed by the chandeliers, hair vivid and her dress snow-pale. She drew in close, without Christian pulling her to him, curls tickling the side of his face, and whispered: “You don’t have to dress that way for me.”

Christian looked down at his rugby shirt and jeans.

“You can be your real self,” Laura told him, her eyes intent.

“I am my real self,” Christian said. “I don’t understand.”

He was starting to feel very uneasy, but before he could ask her exactly what she meant, or what she thought of him, Laura leaned in again, warm lips against his ear, and said: “Will you take me to your room?”

Explanations could wait.

“Yes,” Christian said. “Absolutely. I’m sure you will enjoy it. Uh, my room, that is. It’s decorated. Faye hired a decorator to do that.”

Laura laughed at him as if she understood, and he led her back down the stairs, cradled in the corner of his arm. Her heart was beating very fast. His thoughts seemed set to the nervous rhythm of her pulse, leaping around erratically.

“Your bedroom is in the basement?” Laura asked, and then laughed nervously. “No, of course, that makes sense. Obviously.”

Christian opened the door to his room and thanked Faye silently for her good taste in interior design. “Subtle,” Faye had said at the time. “We’re going for subtle.” When Bradley then chimed in, “We don’t want to let it all fang out,” she had beaten him with her Blackberry.

Christian’s room was done all in cream colors, a reproduction of Monet’s Water Lilies above the fireplace. The only touch of brightness were the crimson curtains curling at the edges of a door that led to nowhere, which has been installed to cover the only window in the room.

It would all have looked really classy, except for the fact Christian had left his coffin out in the center of the room with the lid on the floor, instead of tucking the whole thing away under the extra bed.

“Er, sorry,” Christian said, and dived toward it.

“No,” Laura said. “It’s fine. Leave it.”

He’d heard that girls liked to set the mood, but he didn’t even like to think about what kind of mood a coffin set.

“We do kind of need to get it out of the way,” Christian pointed out, “so we can get to the—”

Laura looked at him, her face a blank.

“Unless you’ve changed your mind,” Christian said hastily, “which is absolutely, completely fine. I would understand. We could go back to the party—”

He was interrupted by Laura walking into his open arms. He closed them around her almost by reflex, drawing her close because she was warm, because she felt soft and smelled sweet and he wanted her there, wanted her to want to be there so badly.

She turned up her face to his, and he kissed her, light and exploring, letting her breathe, letting her set the pace. Her pulse thundered beneath her skin, singing a song of life and pleasure to him every time he touched her. He kissed her mouth lightly, the corner of her lips, her chin, and then her mouth again. She started, as if she had not expected him to be so tender, and the tip of his fang cut her. Christian tasted blood.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he murmured, drawing back.

“It’s fine,” Laura whispered, her voice trembling a little, but it must have been with excitement because she threaded her fingers through his hair and brought his face down to hers again.

He kissed her again, delicately, mouth lingering against hers with all the gentleness he possessed. He didn’t want to taste her blood. This wasn’t about feeding.

Her mouth opened, yielding and lovely. Her fingers in his hair tugged. He kissed her a little harder, kissed her cheek, her chin, brushing butterfly kisses along her jaw. She pulled his head down again so his mouth slid from her jaw to her throat.

Even then, he didn’t get it. He kissed her there, where her pulse was beating fast but safe beneath her fragile skin.

“Do it,” she said, breathing hard and determined.

He lost the rhythm of her warm heart and breath then, slid back into a cold place.

“Do what?” he asked, but he was already drawing back. He already knew.

Christian stepped away and walked alone to the crimson curtains, stood on the threshold of the door that went nowhere.

“Don’t you want to?” Laura asked, her voice breaking. “My friend Rochelle said that if you liked me, you’d want to.”

“Did she?”

“I thought human blood was best—”

“I don’t care if it is. I do not want to be something who thinks about human beings as food,” Christian said, keeping his voice low.

“That’s really noble,” Laura began.

“No,” Christian told her. “No, it isn’t. I do not think about you as food. I do not want the blood, so I am not noble for not taking it. Can’t you give me credit for a little human decency?”

Laura’s silence made her still. It was the silence of anyone hurt and embarrassed and being shouted at by a stranger.

Christian took a deep breath he didn’t need at all. “No. Of course you can’t. That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

He shouldn’t be shouting at her. She wasn’t wrong, after all. He’d threatened to drink Bradley’s blood this very evening. He and Laura were just strangers who didn’t understand each other. It was now they were learning that.

He’d wanted her to be human for him. That was just as insulting.

“I’m sorry that I upset you,” Laura said in a small voice, her eyes combing the corners of the room as if searching for places she could hide. “I don’t quite … I don’t know what I did wrong.”

Christian’s mother had taught him at a very early age that it was wrong to make girls cry.

“You did nothing wrong,” he said as gently as he could. “I guess I’m just not vampire enough for you.”

Not yet.

He offered her his arm and led her gently back to Rochelle, who would be her friend for the night because she had got them invited to this great party. They both seemed willing to engage in a little human deception.

“I’ll see you around?” Laura asked. She sounded both uncertain about whether she would and about whether she wanted to.

Christian lied to her, intentionally, for the first time, and said, “You will.”

When Christian tried to go back down to his room, he almost tripped over Haley and Josh on the basement stairs.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, and backpedaled hastily before Josh could become asthmatic with combined terror and passion.

He crashed into a man wearing a papier-mâché lion head who turned out to be Pez.

“Oh, hey, man,” said Pez. “Where’s your lady friend?”

