Interview with the Vixen Read online

  “Football? That’s what you want to talk about?” He leans back and studies her. “How about we talk about something real, Ronnie. Friday night?”

  Veronica sighs. Friday night, when she was supposed to be out with Reggie but was in fact busy being turned into a vampire. “I’m sorry,” she says, and she tries to sound as sincere as she possibly can. She really needs to get Reggie out of the way, so she can get on with figuring out this plan. “I should have called, I know. I’ll make it up to you. Next week—we’ll go out again next week, for real this time—”

  “You think this is about us going out?” Reggie leans over the table, and his eyes darken.

  Veronica swallows. “What else—”

  “Ronnie.” He says her name like she’s some kind of monster, and heat prickles up her spine. “Why are you acting like nothing happened? We almost died.”

  The car accident. So—it was real?

  “I don’t know …,” she begins, slowly, but then she shakes her head. “Wait. So it was you that I hit?”

  Reggie rakes a hand through his dark hair. “Yeah,” he says, like duh. “And then—”

  “And then what?”

  He shakes his head again. “Look at you. You’re completely fine. I thought you might’ve died, but here you are. Good as new.”

  Good as dead, Veronica thinks, but she can’t say that, can she? “Guess I got lucky,” she says lightly. “You did, too.”

  And now the way he looks at her matches the way he said her name. “Lucky?” he says, and laughs. It’s a bitter sound, something cruel to it. “I guess so. Although I don’t know if anybody else would call us lucky.”

  “We survived a—”

  “Cut the crap, Ronnie,” Reggie interrupts. “We both know how we got out of that car wreck alive. Don’t we?”

  He snarls, suddenly, and Veronica gasps.

  Because instead of his pristine braces-straightened teeth, Reggie’s sporting two new, blinding-white accessories.

  Fangs.

  “So,” he says, “maybe now you’ll tell me what the hell is going on.”

  VERONICA KNOCKS A hand against her forehead. She glances to the front of the laundromat to make sure Mr. Gunderson’s still not paying them any attention.

  No no no. What happened?

  “Come with me.”

  She grabs Reggie by the wrist and drags him out the back of the laundromat, into the alley filled with overflowing trash cans and an old broken-down oven from the pizza place a few doors down. “Hold up,” she says to Reggie, trying not to let her panic show too much. “You’re a vampire?”

  Reggie Mantle is a vampire.

  Well, if this isn’t absolutely the last freakin’ thing Veronica needs right now.

  Reggie’s staring at her. “So I’m not losing it,” he says. “We really are vampires, then. I am a vampire.”

  Veronica waves a hand in the air, dismissive. It’s bitchy, but she really doesn’t have time for Reggie’s existential crisis—not when Archie could be killed at any moment and her parents are walking, talking playthings for a monster.

  “Yeah, I know, it’s a lot,” she says. “But when did you—”

  “I was on my way to pick you up,” he says. “You came out of nowhere, and I couldn’t stop. I woke up on the road, and I thought that was it; I was gonna die.” Reggie’s gaze drifts somewhere distant. “Then I feel someone pulling me off the road and into the woods, and then there’s this weird—burning? And next thing I know, I’m waking up again, but I was in my own backyard. And then—”

  Veronica waits for him to finish, but he doesn’t say anything more. Only swallows hard and shrugs. “Then what?” she says, pressing him. “Reggie. I need to know.”

  “I had this urge to … to feed.” Reggie’s eyes shine now, like the memory of it has awoken some new joy in him. “So I did.”

  “What?” Veronica hisses. “You killed someone?”

  Reggie shakes his head. “A fox,” he says. “It came in my yard.”

  And Veronica slumps back. At least there’s that.

  So me and Reggie both went for animal blood first. But how long can that last? she wonders. How long can a vampire resist until they give in, find the human blood they so desperately want? Are we both destined to give in, eventually?

  She eyes Reggie. So he’s a vampire, too. Theodore must have done to him exactly what he did to Veronica—pulled him from the crash, turned him.

