Dracula scored only about a six, apparently.
Apart from that, the vampires had donated, bought, or stolen six floors of historical texts, in a wide variety of languages. There were even ancient scrolls that looked too delicate to properly handle, and a few wax tablets that Amelie had told her dated from Roman times.
The audiovisual area was new, but it contained everything from samples of the flickers made for penny arcades in the early 1900s to silent film, sound film, color film, all the way up to DVDs. Again, most of it was concerned somehow with vampires, but not everything. There seemed to be an awful lot of costume drama. And, for some reason, musicals.
Claire found the digital video interviews on the computer kiosk, listed by the vampire’s name and date of—birth? Making? What did they call it? Anyway, the date they got fanged.
The newest one was Michael Glass.
Claire brought up the player and blinked as Michael fidgeted in front of the camera. He wasn’t comfortable. This wasn’t being onstage for him, obviously. He messed with the clip-on microphone until Kim’s off-screen voice told him to cut it out, and then he sat, looking like he wished he’d never agreed to any of this, until the questions started. The first ones were obvious—name, current age, age at death, original birthplace.
Then Kim asked, “How did you become a vampire?” Michael thought about his answer for a few seconds before he said, “Total stupidity.”
“Yeah? Tell me.”
“I grew up in Morganville. I knew the rules. I knew how dangerous things were, but when you grow up with Protection, I think you get careless. I’d just turned eighteen. My parents had already left town, my mom was sick and needed cancer treatments, so I was on my own. I wanted to sell the house and get on with my life.”
“How’s that going for you?”
Michael didn’t smile. “Not like I’d hoped. I got careless. I met a guy who wanted to buy the house, somebody new in town. It never occurred to me he was a vampire. He—didn’t come across that way. But the second he crossed the threshold, I knew. I just knew.”
He shook his head. Kim cleared her throat. “Can I ask who . . . ?”
“Oliver,” Michael said. “He killed me his first day in town.”
“Wow. That sucks completely. But you didn’t become a vampire then, right?”
“No. I died. Sort of. I remember dying, and then . . . then it was the next night, and I couldn’t remember anything in between. I was fine. No holes in the neck, nothing. I figured maybe I’d dreamed it, but then—then I tried to leave the house.”
“What happened?”
“I started to drift away. Like smoke. I got back inside before it was too late, but I realized after a few more tries that I couldn’t leave. Didn’t matter which door, or how I did it. I just—stopped being me.” Michael’s eyes looked haunted now, and Claire saw a shiver run through him. “That was bad enough, but then morning came.”
“And what happened?”
“I died,” Michael said. “All over again. And it hurt.”
Claire turned it off. There was something wrong about hearing this, seeing him let down his guard so completely. Michael had always tried to make it all okay, somehow. She hadn’t known how much it had freaked him out. And, she found, she didn’t really want to know how it had felt when he’d been made a real vampire by Amelie, in order to be able to live outside of the house.
She knew too much already.
There were about twenty other video interviews in the folder, but there was one that made Claire hesitate, then double-click the icon.
The camera zoomed in, steadied focus, and then the lights came up. “Please give us your name, the date you became a vampire, your birthplace, and your death age.” It was Kim’s voice, but this time she sounded nervous, not at all the smart-ass Claire knew. “Please.”
Oliver leaned back in his chair, looking like he’d smelled something nasty, and said, “Oliver. I will keep my family name to myself, if you please. I was made vampire in 1658. I was born in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, East Anglia, England, in 1599. So as you see, I was not a young man when I was turned.”
“Was it your choice?”
Oliver stared at Kim, off camera, for so long that even Claire felt nervous. Then he said, “Yes. I was dying. It was my one chance to retain the power I’d attained. The thieving trick of it was that once I’d made my devil’s bargain, I couldn’t hold the power I sought to keep. So I gained new life, and lost my old one.”
“Who made you?”
“Bishop.”
“Ah—do you want to say anything about Bishop—”
“No.” Oliver suddenly stood up, fire in his eyes, and stripped the microphone off in a hail of static. “I’ll do no more of this prying. Past is past. Let it die.”
Kim, very quietly, said, “But you killed him. Didn’t you? You and Amelie?”
Oliver’s eyes turned red. “You know nothing about it, little girl with your foolish toys. And pray to God you never will.”
Oliver knocked the camera over, and Kim yelped, and that was it.
Fade to black.
“Enjoying yourself?” Oliver’s voice said, and for a second Claire thought it was on the computer screen, then realized that it came from behind her. She turned her head, slowly, to find him standing near the door of the small room, leaning against the wall. He was wearing a T-shirt with the Common Grounds logo on it, and cargo pants, and he didn’t look like a five-hundred-year-old vampire. He even had a peace-sign earring in one ear.
“I—wanted to know about the historical interview project, that’s all. Sorry.” Claire shut down the kiosk and stood up. “Are you going to try to kill me again?”
“Why? Do you want to be prepared?” He cocked his head at her.
“I’d like to see it coming.”
That got her a thin smile. “Not all of us have that luxury. But no. I have been schooled by my mistress. I won’t raise a finger to you, little Claire. Not even if you ask me to.”
Claire edged slowly toward the door. He smiled wider, and his gaze followed her all the way . . . but he let her go.
When she looked back, he was at the kiosk, clicking the mouse. She heard his interview start, and heard his nonrecorded voice murmur a curse. The recording cut off.
Then the entire kiosk was ripped out and smashed on the floor with enough force to shatter a window three feet ahead of her.
Somebody wasn’t happy with how he looked on camera.
Claire broke into a run, dodged around another row of books, turned left at the German books to make for the exit—
And tripped over Kim, who was sitting on the floor of the library, staring down at the screen of her cell phone as if it held the secrets of the universe.
“Hey!” Kim protested, and Claire pitched headlong to the carpet. She caught herself on the way down, kicked free of Kim’s legs, and crawled backward. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Claire said, and got up to dust herself off. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Research,” Kim said.
“In German?”
“I didn’t say I was looking at the books, dummy. But I could read German. It’s possible.”
“Do you?”
Kim grinned. “Just curse words. And where’s the bathroom, in case I get stuck in Berlin. Hey, what was the crash?”
“Oh. Oliver. He just found the interview you did with him.”
Kim’s grin left the building. “He killed my computer, right? He just went all Hulk Smash on it.”
“He wasn’t happy.”
“No,” Oliver said, and rounded the corner of the aisle. There were flickers of red in his eyes, and his bone-pale hands were curled into fists. “No, Oliver isn’t happy at all. You told me you’d destroyed the interview.”
“I lied,” Kim said. “Dude, I don’t work for you. I was given a job to do by the council, with a grant and everything. I’m doing it. And now you owe me for a new computer. I’m thinking maybe a laptop.”