by Rachel Caine
“You didn’t do anything crazy, right?” It was hard to keep her eyes open, but touching him felt so good. So amazingly good.
“Michael had to pound me a couple of times to convince me not to go stage a rescue.” Shane shrugged. “He hits like a girl, for a vampire.”
“He was trying not to hurt you, dummy.”
“Yeah, I know. Scoot over.”
She did, and opened up the blanket. He slid in next to her, turned on his side, and kissed her before she could protest about needing a shower and toothpaste and all that stuff.
He wrapped her in his arms, so close, and she felt his breath stirring her hair. “You’re safe now,” he said. “You’re safe.”
She drifted off again in seconds into a deep, warm, dreamless sleep, feeling good for the first time in what seemed like years.
SEVEN
Eve woke them up when she clattered downstairs at ten in the morning. Shane groaned, rolled over, and fell off the couch with a thump, tangled in the blanket. Eve stopped on the steps and leaned over the railing. “Wow, Grace, that was impressive. You really stuck the landing. . . . Claire?” She blinked, then practically flew down the rest of the steps. “Claire! You’re back! You’re okay!” She stepped over Shane, who was still trying to get free of the blanket, and pulled Claire up to hug her like a rag doll. “We were so scared; we didn’t know how to get to you—everybody was looking—” She stopped and held Claire at arm’s length. “Ew.”
“Yeah,” Claire said. “I need a shower.”
“I don’t think a shower’s going to cut it. Maybe fire hoses, and those brushes they use on elephants.” Eve stepped back and offered Shane a hand up as he finally got untangled.
“Speaking of elephants, you sounded like a herd of something coming down the stairs,” he said. “What the hell are your shoes made of? Hooves?”
“And good morning to you, too, grumpy. Nice bedhead.” He flipped her off. “No coffee for you.” Eve turned back to Claire and hugged her one more time. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” Claire said, and yawned again. “I will be once I get clean.”
“Yeah, big endorsement of that. I’ll have breakfast ready for you!”
Shane grabbed Claire’s hand. She smiled at him, oddly shy, because the glow in his eyes meant he was up to something, or thinking about being up to something. But he finally shook his head and said, “Go on, before I do something I probably shouldn’t.”
That sounded interesting. She wasn’t that tired. But yuck, getting clean sounded even better. So she kissed him quickly and ran up the steps toward the bathroom.
“See?” she heard Shane yell at the kitchen. “She doesn’t stomp around like a cattle stampede!”
“Bite me, Collins! No bacon for you, either!”
Things were back to normal. Claire breathed a huge sigh of relief, and felt something that had been completely knotted up in her gut start to relax.
The shower felt so good it was hard to actually get out again, but the creaky hot-water heater finally convinced her by spritzing in ice-cold bursts when it was about to give up altogether. The bathroom was wreathed in so much steam it was like a sauna, and Claire enjoyed the feel of it against her skin as she shaved her legs and underarms and applied lotion and generally felt human again.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Yeah, just a minute!” she called. “I’m almost done!”
“Mom?”
Claire stopped in the act of finger-fluffing her hair and turned toward the door. All of a sudden, the heat of the bathroom faded away, and the knot in her stomach came back. “What? Michael, is that you?”
Whoever it was, the voice didn’t call out again, and when she went to the door and pressed her ear against it, she didn’t hear anything at all. Weird. Really weird.
Claire put on her new, clean clothes—jeans, an orange camisole, and a pretty flowered sheer top that she’d scored at the resale shop. She unlocked the door and peeked out into the hallway.
Deserted.
She opened the door all the way and stepped out, accompanied by clouds of escaping steam. All the doors were shut, including Michael’s at the end of the hall. She didn’t see any sign of life up here, but Eve and Shane were still yelling back and forth downstairs.
Weird.
Claire left the door open and went to her room for her shoes. As she opened it, she found Michael standing in there with his back to her.
“Michael?” Finding him in her room was more than a little shocking. He was really good about giving her privacy, even if it was technically his house; he always knocked and waited for permission before coming in, which he rarely did anyway. “Something you wanted?”
He turned slowly to face her. She was blindly afraid for a second that something awful had happened to him, some kind of accident, but he looked . . . normal.
Just kind of dazed.
“What’s happened here?” he asked her. “It shouldn’t be like this. Why is it like this?”
“I—I don’t understand. It looks okay to me. I mean, sorry about the bed. I meant to make it up. What are you—”
“Who are you?” Michael interrupted her, and took a step back when she came toward him. “Whoa. Stay right there. Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?”
Claire’s mouth opened and closed, because she had no idea what to say to that. Was he kidding? No, she didn’t think so—there was real confusion in his face, real panic in his blue eyes. “I—I’m Claire,” she finally said. “Claire, remember? What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t—” He pulled in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and clenched his fists tight. She saw something strange pass over his face, and then he looked at her again, and he was back to being the same Michael she knew. “Claire. Oh, crap, Claire, I’m sorry. That was weird. I think . . . I think I was sleepwalking. I was dreaming it was three years ago, and my parents were still here. This used to be their room. I was thinking how weird it was that their stuff wasn’t here.” He laughed shakily and wiped at his forehead like he was sweating, although Claire didn’t think he was. “Wow. Didn’t like that much. It really felt wrong.”
