by Rachel Caine
He just shook his head, his expression something between You’re crazy and You’re amazing. But not in a good way. She pulled up a chair and began leafing through the books, one after another. Nothing…nothing…nothing…
“Claire.” Shane sounded odd. He handed her a black leather-bound book. “Take a look.”
It was too new. They were looking for an old book, right? This was…this was a Holy Bible. With a cross on the front.
“Look inside,” he said. She opened it. The first few gold-leafed pages were standard, the same familiar words she’d grown up with, and still believed. Eve had said they had a few churches in Morganville, right? Maybe they had services. She’d have to check.
Midway through Exodus, the pages went hollow, and there was a tiny little volume hidden inside the Bible. Old. Very old. The cover was water-stained dirty leather, and scratched into it was a symbol.
The symbol.
Claire pulled it out of the Bible and opened it.
“Well?” Shane demanded after a few seconds. “What about it?”
“It’s—” She swallowed hard. “It’s in Latin.”
“So? What does it say?”
“I don’t read Latin!”
“You’re kidding. I thought all geniuses read Latin. Isn’t that the international language for smart people?”
She picked up a book without looking and threw it at him. He ducked. It flopped to the floor. Claire flipped pages in the small volume. It was handwritten in faded, coppery ink, the kind of beautiful perfect writing from hundreds of years ago.
She was actually holding it in her hands.
And here she’d been intending to just fake it.
“We’d better get going,” Shane said. “Seriously. I don’t want to be here when the cops come calling.”
“You think they will?”
“Well, if dear old Prof Wilson keeled over after stealing the vampires blind, yeah, I think they’ll send a couple of cops over to inventory the goodies. So we’d better move it.”
She stuffed the journal back into the Bible and started to put it into her backpack, then paused in outright despair. Too much stuff. “We need another bag,” she said. “Something small.”
Shane came up with a plastic grocery sack from the kitchen, stuck the Bible inside, and hustled her out. She looked back at Professor Wilson’s lonely living room one last time. A clock ticked on the mantel, and everything waited for a life that would never start up again.
She was right. It was sad.
“Run first,” Shane said. “Mourn later.”
It was the perfect motto for Morganville.
They made it back home with half an hour or so to spare, but as they turned the corner on Lot Street, where the Gothic bulk of the Glass House pretty much dwarfed all of the other, newer houses around it, Claire’s eyes went immediately to the blue SUV sitting at the curb. It looked familiar….
“Oh my God,” she said, and stopped dead in her tracks.
“Okay, stopping? Not a great idea. Come on, Claire, let’s—”
“That’s my parents’ car!” she said. “My parents are here! Oh my God!” She practically squealed that last part, and would have turned around and run away, but Shane grabbed her by the neck of her shirt and hauled her around.
“Better get it over with,” he said. “If they tracked you this far, they’re not going to drive off without saying hello.”
“Oh, man! Let go!” He did. She twitched her shirt down over her shoulders and glared at him, and he did an extravagant bow.
“You first,” he said. “I’m watching your back.”
She was, at least temporarily, more worried about her front.
When she cracked open the door to the house, she could hear Eve’s anxious voice. “I’m sure she’ll be here any time—she’s, you know, at class, and—”
“Young lady, my daughter is not in class. I’ve been to her classes. She hasn’t been to class the entire afternoon. Now, are you going to tell me where she is, or do I have to call the police?”
Dad sounded pissed. Claire swallowed hard, resisted the urge to back up and close the door and run away—mainly because Shane was right behind her, and he was finding this way too funny to let her escape—and walked down the hall toward the voices. Just Eve and Dad, so far. Where was—
“Claire!” She’d know that shriek of relief anywhere. Before she could say Hi, Mom, she was buried in a hug and a wave of L’Oréal perfume. The perfume stayed longer than the hug, which morphed into Claire’s being held at arm’s length and shaken like a rag doll. “Claire, what have you been doing? What are you doing here?”
