by Rachel Caine
“We don’t like smart-mouthed freaks around here,” he said. “We got our ways.”
“Yes sir. We understand now. We were just trying to have a little fun. We won’t be any trouble, I promise. Please let my friend go.” She kept her tone calm, sweet, reasonable—all the things she’d learned to do when Myrnin was running off his rails.
Orange Cap blinked, and she thought he was seeing her for the first time. “You need better friends, little girl,” he said. “Shouldn’t be running around with a bunch of freaks. If you was my daughter—” But he’d lost his edge, and he let go of Eve’s hair and wiped his hand on his greasy jeans as he folded up his knife. “You get on up out of here. Right now. You let Berle go, and we’ll let this pass. Nobody gets hurt.”
“We’re going,” Claire said instantly, and grabbed Shane’s hand. Michael let go of the angry guy, Berle, who snatched his arm back and rubbed at his wrist as if it hurt. It probably did. Claire could see white marks where Michael had held him. That was restraint, for Michael; he probably could have broken the bone without much effort. “Sir?” She spoke again to Orange Cap, treating him like the man in charge, and he nodded and clapped his friends on the shoulders.
They all stepped back.
Claire slipped out of the booth and squeezed by the men, practically dragging Shane with her. Eve and Michael followed. They walked away from the table, into the store, and Claire pushed open the door and led them all outside, into the harsh white light near the gas pumps and the car.
She looked back at the store. The three men, the people working the restaurant, and practically everyone else were looking out the windows at them.
Claire turned on Eve first. “Are you crazy?” she demanded. “Just couldn’t shut up, could you? And you!” She pointed at Michael. “You’re not in Morganville anymore, Michael. Back there you were a big dog. Out here, you’re what we were back there. Vulnerable. So you need to stop thinking that people owe you respect just because you’re a vampire.”
He looked stunned. “That’s not what I—”
“It was,” she said, interrupting him. “You acted like a vamp, Michael. Like any vamp getting back-talked by a human. You could have gotten us hurt. You could have gotten Eve killed!”
Michael looked at Shane, who lifted his shoulders in a tiny, apologetic shrug. “She’s not wrong, bro.”
“That’s not what it was,” Michael insisted. “I was just trying to—look, Eve started it.”
“Hey! That thump you heard was me under the bus, there! ”
Shane shrugged again. “And now Michael’s not wrong. Hey, I like this game. I don’t have to be the wrong one for once in my life.”
“Shut up, Shane,” Eve snapped. “What about you, Miss Oh, sir, please let my friends go; I’m such a delicate little flower? What a crock of shit, Claire!”
“Oh, so now you’re mad because I got you out of it?” Claire felt her cheeks flaming, and she was literally shaking now with anger and distress. “You started it, Eve! I was just trying to keep you from getting killed! Sorry you didn’t like how I pulled that off!”
“You just—can’t you stand up for yourself?”
“Hey,” Shane said softly, and touched Eve’s arm. She whirled toward him, fists clenched, but Shane held up both hands in clear surrender. “She stood up for you. Might want to consider that before you go calling Claire a coward. She’s never been that.”
“Oh, sure, you take her side!”
“It’s not a side,” Shane said. “And if it is, you ought to be on it, too.”
Michael had been watching, calming down (or at least shutting down), and now he reached out and put his hands on Eve’s shoulders. She tensed, then relaxed, closed her eyes, and blew out an impatient breath. “Right,” she said. “You’re going to tell me I can’t be upset about nearly getting my face cut off.”
“No,” Michael said. “But don’t take it out on Claire. It’s not her fault.”
“It’s mine.”
“Well...” He sighed. “Kind of mine, too. Share?”
Eve turned to face him. “I like my blame. I keep it close like a warm, furry blanket.”
“Let go,” he said, and kissed her lightly. “You’re taking my side of the blame blanket.”
“Fine. You can have half.” Eve was calmer now, and relaxed into Michael’s embrace. “Damn. That was stupid, wasn’t it? We nearly got killed over ice cream.”
