The Maestro's Apprentice (7 page)

A woman’s polished voice answered, surprising her.

“Um…hello?” Autumn said.

“Yes?” the woman’s voice answered. “Whom are you trying to reach?” Her accent was Northern, but Autumn couldn’t place it.

“I’m…I’m calling about Biali’s. I…have a situation to explain.” It felt like a dumb thing to say, but it was all she could think of. She stared at the backs of the other patrons 56

to distract herself. The girl with the older man shifted in her seat and moved her book pack around at her feet. She was in a light-blue sweater.

What an unprovocative color,
Autumn thought. It was the sort of color a girl wore if she had never gone home with a strange man and taken money for sex, she supposed.

Then she shook her head to dislodge the thought.

“Okay,” the voice said. “What is your role?”

“My role?” Autumn asked, looking away from the girl and blinking rapidly. Her heart sped. What if the woman didn’t believe her?

“What
are
you? Are you one of us?” The woman made her voice slightly more urgent.

“Not…not exactly,” Autumn said. For a moment, she wondered if Biali’s was just some club for people who liked to pretend to be vampires, maybe a high-class fetish establishment. She blushed. “I’m a…well, I
was
a…a feeder.”

There was a pause, then the woman said, “I see. Why are you calling us? What do you need?”

Motion at the front door caught her eye. A man in a gray suit with bleached blond hair sauntered in, paused and removed his sunglasses, taking stock of the room. Autumn could have sworn she saw him sniff the air. He raised his nose first in one direction, then in another, a gesture she had seen vampires make many times. Then she decided she was freaking out so much her eyes were playing tricks on her, especially when the man made his way over to the snack machine and dropped in a few quarters.

“Are you there?” the woman on the phone asked. Autumn hadn’t realized she’d zoned out.

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“Oh,” she said, holding the phone with both hands, cradling it against her chin.

“I’m…I’m sorry.”

By now, only the man’s shoulder and one arm were visible around the snack machine, but she heard him punch a button.

Autumn lowered her voice, hoping that the phone connection was good enough for the woman to hear. Even vampire ears couldn’t make up for a faulty connection. “We need a safe place to go. My friend is…one of you…and he…
bit
someone last night. She liked it, but I’m worried she may tell someone. You never know how people will talk.”

Autumn leaned forward to try to see if the guy’s body language revealed he had heard anything, but she still couldn’t see much. The thump and rattle of his selection hitting the tray made her jump. He leaned forward and squeaked open the top.

“No, you don’t,” the woman said. She still spoke in a clipped manner but Autumn thought her voice had softened just a little. “Do you have a pen?”

“Yes,” Autumn said, and shrugged out of her little pack. The plastic bag inside rattled and smelled like grease. She found a pen and a scrap of paper and took down the address and directions the woman gave, plus an additional phone number.

The man backed away from the machine, leaned to the side and looked at her. His eyes were so blue they seemed almost turquoise. He looked her over, twitched his lips into a smile, and left. She watched him hold a honey bun in one hand and his sunglasses in the other as he sauntered across the room, watched him pause at her computer momentarily. That’s when her heart gave a jolt and her body filled with adrenaline. She began to tremble all over.

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“The day you are planning to come, call this number for the password. It changes each day, for obvious reasons.”

“Okay,” Autumn said suddenly, shaking herself out of her stupor. “Thank you.”

After hanging up, she inched from around the snack machine, watching the man. No one else in the room seemed to notice him. Even the guy at the counter gave him only a cursory glance before going back to his book.

Finally, the man simply left without looking at her again. Shaken, Autumn hurried over to the computer, kicking herself for not closing the window before making the call.

She scanned the screen to see if maybe the site’s URL was on the page anywhere. It wasn’t on the page, but it was in the window at the top of the page. She logged out hurriedly and looked at the door, her heart thumping madly. She didn’t see him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t right around the corner.

Whoever he was.

59

Chapter Six

Adam stood with both hands planted firmly on his head, staring at Autumn, who sat on the bed with the stack of twenties beside her. The biscuits and cheese sat still wrapped on top of the plastic sack at the writing desk, where Maria sat and watched with a sad, worried look on her face.

