The Longest Night

  “Oh, God, here we go again.” Paige yawned and looked through her pockets for another candy cane. The last time she’d tried to interfere she’d nearly lost an eye. Vampire fangs were pointy. And Aggie bit. “Don’t go Mary Walker on me.”

  Mary had lived at the farmhouse before Aggie moved in. Actually, she was the reason there was an extra bed for Aggie. She’d been working through her issues, or whatever it was the counselors called not killing vampires every night, when she snapped. She’d managed to sneak holy water into the blood supply, and then guilt made her drive her car into the lake. That part Aggie never could understand.

  And she didn’t have time to think about it now.

  Callahan emerged from the treeline, silent and graceful as any woodland creature. He passed for human easily enough when he was in town, but stalking through the snow with his eyes gleaming wolf-blue, he was definitely otherworldly. He was tall, black haired and angular, with cheekbones that could cut through ice. The holy water scar across his tip of his left eyebrow did nothing to detract from his beauty.

  Aggie bent her knees slightly, getting ready to leap. She’d have preferred to be hiding up in the tree, but it was coated with ice and too slippery to climb. She’d make do. Yen always had. They’d barely had enough to eat, never mind fancy weapons like the ones at school. Even at ten, Aggie knew how to whittle branches into points and create makeshift stakes from rusty fence railings.

  His boots didn’t crunch in the snow. She could envy him that talent and still hate him.

  She forced herself to wait, to be patient. Hunter always said to choose your moment, not to let it choose you. If she waited too long he’d be too close to the house. There were practical precautions like blood stocked in all the vampire rooms, deadbolts, UV lights, and nose plugs scattered everywhere; but there were also magical charms. Aggie got herself caught in a spell on her first night at the farm. She was so determined to prove that magic didn’t exist and vampires needed to be dusted, she’d ended up swinging from a tree in a net, covered in some kind of magical blue slime that made her smile goofily at everyone, including Cal. That he’d been the one to find her still made her grit her teeth.

  She lunged for him, stake in hand.

  He dropped low at the last second, and Aggie flew over his head, too far into the leap to correct herself. Momentum carried her forward, despite her flailing arms. She had just enough time to hook her ankle around the back of his head. He stumbled and they both plowed into the snow, leaving deep grooves.

  Cal twisted so that he took the brunt of the fall. His arms closed around her shoulders, pinning her on top of him. She snarled. His fangs elongated in a responding hiss. She kneed him in the groin. He grunted in pain but didn’t let go. He did go faintly cross-eyed, which she’d gloat about later.

  Much later, since right now all she could think about was the shape of his lower lip and his chest pressed against hers. If she leaned down slightly they’d be kissing. She should lean down slightly.

  “Pheromones!” Aggie shouted wildly, suddenly realizing why she was thinking about kissing him. Her carefully planned attack veered ever so slightly into panic. She struggled like a cat being dropped into a cage of dogs. “Asshat!”

  “It’s instinct!” he shouted back, still not releasing her. “Move your damned knee and I’ll let you go.”

  “Paige, he’s hot!”

  “I know that,” Paige replied from the bushes. “But I don’t play for that team.”

  “Pheromones!” Aggie yelled. “Pheromones!”

  “Watch your knee!” he bellowed.

  An arc of freezing water stabbed between them. They yelped, jerking apart. Aggie was soaked through, her teeth chattering before she’d even had time to wipe her eyes clear. Cal rolled to his feet, shaking his head until his hair stood up in dark spikes. The line of his jaw was distracting. He was still too close. Aggie crab-walked backward frantically before standing. Paige snorted a laugh.

  Lucy stood nearby, a garden hose in her hand. She wore striped hand-knit mittens and a hat with a pom-pom. “Are you two quite done?”

  Cal spat out a mouthful of water. Aggie crossed her arms over her chest, her lips turning blue. There was already a bruise on her elbow where she must have landed on it. There was a rip in Cal’s shirt which vindicated her slightly.

  “If you’re flirting, you’re doing it all wrong,” Lucy said mildly.

  “This from the girl who broke my nose,” Nicholas interrupted, amused. He came out of the shadows, gray eyes gleaming. “A lot.”