She still felt afraid, for some reason. “But . . . you’re okay now?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, and gave her that dazzling Michael Glass smile that put girls on the floor from a distance. “Sorry if I scared you. Man, I haven’t sleepwalked in ages. So weird.”
“You knocked on the bathroom door,” Claire said. “You . . . you asked if I was your mom.”
“I did? Sorry; that is supercreepy. You’re much shorter than my mom.”
“Brat,” she said, surprised into a giggle.
“That’s no way to talk to a vampire.”
“Bloodsucking brat.”
“Better,” he said. “I can’t believe I just barged in here. I’m really sorry. Won’t happen again.”
“It’s okay; you couldn’t help it.” But she still watched him all the way down the hall, until they were downstairs. Having a vampire do something that strange, even if it was Michael, gave her a serious case of the chills.
In the kitchen, when they were all together, everything seemed fine. Michael was the same, and Eve and Shane sniped back and forth at each other with the same casual sort of loving cruelty that they always had. Claire found herself doing nothing but watching them, looking for anything odd. Out of place.
“Hey,” Eve said as she set a plate of bacon and eggs down in front of Claire on the table. “Space Ghost. You in there anywhere?”
Claire blinked and focused on her. Well, Eve would never freak her out, because Eve was always . . . Eve. Today’s eyeliner was dark blue, and heavy, and her rice-powder makeup and navy lipstick probably should have looked weird, but instead, they just looked cute. And normal. “Sorry,” Claire said. “Still tired, I guess. That was really, really hard.”
“Spill. Tell me everything.” Eve was going through a phase where she wanted to
eat everything with chopsticks. Claire watched her unwrap a set of cheap bamboo ones, scrape them together a few times, and dig into her eggs. “Did you have to do anything gruesome?”
“Not unless you count sleeping in Myrnin’s”—oh, she realized right at the end of that sentence that she really shouldn’t have gone there, because Shane and Michael both turned to look at her—“uh, lab. No, not really.”
Eve stared. “You were totally going to say ‘bed.’”
“Wasn’t!” Claire felt her cheeks flaming. “Anyway, all I had to do was repair something. And then they let me sleep. No big deal.”
“No big deal? You were gone for almost five days without a word, Claire! You got arrested! Even our resident ex-con was impressed.” Meaning Shane, of course, who’d spent his share of time behind Morganville bars. He barely paused in chopping up onions for his eggs to flip her off. “If it hadn’t been for Michael and Myrnin . . .”
“Michael,” Claire said, and looked at him. He was microwaving his sports bottle, which held his morning O negative. “I thought you might help hold Shane down and keep him from doing anything dangerous.”
“Wasn’t easy,” Michael said.
Eve nodded. “He stayed on Amelie until she told him what happened to you, and then he kept Shane from pretending he was a ninja and going to rescue you.”
“Hey, you, too!” Shane protested.
“Yeah, okay, me, too,” Eve said. “Myrnin called, too. I guess he thought it would be reassuring or something to tell us you’d been standing up for forty hours, and not falling down. What a whack job. Oooh, was he wearing the bunny slippers? Tell me he was wearing the bunny slippers!”
“Sometimes,” Claire said, and dug into her breakfast. It was good, really good. Eve was developing a flair for eggs and bacon and morning-type stuff. “You guys were really going to come get me?”
“Let’s just say the boys got their fight on about it, and leave it at that,” Eve said, and winked. “Tell me that doesn’t make you feel all loved.”
Claire did feel loved, and it made her blush. She concentrated on her food as Michael, Shane, and Eve got their own and slid into the other chairs. At some point, Eve called Shane a tool. Shane called Eve a skank. Normal morning.
Michael, though, was quiet. He sipped his sports bottle and watched them all without saying much. There was something odd about him still, like he was standing a few feet outside of his body, observing. Claire got that feeling again, that gut-twisting one. Something’s wrong.
But he seemed fine when they flipped for the washing-up, and fine when he lost the coin toss. In fact, he was whistling as he scrubbed dishes, tossed them up in the air, and caught them with impossible vampire skill.
Show-off.
“Whoa, whoa, speedy, where you going?” Shane asked as Claire headed for the door. “You just got here!”
“I need to talk to Myrnin,” she said.
“Not right now you don’t. You need to go back to bed.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Which made her feel a horrible stab of guilt, because she hadn’t even called her mom and dad, or gone to see them yet. “Ah, about—”
“Yeah, I know, you need to see the ’rents. Okay, but I go with.”
“Shane, you know how that’s going to play out.”
He sighed. “I really do,” he said. “But I’m not letting you run around Morganville today all by yourself.”
She stopped and turned to him. They were alone in the living room, and she took his hands. “You know about the frat guy? Kyle?”
Shane’s face went completely still, but his eyes were hot. “Yeah, I know. They’ve got him in the cage in Founder’s Square. Word gets around, even if us mere mortals aren’t getting tickets to the barbecue. People are angry. This could go bad, Claire. I don’t think Amelie understands how bad.”
