No one said much on the drive through Pennsylvania.
Maria had maps and dispatches spread out across her lap, and she was studying intently by the faint glow of the map light. About eighty miles ago, she had told Eleanor to be quiet. Eleanor was sprawled across the back seat with her headphones on, listening in rapt and trembling ecstasy. I was driving. I usually drove. Eleanor was too easily distracted, and I didn't think Maria knew how. The only sounds were the rubbery squeak of the windshield wipers, the hiss of the wheels on the asphalt, and Kay's faint, ragged breathing.
"We're going to need gas soon," I said.
Maria dug through her papers and pulled out a laminated map. "Nothing through here is particularly safe. Everything that isn't Camarilla is up to its ass in werewolves. The next exit looks as good as anything else. Go ahead and take that."
Eleanor pulled off her headphones in a sudden startling blast of Wagner. "Since when is a Cam city not safe?"
"Since there's only three of us and people are waiting for us in Toledo," Maria said firmly. "You can hunt Cammies some other time."
Eleanor mumbled in disappointment and put her headphones back on.
I took the next exit. There were two gas stations and a deserted industrial park.
"Eleanor," I said. She didn't hear me. "Eleanor."
Eleanor slipped one earphone off and said, "Umm?"
"Did you feed Kay?"
"Yeah. Tuesday."
"Food, El. Did you give her any food?"
"Yeah. Right before that."
I sighed in exasperation. "You mean Monday?"
"I think so," she said. She sank back into her music and turned away.
One of the gas stations had a food mart. I picked that one.
The car took eighteen dollars worth of gas. We were supposed to be traveling inconspicuously, so I went inside to pay.
The food mart was revolting. The guy behind the counter wasn't a juicebag, exactly; he wasn't appetizing enough for that. He smelled of cannabis and unwashed socks, and the food itself had a cloying sour stench. The lights were dim with grease; one of the fixtures buzzed wildly with a sound like all the flies in the world. I looked around quickly for something that wouldn't make Kay violently ill. I bought a bottle of apple juice, a box of crackers, and a half-gallon plastic bottle full of cold water.
The guy took my money and pushed the wrong change at me through a tiny slot in a thick glass wall. Its narrow-set eyes smiled insolently at me; its gaze darted toward my breasts.
Maria could smash that glass wall open with one hand. I contemplated asking her to.
Outside, Maria leaned into the driver's seat, honked the horn.
The counter-guy started to say something, but I didn't hear what. I was already gone.
In the back of our old station wagon, Kay lay curled on a pile of duffelbags. I slapped her leg to wake her. She jerked awake and stared at me. Panic. Terror. I gave her the water bottle. "Drink. Slowly, or you'll get sick. Understand?"
She nodded. I tossed the food mart bag in beside her and closed the tailgate.
Maria looked up from her maps. "No problems?"
"None," I said. "We should be okay until we pass Pittsburgh, at least."
I headed back toward the interstate. From the front seat I could hear Kay drinking in slow deliberate gulps.
Maria flipped through a pile of papers written in the Bishop's elegant, old-fashioned hand. "I've been over this at least twice and I still don't quite understand what's going on out there."
"Want me to take a look? Eleanor can drive for a while."
Maria shuddered. "No, thanks. She likes to dread-gaze other drivers, remember?"
"I thought that was kind of funny."
"We could let her drive on the way home," Maria said thoughtfully.
Maria slipped the papers back into her attaché bag and stared moodily out the window into the darkened fields. The silence bothered her. "Want to practice that new setting for the Call to Caine?"
That was the thing we had in common, at home. We could sing. We were actually pretty good at it; Eleanor's a musical genius, and Maria's had a strong trained voice as long as anybody in the pack could remember. There were people who called us the Chorus Girls. Usually not twice, unless they said it respectfully. Surprisingly a lot of them did.
"We could do that," I said. "Tell Eleanor."
Maria reached into the back seat and took Eleanor's headphones off. "Want to practice?"
