Dead Girls' Dance tmv-2

by Rachel Caine

Michael glanced at her. “Yeah,’” he said. “I remember.’”

  “Oh hell.’” Shane collapsed back on the sofa and put his head in his hands. “God, man, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’”

  “Not your fault.’”

  “I called him.’”

  “You called him because it looked like we were all pulling an Alamo. You didn’t know—’”

  “I know my dad,’” Shane said grimly. “Michael, I want you to know, I wasn’t—I didn’t come here to do his dirty work. Not…not after the first week or so.’”

  Michael didn’t answer him. Maybe there was no answer to that, Claire thought. She scooted closer to Shane and stroked his ragged, shoulder-length fine hair. “Hey,’” she said. “It’s okay. We’re all okay.’”

  “No, we’re not.’” Shane’s voice was muffled by his hands. “We’re totally screwed. Right, Mike?’”

  “Pretty much,’” Michael sighed. “Yeah.’”

  “The cops will find them,’” Eve said in an undertone to Claire as both girls stood in the kitchen making pasta. Pasta, apparently, was a new thing that Eve wanted to try. She frowned down at the package of spaghetti, then at the not-yet-bubbling pot of water. “Shane’s dad and his merry band of assholes, I mean.’”

  “Yeah,’” Claire agreed, not because she thought they would, but because, well, it seemed like the thing to say. “Want me to warm up the sauce?’”

  “Do we do that? I mean, it’s in a jar, right? Can’t you just dump it over the pasta?’”

  “Well, you can, but it tastes better if you warm it up.’”

  “Oh.’” Eve sighed. “This is complicated. No wonder I never cook.’”

  “You make breakfast!’”

  “I make two things: bacon and eggs. And sometimes sandwiches. I hate cooking. Cooking reminds me of my mother.’” Eve took another pot from the rack and banged it down onto the massive stove. “Here.’”

  Claire struggled with the top on the spaghetti sauce jar, and finally got it to release with a pop. “You think they’re going to stay mad at each other?’” she asked.

  “Michael and Shane?’”

  “Mmm-hmmm.’” The sauce plopped into the pot, chunky and wet and vaguely nauseating. Claire considered the second jar, decided that if two of the four of them were boys, more was better. She got it opened and in the pot, as well, then turned on the burner and set it to simmer.

  “Who knows?’” Eve shrugged. “Boys are idiots. You’d think Shane could just say, ‘Oh man, I’m glad you’re alive,’ but no. It’s either guilt or amateur night at the Drama Queen Theater.’” She blew out a frustrated breath. “Boys. I’d turn gay if they weren’t so sexy.’”

  Claire tried not to laugh, but she couldn’t help it, and after a second Eve smiled and chuckled, too. The water started boiling. In went the pasta.

  “Um…Eve…can I ask…?’”

  “About what?’” Eve was still frowning at the pasta like she suspected it was going to do something clever, like try to escape from the pot.

  “You and Michael.’”

  “Oh.’” A surge of pink to Eve’s cheeks. Between that and the fact that she was wearing colors outside of the Goth red and black rainbow, she looked young and very cute. “Well. I don’t know if it’s—God, he’s just so—’”

  “Hot?’” Claire asked.

  “Hot,’” Eve admitted. “Nuclear hot. Surface of the sun hot. And—’”

  She stopped, the flush in her cheeks getting darker. Claire picked up a wooden spoon and poked the pasta, which was beginning to loosen up. “And?’”

  “And I was planning on putting the moves on him before all this happened. That’s why I had on the garters and stuff. Planning ahead.’”

  “Oh, wow.’”

  “Yeah, embarrassing. Did he peek?’”

  “When you were changing?’” Claire asked. “I don’t think so. But I think he wanted to.’”

  “That’s okay, then.’” Eve blinked down at the pasta, which had formed a thick white foam on top. “Is it supposed to be doing that?’”

  Claire hadn’t ever seen it happen at her parents’ house. But then again, they hadn’t made spaghetti much. “I don’t know.’”