  “That wasn’t flirting,” she insisted. “Mostly.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “Shush, I’m about to go all Yoda and shit.”

  “We weren’t flirting,” Aggie replied tightly, horrified. “I was trying to stake him.” If Cal thought for one second that she had a crush on him, she’d stake herself. Just because Lucy and Nicholas—a human and a vampire—were disgustingly cute together didn’t mean it was normal.

  “I don’t know why I bother patrolling. No one out there wants to kill you as much as you want to kill each other,” Nicholas said. “Why, this time, Aggie?”

  “He’s a vampire.” Her explanation might have had more impact if she hadn’t said it to another vampire.

  “You know the house rules.” Lucy tossed the hose aside. Paige scrambled out of the bushes to get out of the way. “And you know there are magical wards set all over the place.”

  “Why do you think she attacked me out here?” Cal muttered.

  “One of these times, one of you is actually going to succeed,” Lucy pointed out. “What then?”

  “Cake?” Aggie supplied. Lucy’s eyes narrowed. For a girl barely older than they were and wearing three different crystals, she could be surprisingly scary. “Sorry,” Aggie added.

  Cal just stood stiffly, fangs poking out from under his top lip. Lucy didn’t even blink. Yen would have dusted him by now. Instead, Lucy fished a stake, a cell phone covered in rhinestones, gum, and a tangle of nose plugs from her pocket. She handed him the nose plugs. “Put these on.”

  They helped block the lure of warm blood, especially after a battle. Aggie should have worn hers to block Cal’s vampire pheromones. Rookie mistake.

  “I can’t believe you turned the water on us in this kind of weather.” Aggie shivered so violently she nearly bit her tongue in half.

  “Maybe next time you’ll think twice,” Lucy said with an arch and thoroughly unapologetic smile. “You’ve both earned yourself meditation time.”

  Cal’s shoulders slumped. “Damn it,” he muttered.

  “That’s ‘om’ to you,” Lucy corrected cheerfully.

  * * *

  Aggie forced herself to walk slowly, every muscle in her body screaming at her to run. If she ran, her sister Yen would think she didn’t trust her.

  At nine years old, Aggie knew two things for sure: a vampire had killed her dad, and Yen and Aggie were all each other had left. If Yen wanted Aggie to hang out in Central Park at midnight, she would do it. Even if there was sweat pooling under her arms while the December wind blew frigid and sharp as fangs. Yen took care of her. She was only sixteen but she knew which restaurant and grocery store dumpsters had the freshest food, and where to sleep without getting hassled by social services, cops, or gangs. She even took Aggie to the library so she “wouldn’t grow up stupid.” And Mrs. Boneta at the deli always had a cup of hot chocolate for her, ever since the night Yen had knocked out a thief just as he’d been about to pistol-whip Mr. Boneta for the cash in the register.

  It wasn’t so bad really.

  Until the sun went down.

  Mostly, Aggie hid and waited anxiously for Yen to come back from hunting vampires. But for the first time, Yen needed her help. At Christmastime, people in thick coats thronged the park for skating and snowball fights and there were pretty red bows everywhere. It was nice, even if it got dark too early. But this year, people were going missing.

  Aggie pretended to limp away from the skating rin
k as though she had blisters, her stolen skates dangling over her shoulder. Tonight was just pretend, but Yen had promised she could try actually ice skating in the morning. She’d also told her to cry because it would be more believable. Aggie didn’t have to pretend that part. She was cold and scared and it was really dark away from the skating rink lights.

  “Daddy?” she asked tremulously. She was supposed to act as if she was lost. If her father were still alive, he’d never have let her get lost.

  “Well, what have we got here?”

  But he wouldn’t have been able to protect her from vampires either. Not like Yen.

  Aggie wiped the tears off her cheeks, where they were growing uncomfortably cold. “I’m lost,” she said in a small voice. “Can you help me?”

  “Even better.” The first vampire grinned, flashing her fangs. “I can help myself.”

  There were two of them, all hunger and cruel beauty. For a moment, Aggie was mesmerized. She’d heard that vampires were ugly monsters and she’d expected some kind of stench or bloody saliva. But these girls were only a little bit older than Yen. One wore a baby-doll dress with little pink bows. She looked like a birthday cake, sweet and special.