Christian was mildly surprised that Pez had noticed Laura existed at all. Many things happening on Planet Earth passed Pez right by. “I think she only liked me because I’m a vampire.”

Pez looked stunned. “Hang on,” he said. “You’re actually a vampire?”

“Ah, yes?”

“I thought that was a gimmick Faye came up with!”

“Yes, Pez,” Christian said wearily. “I’m a gimmick. I’m also a vampire.”

Pez nodded his fluffy, dreadlocked head which bounced with all the product that Faye ordered into it every day.

“Huh.”

Christian waited while Pez processed the idea, feeling slight dread at the thought of how terrified Josh was of him.

“Dude,” said Pez. “If you’re actually a vampire, it is really nice of you to go grocery shopping so much.”

“Oh, well,” Christian mumbled, feeling unexpectedly flustered. “There’s a late-night grocery shop down the road. I don’t mind. I know Josh needs sugar, and Bradley drinks all that milk, and you kind of use up all the bubble bath.”

“It’s tangy,” Pez assured him. “Very refreshing.”

“Okay.”

Pez punched him in the chest and then swayed back, laughing. “Appreciate it, man,” he said, and then rejoined the conga line.

Christian was feeling a bit too fragile to cope with a conga line full of unlikely and intoxicated papier-mâché animals, so he went down to the projection room where he thought he could hear the video recording of their first concert being played.

He did not at all mean to see Bradley and Faye kissing in the darkened room, but that was exactly what he saw, and his vampire vision left nothing to the imagination.

Christian blinked hard three times to dispel the terrible sight.

“Chris, you are in so much trouble,” said Faye, disentangling herself from Bradley’s embrace, her lipstick blurred.

“I am so sorry, I had no idea. The music was up very loud. Please don’t kill me.”

“You keep sidling away from the wind machine,” Faye said, ignoring him superbly, as she did when she had decided people were being stupid. “Don’t try to lie to me. It’s extremely clear.”

Christian looked at his blown-up image on the farthest wall, bathed in violet light and definitely shying away from the wind machine.

“Hey, where’s Laura?” Bradley asked. He was wearing Faye’s lipstick, too. It made him look monumentally ridiculous.

“Not with me,” Christian said. “You were right.”

Bradley looked sympathetic, which Christian appreciated. The look on Faye’s face gave him chills.

“Chris, do you mean that you just gave me a dramatic rescue and a tragic love affair, all in only two days?” she asked slowly. “Because if you’ve done that, I have to say, I think I love you.”

Bradley made a distressed face. “Faye, give the guy a break. He has feelings.”

“I know—torment, isolation, longing for love,” Faye said, as if checking boxes in the terrible list that lived inside her brain. “Adore it. Totally classic.”

“I’m not …” Christian burst out, and stopped.

He wasn’t that vampire thing Laura had longed for. That was what he wanted to say. But to Faye and Bradley, of all people, he just couldn’t do it.

Faye’s face softened a little. She walked over to him, hair mussed and lipstick smeared. For a moment, Christian thought that she might actually be experiencing a wave of womanly sympathy.

“But you are,” she said, stabbing her perfectly manicured nail in his direction, and his wild dream died. “You’re the vampire wishing for his lost humanity, yearning for love as a way to recapture it, always thinking that someday, someone will understand.”

“You don’t understand,” Christian said reflexively, and then bit his tongue (that was extremely painful for a vampire).

“Oh, I know,” Faye said. “Nobody does. But you’ll keep thinking maybe someone will. You’ll keep searching for the one, and they’ll keep hoping they could be the one, and the album will go to the top of the charts!”

“I feel somewhat exploited,” Christian said. “I think that’s due to the fact that you’re exploiting me.”

He looked over Faye’s shoulder at the images onscreen. Bradley was shaking what his mother and his plastic surgeon had given him, Josh and Pez shuffling behind him. Christian was all alone, his black hair lifted like wings by the wind machine.

“Sure,” Faye agreed. “But what else are you going to do? What else are you going to be? You’re a vampire, Chris. And I’m going to make you a star.”

The haircut on that lit-up musician on the big screen didn’t look as stupid as it always did in the mirror. Even the cloak didn’t look stupid.

“It’s not so bad, Chris,” Bradley said encouragingly. “Stop moping.”

Faye whirled on him. “Never tell him that again!”

“Sorry, Faye.”

“Keep moping, Chris,” said Faye sternly. “Mope your little heart out. Now, I’m tired of this party. Nobody is doing anything scandalous or newsworthy at all. We’re going to my house, Bradley. Feel free to mope here alone, Chris. Or if you like, you can join us.”

Chris took a moment to ponder the possible implications of Faye’s offer, and feel his head go all swimmy with horror. He looked at Bradley to check that Bradley was also horrified, and Bradley gave him a thumbs-up.

Christian’s horror reached almost cosmic proportions.

“I think,” he said coldly, “I will fetch my cape and go for a walk.”

“It’s raining, man,” Bradley informed him.

“I think that I will fetch my cape and go for a long, miserable walk in the rain.”

Faye smiled brilliantly. “And that’s why we all love you, honey.”

Christian paused on his way out to cast one more reproachful and traumatized look at the pair of them.

Over their heads he saw his own image: the rock star vampire, eyes shut, lost in the music and the moment of love. Christian saw himself looking wistful and oddly beautiful, pale in neon lights and makeup, yet somehow divorced from both, shining like an icon. He looked happy and almost human.

Almost, but not quite. He was smiling a little.

In the spotlights, his fangs gleamed.