Peeps by Scott Westerfeld Read Free Book Online Page B

people express themselves with their eyes. This building had a schizophrenic look. Its lower floors were cluttered with tiny balconies, but along the top floor stretched floor-to-ceiling windows, wide open with surprise. I remembered Morgan pointing the building out to me, giggling and squeezing my hand. . . .
    “That’s where I live!” she’d said, thus marking the exact moment when I had been absolutely positive I was going to get laid.
    How the hell does anyone forget a moment like that? I wondered.
    Shaking my head in amazement, I stumbled back up the pier.
     
    The first trick was getting in.
    Funny. I hadn’t remotely remembered that Morgan lived in a luxury building: river views and duplex penthouses, a lobby encased in marble and brass, the uniformed doorman watching six TV monitors.
    Give a boy the loss of his virginity and much else is forgotten.
    I watched from across the street, hiding behind a cluster of newspaper boxes, waiting for just the right bunch of residents to follow through the door—my age or so, a little bit drunk, and enough of them for me to follow along unnoticed.
    Of course, if I was really lucky I’d see Morgan herself. But what was I going to say to her? Hey, do you know you’re carrying vampirism? What’s up with that?
    The minutes passed slowly, the night growing steadily colder. The wind roaring off the river stopped being invigorating and veered over into cruel. My Bahamalama-Dingdong buzz began to wear off, and soon my system started demanding more blood sugar. It occurred to me that the only solid food I’d had for dinner was seven frozen bananas, not enough for my voracious parasites.
    Bad host. Hungry parasites can provoke crazy behavior.
    Worst of all, I felt like I was being the stalker now, stuck between anathema and obsession.
    Just after midnight, I spotted my ticket inside.
    They were three girls and two guys, college-aged, dressed for a night out. They shouted jokes at one another, their voices still pitched for whatever loud bar they had spent the evening in.
    I left my cover and started across the street, timing my move to reach the outer door just as they did.
    They hardly noticed me, still arguing about what kind of pizza to order. “Lots of cheese. Hangover helper,” one guy was saying. The others laughed and voted their way to a split ticket of two large—one mushroom and one pepperoni, both with extra cheese. Sounded pretty good to me, after all those drinks. As we approached the door, I tried to look interested in the conversation while hanging at the back of the pack.
    Through the glass, the doorman looked up with a smile of weary and indulgent recognition, and the inner door buzzed as one of the women reached for its handle. Warm air rushed over us, and I was inside.
    As we crossed the lobby toward the elevators together, the woman who’d opened the door glanced back at me. A questioning look troubled her expression. I returned her gaze blankly. With four friends around her, she shouldn’t be so nervous about a stranger, but sometimes normal humans get a weird feeling from us predator types.
    Of course, I was getting a weird feeling about her too.
    She wore a leather jacket over a short plaid dress that left her knees bare to the cold. Her hair lay across her forehead in a jet-black fringe that had grown out too long, ending just above her dark brown eyes. It took me a moment to realize that in the days before I lusted after all women all the time, this girl would have been my type.
    She kept watching me as her friends prattled on, her expression more thoughtful than suspicious. When she ran her tongue between her lips in a distracted way, a little shudder went through me, and I tore my eyes away.
    Bad carrier , I scolded myself, snapping a mental rubber band against my wrist.
    The elevator dinged and opened, and the six of us crowded inside. I tucked myself into the corner. The pizza consensus had become unglued, and everyone besides the girl in the