  Aggie had paused for too long. If she’d been alone, they’d have drained her.

  Instead, Yen dropped down from the tree above them. She’d rubbed herself in dirt and snow to cover her scent. Not that vampires sniffed a lot of trees. Yen took out the girl in the dirty jeans by landing on her head. She used the speed of her fall to drive a stake down into her heart. The girl made a strange sound, and fell to ashes under Yen’s boots as she landed. The girl in the pretty dress gave a strangled scream of shock and rage. No, not a girl. A vampire. Aggie had to learn to recognize them for that they really were.

  The vampire backhanded Yen, sending her crashing into the bushes. She turned to Aggie and Aggie broke into a run, abandoning Yen’s first lesson: Never run. Stand and fight. Always.

  The vampire gave chase, eyes flashing silver. Yen scrambled free of the thicket.

  “Aggie, Ochiru!”

  Aggie did as she was told and dropped suddenly, hitting the ground so hard her jaws clacked together. The vampire reached for her but it was too late. Yen had already released a bolt from her miniature crossbow. It whistled through the air and Aggie saw the moment the vampire recognized the sound, but the bolt was faster. It slammed into her chest and she fell apart, a pile of ashes in an empty party dress.

  Yen limped toward her baby sister, grinning fiercely. “I told you, you can trust me.”

  * * *

  Aggie paused for a brief moment on the threshold of the living room to dry off. As usual it was stuffed with couches, dog fur, and vampires. Paige elbowed her aside to get to her favorite cushion. The farm dogs, Van Helsing and Gandhi, were sprawled on the floor waiting for popcorn to fall. Family nights usually involved movies and pretending that you didn’t know eight different ways to kill the person across the room from you.

  “Zombies?” Paige asked hopefully. Lucy had a weakness for bad horror movies.

  Lucy shook her head. “I think it’s time we watched The Breakfast Club again.” Unfortunately she also had a weakness for 80s teen movies.

  There was a chorus of groans. Catelyn scowled. “Okay, who the hell pissed her off this time?”

  Lucy slipped the DVD into the player. “This isn’t a punishment. It’s a classic.”

  “Casablanca is a classic.”

  “Potato, Potahto.”

  “I still want to know whose fault this is,” Noah muttered as Aggie and Cal studiously avoided everyone’s condemning gazes.

  Lucy always made them watch The Breakfast Club to prove that people from different social groups could learn to get along. When Aggie pointed out that the only thing the characters had in common was detention and that high school sucks, Lucy smiled and said, “Exactly.” If they made it work on so little, humans and vampires could make it work too. There was no winning an argument with her. Especially not about John Hughes movies.

  “You guys should thank me,” Lucy grinned, sitting on the floor and resting her head on Nicholas’s knee in the chair behind her. The dogs inched closer hopefully. “If my mom was here she’d make you use the talking stick to share all your angsty teenage shit.”

  After Lucy’s parents left on a world trip, Lucy and Nicholas turned the family homestead into a house for troubled students. It didn’t matter to them if they were vampire or human. Lucy was determined to make everyone get along. She was weird, but kind of cool if you could get past her cheerful irreverence for the things that made most people wake up in a cold sweat.

  With eleven detentions and two suspensions all in the first term of school—all for infractions against vampires in town—Aggie had no choice but to get used to it. Especially since one of those transgressions involved Hunter’s fiancée Quinn Drake. How was she supposed to know he’d been on campus to help with a demonstration? He was a vampire. She’d done what she was trained to do.

  So now it was the farmhouse or expulsion.

  She had nowhere else to go, and what’s more, she loved the academy. She’d just have to find a way to get used to knowing Cal was in the room across the hall, along with the other vampires. She wasn’t the only one who was having trouble acclimatizing; there were daily fights in the hall every time the sun came up and went down.

  “Movie night sounds great,” Kali said quickly. She was tucked into the farthest corner. She always sat the farthest away and said the least. A talking-stick sharing circle was her idea of hell. She held a pink mug filled with blood, like Cal, Noah, and Nicholas. Lucy designated all pink mugs for blood consumption. She claimed it was not only sanitary to separate dishes, but that a vampire’s worst problem was a tendency to brood. And it was hard to brood properly while holding a pink mug.