Eleanor sat up, leaned forward, and sang a deep low A that shook the chilly February air.
I found my own pitch, a third above, held it, listened to the high bright sound of Maria's voice way above mine. We made one long chord, and Eleanor began the piece she'd been working on all winter.
Caine hears your call, and you are blessed, fearing no fire and mighty in battle. Go forth in strength and return in glory, for Caine has heard your call.
"Stop," Eleanor said. "Take it from the third 'and you are blessed,' the one right before Maria does that first long run. Got it?"
"Yeah," I said. This was the most complicated thing we'd ever done; Maria had said once that she thought it made baroque church music look easy. No living person could come even close to making it sound right; we could do it only because we could use all our breath to make sound and didn't have to waste it on anything else. It was music only we could make "And you are blessed, blessed forever," I sang, wondering whether I really was.
The priest of the founded pack in Philadelphia had blessed all three of us before we left, commended us to the protection of our Father. His face had been impassive; his words too much like a rote recitation. He had signed my forehead with our mingled blood, his touch so light as to be insignificant. The ceremony had taken hours, filled with responses and motions we didn't recognize. At last they passed the heavy silver chalice from hand to hand. The scent filled me with frantic longing, and I had drunk thirstily, wanting to be filled with the courage and wild hope I had always found in the Vaulderie. The blood had been cold, had tasted dusty, like solemn duty. Nothing more. Surrounded by the carved marble tracery of their ornate temple room, I had passed the chalice on, gazed down at the intricate floor, said nothing.
"For He has heard, He has heard", I sang, wondering whether He really had. Distracted, I followed Maria into the dizzying heights of the upper octaves and got lost there. I struggled back to my note, the solid middle line that held the melody, and realized that I was now driving on the wrong side of the road.
I wrenched the wheel around and pulled the car back to the right side of the yellow line. Nobody seemed to have noticed. Anybody who said anything would have looked like a coward anyhow.
"All right," Eleanor said. "Can we start again? I want us to get this perfect before the sun comes up."
"Or goes nova," Maria said. "I think it's going to take that long."
"No, it's not," Eleanor said firmly. "All the way back to Caine hears your call, okay?"
It took three hours to get it right.. The strong fierce sound of our mingled voices was rich and bright with the passion I had hoped to drink from the Vaulderie cup in Philadelphia. We held the last note as long as we could. For a long while, no one spoke, until we all spoke at once.
Maria said, "Oh, my," in a breath of reverent awe.
Eleanor said, "Not bad," with smug satisfaction.
I said, "Wow."
After that, there wasn't much to say.
Maria stared out the window, intently at first, as though watching for lupines, and then absently. In the silence of the car I could hear the loud crashes of Wagner through the thin foam padding of Eleanor's headphones. I was starting to get hungry.
"We've left the land of communal havens and Welcome Rites behind a long way back," Maria said gloomily, looking at her map. "We're going to have to spend the day someplace. The next exit doesn't look too bad – I suppose we can find a touristcamp if we have to."
"Motel," I mumbled. When Maria gets distracted, she still thinks it's 1926.
There was a motel at the exit. The sign was neon, faded, fifty years old. In the middle of the parking lot there was an old swimming pool filled with rubbish. Grass and moss grew out of cracks in the concrete. The word "OFFISE" was written on one of the doors in green house paint. Maria went in.
When she came back out, she was carrying a long wooden stick with a key dangling from it.
"We're down at the end," she said, pointing. There was a broken ice machine sitting outside, and the skeleton of a pickup truck. She unlocked the door. "See if you can get Eleanor's attention."
I took Eleanor's headphones off. She scrambled out of the back seat, stretched herself, and went in, clutching her precious shoebox of unlabled cassette tapes. "Yuck," she said decisively. "This place is disgusting. It smells worse than Kay does." Eleanor hates the smell of human bodies. She says that she always has.
I opened the tailgate. Kay whimpered sleepily. I shook her hard, to wake her. "We're stopping," I told her. "Unload."