“Mom—”
“We were so worried about you after that terrible accident, but Les couldn’t get off work until today—”
“It wasn’t that big a deal, Mom—”
“And we just had to come up and see you, but your room is empty in the dorm. You weren’t in classes—Claire, what’s happened to you? I can’t believe you’d do something like this!”
“Like what?” she asked, sighing. “Mom, would you quit shaking me? I’m getting dizzy.”
Mom let go and folded her arms. She wasn’t very tall—just a couple of inches over Claire’s height, even in midheeled shoes—and Dad, who was glowering at Shane in the background, was as tall and twice as broad. “Is it him?” Dad asked. “Did he get you into trouble?”
“Not me,” Shane said. “I’ve just got that kind of face.”
“Shut up!” Claire hissed. She could hear that he thought all this was funny. She didn’t. “Shane’s just a friend, Dad. Like Eve.”
“Eve?” Her parents looked at each other blankly. “You mean—” As one, they cast horrified glances at Eve, who was standing with her hands folded, trying to look as demure as it was possible to look while wearing an outfit that looked like something a Goth ballerina might wear—all black netting in the skirt and red satin up top. She smiled sweetly, but it was kind of spoiled by the red lipstick (had she borrowed Miranda’s?) and skull earrings.
Mom said faintly, “Claire, you used to have such nice friends. What happened to Elizabeth?”
“She went to Texas A&M, Mom.”
“That’s no reason not to still be friends.”
Mom logic. Claire decided that Shane had been right—there was no getting out of this one. She might as well jump into the pool; the sharks were circling no matter what she did. “Mom, Eve and Shane are two of my roommates. Here. In this house.”
Silence. Mom and Dad looked frozen. “Les?” Mom asked. “Did she say she was living here?”
“Young lady, you are not living here,” Dad said. “You live in the dorm.”
“I’m not. I’m living here, and that’s my decision.”
“That’s illegal! The rules said that you have to live on campus, Claire. You can’t just—”
Outside the windows, night was slipping up on them, stealthy and quick as an assassin. “I can,” Claire said. “I did. I’m not going back there.”
“Well, I’m not paying good money just to have you squat in some old wreck with a bunch of—” Dad was at a loss for words to describe how little he thought of Eve and Shane. “Friends! And are they even in school?”
“I’m currently between majors,” Shane offered.
“Shut up!” Claire was nearly in tears now.
“All right, that’s it. Get your things, Claire. You’re coming with us.”
All the amusement faded out of Shane’s face. “No, she isn’t,” he said. “Not at night. Sorry.”
Dad got red-faced and even more furious, and leveled a finger at her. “Is this why you’re here? Older boys? Living under the same roof?”
“Oh, Claire,” Mom sighed. “You’re too young for this. You—”
“Shane,” Shane supplied.
“Shane, I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice boy”—she didn’t sound especially convinced—“but you have to understand that Claire is a very special girl, and she’s very young.”<
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“She’s a kid!” Dad interrupted. “She’s sixteen! And if you took advantage of her—”
“Dad!” Claire thought her face might be just as red as his, for very different reasons. “Enough already! Shane’s my friend! Stop embarrassing me!”
“Embarrassing you? Claire, how do you think we feel?” Dad roared.
In the silence, Claire heard Michael say mildly, from the stairs, “I think maybe we’d all better sit down.”
They didn’t all sit down. Shane and Eve escaped to the kitchen, where Claire heard a clattering of pots and furious whispering; she was sitting uncomfortably on the couch between her parental bookends, looking mournfully at Michael, who was sitting in the armchair. He looked calm and collected, but then, he would. Mom, Dad, this is Michael, he’s a dead guy…. Yeah, that would really help.
“My name is Michael Glass,” he said, and extended his hand to Claire’s dad like an equal. Dad, surprised, took it and shook. “You’ve already met our other two roommates, Eve Rosser and Shane Collins. Sir, I know you’re concerned about Claire. You should be. She’s on her own for the first time, and she’s younger than most kids coming to college. I don’t blame you for being worried.”
Dad, defused, settled for looking stubborn. “And who the heck are you, Michael Glass?”
