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Nothing can happen more beautiful than death

-Walt Whitman

Tana woke lying in a bathtub Her legs were drawn up, her cheek pressed against the cold metal of the faucet A slow drip had soaked the fabric on her shoulder and wetted locks of her hair The rest of her, including her clothes, was still completely dry, which was kind of a relief Her neck felt stiff; her shoulders ached She looked up dazedly at the ceiling, at the blots of rown into Rorschach patterns For a moment, she felt completely disoriented Then she scra on the enamel, and pushed aside the shower curtain

The sink was piled with plastic cups, beer bottles, and askew hand towels Bright, buttery late suht streamed in from a s shadowsabove it

A party Right She'd been at a sundown party "Ugh," she said, her fingers on the curtain to steady herself, popping three rings off the rod with her weight Her temples throbbed dully

She re bracelets that still chiether when she moved and the steel-toed oxblood boots that took forever to lace and were er on her feet Re black and kissed her ot a little blurry after that

Levering herself up, Tana stumbled to the faucet and splashed water on her face Her ed, lipstick smeared across her cheek, mascara spread like a stain The white baby doll dress she'd borrowed out of her mother's closet was ripped at the sleeve Her black hair was a tangleddidn't do a lot to fix She looked like a dissipated mime

The truth was that she was pretty sure she'd passed out in the bathrooirlfriend Before that there'd been soer, where you bet on whether a tossed coin would co, you had to do a shot After that cas froed Tana to irlfriend, the one earing around her throat a dog collar she'd found in the mudroom He said it would be like an eclipse of the sun and the ht You mean an eclipse of the sun and edly, infuriatingly persistent And as the whiskey sang through her blood and sweat slicked her skin, a dangerously familiar recklessness filled her With a face like a wicked cherub, Aidan had always been hard to say no to Worse, he knew it

Sighing, Tana opened the bathroo in and out all night with her right there, behind the shower curtain, and how hu was that?-and padded out into the hall The s else, so metallic and charnel-sweet The television was on in the other room, and she could hear the low voice of a newscaster as she walked toward the kitchen Lance's parents didn't care about his having sundown parties at their old far the doors at dusk and keeping thes were always full of shouting and showers, boiling coffee and trying to hack together breakfast fros and scraps of toast

And long lines for the two s on the doors if you took too long Everyone needed to pee, take a shower, and change clothes Surely that would have woken her

But if she had slept through it and everyone was already out at a diner, they would be laughing it up Joking about her unconscious in the tub and whatever they'd done in that bathroom while she was asleep, plus maybe photos, all kinds of stupid stuff that she'd have to hear repeated over and over once school started She was just lucky they hadn't markered a mustache on her

If Pauline had been at the party, none of this would have happened When they got wasted, they usually curled up underneath the dining room table, limbs draped over each other like kittens in a basket, and no boy in the world, not even Aidan, was bold enough to face Pauline's razor tongue But Pauline ay at draone to the party alone

The kitchen was e on the countertops and being soaked up by a s for the coffeepot when, across the black-and-white linoleum floor, just on the other side of the door fraers stretched out as if in sleep She relaxed No one ake yet-that was all Maybe she was the first one up, although when she thought back to the sun streaking through the bathrooh in the sky

The longer she gazed at the hand, though, the more she noticed that it seeernails bluish Tana's heart started to thud, her body reacting before her ht up She slowly set the pot back on the counter and forced herself to cross the kitchen floor, step by careful step, until she was over the threshold to the living room

Then she had to force herself not to scream

The tan carpet was stiff and black with stripes of dried blood, spattered like a Jackson Pollock canvas The walls were streaked with it, handprints se surfaces And the bodies Dozens of bodies People she'd seen every day since kindergarten, people who at odd angles, their bodies pale and cold, their eyes staring like rows of dolls in a shop

The hand near Tana's foot belonged to Io to art school next year Her lips were slightly apart, and her navy anchor-print sundress rode up so that her thighs were visible She appeared to have been caught as she was trying to craay, one ar the carpet Tana reeled back, then braced to go farther into the room

Otta's, Ilaina's, and Jon's bodies were piled together They'd just gotten back from summer cheer camp and had started the party off with a series of backflips in the backyard just before sunset, as h the war like rust, tinting their hair, dotting their skin like freckles Their eyes were locked open, the pupils gone cloudy

She found Lance on a couch, posed with his arirl on one side and a boy on the other, all three of their throats bearing ragged puncturenear their hands, as if they were still at the party As though their white-blue lips were likely to say her name at any moment

