Fatal Bargain by Caroline B. Cooney

Author:Caroline B. Cooney [Cooney, Caroline B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9540-3
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-12-05T21:26:00+00:00

Chapter 9

THE CLOAK OF THE vampire moved by itself.

It swirled toward Lacey.

Perhaps it had muscles and a will of its own. Perhaps it was the real vampire. Perhaps the thing inside the cloak was just a mirage.

Lacey’s eyes opened wider and wider. And yet she could see less and less, for the cloak of the vampire filled the entire room, its hem sweeping the ceiling and the floor together.

Her muscles yanked together, demanding action, but instead of running or fighting, Lacey stiffened and could not move.

Mom! she thought. Dad! Kevin!

The cloak rippled in symmetrical folds. It was a wet dripping thing to be used to line caves. And in another moment, it would encircle her; she would be nothing but “an event” to this cape.

I won’t cry, thought Lacey. I won’t whimper or moan. I certainly will not scream, because he said he liked that best.

But she knew that she would scream. The scream was building up in the bottom of her lungs, and demanding release; the scream was a living creature all by itself, and it, too, was climbing. She could feel the scream erupting like a volcano.

Would they hear? The five who had left her here? Would they hear her scream? Would it chill their hearts?

But they don’t have hearts, thought Lacey. If they had hearts, they would not have left me here.

The corners of the vampire’s cloak curled up, like fingers.

Dripping, the fingers crept toward her.

Sherree was the first one out the door. The first to put a foot on the top step of the stairs. The first to grab the banister and taste the wonderful freedom that waited outside the mansion.

Sherree envisioned the great outdoors. The real world. The acceptable, ordinary world of normal people doing normal things.

A world in which you could worry about what to wear, and how to accessorize, and with whom to flirt. A world in which you could do homework, or watch television, or drive a car.

A safe world.

Sherree put her mind into that safe world, that world without slime and without terror.

But her mind would not go.

Her mind stayed with Lacey.

Lacey. Alone with that thing? What would it be like for Lacey? Alone? No human beside her? Just Lacey and Evil?

For Sherree, to whom the parties and friends and shopping and ringing telephones were life, to be alone was the greatest curse of all.

Lacey is alone, thought Sherree. I nominated her to be alone. Forever and ever.

This is like the sinking of the Titanic, thought Roxanne. Survivors didn’t even wait for enough passengers to fill the lifeboat; they just rowed away, listening to the screams of the drowning — who could easily have fit into their half-empty boat.

I’m leaving Lacey, thought Roxanne. This girl with whom I was supposed to be at a party. Laughing. Dancing. Joking. The party went sour, but I went more sour. I left her there. Alone.

I’ll be free. I’ll be safe. But not unless I row away from a drowning friend.

Roxanne thought of the high school yearbook.

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