I turned the corner to a sight I'd never seen before: More than a dozen young goths waiting in a line. Spiked, dyed black-and-white hair, purple floor-length extensions, billowy capes, knee-high black boots, and Morticia dresses. Lips, cheeks, tongues, foreheads pierced with metal studs and chains. Tattoos of bats, barbed wire, and esoteric designs covered their limbs, chests, and backs and, in many cases, their entire flesh.
Above the line of ghoulish goths, two coffins were outlined in red neon on the black brick building.
Impatience being my virtue, I snuck in front of a girl who was tying up loose corset laces in her medieval gown.
A Marilyn Manson look-alike standing in front of me turned to face me. "You from around here?"
"I don't think any of us are from around here, if you know what I mean," I said, all knowing.
"I'm Primus," he responded, extending his hand. His fingernails were longer than mine.
"I'm Raven," I replied.
"And I'm Poison," a girl in a tight black-and-red-striped rayon dress snapped, grabbing Primus's hand away. The crowd continued moving forward. Primus and Poison showed their IDs and disappeared inside.
A bouncer in a Nosferatu T-shirt scrutinized me, blocking the black, wooden coffin-shaped door.
I held my card proudly. But when the devilish-looking bouncer started studying it, my confidence waned and my heart began to pound.
"This looks like it was taken yesterday."
"Well, it wasn't," I said with a sneer. "It was taken today."
The bouncer cracked a smile, then laughed. "I haven't seen you here before."
"Don't you remember me from last time? I was the girl in black."
The bouncer laughed again. He stamped my hand with an image of a bat and wrapped a barbed-wire-shaped plastic bracelet around my left wrist. "Here alone?" he asked.
"I'm hoping to meet a friend. An older dude, bald with a gray cloak. He was here recently. Have you seen him?"
The bouncer shrugged. "I only remember the girls," he said with a smile. "But, if he doesn't show, I'm off just before sunrise," he added, letting me pass and opening the coffin door.
I stepped through and entered a dark, crowded, smoke-filled, head-banging Underworld. I had to pause to let my eyes adjust.
Dry-ice fog floated over the clubsters like tiny ghosts. The cement walls were spray-painted black, with flashing neon headstones. Pale mannequins with huge bat wings hung from the ceiling, some bound in leather, others in Victorian suits or antique dresses. The bathroom doors were shaped like giant tombstones; one read MONSTERS and the other GHOULS. Spiderwebs clung to the bottles behind the bar. A sign underneath a broken clock read NO GARLIC. Next to the dance floor a mini gothic flea market was set up on folding tables. A vampire clubster could buy anything from fake teeth to body tattoos and tarot card readings. A balcony loomed above the dance floor, accessible by a spiral staircase. Clubsters, with blood- filled amulets dangling from their necks and grimacing vampire teeth, seemed to be a mix of harmless outcast goths and maybe a few truly deranged. But if I had to bank that there were real vampires in this part of the world, some had to be mixing it up here, where they could walk hidden among the masses. The thrashing music of Nightshade blasted from the speakers. I could feel the stares as I walked by. Instead of the usual glares I was used to enduring whether walking down the halls of Dullsville High or sauntering past Prada-bes milling about town, I felt self-conscious for a different reason--I was being checked out. Hot Goths, Gorgeous Goths, even Geeky Goths were eyeing me as if I were a gothic Paris Hilton catwalking down a medieval runway. Even girls, sporting shrunken T-shirts that read SIN or pretentiously exposed their concave, multipierced bellies, scrutinized me territorially, as if threatened by any other single female with black eye shadow in a tight black dress. I fingered my raven- colored hair nervously, trying to be careful whom I made eye contact with. Were they real vampires smelling the scent of a mortal? Or just goths looking for a ghoul?
I pushed my way to the bar, where a longhaired bartender wearing lipstick and eye shadow was pouring red liquor into a martini glass.
"What can I get for you?" he asked. "Blood beer or an Execution?"
