The Birch House

Chapter Ten

I was too wired to sleep, and besides, my back hurt, and I couldn't stand the thought of waiting even one more night to get started. Michael hadn't seemed like the kind of guy to wait for his revenge, and Chase - Chase wasn't the kind of guy to not hold up his end of a deal, either

If he's stupid enough to want to get bitten, fine, but he's not using me for an excuse.

Chase hadn't come out of his room all night. I hadn't heard a thing when I'd listened - carefully - at his door. Alyssa had mimed headphones and turning up an invisible speaker. I could understand that; I'd spent lots of hours trying to blow out my own eardrums to avoid the world.

Alyssa lent me her laptop - a retro thing, big and black and clunky, with a biohazard-symbol sticker on the front. When I connected it to the WiFi and booted it up, the desktop graphic was a cartoon Grim Reaper holding a road sign instead of a scythe - a round sign that read MYSTIC, with an arrow pointing down.

I clicked on a couple of folders - guiltily, but I was curious - and found they were full of poetry. Alyssa liked death, or at least, she liked to write about it. Florid romantic stuff, all angst and blood and moonlit marble...and then I noticed the dates. The last of the poetry had been done three years ago. Alyssa would have been, what, fifteen? She'd been starry-eyed about vampires back then, but something had changed. No poetry at all for the past three years...

Alyssa walked in the open door. "Working okay?" she asked. I jumped, guilty, and gave her thumbs-up as I clicked open the Internet connection. "Okay, I called my cousin in Illinois. She's going to let us use her PayPal account, but I have to send her cash, like, tomorrow. Here's the account." She handed over a slip of paper. "We're not going to get her killed, right?"

"Nope. I'm not buying much from any one place. A lot of people buy leather and tools and stuff. And paper - how old is this book supposed to be?"

"Old."

"Was it on vellum?"

"Is that paper?"

"Vellum is the oldest kind of paper they used in books," I said. "It's sheepskin."

"Oh. I guess that, then. It's really old."

Vellum would be hard. You could get it, but it was easy to trace. But it wasn't any good being freak smart if you couldn't get around things like that... Oh, yeah, I needed to think about using somebody else to do the research, too. Too dangerous having tracks that led right back here to the Birch House...

I went to work. I didn't even notice Alyssa going and shutting the door behind her.

For four days, I studied. Four solid days. Alyssa brought me up soup and bread and sandwiches, and Chase dropped by once or twice to tell me I was crazy and he wanted me to stay the hell out of his business; I didn't pay any attention. I got like that when I was completely inside of something. I heard him, and I said something back, but no way was I listening. Like my parents, Chase eventually gave up and went away.

Alex came to my room just a little before dawn. That one surprised me long enough to drag me out of my trance for a while. "How's it going?" he asked.

"Mission Save Chase? Yeah, it's going," I said. "I have to work the long way around. No traces. Don't worry - even if the vamps get angry, they won't be able to prove we did anything but bring them what we thought they were looking for."

Alex looked pleased, but worried. He worried a lot. I supposed that being trapped the way he was, that was really all he could do - fight anything that got inside to hurt us, and worry about everything else. Frustrating, I guessed.