Deadly Offer by Caroline B. Cooney Read Free Book Online Page B

pull of your fine personality?”
    Her heart turned into a furnace of rage and pain.
    “How charming you look with those bloodred cheeks,” said the vampire. “Blushing is a trait that’s always appealed to me.”
    “You are sick,” said Althea with loathing. Her whole body was trembling. Her skin literally crawled, as if it were coming off.
    “No, Althea, I am not sick. I am a vampire. You made a choice, Althea. You. ” He smiled at her, and the crescent of evil sparkled like diamonds, like the lost sparkle of Celeste’s life. “You,” he repeated, “you, you, you, you.”
    “That’s true,” said Althea. “But I’m not doing it again. I’m popular now, and that’s what I wanted, and that’s where we stop.” She felt as if each muscle had detached from its bone and tendon and was fibrillating like a bad heart. How could he do this to her?
    “Here’s how we shall solve the problem,” said the vampire.
    “We shall solve it,” said Althea in her hardest voice, “by you going away. Forever and ever and ever.”
    He tilted his head. He rested his crinkled-foil fingernails against his mushroom-colored cheek. He stroked his long ear-lobe. She had not noticed before how long his earlobes were. As if his victims, in the last struggle, tried to pull him off and stretched him. Very softly the vampire whispered, “And do you wish your popularity to go away, Althea? Forever? And ever? And ever?”
    The shaking muscles grew still.
    The pounding heart slowed.
    The flushed, skin went pale.
    If he chose, the party that had not yet been would never be.
    Nobody accepted my party invitation because of a slow day, thought Althea, or because they want to see the house, or get to know me better. The vampire made them accept. It’s his party.
    “You choose,” the vampire said.
    It was hard to talk or think or even exist. “Choose what?”
    “Who crosses my dark path, of course. There will be twenty people you have invited, and no doubt twenty more you did not. You choose.” He smiled.
    She shook her head. “No. They’re my guests.”
    “I’m your guest, too. You opened my shutters, did you not?” His voice was like tissue paper, floating slowly to the ground.
    Althea decided to call his bluff. “You are depraved. You are demented. I will not do anything more that you ask. Accept that. I’m not giving in. Period. That’s final,” she added.
    He smiled and nodded, his trunk pulsing back and forth, as if feeling a pulse. Somebody else’s pulse. Teeth hung over his narrow lips like foam on a sea wave.
    “What is final,” said the vampire gently, “is your popularity. Do you wish to make a fool of yourself at your first game? Do you wish people to laugh at you in public? Do you wish the squad to request Mrs. Roundman to remove you? Do you wish her, at halftime, to put in one of those oh-so-eager Junior Varsity cheerleaders instead of you?” His voice was slippery as silk and cruel as boredom. He said, “I made you. I will unmake you.”
    She thought, I can pretend to go along with him. That will give me Saturday’s game and Sunday’s party. Then I’ll be safer, and I’ll make it clear to him that this is over.
    She turned her music on. Loud pulsing beats, guitars and drums and keyboard, thrust its way into the room. It hammered and screamed, demanding attention. The vampire frowned and turned away. “Too loud for me,” he said angrily.
    She made a note of that. She would have the house shaking with noise.
    “I wish to have one of your guests,” said the vampire. His smile was no longer evil; it was sweet and innocent, like a child going to a picnic. “You choose the guest,” said the vampire. “It’s entirely up to you, Althea. I would not dream of taking a friend of yours. Surely there is somebody coming who doesn’t matter. If not, simply invite a girl who doesn’t matter. Lots of people don’t matter.”
    I didn’t matter a week ago, thought Althea. But I matter now. Am I going to give