"I'd like an Execution, but make it a virgin," I replied with confidence. "I'm driving. Or should I say flying."
The grim bartender broke into a smile. He took two pewter bottles off the shelf and poured them into an iron-maiden-shaped glass.
"That'll be nine dollars." "Can I keep the glass?" I asked. I sounded like an excited kid at an amusement park instead of an underage teen trying to be cool at a bar.
I handed him a ten. "Keep the change," I said proudly, like I'd seen my dad do a thousand times. I wasn't even sure I was leaving a proper tip.
I took a sip of the red slush, which tasted like tomato juice.
"Was a bald man wearing a dark cloak here the other night?" I asked, shouting over the blaring music. "He made a phone call from the club."
"That guy's here every night."
I smiled eagerly. "Really?"
"And at least fifty guys just like him," he answered loudly.
I turned around. He was right. There were as many shaved heads as there were spiked ones.
"He has creepy-looking eyes and a Romanian accent," I added.
"Oh, that dude?" he asked, pointing to a skinny, bald man with a gray cloak, talking to a girl in a Wednesday Addams dress in the corner.
"Thanks!"
I quickly pushed my way through the crowd.
"Jameson!" I shouted, tapping him on the shoulder. "It's me!"
He turned around. But instead of actually being a senior citizen, he just looked like one. I fled before he could ask me to bond with him for eternity. I scooted by the gothic marketplace, not having time to stop and purchase pewter, crystal, or silver amulets or have my tarot cards read.
But when I passed the last booth, a palm reader grabbed my hand. "You are looking for love," she said.
A single girl in a club looking for love? What were the odds of that?
"Well, where is he?" I challenged, shouting over the blaring music.
"He's closer than you think," she answered mysteriously.
I glanced around the packed club. "Where?" I hollered.
The reader said nothing.
I slipped a couple of dollars into her palm. "Which direction?" I asked loudly.
She looked into my eyes. "East."
"The bar?"
"You must look in here," she said, and pointed with her other hand to her heart.
"I don't need pithy sayings. I need a map!" I chided, and continued to make my way through the crowd.
I stopped at the DJ booth.
"Did you see a bald man here recently?" I asked the DJ, who was dressed in a white lab coat with fake blood splattered on it.
"Who?"
"Did you see a bald man here last weekend?" I repeated. He shrugged his shoulders.
"He may have been wearing a gray cloak."
"Who?"
"The man I'm asking about!" The music was so loud, even I couldn't hear myself.
"Ask Romeo at the bar," he hollered back.
"I already did!" I grumbled.
As I returned to the bar, I spotted a dark-haired guy in jeans and a charcoal gray T-shirt leaning against a Corinthian column on the dance floor.
I pushed past the clubsters, my heart beating full force. "Alexander?"
But on closer inspection, I was confronted with a twenty- something wearing a BITE ME T-shirt and reeking of alcohol.
Frustrated, I headed back to the bar once again.
"That wasn't him," I said to Romeo. "The guy I'm talking about made a phone call from the Coffin Club."
Romeo turned to his Elviraish counterpart, who was placing a tip into her bra.
"Hey, this girl's looking for a bald guy who came to the club the other night," Romeo said. "He made a phone call from here."
"Oh, yeah, that sounds familiar," she said.
"Really?" I perked up.
"I remember because he asked to use the phone. No one asks anymore. Everyone has a cell." "Did he tell you where he was staying?"
"No. He just said thank you and gave me a twenty for handing him our phone."
"Was he with anyone?" I asked, eager to receive news of Alexander.
"I think I saw him hanging out with a guy in a Dracula cape."
"Alexander?" I asked excitedly. "Was his name Alexander Sterling?"
Romeo looked at me as if he had recognized the name, but then turned away to wipe down the bar.
"I didn't have time for introductions," Elvira said. She turned away from me and waited on a guy dressed in leather waving a twenty.
Jameson had been here! And possibly Alexander, in the cape he had worn on the last night I saw him.