  “Oh crap!’” The white foam kept growing, like in one of those cheesy science fiction movies. The foam that ate the Glass House…it mushroomed up over the top of the pot and down over the sides, and both girls yelped as it hit the burners and began to sizzle and pop. Claire grabbed the pot and moved it. Eve turned down the burner. “Right, pasta makes foam, good to know. Too hot. Way too hot.’”

  “Who? Michael?’” Claire asked, and they dissolved in giggles.

  Which only got worse when Michael walked in, went to the refrigerator, and retrieved the last two beers from his birthday pack. “Ladies,’” he said. “Did I miss something?’”

  “Pasta boiled over,’” Claire gulped, trying not to giggle even harder. Michael looked at them for a second, curious, and then shrugged and left again. “Do you think he’s telling Shane right now that we’re insane?’”

  “Probably.’” Eve managed to control herself, and put the pasta back on the burner. “Is this shock? Are we in shock right now?’”

  “I don’t know,’” Claire said. “Let’s see, we’ve been barricaded in the house, attacked, nearly burned to death. Michael was murdered right in front of us, then came back, and we got interrogated by the big, scary vampire cops? Yeah, maybe shock.’”

  Eve choked on another snort/giggle. “Maybe that’s why I decided to cook.’”

  They watched the pasta bubble in silence. The whole room was starting to smell warm with spices and tomato sauce, a comforting and homey sort of smell. Claire stirred the spaghetti sauce, which was looking delicious now that it was simmering.

  The kitchen door banged open again. Shane, this time, a beer in one hand. “What’s burning?’”

  “Your brain. So, did you two girls kiss and make up?’” Eve asked, stirring the pasta.

  He glowered at her, then turned to Claire. “What the hell is she making?’”

  “Spaghetti.’” And technically, it was Claire mostly, but she decided not to mention it. “Um, about your dad—do you think they’re going to catch him?’”

  “No.’” Shane hip-bumped Eve out of the way at the stove and did some spaghetti maintenance. “Morganville’s got a lot of hiding places. That’s mostly for the vamps’ benefit, but it’ll work for him, too. He’ll go to ground. I’ve been sending him maps. He’ll know where to go.’”

  “Maybe he’ll just leave?’” Eve sounded hopeful. Shane dragged a piece of spaghetti out of the tangle in the pot and pressed it against the metal with the spoon. It sliced cleanly.

  “No,’” Shane said again. “He definitely won’t leave. He’s got no place else to go. He always said that if he crossed the border into Morganville again, he was here until it was done.’”

  “You mean until he’s done.’” Eve crossed her arms, not as if she was angry, more like she was cold. “Shane, if he goes after even one vampire, we are dead. You know that, right?’”

  He picked up the beer bottle and drank, avoiding an answer. He flipped off the burner under the spaghetti, took the pot to the sink, and drained it with the edge of a lid. Like a real chef or something.

  Which, Claire had to admit, was pretty much totally hot, the way he moved so confidently. She liked to cook, but he had authority. In fact, she was paying a lot more attention to what Shane did today—the way he moved, the way his clothes fit—or didn’t, in his case, because Shane was wearing his jeans loose and just baggy enough to give her fantasies about them sliding down. Which made her blush.

  She concentrated on getting down the bowls from the cupboard. Mismatched bowls, two out of four of them chipped. She put them out on the counter as Shane returned with the spaghetti and began portioning it out. Eve grabbed the sauce and followed him down the line, ladling.

  It looked pretty tasty, actually. Claire picked
up two bowls and carried them into the living room, where Michael was tuning his guitar as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t been stabbed through the heart and dragged outside and—oh my God, she didn’t want to finish that thought at all.

  She handed him the bowl. He set the guitar carefully back in its case—somehow, with all the mayhem that had gone on in the past two days, it had escaped damage—and dug in as Eve and Shane trailed in with their own dinner. Eve had two chilled bottles of water under one arm. She tossed one to Claire as she sat down cross-legged on the floor, next to Michael’s knee.

  Shane settled on the couch, and Claire joined him. For a few minutes nobody said anything. Claire hadn’t realized that she was hungry, not really, but the second the sauce hit her tongue and exploded into flavors, she was starving. She couldn’t gobble it fast enough.

  “Hell’s put in a skating rink,’” Shane said. “This is actually edible, Eve.’”

