anyway. Start at the beginning."
"Okay, well, it started at the Crypt."
"Uh, as in 'Tales from the...'? Or as in the Old Burial Ground?"
"As in the club on Prentiss Street. It's this underground club, and I mean really underground. I mean,
nobody seems to know about it except the people who go there, and they're all our age. Sixteen or
seventeen. I never see any adults, not even DJs."
"Go on." Rashel was listening intently. The Night People had clubs, usually carefully hidden from humans.
Could Daphne have wandered into one?
"Well. It's extremely and seriously cool-or at least that's what I thought. They have some amazing music.
I mean, it's beyond doom, it's beyond goth, it's sort of like void rock. Just listening to it makes you go all
weird and bodiless. And the whole place is decorated like this post-apocalypse wasteland. Or maybe
like the underworld...." Daphne stared off into the distance. Her eyes, a very deep cornflower blue
under heavy lashes, looked wistful and almost hypnotized.
Rashel poked her and chocolate slopped onto the table. "Reminisce about it later. What kind of people
were in the club? Vampires?"
"Oh, no." Daphne looked shocked. "Just regular kids. I know some from my school. And there's lots of
runaways, I guess. Street kids, you know."
Rashel blinked. "Runaways..."
"Yeah. They're mostly very cool, except the ones who do drugs. Those are spooky."
An illegal club full of runaway kids, some of whom would probably do anything for drugs. Rashel could
feel her skin tingling.
I think I've stumbled onto something big.
"Anyway," Daphne was going on, "I'd been going there for about three weeks, you know, whenever I
could get away from home-"
"You didn't tell your parents about it," Rashel guessed flatly.
"Are you joking? It's not a place you tell parents about. Anyway, my family doesn't care where I go. I've
got four sisters and two brothers and my mom and my step-dad are getting divorced... they don't even
notice when I'm gone." "Go on," Rashel said grimly. "Well, there was this guy." Daphne's cornflower eyes
looked wistful again. "This guy who was really gorgeous, and really mysterious, and really just-just
different from anybody I ever met. And I thought he was maybe interested in me, because I saw him
looking at me once or twice, so I sort of joined the girls who were always hanging around him. We used
to talk about weird things."
"Like?"
"Oh, like surrendering yourself to the darkness and stuff. It was like the music, you know-we were all
really into death. Like what would be the most horrible way to die, what would be the most awful torture
you could live through, what you look like when you're in your grave. Stuff like that."
"For God's sake, why?" Rashel couldn't disguise her revulsion.
"I don't know." All at once, Daphne looked small and sad. "I guess because most of us felt life was
pretty rotten. So you kind of face things, you know, to try to get used to them. You probably don't
understand," she added, grimacing.
Rashel did understand. With a sudden shock, she understood completely. These kids were scared and
depressed and worried about the future. They had to do something to deaden the pain... even if that
meant embracing pain. They escaped one darkness by going into another.
And am I any different? I mean, this obsession I've got with vampires... it's not exactly what you'd call
normal and healthy. I spend my whole life dealing with death.
"I'm sorry," she said, and her voice came out more gentle than when she'd been trying to soothe Daphne
before. Awkwardly, she patted the other girl's arm once. "I shouldn't have yelled. And I do understand,
actually. Please go on."
"Well." Daphne still looked defensive. "Some of the girls would write poetry about dying... and some of
them would prick themselves with pins and lick the blood off. They said they were vampires, you know.
Just pretending." She glanced warily at Rashel.
Rashel simply nodded.
"And so I talked the same way, and did the same stuff. And this guy Quinn just seemed to love it-hey,
look out!" Daphne jerked back to avoid a wave of hot chocolate. Rashel's sudden movement had
knocked her cup over.
Oh, God, what is wrong with me? Rashel thought. She said, "Sorry," through her teeth, grabbing for a
wad of napkins.
She should have been expecting it. She had been expecting it; she knew that Quinn must be involved in
this. But somehow the mention of his name had knocked the props from under her. She hadn't been able
to control her reaction.
"So," she said, still through her teeth, "the gorgeous mysterious guy was named Quinn."
"Yeah." Daphne wiped chocolate off her arm. "And I was starting to think he really liked me. He told me
to come to the club last Sunday and to meet him alone in the parking lot."
"And you did." Oh, I am going to kill him so dead, Rashel thought.
"Sure. I dressed up..." Daphne looked down at her bedraggled outfit. "Well, this did look terrific once.
So I met him and we went to his car. And then he told me that he'd chosen me. I was so happy I almost
fainted. I thought he meant for his girlfriend. And then..." Daphne trailed off again. For the first time
since she'd begun the story, she looked frightened. "Then he asked me if I really wanted to surrender to
the darkness. He made it sound so romantic."
"I bet," Rashel said. She rested her head on her hand. She could see it all now, and it was the perfect
scam. Quinn checked the girls out, discovered which would be missed and which wouldn't. He
kidnapped them from the parking lot so that no one saw them, no one even connected them with the
Crypt. Who would notice or care that certain girls stopped showing up? Girls would always be coming
and going.
And there had been nothing in the newspaper because the daylight world didn't realize that girls were
being taken. There probably wasn't even a struggle during the abduction, because these girls were willing