“Another thing I don’t want on my tombstone,” Shane said.
“You have others?” Claire asked.
He held up one finger. “I thought it wasn’t loaded,” Shane said. Second finger. “Hand me a match so I can check the gas tank.” Third finger. “Killed over ice cream. Basically, any death that requires me to be stupid first.”
Michael shook his head. “So what’s on your good list?”
“Oh, you know. Hero stuff that gets me rerun on CNN. Like, I died saving a busload of supermodels.” Claire smacked his arm. “Ow! Saving them! What did you think I meant?”
“So,” Claire said, taking the high ground, “what now? I mean, I guess ice cream is kind of off the table, unless you’re okay with random violence as a topping.”
“Got to be something else in town,” Michael said. “Unless you just want to sit here and take up a gas pump until Oliver gets his act together.”
“He told us to wait here.”
“Yeah, well, I’m with Michael on this one,” Shane said. “Not really into doing what Oliver wants, you know? And this is supposed to be our trip, not his. He’s just along for the ride. Personally, I like moving the car. Even if we’re not leaving him behind.”
“You really do have a death wish.”
“You’ll save me.” He kissed Claire on the nose. “Mikey, you’re driving.”
5
Durram, Texas, was a small town. Like, really small. Smaller than Morgan ville. There were about six blocks to it, not really in a square; more like a messy oval. The Dairy Queen was closed and dark; so was the Sonic. There was some kind of bar, but Michael quickly vetoed that suggestion (from Shane, of course); if they’d gotten into trouble asking for ice cream, asking for a beer would be certain doom.
Claire couldn’t fault his logic, and besides, none of them was actually bar-legal age, anyway. Though she somehow doubted the folks in Durram really cared so much. They didn’t seem like the overly law-abiding types. Cruising the streets seemed like a big, fat waste of time; there weren’t any other cars on the streets, really, and not even many lights on in the houses. It seemed like a really boring, shut-up town.
Shades of Morganville, though in Morganville at least you had a good reason to avoid being out after dark.
“Hey! There!” Eve bounced in the front seat, pointing, and Claire squinted. There was a tiny, dim sign in a window, a few lights were on, and the sign might have said something about ice cream. “I knew no self-respecting small Texas town would shut down ice cream service at night.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Shut up, Shane. How can you not want ice cream? What is wrong with you?”
“I guess I was born without the ice cream gene. Thank God.”
Michael pulled the car to a stop in front of the lonely little ice cream parlor. When he switched off the engine, the oppressive silence closed in; except for street signs creaking in the wind, there was hardly a sound at all in downtown Durram, Texas.
Eve didn’t seem to care. She practically flung herself out of the car, heading for the door. Michael followed, leaving Claire and Shane behind in the backseat.
“This isn’t going at all how I’d thought,” Claire said with a sigh. He laced their fingers together and raised hers to his lips.
“How’d you think it would go?”
“I don’t know. Saner?”
“You have been paying attention this last year, right? Because saner isn’t even in our playbook.” He nodded toward the ice cream parlor. “So? You want something?”
“Yes.” Sh
e made no move to get out of the car.
“Then what—oh.” He didn’t sound upset about it. He’d been telling the truth, Claire thought. He really didn’t have the ice cream gene.
But he did have the kissing gene and didn’t need that much of a hint to start using it to both their advantages. He leaned forward, and at first it was a light, teasing brush of their lips, then soft, damp pressure, then more. He had such wonderful lips. They made her ignite inside, and it felt like gravity increased, all on its own, dragging her back sideways on the big bench seat; pulling him with her.
Things might have really gone somewhere, except all of a sudden there was a loud metallic knock on the window, and a light shined in, focusing on the back of Shane’s head and in Claire’s eyes. She yelped and flailed, shoved Shane away, and he scrambled to get himself together, too.
Standing outside of the car was a man in a tan shirt, tan pants, a big Texas hat.... It took a second for Claire’s panicked brain to catch up as her eyes fastened on the shiny star pinned to his shirt front.