  But what does Theodore want with Reggie? Yet another mind to control? What’s Reggie gonna do, score a touchdown for you? Veronica thinks. Scarf down seven hot dogs in under two minutes? The boy has limited skills.

  She widens her eyes. “Wait,” she says. “This is going to sound—just go with it, okay?” She pauses before she asks the question. “Did you die?”

  And Reggie raises his eyebrows. “Did I die?”

  “I know it sounds weird, but it’s important. When you get turned, it matters if—just tell me,” Veronica says. “Did you die? In the accident, before you were turned.”

  Reggie eyes her cautiously and then shakes his head. “I mean, I don’t think so,” he says. “I thought I was going to. But then everything changed.”

  Veronica exhales, relieved. That makes him a strigoi, like her, and that means that Theodore doesn’t have another member of his mind-control army ready to go. Reggie’s free to do what he wants, not what Theodore would have forced him to do. “Have you seen him again?” she asks quickly.

  Reggie frowns. “Who?”

  “The guy who found you. Who turned you.”

  “No,” Reggie says. “I mean, I didn’t see anybody that night. I have no idea who rescued me.”

  Rescued. Like Theodore is some good Samaritan just stumbling on half-dead kids and turning them out of the goodness of his unbeating heart.

  Wait.

  A thought hits her, and Veronica bites her lip. If Reggie didn’t see who found him—

  Is there a possibility it wasn’t Theodore at all? Could there be more than one vamp out there turning people?

  She exhales. Occam’s razor, V, she thinks. They learned about it last year in English class: the idea that in an unexplained situation, the most obvious answer is usually the right one. When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, she remembers. Not zebras. Or in this case, vampires.

  Veronica leans across the table and fixes her gaze on Reggie. “Listen. You need to lay low, okay? I’m gonna take care of everything.”

  “What do you mean, take care of it?”

  “I know how to undo all of this,” she says, snapping her own fangs out and pointing at them. “Trust me.”

  “Undo it?” Reggie says. “How? What are you even talking about?”

  Veronica resists rolling her eyes again. Yet more vampire lore she really doesn’t have time to be delving into, but okay, fine. Only because she remembers how adrift she felt before she knew. “There are two kinds of vampires,” she starts. “There’s a kind called the moroi, and in order for them to change, they have to die first, and then they’re brought back to life by a vampire bite. They can be mind-controlled and stuff. But you and me, we didn’t die, right?”

  “So …” Reggie furrows his brow. “We’re not that kind.”

  “No. We’re the other kind: strigoi. We were turned because we ingested vampire blood. Now, see, I have no memory of that actual moment, but what I do remember is being on the road after the accident, then waking up in the woods later and this intense feeling of being—”

  “On fire,” Reggie finishes softly.

  Veronica locks eyes with him. Yeah, that’s the transformation feeling, all right. “So now you know. Since neither of us can be controlled, we’re okay. And I know how to undo all of this, turn us back to normal. But I need some time. So, just—keep your head down, don’t go looking for trouble, and don’t let anybody know that you’re a vampire.”

  Reggie’s silent for a minute, and Veronica would believe he’s thinking it over if she didn’t know that
Reggie’s internal monologue is more football girls food football girls food than Do I agree with the advice my good friend Veronica is giving me? Oh me, oh my, I wonder what I should do.

  “You want me to act like nothing’s changed?” he says eventually.

  “Unless you want to be at the center of a neighborhood-watch mob wielding pitchforks, then yeah, I want you to act like nothing’s changed.”

  Reggie grits his teeth—his fangs. “Fine,” he agrees. “But in the meantime—I’m starving, Ronnie. What am I supposed to eat?”

  Veronica throws her hands up. “Go to Pop’s,” she says. “Get a burger, super rare. That should tide you over.”

  “A burger?”

  Veronica’s own stomach growls in response, and she presses a hand to it. I need to eat, too, she thinks, and reminds herself to text Dilton and get him to swipe some more pig’s blood from the lab.

  She eyes Reggie again. She could spare some of it, she guesses. Especially if it means he’s not running wild around town, getting in the way of her dealings with Theodore.