“I own this house,” he said. “I rent a room to your daughter.”
“How old are you?”
“A little over eighteen. So are Shane and Eve. We’ve known each other a long time, and to be honest, we didn’t really want to let another person into the house, but…” Michael shrugged. “We had an empty bedroom, and splitting costs four ways is better. I thought a long time about letting Claire stay here. We had house meetings about it.”
Claire blinked at him. He had? They did?
“My daughter’s a minor,” Dad said. “I’m not happy about this. Not at all.”
“Sir, I understand. I wasn’t too happy about it, either. Even having her here is a risk for us, you understand.” Michael didn’t have to go into it, Claire saw; her dad totally got it. “But she needed us, and we couldn’t turn her away.”
“You mean you couldn’t turn her money away,” Dad said, frowning. For answer, Michael got up, went to a wooden box sitting on the shelf, and took out an envelope. He handed it to Dad.
“That’s what she paid me,” he said. “The whole amount. I kept it in case she wanted to leave. This wasn’t about money, Mr. Danvers. It was about Claire’s safety.”
Michael glanced across at her, and she bit her lip. She’d been hoping to avoid this—desperately hoping—but she couldn’t see any way out now. She nodded slightly and slumped back on the couch cushions, trying to make herself small. Smaller.
“Claire’s dorm was girls-only,” Claire’s mom put in. She reached over to stroke Claire’s hair absently, the way she did when Claire was little. Claire endured it. Actually, she secretly liked it, a little, and had to fight not to relax against Mom’s side and let herself be hugged. Protected. “She was safe, wasn’t she? That Monica girl said—”
“You talked to Monica?” Claire said sharply, and looked wide-eyed at her mother. Mom frowned a little, dark eyes concerned.
“Yes, of course I did. I was trying to find out where you’d gone, and Monica was very helpful.”
“I’ll bet,” Claire muttered. The idea of Monica standing there smiling at her mom—looking innocent and nice, probably—was sickening.
“She said you were staying here,” Mom finished, still frowning. “Claire, honey, why would you leave the dorm? I know you’re not a silly girl. You wouldn’t do it if you didn’t have a reason.”
Michael said, “She did. She was being hazed.”
“Hazed?” Mom repeated the word like she had no idea what it meant.
“From what Claire told me, it started small—all the freshmen girls get it from the older ones. Nasty stuff, but not dangerous. But she got on the wrong side of the wrong girl, and she was getting hurt.”
“Hurt?” That was Dad, who now had something to hold on to.
“When she came here, she had bruises like a road map,” Michael said. “To be honest, I wanted to call the cops. She wouldn’t let me. But I couldn’t let her go back there. She wasn’t just getting knocked around…. I think her life was in danger.”
Mom’s hand had frozen in Claire’s hair, and she let out a little moan.
“It’s not that bad,” Claire offered. “I mean, look, nothing broken or anything. I had a sore ankle for a while, and a black eye, but—”
“A black eye?”
“It’s gone. See?” She batted her eyelashes. Mom’s gaze searched her face with agonizing care. “Honest, it’s over. Done. Everything’s fine now.”
“No,” Michael said. “It’s not. But Claire’s handling it, and we’re watching out for her. Shane especially. He—he had a little sister, and he’s taken an interest in making sure Claire stays safe. But more than that, I think Claire’s taking care of herself. And that’s what she has to learn, don’t you agree?” Michael leaned forward, hands loosely clasped, elbows on his knees. In the glow of the lamps, his hair was rich gold, his eyes angel blue. If anybody ever looked trustworthy, it was Michael Glass.
Of course, he was dead and all, which Claire had to bite her tongue not to blurt out in sheer altered-state panic.
Mom and Dad were thinking. She knew she had to say something…something important. Something that would make them not drag her home by the ear.
“I can’t leave,” she said. It came from her heart, and she meant every word. Her voice stayed absolutely steady, too—for once. “Mom, Dad, I know that you’re afraid for me, and I—I love you. But I need to stay here. Michael isn’t telling you this, but they put themselves on the line for me, and I owe it to them to stay until it’s settled and I’m sure they won’t get in trouble for me. It’s what I have to do, you understand? And I can do it. I have to.”