She scrambled to her feet, picked up Maria's bags, and carried them into the filthy little room.
"Joanna," Maria said, "Too bad you're not from Pennsylvania."
Kay made another trip out to the car. I watched her. "What?"
"You wouldn't need your dirt bag. This place has enough dirt of its own."
"Don't go making fun of my dirt, boss. At least I know my hair looks good."
Maria laughed. "Who told you that?"
"Let's get the windows," I said. I reached into one of the bags for a roll of heavy black foil and the duct tape. I covered the small, grubby window, sealed the edges. Stepped back, checked for gaps.
"Eleanor," I said. "You want to check this?"
Eleanor went over it carefully, looking for tiny glimmers of the faint streetlight outside. "Looks tight to me," she said. I closed the curtains over it while she sealed the bottom of the door. I checked that for her and jammed the door brace under the knob. "It's light-tight, Maria," I said.
"Good," Maria said. She sat down in the cheap plastic chair in front of the dresser. It was the kind of chair that people have on patios. Maria sat there, staring into the empty mirror. Kay stood behind her, taking down the complicated coils of Maria's hair. Her lips moved as she counted the hairpins into her pocket. Forty-nine, she whispered to herself. Her forehead creased. Her lips tightened. Maria turned back to glance at her, a moment of impatience.
Kay brushed Maria's sleek, glossy hair carefully, reverently. Maria sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap, her face calm and thoughtful. Kay counted. Kay always counted. Her lips moved silently, forming the words. Ninety-four, ninety-five, ninety-six.
Kay's brush snagged on a tiny tangle that wound around the missing fiftieth hairpin. Maria jerked a little, startled. Held up her index finger, as though to say one. Kay nodded, bit her lip till the blood ran.
The sight of Kay's bright blood made me realize that I was hungry. I looked at my watch. Too close to sunrise. I'd do it in the evening.
Kay stood in front of Maria, taking off her makeup with cold cream. Her hands traced Maria's face skillfully. I wondered what it would be like to sit so still with warm hands fluttering over my mouth, my eyelids. Kay could, I supposed, do makeup for me if I wanted. I didn't particularly want her to. I rather like my own plain, pointy face, and I could change it myself anyway.
When Kay had finished she knelt beside Maria's feet, sinking backward onto her heels, bowing her head low. Maria stood up and seized Kay by the hair and lifted her until her feet dangled helplessly into empty air.
"Incompetence," Maria said.
Kay's lips barely moved. Mercy.
Maria dealt her a vicious open-handed slap. I had once seen Maria's open palm leave a dent in a steel fire door.
Kay closed her eyes. Her lips moved almost imperceptibly, forming silent words I didn't recognize.
Maria shook her hard, and threw her at the grubby wall with the peeling green striped wallpaper. There was a terrible thump. The wallboard broke open, revealed the cracking cinder block beneath. Kay gave a tiny whimper and lay motionless. Maria ignored her.
"Where do you want to sleep?" Maria asked me.
"Doesn't matter," I said. I had my Dirt Bag, which was all I really needed. Forty-six pounds of cemetery dirt from the Perpetual Rest Memorial Garden in Rochester, New York. I took a handful out, spread it out on the bamboo-printed bedspread. I added another, just in case. I threw the pillows onto the floor, put the Dirt Bag at the head of the bed. I sat on the edge of the bed to take off my boots.
Maria sleeps in bathtubs. At home, in Rochester, she sleeps in a marble sarcophagus. She says that she likes to wake up in something cold, hard, and damp. It was something her sire taught her - something about being separate from human beings. Eleanor says that's ridiculous.
Eleanor stripped the blankets off the other bed, tossed them into a heap on the floor. "They reek," she said. She reached into her backpack and covered the bed with her own clean sheet. Eleanor's backpack is the Cleanliness Bag, but nobody calls it that.
