The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012

Imagine never being able to shed your baby fat, your zits, or your adolescent mood swings.

“Wow,” he said.

“Wow indeed.”

“So… did the guy have a knife or something? Her hand—”

Odette said, “You need to understand that I provide the only structure she has in her life, and the only security. Sometimes I must be a little harsh with her, but it’s for her own sake. She doesn’t survive by being a clever adult in a permanently childlike body. She’s a child who survives because I protect her.”

“Protect her?” Crystal, who was clearly injured—but who had also just killed someone. “From who?”

“Her own rash nature,” Odette said tartly, “but also older vampires. The Quality don’t like the young ones, for reasons that should be obvious. Recklessness puts us all at risk. Correction helps in the short term, but there is no curing persistently childish behavior in someone who is, essentially, a permanent child.”

Crystal’s prickliness began to make more sense. “Why do you keep her around, then?”

Odette jabbed irritably at the keyboard with one long, iridescent fingernail. “Youngsters are adaptable and good at modernity. She can be very helpful.”

Useful, she meant.

“Well, well!” Odette’s attention was caught by something on the screen. “Axel Hochauer has sold off his Grande Armee figures for a tidy sum, I see.” She smiled. “Goretsky must be livid.”

Josh knew he was dismissed.

He found Crystal crying in the bathroom. Clearing his throat nervously, he asked, “Crystal? Did she do something to you?”

“Made me hold my hand in sunlight,” she blubbed, glaring up at him through her tears. “Look!”

The skin on the back of her hand was scabby and blotched with raw pink skin. She wrapped it up again quickly. “It was worse before; we heal fast. That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. I hate that mean old bitch!”

She had killed the meth head, but her own situation was pretty dire. He couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Not enough to hug her or anything like that, but sorry.

“Hey,” he said, propping his hip against the sink. “Want to hear a new song? It’s not exactly finished yet—I mean, I’m not through working on it—but I think it’s a pretty good start. I’m calling it ‘Love Birds.’”

He sang, mezza voce:

“Raven hates her own harsh tone.

She hacks and hawks to spit it out.

Swallow down her razor kiss

Salty, icy, light as bone,

To sweeten Raven’s song.

She’ll be your love, your turtledove,

If you sweeten Raven’s song.”

“ ‘Turtledove?’” Crystal mimicked scornfully. “What century do you come from? Makes no sense, either. Well, that’s cool. You can’t eat music, and I’m starving.”

She was always hungry, and she always had to be reminded to stop.

Next time things seemed back to normal. Crystal, Grand Theft Auto champion with a stuffed arcade bear to prove it, was on the monitor again, checking for comparables to Odette’s latest find: a rare Chinese pipe, all delicately curved brass tubing and carved wood. Josh, already tapped by both vampires, dozed in a beat-up armchair on the other side of Ivan’s desk.

“Oh, shit!” Crystal leaned back and yelled, “Odette! MacCardle’s in Dallas!”

Odette swept into the office and tilted the monitor around to see the news photo. It featured a scrawny, self-satisfied-looking guy with suspenders holding up his pants, shaking some fancy suit’s hand in an auction showroom.

Odette snarled silently, showing a gleam of fang (Josh looked away; he hated thinking about where those teeth had been). But all she said was “Fine. He’s there, we’re here.”

She went back to inspecting the Chinese pipe.

Crystal whispered fiercely, “Fine my foot! If MacCardle comes sniffing around here, we are so gone.”

Josh was jolted by a stab of realization: He didn’t want them gone—not without him. (God, could he really be thinking like this?)

“He looks harmless,” he observed cautiously. “Not exactly a Van Helsing type.”

“He’s Quality, dummy. He comes sneaking around after Odette trying to snag the good stuff first, which makes her so mad! You won’t like her when she’s mad,” she intoned, wiggling the fingers of her now-unblemished hand.

“What, she turns green and smashes the place up?”

“No joke,” Crystal said.

“Okay, this is for real, right? People who live forever by drinking human blood spend their time fighting over high-priced junk?”

Crystal snorted. “Are you kidding? They love to feud over scraps—ugly old vases, souvenir ashtrays from Atlantic City, dried-up baby shoes. Some of them are addicted to anything from their own time. Mostly, though, it’s about personal pride and protecting their investments.”

“They hunt down enameled kitchenware, just like some retired bus driver desperate for something to do, and that’s about pride and investment?”

“Hey, look around you,” she said. “Even mass-produced trinkets get valuable if they survive long enough. A vampire can wait a century for his tin plates to become rare and then sell them for a bundle. Then there’s the thrill of spotting a trend first and getting in there before anybody else. Odette’s amazing at that. Timing the market is a real competition for them; they bet on each other. Gambling’s always been the favorite pastime of the upper crust. Well, crust doesn’t get any upper than the Quality.”

An idea sparked, then glowed. “Crystal? What does Odette collect for herself?”

“What you want to know for?” She stared at him suspiciously. “Anyway, you’re asking the wrong person.”

“It can’t all be just merchandise to her,” he insisted. “What does she find in a place like this that she won’t resell?”

Crystal absently twisted the ears of the trophy bear as she thought this over. “Odd stuff. One-of-a-kind things: snapshots, carvings, pictures.”

“Art,” he said.

“Art, and artists. If she thinks you have what she calls ‘real creative talent,’ you get a vampire godmother for life—whether you want it or not.”

Odette hadn’t asked to see his drawings again, but… “What about my songs?”

“The last music Odette liked was a minuet,” Crystal said, rolling her eyes. “And plus she has the tinnest ear ever and hates poetry.”

He pressed on. “Well, what else? What does she love?” If he could find something special, something to show that he was on Odette’s wavelength—that he was too useful to leave behind—

“Well, there’s this quilt,” Crystal said. “Grubby old thing; pretty hand stitching though—little strips of silk from men’s ties, kimonos, and like that. She paid a lot for it. She still has it.”

“But why? Why that?”

“How should I know?” Crystal scowled, then softened slightly. “I did hear once that her brother was a famous goldsmith, couple centuries back. He had a stroke, so she got to design jewelry, under her brother’s name, for the rich people. It could be a true story, but who knows? She’s not the kind who runs her mouth about her first life, like some of the Quality. Specially the really old ones, trying to hang on to their memories. Anyway, maybe she was talented herself, back in the day.”

Josh nodded, thinking furiously. He was not going to be left behind in flyover country if he could help it.

Two more of the Quality showed up at Ivan’s at the next open evening. One looked the part—tall, pale, and