  Again, Claire had the impulse to claim credit…and managed not to, mostly because that would have required her to stop shoveling pasta into her mouth.

  “Claire,’” Eve said. “She’s the cook, not me. I just, you know, supervised.’” Which gave Claire a pleasant little spurt of gratitude and surprise.

  “See? I knew that.’”

  Eve flipped him off and noisily sucked some spaghetti into her mouth.

  Claire got to the bottom of the bowl first—even before Michael or Shane—and sat back with a sigh of utter contentment. Nap, she thought. I could take a nap.

  “Guys,’” Michael said. “We’re still in trouble. You know that, right?’”

  “Yeah,’” Eve said. “But now we have catered trouble.’”

  He ignored her, except for a brief little quirk of a smile, and focused on Shane. “You need to tell me everything,’” Michael said. “No bullshit, man. Every last thing, from the time you left Morganville.’”

  Shane seemed to lose his appetite.

  Which, for Shane, was not a good sign at all.

  The vampires had offered them money. Cash compensation. It was Morganville’s version of Allstate, only it wasn’t insurance—it was blood money for a dead child.

  And the Collins family—Dad, Mom, and Shane—had packed up whatever had survived the fire that had taken Alyssa, and left town in the middle of the night. Running. That probably would have been that, Shane explained; people did leave town from time to time, and it was rarely any trouble. Michael’s own parents had taken off. But…something went wrong with Molly Collins.

  “At first, she’d just space,’” Shane said. He’d drained his beer, and now he was just rolling the bottle between his palms. “Stare at things, like she was trying to remember something. Dad didn’t notice. He was drinking a lot. We ended up in Odessa, and Dad got a job at the recycling plant. He wasn’t home much.’”

  “That must have been an improvement,’” Eve muttered.

  “Hey, let me get through it, okay?’”

  “Sorry.’”

  Shane took another deep breath. “Mom…she kept talking about Alyssa. You have to understand, we didn’t—I couldn’t remember anything, except that she’d died. It was all just sort of a blur, but not the kind of blur you worry about, if you know what I mean…?’”

  Claire was fairly certain nobody did, but she remembered her conversation with her own parents. They’d forgotten things, and somehow, they hadn’t really cared. So maybe she did understand.

  “I started working, too. Mom…she just stayed in the motel. Wouldn’t do anything except eat, sleep, sometimes take a bath if we yelled at her long enough. I figured, you know, depression…but it was more than that. One day, out of nowhere, she grabs me by the arm and she says, ‘Shane, do you remember your sister?’ So I go, ‘Yeah, Mom, of course I do.’ And she says the weirdest thing. She says, ‘Do you remember the vampires?’ I didn’t remember, but it felt—like something in me was trying to. I got a bad headache, and I felt sick. And Mom…she just kept on talking, about how there was something wrong with us, something going wrong in our heads. About the vampires. About Lyssa dying in the fire.’”

  He fell silent, still rolling the beer bottle like some kind of magic talisman. Nobody moved.

  “And I remembered.’”

  Shane’s whisper sounded raw, somehow, vulnerable and exposed. Michael wasn’t looking at him. He was looking down, at his own beer bottle, and the label he was peeling off in strips.

  “It was like some wall coming down, and then it all just flooded in. I mean, it’s bad enough to live through it and sort of cope with it, but when it comes back like that…’” Shane visibly shuddered. “It was like I’d just watched Lyss die all over again.’”

  “Oh,’” Eve said faintly. “Oh God.’”

  “Mom—’” He shook his head. “I couldn’t handle it. I left her. I had to get away, I couldn’t just—I had to go. You know? So I left. I ran.’” A hollow rattle of a laugh. “Saved my life.’”

  “Shane—’” Michael cleared his throat. “I was wrong. You don’t have to—’”

  “Shut up, man. Just shut up.’” Shane tipped the bottle to his lips for the last few drops, then swallowed hard. Claire didn’t know what was coming, but she could see from the look on Michael’s face that he did, and it twisted her stomach into a knot. “So anyway, I came back a few hours later and she was in the tub, just floating there, and the water was red—razor blades on the floor—’”

  “Oh, honey.’” Eve got up and stood there, hovering next to him, reaching out to touch him and then pulling back in jerky motions without making contact, like he had some force field of grief shielding him. “It wasn’t your fault. You said she was depressed.’”

