The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black Read Free Book Online Page B

fingers, hoping that could kill any infection before it spread. Then she stood up, leaning against the locked door, and started lacing up her boots, pulling the ties tight.
    When she was done, she called Pauline.
    Dialing the number was automatic, giving in to the temptation of momentary escapism. She couldn’t think as the phone rang; her mind felt empty of everything but the feeling that if Pauline answered, then she was going to be all right for a little while. Tana didn’t know what she was going to say, didn’t even know how to put together words to explain where she was or what had happened. She’d been operating on instinct and impulsiveness at Lance’s farmhouse—get everyone out and worry about the consequences later. But later had come. It was waiting for her outside the door. She could only forestall it.
    “Hello?” Pauline’s voice was loud and in the background. Tana could hear music playing.
    “Hey,” she said, like everything was normal. It felt good to pretend. Muscles along her shoulders relaxed minutely. “What are you doing?”
    “Hold on, I have to go in the other room. So much is going on.”A door shut on the other end of the line and the music dimmed. Then Pauline started telling Tana the news about David, her kinda sorta boyfriend at drama camp. He had a girlfriend back home—a girl he’d been with since middle school—but he’d been giving Pauline mixed signals all summer. Intense conversations and made-up excuses to touch each other during improvs, followed by agonized hand-wringing. His girlfriend was coming to visit Tuesday, but just that night David had kissed Pauline. She was freaking out.
    Tana felt relief wash over her along with the familiar drama. She sagged against the door frame, tipping her head back and closing her eyes. She could have interrupted Pauline, could have told her about the nightmare drive through the dark with the tire iron in her hand, told her about the vampires and the carnage and the scrape of a tooth. But if she did, she would have to think about those things again.
    So she listened to Pauline tell her the story, and then they rehashed it a bit; and when Pauline asked her how she was doing, Tana said that she was fine.
    She was fine and the party had been fine and everything was fine, fine, fine.
    “You sound weird,” Pauline said. “Have you been crying?”
    Tana thought about asking Pauline to find an abandoned place with a door that could be barred and lock her inside with a few gallons of water and granola bars. Pauline would do it for her; Tana knew she would. And a week later, when Tana begged and howled and screamed to be let out, maybe Pauline would do that as well. It was too big a risk.
    So Tana insisted that she was really, really fine. Then Pauline hadto go because she had a nine o’clock curfew and was leaving the common room to head back to her dorm.
    For long minutes after Tana hung up and put away her phone, she tried to hold on to the feeling of normalcy. But the more she stood there, the more her stomach cramped with fear, the more she was aware of how her skin felt hot and cold at once.
    She had to not be infected, that was all. She had to not be infected so she and Pauline could move to California after graduation as they planned. They were going to rent a tiny apartment, and Tana was going to get a boring, steady job—like maybe be a waitress or work the front desk at a tattoo parlor or at a copy shop, where they’d get discounts on head shots—while Pauline went to her auditions. They were going to do each other’s makeup like pinup girls from the fifties and wear each other’s clothes. And they were going to swim in the Pacific Ocean and sit under palm trees while the warm breeze off the water ruffled their salt-crusted hair.
    Finally, Tana realized that she couldn’t stay in the bathroom any longer. She opened the door, braced for an attack, braced for one of the vampires from the house to have followed her somehow, but