Oh. Oh, crap.
Local sheriff.
He tapped on the window again with the end of a big, intimidating flashlight, then blinded them again with the business end. Claire squinted and cranked down the window. She licked her lips nervously, and tasted Shane. Inappropriate!
“Let’s see some ID,” the man said. He didn’t sound like the Welcome Wagon. Claire searched around for her backpack and pulled out her wallet, handing it over with trembling hands. Shane passed over his own driver’s license. “You’re seventeen?” The sheriff focused the beam on Claire. She nodded. He shifted the light to Shane. “Eighteen?”
“Yes sir. Something wrong?”
“Don’t know, son. You think there’s something wrong about taking advantage of a girl who’s under eighteen on a public street?”
“He wasn’t—”
“Sure looked that way to me, miss. Out of the car, both of you. This your car?”
“No sir,” Shane said. He sounded subdued now. Reality was setting in. Claire realized they’d just made the same mistake that Michael had—they’d acted as if they were home in Morganville, where people knew them. Here, they were a couple of troublemaking teenagers—one underage—making out in the back of a car.
“You got any drugs?”
“No sir,” Shane repeated, and Claire echoed him. Her lips, which had felt so warm and lovely just a minute ago, now felt cold and numb. This can’t be happening. How could we be this stupid? She remembered Shane’s list of ways not to die. Maybe this ought to be number four.
“You mind if I search the car, then?”
“I—” Claire looked at Shane, and he looked back at her, his eyes suddenly very wide. Claire continued. “It’s not our car, sir. It’s our friend’s.”
“Well, where’s your friend?”
“In there.” Claire’s throat was tight and dry, and she was holding Shane’s hand now in a death grip. If he searches the car, he’ll open the coolers. If he opens the cooler and finds Michael’s blood ...
She pointed to the ice cream shop door. The sheriff looked at it, then back at her, then at Shane. He nodded, switched off his flashlight, and said, “Don’t you go nowhere.”
Through all of that, Claire had only a blurry impression of him as a person—not too young, not too old, not too fat or thin or tall or short—just average. But as he walked away, his belt jingling with handcuffs and keys and his gun strapped down at his side, she felt cold and short of breath, the way she had when she’d faced down Mr. Bishop, the scariest vampire of all.
They were in trouble—big trouble.
“Fast,” Shane said, as soon as the door started to close behind the sheriff. He yanked open the door, grabbed Michael’s cooler, and looked around wildly for someplace to put it. “Go to the door. Cover me.”
Claire nodded and walked up to the door, looking in the grimy glass, blocking any view past her of the street. She made little blinders out of her hands as if it were hard to see in. It wasn’t. The sheriff had walked straight up to Michael and Eve, who were still standing at the counter of the ice cream shop. Eve had an ice cream cone in her hand, fluorescent mint green, but from the look on her face, she’d forgotten all about it.
Claire glanced back. Shane was gone. When she looked back into the store, the sheriff was still talking to Michael, Michael was answering, and Eve had a terrified look in her eyes.
Claire nearly screamed when someone touched her shoulder, and jumped back. It was Shane, of course. “I put it in the alley, behind a trash can. Covered it with a stack of newspaper,” he said. “Best I could do.”
The sheriff had finished his conversation, and he, Eve, and Michael were heading for the door. Claire and Shane backed up to the car. Claire leaned against him and felt his heartbeat thudding hard. He looked calm. He wasn’t.
Eve didn’t even look calm. She looked, well, distressed. “But we didn’t do anything!” she was saying, as they came outside. “Sir, please—”
“Got a report of trouble up at the Quik-E-Stop,” the sheriff said. “People fitting your description threatening folks. And to be honest, you kind of stand out around here.”
“But we didn’t—” Eve bit her lip on blurting that out, because in fact they had. Michael had, for sure. “We didn’t mean anything. We just wanted to get some ice cream, that’s all.”