Eleanor took off her shoes, straightened her clothes, lay down with her arms folded, as though she were a corpse at a wake. She closed her eyes and let sleep overcome her.
Maria closed the door of the bathroom.
I stripped down to my bare cold undead body. I sleep in a pile of dirt, and bodies are easier to wash than clothes.
Kay pulled herself to her knees and crawled over to lie in front of the door. Her breathing was hoarse, wet, interrupted by muffled sobs. She was usually silent. She had been quieter than this when Maria broke her ribs, back in May. I put my long shirt back on and went over to sit beside her.
"Kay?" I said, quietly. I laid my hand on her shoulder and felt her body stiffen in terror. Maria had insisted that Kay be trained not to flinch. "Anything broken?"
She held out her right arm, which was already swollen and darkening. It hung at an awkward angle, the flesh distorted by her shattered bones.
"Can't you heal that?," I asked her.
She shook her head sorrowfully.
"Why not?"
Kay pulled herself up, awkwardly, and regarded me with wide frightened eyes. I'd taught her to answer direct questions, but nobody ever asked her any. I hardly remembered what her voice sounded like.
"It would take too much vitae, mistress," she whispered. Her voice was thin and weak. "And it's all crooked. It would heal wrong anyway, ma'am."
If she couldn't be healed, we'd have to put her down. That pissed me off. Kay was the best ghoul we'd had had in years, infinitely better than the last one, who dropped things, lost things, and threw up. "I'll take care of it, " I said.
She swallowed, hard, and opened the collar of her shirt with her good hand.
"I'm going to try something. It's going to hurt. Understand?"
Kay nodded, squeezing her eyes shut..
With my fingers I opened the flesh of her wounded arm. She gave a gasping shriek of pain.
"Be quiet," I hissed. "Do you want to wake up Maria?"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Kay wailed, even less quietly.
I shoved my handkerchief into her mouth.
I probed the opening I'd made, checking the damage. The bones didn't look that hard to fix. With my fingers I smoothed the edges back together, as though I were mending wet clay. Kay grew pale, breathing in short rapid gasps. Her back arched, and her good hand clawed wildly at the carpet.
It took an hour. Her blood was warm on my hands. I thought of tasting it, drinking from the veins in her wrist that the shattering bones had opened. Instead I forced myself to concentrate on the dozen tiny cracks I had to mend. I listened to her desperate sobbing breaths, the racing of her heart. She stank of terrified sweat. Her blood was warm and slippery and almost opaque. It was harder work than I'd imagined.
When I was finally done, I eased Kay's bruised flesh back into place, rubbing her arm gently until the skin was whole again. There was still a lot of damage; she'd need vitae to heal. I licked the blood from my fingers and bit my own wrist open. She drank weakly, then eagerly. Her lips were warm and soft against my hand, like the nose of some timid, herbivorous animal. I gave her more than Maria would have, much more than Eleanor usually did. "Will you be able to finish healing now?"
She nodded shakily. Her breathing came in empty racking sobs. Her body was trembling; she was soaked with cold sweat. My hands were sticky with her blood and her saliva. There was a sink in the corner of the room, with coarse towels and cheap soap. As I washed, I noticed a stack of thin plastic cups on the counter. I filled one with cold water and carried it back to Kay.
I had to hold the cup for her as she drank. For some reason I didn't understand, I smoothed her damp hair away from her face and stroked her back. "Sssh," I whispered, "You're all right. You're all right." I wrapped her gently in the tattered blankets Eleanor had pushed away. "Go to sleep," I told her. "You need the rest. Just stay in front of the door, understand?"
Kay nodded. I stood up. Kay rose halfway to her knees and pressed her face reverently against my feet. "Mistress?" Her voice was tentative, hesitant. I was the one, after all, who had taught her not to speak.
"Yeah?"
"Thank you."
I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything. The sun was coming up. I staggered to my bed and passed out in the middle of my pile of dirt, my head pillowed on the lumpy hardness of my Dirt Bag.