Tana felt dizzy The room seemed to spin She sank to the blood-covered carpet and sat, the pounding in her head growing louder and louder On the television, soranite countertop while a grinning child ate jam off a slice of bread

One of the as open, she noticed, curtain fluttering The partyin the s for the cool breeze just outside Then, once the as open, it would have been easy to forget to close it There was still the garlic, after all, still the holy water on the lintels Things like this happened in Europe, in places like Belgium, where the streets teemed with vampires and the shops didn't open until after dark Not here Not in Tana's tohere there hadn't been a single attack in more than five years

And yet it had happened Ahad been left open to the night, and a vah

She should get her phone and call-call someone Not her father; there was no way he would be able to deal with this Maybe the police Or a vae, bald former wrestler always decked out in leather He would knohat to do Her little sister had a poster of Heolden-haired Lucien, her favorite Coldtown vampire Pearl would be so excited if Heraph

Tana started giggling, which was bad, she knew, and put her hands over her h in front of dead people That was like laughing at a funeral

The unblinking eyes of her friends watched her

On the television, the newscaster was predicting scattered showers later in the week The Nasdaq was down

Tana reain that Pauline hadn't been at the party, and she was so fiercely, so selfishly glad that she couldn't even feel bad about it, because Pauline was alive even though everyone else was dead

Fro It was playing a tinny remix of "Tainted Love" After a while, it stopped Then two phones s co into a chorus of discordant sound

The news turned into a show about threeskull The laugh track roared every time the skull spoke Tana wasn't sure if it was a real show or if she was i it Time slipped by

She gave herself a little lecture: She had to get up off the floor and go into the guest room, where jackets were piled up on the bed and root around until she found her purse and her boots and her car keys Her cell phone was there, too She'd need that if she was going to call someone

She had to do it right then-no

It occurred to her that there was a phone closer, shoved into the pocket of one of the corpses or pressed between cold, dead skin and the lace of a bra But she couldn't bear the idea of searching bodies

Get up, she told herself

Pushing herself to stand, she started picking her way across the floor, trying to ignore the way the carpet crunched under her bare feet, trying not to think about the s from her sophomore-year social studies class-her teacher had told them about the famous raid in Corpus Christi, when Texas tried to close its Coldtown and drove tanks into it during the day Every huot shot Even theva places and beheaded or exposed to sunlight When night fell, the reate and flee, leaving dozens and dozens of drained and infected people in their wake Corpus Christi vaet for bounty hunters on television

Every kid had to do a different project for that class Tana had made a diorama, with a shoe box and a lot of red poster paint, to represent a news article that she'd cut out of the paper-one about three vampires on the run from Corpus Christi who'd break into a house, kill everyone, and then rest aain

Which made her wonder if there could still be a vahtered all these people Who'd somehow overlooked her, who'd been too intent on blood and butchery to open every door to every hall closet or bathroom, who hadn't swept aside a shower curtain It would

Her heart raced, thundering against her rib cage, and every beat felt like a punch in the chest Stupid, her heart said Stupid, stupid, stupid

Tana felt light-headed, her breath coain and put her head between her legs-that hat you were supposed to do if you were hyperventilating-but if she sat down, she et up She forced herself to inhale deeply instead, letting the air out of her lungs as slowly as she could

She wanted to run out the front, race across the lawn, and pound on one of the neighbors' doors until they let her inside

But without her boots or phone or keys, she'd be in a lot of trouble if no one was home Lance's parents' farmhouse was out in the country, and all the land behind the house was state park There just weren't that hbors nearby And Tana knew that once she walked out the door, no force on earth could make her return

She was torn between the i, close her eyes, tuck her head beneath her arame of since-I-can't-see-monsters- to save her She had to think

Sunlight dappled the living rooh the leaves of trees outside-late afternoon sun, sure, but still sun She clung to that Even if a whole nest of vampires were in the basehtfall She should just stick to her plan: Go to the coatrooo outside and have the biggest, most awful freak-out of her life She would allow herself to screa as she did it in her car, far from here, with the s up and the doors locked

Carefully, carefully, she pushed off each of her shining le when she moved

This time as she crossed the rooed breath she took She iined cold hands cracking through the kitchen linoleued down into the dark It seemed like forever before she made it to the door of the spare room and twisted the knob

Then, despite all her best intentions, she gasped

Aidan was tied to the bed His wrists and ankles were bound to the posts with bungee cords, and there was silver duct tape over hismoment, all she could do was stare at hi over her all at once So out sunlight And beside the bed, gagged and in chains, amid the jackets someone had swept to the floor, was another boy, one with hair as black as spilled ink He looked up at her His eyes were bright as rubies and just as red