The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Dead men bite not.

-Theodotus

When Pearl got off the bus, she took a cab, and when the taxi let her off-past a checkpoint with an obnoxious guard-the driver took a long look at her.

"How about I drive you back, kid?" the woman asked, leaning out the window. She had big hair, dark and braided in a way that made it appear as if she wore a crown. "No charge. Now that you've seen it, you don't need to stick around a place like that. They'll eat a little thing like you and still be hungry."

"No thanks," Pearl said, and went inside the building. She'd already ignored a bunch of calls from home, so she wasn't going to let a stranger rattle her.

She didn't feel nervous until she was sitting on a rough concrete bench, signing forms that had words like waive all rights and national threat. Once she'd said that she was infected, they'd hustled her right through the building as if she were a bomb about to go off. No one tried to convince her this was a bad decision. No one even looked at the marks she'd made on her inner arm in preparation.

But it wasn't until she was hanging above the city in an iron cage that she began to think that maybe she'd made a mistake.

Coldtown didn't look the way Pearl expected. In all the videos, it seemed as if it would be an endless party, full of beautiful and well-dressed people, but the streets were mostly empty and lined with garbage. And it was big, really big, with buildings stretching out toward the far walls. Pearl started to wonder if maybe it wasn't going to be as easy to find her way as she'd figured.

After Pearl had seen Tana's fight with the blue-haired girl at Lucien Moreau's, after she'd watched the girl sink her fangs into Tana's neck, Pearl had gone straight onto the fan message boards. There were lots of gross boys being perverts, chatting back and forth about how much they liked watching the girls wrestle. She ignored them and wrote her own post, asking if her sister was okay. For a tense hour, she didn't hear anything.

As she sat on her bed refreshing her browser, she kept thinking about what her Grandma and Grandpa had said, about how it was her job to look after Tana. She couldn't do that if they didn't live in the same place. If she'd gone to Coldtown with Tana, they could have stayed in one of the old warehouses by the water. They'd have hung out with Aidan and gone to parties instead of school, and what happened to Tana would never have happened, because Pearl would have told her that girl was bad news. But maybe now it was too late to do anything.

Then, finally, one of the board moderators private-messaged her. His name was Nicholas, and he said her sister was doing okay, but if she came to Coldtown, Lucien was interested in meeting her. Don't tell anyone, he wrote her. Think of how surprised your sister will be.

And that was what she thought of the whole ride there. All she had to do was find her way to Lucien Moreau's house. She'd imagined that would be easy; she figured she'd just ask people and they'd show her the way.

As she walked through the streets, though, no one looked safe enough to approach. A group of thin and dirty strangers stood around a burning trash can, cooking something on long shaved sticks that looked a lot like bugs. They seemed more likely to steal her stuff than help her.

She'd seen lots of feeds from Lucien's, though, and some of them had exterior shots. All she had to do was find the part of Springfield where the big old mansions were. She was sure she'd know the house when she saw it. Invigorated by this idea, Pearl started marching toward the area of the city with the brightest lights.

"Hey," a voice said, and she spun around. A girl with curly blond hair and a tatty sundress was leaned against a brick wall, bag slung over her shoulder, smoking a cigarette that stank of some spice. "You need a place to stay?"

"Not exactly," Pearl said, feeling shy. "I'm looking for my sister and-"

"I've got a friend who knows a lot of people," she said, peeling herself off the wall. "It's not safe on the streets around here. We all travel in a big group. Runaways, just like you, right? You should come with me."

Pearl hadn't really thought of herself as a runaway. After all, it wasn't like she didn't know where she was going. It wasn't like she was going to be by herself. And there was something scary about the girl, something not right about the way she spoke, as though all the words were rehearsed.

"Thanks," Pearl said, "but I've got to find my sister."

"My friend would really like you," said the girl, smiling a smile that seemed a little too wide to be real. "Come have dinner with us. You've got to be hungry, right?"

"No, I-" Pearl started when the blond girl caught hold of her arm, fingers digging in.

"Okay, enough with being nice." The girl started dragging her toward an alley. "You're coming with me."

Pearl tried to jerk free, scrabbling at the girl's fingers. The girl reached into her bag and came up with a knife in her other hand, the kind that chopped vegetables, that was normally in kitchens. "I said I wasn't going to be nice."

Pearl screamed.

The people by the trash can glanced up briefly, but none of them moved.

The girl pointed her knife at Pearl's chest, making her go abruptly quiet.

"Come on," the girl said. "Don't be such a baby."

"What's going to happen to me?" Pearl asked quietly, her voice shaking.

The blond girl didn't answer. She was looking past Pearl, her eyes widening. Suddenly, she dropped Pearl's arm and started to run.

Pearl hadn't thought it was possible to be more scared, but anything that had terrified that girl had to be really, really bad. She felt light-headed with fear, as though she was going to pass out if she turned around.

She pressed her eyes shut. Then, taking a deep breath, she whirled and opened them, poised to scream, her throat hoarse from all the screaming she'd done already.

Aidan was smiling at her, his floppy brown hair falling over his ruby eyes, his sharp teeth evident, as he crossed the patchy asphalt.

"I've been looking for you," he said.

Behind him, from the shadows, came a second vampire.