By the time they had climbed up three flights to the promenade deck, Alex and Minhi could hear a new sound-a warbling, hissing voice playing over the orchestra in the ballroom.

Alex stopped, holding up a hand.

"What?" Minhi asked.

"Minhi, you're still infected. The vocal virus, something that was pa.s.sed to you in the first of Sid's readings." He looked around at the pristine carpeting, looking for anything. What could he use? He looked at her handbag. "Do you have, like, tissues or something?"

She shook her head. "I can barely fit my room keys in this thing."

"You need something to stuff in your ears." Then he realized what he could use. He reached down and took off his dress shoes, ripping out the laces as he spoke. "Here."

He knotted one lace, holding it up to check the size. He knotted it again. "Look, I know it seems weird, but you've got to trust me: You need to stick this in your ear."

She took it, eyeing him. "And here I thought you were going to tie my hands again."

"This one, too," he said, handing her the second knotted string. "For the other one."

"Alex, don't be ridiculous."

"Trust me," he said.

Minhi shook her head and pulled back her hair, stuffing the knots in her eardrums. She drew the strings back so they disappeared behind her hair. "Okay?" she shouted.

"I think it'll do in a pinch," he said.

"What?"

Alex gestured. "This way."

A scream lit up from the ballroom and he looked back at her with alarm. They reached the ballroom and saw bedlam.

Alex and Minhi ran onto the floor and found people looking about in shock. A voice was speaking over the intercom, whispering, "This is the moment of your freedom."

In the rear of the room, a group of students and adults were beating on a pair of double doors that led to another dining hall. Alex didn't see any of the debutantes, but he had a good idea where they had all gone.

Paul and Sid forced their way through the crowd. "Alex!" Paul shouted.

"Minhi, you're here," Paul said, showing visible relief. She didn't hear him but nodded.

"She's got her ears stuffed up," Alex explained.

"What, why?" Paul asked.

"Because of that," Alex said, pointing to the air and the droning, strange message. "What's happening?"

Paul looked unnerved, which was unusual for him. "The music cut out and all of a sudden the girls pulled their Montblancs on their parents."

"All of them?" Alex looked around.

Sid said, "All of the ones that got the pens. Well, not Minhi. So that means eleven of them."

"Is Vienna one?"

Paul shook his head. "She and her father disappeared. She looked panicked, not robotic. But forget that for now: The rest of the girls moved like vampires, Alex; they grabbed their parents and dragged them back there." He looked at Alex's socks. "How did you get here?"

"WaveRunner," Alex said, glancing up at the droning sound. "That voice is live. He's here. Paul-grab an ax or a fire extinguisher or something and batter those doors down. Get those people out. Sid? We've got to find him and shut him down."

Alex ran for the bar, Sid and Minhi following. A youngish bartender was on the phone trying to call for help.

"Hey!" Alex called. "Where's the intercom?"

"The bridge," the bartender said.

"Okay," Alex said to Sid and Minhi, sure that Minhi could see his lips. "Wait," he said, and ran for the orchestra, which was deserted, all the musicians having fled with the remaining parents. He emerged again with two drumsticks, their heads broken off to make them sharper, and a violin.

Sid said, "What, you're hoping to subdue him with 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia'?"

"I hate these things," Alex said, bas.h.i.+ng the violin on the bar, and handed Sid and Minhi the drumsticks. He brandished the jagged, splintered neck of the violin, its strings hanging from the tuning bolts.

As Paul began battering away at the blocked doors to try to rescue the parents from a horde of hypnotized girls, Alex, Sid, and Minhi hit the stairs.

The bridge was a large room at the prow of a s.h.i.+p on the second-to-topmost deck. Alex held up a hand again, stopping Sid and Minhi as they reached the metal door at the top of the stairs. A static charge had hit his brain. Alex put his hand on the door, waiting.

Calm down. Chill. In the past he had gotten static from a quarter mile away, but the Merrills in the van had completely caught him off guard. Just like how he had failed to listen to the static on the night of the worm, because he had been upset and distracted. Several times he had been too worked up then to listen to his own mind.

Alex was determined to master the static. He had to clear out the noise.

