Vampire High Sophomore Year - By Douglas Rees Page 0,36

Gregor said. “Or was once. See, there are sinks along that wall.”

There were six sinks about the size of wading pools. Gregor walked over to one and tried to turn the taps. Constantin, Vladimir, Ilie, Turk, and I all joined him at the other sinks. They were like iron. Actually, I suppose, they were iron. Anyway, they didn’t want to move. We all stood there grunting and twisting, and finally one of Ilie’s let go. Then one of Gregor’s. In a few more minutes, every one of the jenti’s faucets was twirling back and forth like it was 1930 again. Turk’s and mine were still frozen solid.

“You permit me to try?” Constantin said to me.

Gregor just walked over to Turk and stood beside her.

“Take your best shot,” she said, giving up.

Gregor and Constantin growled deep in their throats and leaned on the taps, and in a minute they had rejoined the Land of the Working.

Then we all went outside to the shutoff valve.

The shutoff valve was big enough that two of us could get on it at once. Gregor and Vladimir tried to turn it, and it was interesting to watch. I’d never seen jenti faces get so red before. They made space for Constantin and Ilie. That valve didn’t even budge.

Finally, when they were looking exhausted, I said, “I know I only have the body of a weak and feeble gadje, but let me in there,” and they did.

If this was supposed to be the part where my one little extra bit of strength made the difference, somebody forgot to tell somebody about it. Pretty soon, I was as wiped out as they were.

We all lay on dry grass and panted.

Turk walked over and looked at it.

“Oh, man,” she said. “Wouldn’t you know it?”

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Apart from the fact that nothing’s working.”

Turk didn’t answer. She just leaned all her weight on the valve and made grunting sounds. Then the valve gave a short skreak and began to move.

“Somebody stuck a British fitting on the pipe,” she said. “It turns the other way.”

“You are joking,” Gregor said. “Anyway, how do you recognize such a thing?”

“I do art,” Turk said. “I did a whole network of pipes and faucets once and entered it in a show in Seattle. Called it Water You Doing. Great title. Didn’t win, though.”

“You have been—intelligent,” Gregor said, dragging the words out of himself.

“Duh.” Turk shrugged.

From inside the mill came a sound like dragons roaring, trying to get out.

“What is such noise?” Vladimir said.

I swear he jumped.

“Air in the pipes,” I said.

“Let’s go see our water,” Turk said.

Inside, the faucets were trembling and spitting, coming back to life one at a time. Water came spewing out in brown, angry jolts, along with grumbling air that hadn’t moved in seventy years or more.

“You know, some of these drains could be clogged,” I said.

“Thought of it, Cuz,” Turk said. She produced a plunger and stood there holding it like a scepter.

Sure enough, the sink right in front of us began to back up.

“Permit me?” Constantin said, and held out his hand.

“Sure,” Turk said, handing him the plunger.

Constantin worked the plunger up and down and side to side, and gave a heave that sent water flying all over us.

The drain gulped greedily, and the water went down in the most beautiful swirl I’d ever seen.

In an hour, the air was gone from the pipes and the water was running clean. Relatively clean. Almost clean. Clean enough for what we had to do next, which was wash the walls.

You have no idea how fast four jenti can wash the walls of a hundred-and-fifty-year-old New England mill unless you’ve seen them do it. Room by room and floor by floor they scrubbed. None of them spoke except to call for another bucket. Turk and I ran buckets of fresh water to them while they hung on the walls, one or two to each, and made long, sweeping strokes that changed the color of the bricks to dark, warm red.

Vladimir licked one of the bricks and said, “Not bad. If it were made of blood, I would like it.”

By now it was getting dark inside the mill. We closed everything up. By the time we were done, the sun was throwing patterns of squares all the way across the bottom floor. They made our half-done wigwam glow.

“I never thought it was going to be this easy,” Turk said.

“Not so easy,” Gregor said, looking at his fingers. “But well done.”

A car