Autumn forced herself to focus on the leaf on Adam’s ancient red Adidas T-shirt so she wouldn’t think about how foolish she felt. Suddenly, he turned around, raised both arms in frustration and turned back to stare at Autumn some more.

“Please don’t tell me I just heard you correctly,” Adam said. “Because if you actually slept with some jackass out there for money, I will lose my mind. Please tell me that ain’t what you just said.”

Autumn looked down at the rumpled bedspread, feeling humiliated. She had almost told them about the strange man in the Internet café, but for some reason the words wouldn’t come out. And now Adam was so upset about Bill, she didn’t think she could add to it. “I didn’t sleep with him for money. I slept with him because I wanted to. We just helped each other out, that’s all.” Her voice was quiet.

He raised his finger. Then he lowered it again. “You prostituted yourself,” he said.

“I don’t see what the difference is,” she said. Tears pricked her eyes. “I slept with Claudio…and you…and Seth…and Chloe…all those years to have somewhere to stay.

Why can’t I do it with some guy one time to make our trip easier?”

“Because you don’t
do
things like that, Autumn. It’s not something you do.”

She turned her eyes up to him. “Why?”

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“Because I said so, that’s why.”

She looked down at the money. Her eyes filled with tears. “Are you going to punish me?” she asked. In spite of the games she had played with Bill, she was just a little worried about the prospect of real punishment, but the question came out as a challenge.

“No,” Adam said, sounding perturbed. “I don’t do that, and you know it. I just wish you hadn’t done
this,
is all.” He gestured at the money as though it were diseased.

Autumn wondered if he thought of her that way now, and was much more alarmed by the prospect than she thought she would be.

“Well, it’s done now,” Maria said, standing up and making her way to Autumn. “We might as well make the best of it. Use the money to go somewhere…”

Autumn looked up at Maria gratefully and put her hand on Maria’s as the other woman sat next to her and put her arm around Autumn’s shoulders. She wasn’t prepared for the pain she saw in Maria’s eyes, in spite of the forgiving smile. It was so unlike Maria to be so warm, she thought. It made her feel guilty to think she was the only person that inspired Maria’s gentler side, and now she was thinking of ripping that away from her. The notion startled her.

I am, aren’t I?
she thought.
That really is what I’m considering.

Something knotted in her chest until she could hardly breathe. “Yeah,” Autumn said, and pulled away to stand up, wiping at her eyes. “That’s what she should do. Just forget this happened and use the money. I won’t do it again.”

“Fair enough,” Adam said.

“I have this too,” Autumn said suddenly, reaching into her bag for the Biali House information and offering the scrap of paper to Adam. “I Googled ‘safe places for 61

vampires’ and they made me jump through a bunch of hoops. The site won’t even let you in unless you can tell them a vampire has to be in phase to make another vampire...or, I assume it won’t. It asked the question and I answered and it let me in.”

Adam took the paper and looked at it. Then he looked at Autumn, and back at the paper again. “That’s not too far away. I wonder if it’s for real.”

“You have to call the other number the day you’re coming because they change the password every day.”

“It could be a trap,” Maria said. “I’m sure there are people out there who know about vampires and don’t like them.”

Autumn thought again about the man in the Internet café. She knew she should tell them about him, but simply couldn’t bring herself to. She had never actually handled things before and didn’t want anything to ruin the fact that she had actually found a solution to one of their problems, a place for them to go. At least, that’s what she told herself. She refused to think about the fact that there was something enticingly dangerous about the man, something almost familiar.

Adam nodded. “True. But would they do this, or would they do something else? In my experience, when it comes to racism, most people like to get other people worked up so they can spend their time talking shit. They’d start a movement. It takes an extremely fucked-up individual to go to that much trouble just to hurt people. I think it’s more likely to be what it says it is.”

“Why didn’t Claudio ever mention anything like that?” Maria asked.

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“Claudio played everything close,” Adam said, grabbing his bag from the floor and shoving in yesterday’s T-shirt. “We were all on a need-to-know basis. He probably knows a lot more than he ever told any of us.”