  “Listen, maybe I have something that can help you. I’ll have to check with my supplier,” she says. “But until then, Reggie? Lay low.”

  She flips her hair one last time and stomps back inside, leaving him alone in the alley.

  LAY LOW, Reggie thinks.

  What’s he supposed to do—go home and sit around in his room waiting for Veronica to call him and tell him he’s allowed out again? Nah.

  She left him out on that road to die, after all. She doesn’t get a say in what he does now.

  Reggie smacks a hand against the wall and stalks out of the alley. Fine. She can do whatever she wants, and he’ll do whatever he wants.

  Right now, what he wants?

  Blood.

  Around the front of the building, Reggie sits for a minute in the chill air. Eat a burger. What a joke. Sure, the fox and the couple of other things he’s caught since then have kept him going, but it’s not exactly satisfying.

  He might have been bewildered by the change in himself but he’s not beyond understanding. He has to eat, or he’ll weaken and starve. He has to eat something real.

  Vampires don’t live off dead meat.

  So he sets off, walking fast, with purpose.

  Soon he finds himself at school, on the football field. It’s where he always goes when he needs to think. Being out on the field, being alive and connected with his teammates, listening to the cheering from the stands and feeling the pure life of it all—sweat, breathing, heat. Man, there’s nothing like football.

  It’s the middle of third period, and the field’s empty. Reggie stands right there in the center, wondering what he’s going to do next. Go home? Then he’ll have to face his mom, her constant pecking at him. Go to class? Nah—he’s on high enough alert around all the girls in school on a regular day. Who knows what would happen with him in full vampire mode.

  Vampire.

  And not only is he a monster now, but so is Veronica. Although—how much of a monster is he, really? It’s not his fault he was turned. It’s not his fault he needs human blood to survive. He didn’t ask for any of this; he just has to live with the consequences. That doesn’t make him a monster, does it?

  “Hey.”

  The call slices through Reggie’s thoughts, and he looks in the direction it came from.

  Jessica Hayes is sauntering toward him. She’s wearing gym shorts and a tank top tied into a knot above her belly button. There’s a jewel in it; it flashes at Reggie, gleaming under the low sun.

  “What are you doing out here?” she calls again, closer this time. “Shouldn’t you be in class, Reggie? I know Coach docks your game time if you don’t play by the rules.”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Reggie says, letting his eyes run over Jessica’s body. Letting his nose pick out her smell. “Or are you into cutting class all of a sudden?”

  Jessica stops in front of him and bends over, catching her fingers underneath her running shoes in a deep stretch. “Nope,” she says, and then flips back up, her short hair fanning through the air. “I have study hall third period, and since I’m—how do they put it—a star athlete, I get to come and train.” She shrugs, putting a hand on her hip. “Or do whatever, really. No one ever checks that I’m out here. They just assume I’m doing what they told me to do.”

  A grin spreads across Reggie’s face. Jessica’s a sprinter, on the track team, and he’s a Bulldog: rarely do they cross paths in the athletic department. But he’s seen her—around school, hanging out at parties.

  A runner like that, she’s bound to have some good blood in her. It’s like when you buy the milk with the supplementary vitamins—she’s got that good added nutritional value, Reggie thinks.

  His stomach growls.

  “So,” he says, “what do you feel like doing today? You wanna run? Or—”

  Reggie steps up to her, looking down. She’s almost as tall as him.

  Her eyes are a clear, focused hazel.

  “Or what?” Jessica gives him a coy smile. “What did you have in mind?”

  “It’s easier if I show you,” Reggie says. These are lines he’s practiced in using, lines that have worked more times than he can count, on all kinds of different girls: book-smart ones, athletes, popular, outcast, everyone. Because all the girls want Reggie Mantle when it comes down to it.

  He runs a hand down Jessica’s arm, from her shoulder to her wrist, where he takes hold.

  Her pulse thrums beneath his fingers.

  “Come on,” he says, and begins to lead her toward the bleachers.

  It’s a strange kind of quiet underneath the seats, like they’re sealed in their own little world.