  “Don’t you get it?’” He glared up at her, then at Michael. “She didn’t do it. She wouldn’t. It was them. You know how they work: they close in; they kill; they cover it up. They must have gotten there right after I left. I don’t know—’”

  “Shane.’”

  “—I don’t know how they got her in the tub. There weren’t any bruises, but the cuts were—’”

  “Shane! Christ, man!’” Michael looked outright horrified this time, and Shane stopped. The two of them looked at each other for a long, wordless moment, and then Michael—visibly tense—eased back into his chair. “Shit. I don’t even know what to say.’”

  Shane shook his head and looked away. “Nothing to say. It is what it is. I couldn’t—shit. Let me just finish, okay?’”

  As if they could stop him. Claire felt cold. She could feel Shane’s body shaking next to her, and if she felt cold, how must he be feeling? Frozen. Numb. She reached out to touch him and, like Eve, just…stopped. There was something about Shane right now that didn’t want to be touched.

  “Anyway, my dad came home, eventually. Cops said it was a suicide, but after they were gone I told him. He didn’t exactly want to hear it. Things got…ugly.’” Claire couldn’t imagine how ugly that had been, for Shane to actually admit it. “But I made him remember.’”

  Eve sat on the floor, hugging her knees close to her chest. She looked at him with anime-wide eyes. “And?’”

  “He got drunk. A lot.’” Bitterness ran black through Shane’s voice, and all of a sudden the beer bottle in his hand seemed to get a whole lot of significance for him, beyond just something to occupy his nervous hands. He set it down on the floor and wiped his palms on his blue jeans. “He started hooking up with these bikers and stuff. I—wasn’t in a real good place; I don’t remember some of that. Couple of weeks later we got a visit from these guys in suits. Not vamps, lawyers. They gave us money, lots of it. Insurance. Except we both knew who it was from, and the point was, they were trying to figure out what we knew and remembered. I was too drugged out to know what was going on, and Dad was drunk, so I guess that saved our lives. They decided we were no threat.’” He wiped his forehead with the heel of his hand and laughed—a bitter, broken sound like glass in a blender.

  Shane on drugs. Claire saw
that Michael had caught it, too. She wondered if he was going to say something, but maybe it wasn’t the best time to say, Hey, man, you using now? Or something like that.

  He didn’t need to ask, as it turned out. Shane answered anyway. “But I kicked it, and Dad sobered up, and we planned this out. Thing is, even though we remembered a lot of stuff, the personal stuff, we couldn’t remember things about how to find vamps, or the layout of the town, or even who we were looking for. So that was my job. Come back, scout it out, find out where the vamps hide during the day. Report back. It wasn’t supposed to take this long, and I wasn’t supposed to—get tangled up.’”

  “With us,’” Eve supplied softly. “Right? He didn’t want you to have any friends.’”

  “Friends get you killed in Morganville.’”

  “No.’” Eve put a pale hand on his knee. “Shane, honey, in Morganville, friends are the only things that keep you alive.’”

  4

  Claire couldn’t believe how much had poured out of Shane—all that grief and horror and bitterness and anger. He’d always seemed sort of, well, normal, and it was a shock to see all the emotional bloodshed…and a shock to hear him talk so much, about things so personal. Shane wasn’t a talker.

  She collected the dishes and did them alone, comforted by hot water and the fizz of soap on her hands; she cleaned up pots and pans and splashes of red sauce, and thought about Shane finding his mom dead in a bloody bathtub. I wasn’t in a real good place, Shane had said. The master of understatement. Claire wasn’t so sure that she’d ever have been able to smile again, laugh again, function again, if that had happened to her, especially after losing a sister and winning the Drunk-Asshole Lottery with Dad. How did he do it? How did he keep it together, and stay so…brave?

  She wanted to cry for him, but she was almost sure that he’d have been embarrassed, so she kept the misery inside, and scrubbed dishes clean. He doesn’t deserve this. Why don’t they all just leave him alone? Why does he have to be the one everybody beats on?

  Maybe just because he’d shown he could take it, and make himself stronger for it.