Vamps by Nancy A. Collins Page A

back as far as Bathory Academy is its male counterpart, Ruthven’s School for Boys, located two streets over on East Eighty-ninth.
    Every Monday through Thursday night, from late September until early May, a succession of limousines pull up in front of the school, disgorging a steady stream of young girls dressed in maroon blazers and gray pleated skirts. What they do inside the schoolis anybody’s guess. Most nights the students remain inside the building until at least two in the morning, sometimes as late as four. Every so often groups of students leave in the company of what are assumed to be faculty members, whisked away in shiny stretch limos on mysterious midnight field trips.
    These sightings aside, the girls and their teachers have remained little more than phantoms to the generations of New Yorkers who have found themselves neighbors to the school. And since those who do not mind their own business have a tendency to suddenly disappear forever, it’s far safer for all concerned to simply explain away Bathory Academy as a private night school for the children of the pampered rich who cannot be bothered to get up at the crack of dawn and prefer to sleep away the daylight hours in their parents’ penthouses.
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    Getting dressed was one of Cally’s favorite things. She’d always had a flair for styling clothes. Ever since she was old enough to talk, she had been allowed to dress however she pleased, or at least as far as her pocketbook permitted. She loved buying unusual fabrics, ribbons, and lace and using them to customize the skirts and dresses she found at vintage shops and flea markets.
    As she checked herself in the mirror, she regarded the dreadful maroon blazer and gray skirt with disgust. It was so drab and nondescript compared to what she usually wore. More than ever she wished she was humanand could have a tattoo! Sadly, vampires healed so fast the ink was literally pushed out of the skin within seconds of being applied. Perhaps there was another, less drastic way of proclaiming her individuality on her first night at her new school?
    She opened the jewelry box on her vanity table and took out a pair of vintage Bakelite bangles she inherited from her grandmother. One was a pale olive color that could almost pass for jade; the other was sunflower yellow.
    â€œThat’s better,” she said with a smile as she slipped the jewelry onto her left wrist.
    As she stood on the elevated platform at Marcy Avenue, the wind whipping about her exposed legs, Cally found yet another reason to loathe her school uniform. Judging from the number of leers she was getting from creepy-looking guys, it was a real perv magnet.
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    As she walked up the stairs of the school, Cally wondered what lay ahead for her behind Bathory’s blood-red doors.
    The first thing she saw on entering was the full-length portrait of an outstandingly attractive woman, her milk-white face framed by reddish hair. The lilac shade of her flowing dress offset her luminous green eyes. In one slender hand she held an open roll of blank parchment; the other held a scrivener’s talon.
    What Cally found particularly striking was the look in the woman’s eyes. Unlike other early Romanticera paintings Cally had seen in museums, there was nothing coy or coquettish in the woman’s gaze. Instead she radiated a mixture of wisdom, curiosity, and determination. She seemed to be staring expectantly at Cally, as if she had just asked a question and was patiently awaiting a reply.
    Cally walked over to look at the brass plaque attached to the bottom of the portrait’s frame. To her surprise, the inscription was in English, not the formal chthonic script of the Old Bloods. It read: OUR FOUNDER, MORELLA KARNSTEIN.
    Even though the subject of the painting was long dead, Cally felt as if she were somehow welcoming her to the school. Maybe she could fit in here after all. But first she needed to locate the school secretary