Alex listened, cutting through the droning of Ultravox, which wasn't for him this time. Hear the static. Where is it? He felt himself pointing for Sid's and Minhi's benefit.

Ultravox had lied; he might not have an army but he'd brought protection. There was too much static for it to be just one vampire. Listen. This is what you were born to do. Pick them out.

One on the left. One on the right. One in the center, farther back, and powerful. He turned and said to Minhi, "You go right; I'll go left." To Sid, "You go for the microphone."

One, two, why then, 'tis time to do it.

Alex turned the doork.n.o.b and stepped back, kicking the door, causing it to fly open.

Inside, the PA echoed a half second later than Ultravox, who was speaking live in the room. Alex saw the captain and one crewman, unconscious on the floor. He turned left as a guard vampire lunged for him, and Alex dropped, letting the guard slash over him. Alex rose and swept his leg, knocking the vampire off balance, and dived, driving the violin neck into the creature's chest. Silver-and-wooden shafts from the Polibow were prime weapons, but in a pinch like this, any wood would suffice. He put all his weight on it and felt a crunch, and the vampire burst into flame.

Alex turned and looked behind him as Minhi kicked up, catching the other guard in the chin. She avoided his lunge expertly as though he were moving in slow motion. As she drove the drumstick home, she shouted, "What? I can't hear you!"

Ultravox was at a control panel, watching a closed-circuit security feed. On the black-and-white screen, Alex could see the parents, the influential, targeted ministers, pleading with their daughters, who held them all at bay and had traded their Montblancs for flas.h.i.+ng steak knives. They had not yet delivered the killing stroke, although Ultravox seemed to be working them up into a lather. Killing someone, especially a parent, would go against every instinct, so he had to build a symphony of emotion to mask over that, to go beyond merely threatening to actually delivering the final act, the killing blow.

On the security monitor, Alex saw a large figure go into the room carrying a huge amplifier. It was Paul. He lunged for one of the debutantes and she turned around, slas.h.i.+ng at him.

"Yes, the terror they feel is the terror you can overcome, but don't wait. Now is the time," said Ultravox, showing his fangs. He had to keep talking for the spell to work.

Alex cleared his throat as the sound from the PA cut off, ceasing the echo. The vampire snarled as he saw Sid holding an unplugged microphone cord.

"You think you know everybody," Alex said.

Ultravox swatted Sid aside and grabbed the cord, searching for an outlet.

"But you don't," Alex continued. "It's a fake. You tell people things that hurt them because you know they'll believe you."

"Alex," Ultravox said, as he turned to face him. Time slowed for a second as the vampire's eyes burrowed into his. "You're going to do something-"

"I don't think so," said Alex as he swept the violin handle, catching the vampire in the throat.

"Killthrrrmm," Ultravox gurgled, and Alex plunged the violin neck home.

A burst of brilliant flame filled the bridge as they jumped clear.

For a moment, smoke and ash rained in the small metal room and they all stood in silence. Sid finally brushed a handful of ashes out of his hair and said, "Yeah, that and his book was overrated."

Chapter 34.

"So let me get this straight," Alex said as he placed a few books on the shelf of the little three-man room in New Aubrey House.

"That's the vampire shelf," Sid said, and Alex realized that the books Sid had picked up over the past weeks on his favorite subject were indeed taking up half the s.p.a.ce. The Vampire Encyclopedia made an appearance, and something called Our Vampires, Ourselves. Alex nodded and took his own books, textbooks all, and placed them on the next shelf down.

"Get what straight?" Sangster answered. The instructor was leaning in the doorway, his hands in his pockets. He had a pair of Ray-Ban sungla.s.ses on, as though he needed them inside.

Paul was lying on his bed across from Sid's and Alex's bunks, flipping through one of Sid's magazines. He restated Alex's question. "They committed them?"

"Committed is a strong word," Sangster replied.

"But that's it," Alex insisted, turning back. He ran his fingers along the window that looked out into the trees. "The story is the girls went crazy."

"We had ten debutantes who all tried to ice their very highly placed parents at a public gathering," Sangster said.