Hers was starting to leak in thin green streams. Eve, startled, looked down and licked the melted stuff off her fingers.
“Better eat that before it’s all over you,” the cop said, sounding relaxed and almost human this time. “Do I have your permission to search your vehicle, ma’am?”
“I—” Eve’s eyes fixed on Shane, behind the sheriff, who was giving a thumbs-up. “I guess so.”
He seemed surprised; maybe even a little disappointed. “Sit down over there, on the curb. All of you.”
They did. Eve had trouble doing it gracefully in the poofy black skirt she was wearing, but once she was down, she started wolfing down her ice cream. Halfway through, she stopped and pounded her forehead with an open palm. “Ow, ow, ow!”
“Ice cream headache?” Claire asked.
“No, I’m just wondering how the hell we could be so bad at this,” Eve said. “All we were supposed to do was drive to Dallas. It shouldn’t be this hard, right?”
“Oliver made us stop.”
“I know, but if we can’t stay out of trouble on our own—”
“That was an ice cream headache, right? Not an aneurysm?”
“That’s where things explode in your brain? Probably that last thing.” Eve sighed and bit into the cone part of her dessert. “I’m tired. Are you tired?”
Michael wasn’t saying anything. He was staring at the car, and the cop searching it—going through bags, purses, glove box, even under the seats. He finally glanced over at Shane. “What about the weapons?”
Shane’s mouth opened, then closed.
“Uh—”
Right at that moment, the cop opened Claire’s suitcase and pulled out a sharp silver stake. He held it up. “What’s this?”
None of them answered for a few seconds; then Eve said, “It’s for the costumes. See, we’re going to this convention? And I’m playing the vampire, and they’re playing the vampire hunters? It’s really cool.”
That almost sounded real.
“This thing’s sharp.”
“The rubber ones looked really fake. There’s a prize, you know? For authenticity?”
He gave her a long look, then dropped it back into Claire’s bag, rummaged around, then closed it. He left the suitcases and bags outside the car, scattered around, and after checking in the wheel wells and in the spare tire section, he finally shook his head. “All right,” he said. “I’m going to let you all go, but you need to go right now.”
“What?”
“I need to see your taillights disappearing over the town limits. And I’m going to follow to make sure you get there nice and
safe.”
Oh crap. “What about Oliver?” Claire whispered.
“Well, we can’t exactly give him as an excuse,” Eve whispered back fiercely. She ate the last bit of ice cream cone and smiled at the cop. “We’re ready, sir! Just let us get loaded up.”
Michael grabbed Shane, and they had an urgent conversation, bent over Eve’s giant suitcase. Eve leaped up, tripped over a random bag, and went down with a yelp that turned into a howl.
The sheriff, proving he wasn’t a total jerk, immediately came to bend over her and see if she was okay.
This gave Michael enough vampire-speed time to retrieve the cooler from the alley, put it back in the car, and be innocently reaching for the next bag before the sheriff helped flailing, clumsy Eve up to her feet.
“Sorry,” Eve said breathlessly, and gave Michael a trembling little smile and wave. “I’m okay. Just bruised a little.”
“That’s it,” Shane said. “No more ice cream for you.”
They finished loading things in the car, and Claire took a last look at the deserted streets, the flickering, distant, dim lights. There was no sign of Oliver; none at all.
“Well?” the sheriff said. “Let’s go.”
“Yes sir.” Eve slid into the driver’s side, closed her eyes for a second, then fumbled for her keys and started the car. Michael took the passenger seat in front, and Claire and Shane climbed in the back.
The sheriff, true to his word, got in his cruiser, parked across the street, and turned on the red and blue flashers; no siren, though.
“Thanks,” Michael said, and sent Eve a quick smile. “Good job with the tripping. It gave me time to get the blood.”
“Wish I’d meant it, then.” She put the car in reverse. “And could we please have another word for blood, outside of Morganville? Something like, oh, I don’t know. Chocolate? Red velvet cake?”