“And now we have to figure it out by ourselves?” Maria asked. “He made sure we couldn’t survive without him. What kind of man is that?”

“Hel-lo-o…”
Autumn singsonged irritably, her humiliation gone. “I’ve found a place to go. We’re going to do all right on our own.”

“Unless, like I said, it’s a trap,” Maria said, hunching down and crossing her arms.

“The world isn’t just a pretty little garden for you to play in, you know, Autumn. There are bad people out there. Even if that place
is
for vampires, what makes you think
we’ll
be welcome there?”

Autumn glared back at her. “We have to go to find out. You’re the one who wanted to take your chances out in the world. That’s what I’m doing. I want to experience things.

And yes, even strange men in New Orleans bars.”

Maria started to open her mouth, but Autumn shook her head, leaning slightly forward as she talked.

“I’m not some stupid, innocent kid. Sure, there’s plenty I don’t know, and I’ll probably make mistakes, but I want to
do
things. My things,” she said, patting her chest.

“Not just follow you around like a puppy. And if something bad happens to me because of that, then so be it. At least I was free for a while. If we don’t enjoy what we’re doing out here, and…and…take the bull by the horns, then we should have stayed with Claudio, where it’s nice and safe.” She turned to Adam. “Are we going to Biali House or not?”

Adam sighed and nodded. “I guess so. Ain’t like we have anyplace else.”

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* * * *

Biali House turned out to be a posh resort with a long, curving concrete drive uphill that led to a checkpoint at a large iron gate flanked by white stone pillars mounted by dancing cherubs. Autumn, Adam and Maria walked up the incline in a cluster of people wearing jeans, travel pants and T-shirts. Behind them, a car honked. Adam moved out of the way and scowled over his shoulder at the well-dressed man with sandy hair in a slicked-back World War II Era do, who gave him a smug smile and then flashed his fangs. A woman in a mini dress sat beside him with her hand on his crotch.

Adam scowled harder. “Probably ain’t changed that ugly-assed hairstyle in forty years either,” he muttered. “And you know what? Cats that old probably have some pretty outdated attitudes about a few things.”

“Sixty years,” Maria said.

“What?”

“That style hasn’t been popular for sixty years.”

“Whatever,” Adam said. “It’s ugly, and the cats who wore it back then were…oh, never mind. Fuck it. I don’t care.”

Both Autumn and Maria looked at him strangely. “I didn’t realize this was going to be such a huge trip to the past for you,” Maria said, accidentally stepping off the side of the concrete and nearly losing her balance.

Autumn instinctively reached out for her, but Maria pulled away. “I’m fine,” she muttered. Autumn, who had gotten over her anger, nodded and blinked back tears, swallowing a lump in her throat, annoyed that it had hurt her feelings.

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“A past I’d like to forget,” Adam said. “Things weren’t so great back then. Why do you think I said yes when Claudio waltzed in and asked me if I’d like to be a vampire?”

“He
asked
you?” Autumn said, glad for something other than Maria to think about.

“Sure, he asked me. Pointed out I didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting anywhere in life unless I could put a few decades under my belt and still be young. So I said yes.”

“Was it worth it?” Maria asked.

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Adam said.

“Language, language,” Maria said absently.

Autumn looked at her, wishing things could feel normal again for a while, but Maria was looking in the opposite direction. To avoid looking at her, Autumn suspected.

A uniformed man at the gate mechanically asked for the password, then passed his eyes over Maria and Autumn hungrily. He had a slight build, with high cheekbones and short black hair. His skin was pale. Maria frowned at him, while Autumn met his gaze curiously. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties, but his eyes seemed much older. All at once he looked down and smiled sheepishly. “Forgive me. The hunger comes upon me suddenly and I don’t have a break for two more hours. No offense meant.”

“None taken,” Maria said.

Autumn simply stared, barely aware he was speaking, wondering how old he really was and what it would be like to tempt him.

“Yeah, well just keep it under control, brother,” Adam said.

The man nodded at him. “Of course. You’ll want to take the right pathway and go around to the back entrance.”