  This time they managed to get almost halfway through the movie. It was a record. Tell that to the third coffee table they’d built this month alone. And to Kali as she crashed through it.

  Aggie didn’t even see what set them off. One moment it was popcorn and bad 80s music, and the next Catelyn was attacking Kali. Fletcher and Paige were the only ones who didn’t lunge forward in response—Fletcher because he was so meek and quiet, and Paige because she refused to risk getting blood on her favorite dress.

  The fight didn’t last long. Nicholas leaped out of his chair so fast he blurred.

  Vampires always have the advantage. Aggie could hear Yen’s voice in her ear. Two hunters are better than one. Use every trick.

  Lucy took advantage of her position and went low, kicking her legs between Catelyn’s ankles and taking her down. She landed hard, and the stake in her hand shimmered briefly before shattering. The magic wrapped around the house prevented lethal force, if not violence.

  After a brief savage moment, Nicholas pinned Kali’s arms behind her back. She was snarling as he forced her out of the room.

  Vampires always go for the kill. Don’t hesitate. Heart, throat, holy water.

  Lucy sat on Catelyn’s legs. She snapped her fingers and Gandhi, the biggest of the Rottweilers, sat on Catelyn’s chest to further secure her.

  “With me,” Nicholas barked over his shoulder to the other vampires. “Now.”

  It wasn’t until Cal let go of Aggie’s shoulder that she realized he was even standing next to her. He’d held her back from joining the fight. Yen’s voice turned to a screech in Aggie’s head.

  “Stand down, Aggie,” Lucy said sharply. “That’s an order.”

  From the expression on her face, Aggie knew it wasn’t the first time she’d said it. Aggie felt the cool press of Cal’s fingers through her shirt. His eyes were a pale electric blue, like winter lightning. He released her so abruptly, she stumbled slightly. He stalked away without a word.

  As usual, family night ended with blood and broken furniture.

  More unusually, it wasn’t Cal and Aggie’s fault this time.

  She honestly didn’t know how
she felt about that.

  * * *

  Aggie spent her tenth birthday waiting for Yen.

  By four o’clock in the morning, it was obvious that something was wrong. She should have been back by now. Aggie switched on the GPS in Yen’s phone and grabbed two stakes and a miniature crossbow. Yen had been teaching her how to use it in an abandoned warehouse full of rats. She also had bottles of holy water which they bought off Napoleon. He rode the subway all day and if you knew where to find him, he had all sorts of vampire hunting kits and weapons to sell.

  Yen’s phone was currently in an alley only a few blocks over. That wasn’t a good sign. If she hadn’t made the short distance back, it was because she couldn’t. Panic was bitter and fluttered in Aggie’s belly like wasps’ wings. She forced herself to check her weapons one more time, and pulled her hoodie up over her head. The last thing she needed was a Good Samaritan stopping her because she was too young to be out alone so late.

  She paused at the mouth of the alley. The shadows were thick and shaped like monsters. She swallowed on a dry throat and crept around several planters filled with weeds and dead chrysanthemums. She couldn’t see anyone, no bodies left on the ground or sprawled on the fire escapes.

  The GPS flashed imperiously. Yen was definitely here somewhere. There was a metal Dumpster at the end of the alley, beside the back door to an Indian restaurant. Despite the seriousness of her situation, Aggie’s stomach growled at the thought of naan bread. There hadn’t been anything to eat today. She tried to ignore the smells of curry and chai tea. She stepped farther into the darkness.

  There was no warning. She just knew she wasn’t alone anymore.

  She turned slowly on her heel. The silhouette of a man filled the opening of the alley. He looked like a businessman in a suit and shiny shoes. But she knew him for a vampire instantly, even before he lifted his lips off his fangs. His eyes were pale yellow and impossible.

  Fear and adrenaline made her lightheaded. The moment stretched on until she could have lived her entire life in that filthy alley. He smiled. He was faster, stronger, meaner. She was human. Not only that, she was just a little girl.