I looked around the club for any signs that might help me find him. Maybe Alexander found this place completely bogus. Was this club just full of outcast goths like me, or were any of them real vampires? Then I remembered the way to spot a true vampire was by not looking at them.
I reached into my purse and pulled out Ruby's compact. Every fanged clubster around me reflected back. I had to think of another plan. I replaced the compact and headed for the door.
Suddenly I felt a cold hand on my shoulder.
I turned around.
"I think I know who you want to see," Romeo said.
"You do?" "Follow me."
I hung close to my gothic usher, half exhilarated, half terrified.
He led me up the spiral staircase to the balcony. A shadowy figure sat on a coffin-shaped couch, a large goblet and a candelabra before him on a round coffee table.
The mysterious figure glared up at me. I felt a sudden chill. I could barely whisper, "Alexander--"
The lone figure pulled the candelabra close, illuminating his features.
It wasn't Alexander.
Instead, sitting in front of me was a cryptic-looking teen, his cadaverous yet attractive face almost hidden beneath dripping white hair with red ends, as if they had been dipped in blood. Three silver rings pierced his eyebrow, and a pewter skeleton hung from his left ear. His seductive eyes pierced through me, one metallic green, the other ice blue. The whites were filled with spiderwebbed veins, as if he'd been awake for days. His skin was the color of death. His fingernails were painted black, like mine, and he wore a tattoo on his arm, which read POSSESS.
It took all my strength to turn away from his intoxicating gaze, as if I were trying to break an unearthly spell.
"You look disappointed," he said in a seductive voice, forcing me to gaze back at him. "You were expecting to meet someone else?"
"Yes. I mean...no."
"Hoping for someone to bond with for eternity? Someone who won't run away from you?"
"Aren't we all?" I snapped back.
"Well, I just may be your man." "I think Romeo was confused," I said. "I was looking for someone who made a phone call from here. An older, bald man."
"Really? He doesn't seem your type."
"I was obviously mistaken--"
"One person's mistake is another man's destiny. I'm Jagger," he said with a piercing glare that made my blood boil. He stood and offered a pale hand.
"I'm Raven, but--"
"You are looking for someone who can help you fulfill your darkest desires."
"No, I was looking for...," I began naively.
"Yes?" Jagger asked, with a cunning smile.
Something didn't feel right. Hadn't Romeo already told him who I was looking for? Intuition overcame me. Jagger seemed too eager to hear me name someone.
"I've really got to go," I said, clutching my purse close like a shield.
"Please, join me." He grabbed my arm and pulled me onto the couch. "I believe we have a lot in common."
"Maybe next time...I really have to go--"
"Romeo, get the lady a drink," Jagger commanded. "How about a Death Sentence? It's the club special."
Jagger inched toward me and gently stroked my hair away from my shoulder.
"You're quite beautiful," he said. I avoided his gaze and clutched my purse in my lap while he continued to eye me. I sensed that this seductive good-looking goth was no more my friend than Trevor.
"Listen, you have been--" I began, trying to stand up, when Romeo returned with two goblets.
"Here's to new blood," said Jagger with a laugh.
I hesitantly clinked my goblet with his. He took a long gulp, then waited for me to do the same. With a guy this nefarious, I could only imagine what the drink might have been laced with.
"I've gotta go," I said, standing up.
"He's not like you think he is," he said.
I paused, almost frozen. "I don't know who you are talking about," I replied, and turned to leave.
"We'll find him together," Jagger said, and rose from the couch to block my path.
He winked at me, and then grinned, revealing sharp vampire fangs that glistened in the candlelight. I stepped back, and then realized that in the Coffin Club everyone had fangs.
There was only one way to confirm who or what Jagger was.
"Okay. I'll give you my number," I said, turning away from him. I reached into my purse and sheltered the compact from his view. "Just let me find my pen."
My fingers shook as I opened Ruby's compact and angled it in his direction. I closed my eyes and hesitated. I took a deep breath and opened them.
But Jagger had already disappeared.