“Claire,” Mom said in a small, choked voice. “You’re sixteen! You’re a child!”
“I’m not,” she said simply. “I’m sixteen and a half, and I’m not giving up. I never have. You know that.”
They did. Claire had fought all her life against the odds, and both her parents knew it. They knew how stubborn she was. More, they knew how important it was to her.
“I don’t like this,” her dad said, but he sounded unhappy now, not angry. “I don’t like you living with older boys. Off campus. And I want these people who hurt you stopped.”
“Then I have to stop them,” Claire said. “It’s my problem. And there are other girls in that dorm getting hurt, too, so it isn’t just about me. I need to do it for them, too.”
Michael raised his eyebrows slightly, but didn’t answer. Mom wiped at her eyes with a handkerchief. Eve appeared in the doorway wearing a huge apron with a red-lips emblem that read KISS THE COOK, peered uncertainly at them, and gave Claire’s parents a nervous smile.
“Dinner’s ready!” she said.
“Oh, we couldn’t,” Mom said.
“The heck we can’t,” Dad said. “I’m starved. Is that chili?”
Dinner was uncomfortable. Dad made noncommittal grunts about the quality of the chili. Shane looked like he was barely holding on to his laughter most of the time. Eve was so nervous that Claire thought she would jitter right out of the chair, and Michael…Michael was the calm one. The adult. Claire had never felt more like the kid at the big table in her life.
“So, Michael,” Claire’s mother said, nibbling at a spoonful of chili, “what is it you do?”
Haunts the house where he died, Claire thought, and bit her lip. She took a fast sip of her cola.
“I’m a musician,” he said.
“Oh really?” She brightened up. “What do you play? I love classical music!”
Now even Michael looked uncomfortable. Shane coughed into his napkin and drained Coke in huge gulps to drown out his hiccuping laughter.
“Piano and guitar,” he sai
d. “But mostly guitar. Acoustic and electric.”
“Humph,” Claire’s dad said. “Any good?”
Shane’s shoulders were shaking.
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “I work hard at it.”
“He’s very good!” Eve jumped in, eyes bright and flashing. “Honestly, Michael, you should quit being so humble. You’re really great. It’s just a matter of time before you really do something big, and you know it!”
Michael looked…blank. Expressionless. That didn’t quite hide the pain, Claire thought. “Someday,” he said, and shrugged. “Hey, Shane, thanks for dinner. Good stuff.”
“Yeah,” Eve said. “Not bad.”
“Spicy,” Dad said, as if that was a flaw. Claire knew for a fact he ordinarily added Tabasco to half of what he ate. “Mind if I get a refill?”
Eve jumped up like a jack-in-the-box. “I’ll get it!” But Dad was at the end of the table, closest to the kitchen, and he was already on his feet and heading that direction.
Michael and Shane exchanged looks. Claire frowned, trying to figure out what they were looking so alarmed about.
They sat in silence as the refrigerator opened, bottles rattled, and then it closed. Dad came back, one cold-frosted Coke in his hand.
In his other hand he held a beer. He sat it in the center of the table and glared at Michael.
“You want to explain why there’s beer in a refrigerator with a sixteen-year-old in the house?” he asked. “Not to mention that none of you is old enough to be drinking it!”
Well, that was that. Some days, Claire thought, you just couldn’t win.
She had two days, and only because Dad agreed to allow her to go to the admissions office and file transfer paperwork. Michael tried his best, but even angelic good looks and complete sincerity weren’t good enough this time. Shane had stopped finding it amusing at some point, and started yelling. Eve had gone to her room.
Claire had cried. A lot. Furiously.
She was so angry, in fact, that she barely cared that Mom and Dad were going to be driving out of Morganville in the dark, unprotected and unwarned. Michael took care of that, though, with a story about carjackers stealing SUVs in the area. That was the best anyone could do, and more than Claire wanted, anyway.