Paul indicated his shoulder, where his T-s.h.i.+rt had been pulled up to accommodate a large white bandage. "One of them took a chunk out of me, too."

"Yes, you're grievously wounded," Alex said.

"I should get time off for that," Paul muttered.

Sangster continued, "It's kind of a big deal; made Page Six back home."

"I'm sure," Alex said.

"The story will be that they got swept up in a cult. They'll all be under observation for a while. That should be the end of it."

"That's terrible," Alex said, frowning. "They were victims."

"Yeah." Sangster nodded quietly. "But honestly? Thanks to you they're alive, and so are their parents. If we have to come up with a story to cover the sensational stuff, it's still better than explaining the a.s.sa.s.sination of ten ministers from ten different countries. Every meeting those ministers attend in Geneva will be heavily secured, and yet their own children provided an opportunity to get to them. I'd expect to see copycats. We're lucky they failed. Anyway, it won't be so bad. The young women will spend some time in the Alps, and in six months it will all be forgotten."

"So Ultravox knew that the meeting was coming up here in Geneva," Sid said, "and the ball for the young people was-what would you call it?-the softest target. They even threw in an attack on your researcher, Professor Montrose, to throw you off." Sid took his vampire encyclopedia off the shelf. He sat on his bunk and let it thud beside him. "You know what I think? I think you guys need to stop thinking things are over so soon."

"Yeah, that's inexcusable," Sangster said. "We were so obsessed with our database that we thought the enemy was watching the same thing. But these ten ministers were all working on Info Treaty-they were advocating a new policy for sharing electronic biographical data, to help fight human smuggling. Modernizing birth certificates, death certificates, that sort of thing."

"What does that have to do with vampires?" Alex said.

"What, you never saw Highlander?" Sid said. "Someone lives a long time, they can use a stolen birth certificate to reset their birth date."

Sangster nodded. "Records like that are useful to the Scholomance. So modernizing them would make their normal operations tougher. This a.s.sa.s.sination would have struck fear in the hearts of men, plus it would have been more effective than lobbying."

"Go back," Alex said, waving his hand. "You said ten."

"Sorry?"

"Ten debutantes, but there were twelve-Minhi was spared, so that leaves eleven that should have been s.h.i.+pped off to cult rehab." Alex looked at the teacher, trying to search the eyes behind the sungla.s.ses. "Vienna."

"What about Vienna?" asked Minhi, who came alongside Sangster just then. She was carrying a backpack and had her hair pulled back under a cap. The weather had turned chilly and she was wearing a puffy coat.

"We're taking care of Vienna," Sangster said. "The moment she saw the other debutantes start responding to Ultravox's messages, she ran with her father and locked him in a stateroom. Then she got as far from him as possible. She was afraid she might not be spared the vampire's voice curse and she'd wind up stabbing him."

"The Scholomance has been really rough on her," Alex said, feeling helpless. "They used her brother's injuries to get her to betray her fellow students, and permanently changed her with that scarf. I'm not surprised she was afraid the worst would happen."

Sangster agreed. "Well, she waited at the stern and handed herself over to the Polidorium at her first opportunity, and we're trying to get some other help for her."

Alex understood. They-the Polidorium, with Montrose-were helping Vienna with the scarf.

Minhi nodded, looking down. "Her stuff is still in her room," she said. "I was wondering where she was."

"Anyway, this place is looking great," Sangster said. "Now that it's livable maybe we can start working on the real Glenarvon."

Alex's heart sank at the thought. He kind of liked "Glenarvon-LaLaurie."

"Don't look so crushed," Sangster said. "Otranto said months, but I'll be surprised if it's this year."

Sid cleared his throat and said, "Mr. Sangster, I hate to cut this short, but I have to go work." He had a yellow pad and a bunch of pens. He looked miserable.

"Pumpkin Show?" Sangster said, looking at his watch. "So tonight is the last one."

Sid nodded, suddenly looking kind of pale. "It's the first one I'm doing without using the book."

"Who needs it? Anyway, I was just stopping by." Sangster had an apartment now, in another wing of the house. Alex had heard it was about the size of three of these student rooms. "You guys have made good guests," Sangster said. "Very good guests." And with that he was gone.