  They start out slow, soft.

  Jessica’s a good kisser. Reggie finds himself thinking that as her hands creep up his back, as he grabs on to her waist and begins to moves his mouth away from hers.

  She’s a good kisser, but kissing is not what he came for.

  He pushes her shirt off her shoulder and puts his lips to her skin, eliciting a small gasp from Jessica. “That tickles,” she says, a lilt to her voice that Reggie knows is supposed to hypnotize him. Would work on him, if he were the Reggie of only a few days ago.

  But now he’s not thinking about how far they’ll go, or what’s beneath her shirt.

  No. He can only think about what’s beneath her skin.

  Just a taste, a voice in the back of his head says. Only a little. I just want to know what it’s like …

  “Jessica.” He speaks her name into her skin, and then looks up at her.

  She smiles.

  He flicks his fangs out.

  And Jessica screams.

  The noise is loud, but short, because Reggie sinks his fangs into her throat and she is silenced.

  He feels her vein pop, the fizzy gasp of it, and her blood explodes into his mouth.

  The world around Reggie dissolves.

  It is the most glorious thing he’s ever tasted, the most amazing sensation he’s ever felt, and as her blood fills his mouth, slides down his throat, he feels relief.

  Around them is nothing but dizzying blackness: there is no football field, no bleachers; no time, no space.

  Only the sweet, hot blood he feeds on and the lightning-fast realization that he cannot go back.

  No; it’s more than that.

  He doesn’t want to go back.

  The animal blood he’d had before was like … a sloppy joe, and Jessica is a perfectly rare T-bone steak. At first he means to keep to his plan, to only taste a little of what she has to offer, but he finds that he can’t stop. He just drinks and drinks, swallowing as fast as he can, each drop sweeter than the last.

  Until a time comes when nothing more seems to be reaching him, and Reggie opens his eyes, finally.

  He unlatches his teeth from Jessica’s flesh and lifts his head. He watches the way her head falls back, loose and uncontrolled. How her eyes are locked in a wide-open gaze, f
ocused on nothing.

  She’s dead, he thinks. I killed her.

  And some part of him knows he should feel bad about it, but he doesn’t. After all, they don’t live in a kind world: It’s all about animals, power. He needs to eat, and she’s his food source.

  Simple as that.

  Reggie lets her body drop to the ground, landing with a muted thud. He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth and lets his fangs retract, the red film over his eyes dissipating, and then he uses the toe of his boot to kick at Jessica’s dead body. “What am I going to do with you?” he says, and folds his arms.

  So much for lying low.

  And then Reggie hears the familiar sound of somebody running up the bleachers, and he looks up.

  The footsteps pause.

  A face appears in the gap between the rows. Moose Mason peers down at him. “Reggie?”

  Reggie grins.

  THE LIBRARIAN PASSES by Dilton, and he clicks out of his browser window quickly. Not that she’s paying any attention to him: With his studious reputation, Dilton often finds himself getting away with things. No teacher thinks that a kid who comes in on the weekends to do extra-credit experiments could ever be any kind of trouble.

  That comes in useful, especially for times like now, when instead of finishing his English paper, Dilton is using the library computer to research the strigoi.

  When the librarian’s gone, Dilton opens the browser again and resumes reading. Theodore Finch, he’s discovered, is no stranger to Riverdale. In fact, the Finches were one of the founding families of the town, way back in the early 1900s. So were Veronica’s family, he knows, and the Blossoms, too—everyone knows that both of their families helped put Riverdale on the map, after the Lodges first came to America. But unlike the Blossoms and the Lodges, the Finch name—and their lineage—has disappeared into nothing.

  Dilton taps finch riverdale death into the search bar and then looks up when he hears the door smack open. He stands when he sees who it is.

  “Veronica!” he hisses. “Over here.”

  He drops down and waits for her to join him. He has some blood bags in his backpack, and it feels like he’s lugging contraband around. As long as she’s here, she can take them—and feed, too, so she won’t accidentally vamp out if somebody gets too close.