“You think someone might try to break him out?”
“I’m pretty sure someone will. Hell, I’d have done it myself, except I was more worried about you.”
“Shane, I heard what happened. He and his frat buddies pounded on a vampire, and then he killed his own Protector when he came after them.”
“Yeah, well, I’d kill any of them if he had his fangs up in my face, too.”
“But you wouldn’t have let your friends kick some stranger’s ass and rob him; I know you wouldn’t. And Kyle was the ring-leader. Truth is, I don’t think it mattered to him who got hurt or killed. And I’m not sure it wasn’t cold-blooded murder, with his Protector.”
“If you’re not sure it was, then he shouldn’t be in the cage,” Shane said. “She’s going too far. People in this town have a taste of freedom now, and they’re not going to give it up that easily.”
“The vampires aren’t going to give up being in charge, either. People are going to get hurt if both sides keep on pulling.”
Shane nodded slowly. His expression didn’t change. “Our people get hurt here every day.”
There was no talking to him about this, Claire realized; Shane had come to terms with a lot of things, but he was never, ever going to believe that what the vampires did to humans for punishment was right. And she couldn’t blame him. She remembered how sick she’d felt, how horrified, when Shane himself had been in that cage, waiting to die.
Now Kyle was in there, and his family, the people who loved him, they were feeling the same awful horror. Even if he was a total tool, this was worse than punishment. It was cruelty.
“Maybe we should try to get him out,” Claire said. “Does that sound crazy?”
“Only all of it. You know what the penalty is for breaking someone out of that cage?”
“Joining them in it?”
“Bingo. And sorry, but I’m not risking it. You’re not exactly escape-artist material.”
She was a little relieved, actually. “Maybe I can talk to Amelie. Get her to change her mind.”
“See, that’s much more you. Reason Girl,” Shane said. “Parents?”
She nodded and grabbed her backpack from the corner—force of habit: she didn’t have school today, but the weight of the books and all the assorted junk she kept in it made her feel steadier. Shane turned toward the closed kitchen door. “Yo, undead-for-brains, we’re heading to the Danvers house!”
“I heard that,” Michael yelled back.
“Whole point, bro.” Shane offered Claire his arm, and she took it, and they set out for her parents’ house.
It was a nice day to walk, especially with Shane next to her. Well, truthfully, if it had been forty below and a blizzard, it still would have seemed like a nice day with Shane, but it really was beautiful—sunny, not too hot, a cloud-free, faded-denim sky that seemed to stretch a million miles from horizon to horizon. Wind, of course, like there always seemed to be in Morganville, but more of a breeze than a gust.
It still tasted of sand, though.
“Want a coffee?” she asked. Shane shook his head and kicked a rusted can out of their way.
“If I see Oliver, I’m going to punch him right in the face,” he said. “So no. I’ll skip the coffee.”
“Right, no caffeine for you at all.” There wasn’t much else to do in Morganville besides the coffee shop, anyway. Movies weren’t playing yet, and they were too young for the bars, which also weren’t open yet. She was hoping to delay the inevitable bringing-Shane-to-her-parents tension, but really, there was no getting around it.
She was still working on what she was going to say to her dad when Shane said, “Huh. That’s weird.”
There was something in his voice that made her look up. She saw nothing out of place for a second, but then she saw someone sitting on the curb a block up, head down, shoulders shaking.
Crying.
“Should we . . . ?” she asked. Shane shrugged.
“Probably couldn’t hurt. Maybe he needs help.”
It was a he, after all, a college kid wearing a black knit shirt and scuffed-up jeans. Claire had seen him somewhere before. . . .
It
was the boy from the Science Building. The one who’d given her the rave flyer. Alex? She thought his name was Alex.
As they got closer, she felt that stab of anxiety again. Alex was not the kind of guy to be crying in public like some four-year-old, and besides that, he looked really, really upset.
“Alex?” Claire let go of Shane’s hand and motioned for him to stay put while she crossed the last few feet to the boy. “Hey, Alex? Are you okay?”
He gulped and swiped at his eyes, blinking furiously. Then he glared at her. “Leave me alone.” There was so much ferocity in his voice that Claire instinctively held up both hands and took a step back.
“Okay, sure, I’m sorry. I’m Claire, remember? From the Science Building? I just wanted to help.”
He looked confused then, as well as angry. He scrambled to his feet and looked around, then lunged for Claire and grabbed her arm. His eyes were wild. “Who are you?” he said. “Where am I?”
“Hey, man, let go!” Shane stepped in and batted Alex’s hand away. “Chill. She was trying to help, okay?”
That seemed to make him angrier. Alex shouted right in their faces, “Where am I? How did you get me here?”
Shane looked at Claire and mimed drinking, then shook his head. “Must have been one hell of a party,” he whispered. “Who is this guy?”
“Just somebody from school.”
“Hey!” Alex was shouting again, getting red in the face. “You tell me how I got here or I’m calling the cops!”
“Um . . .” Claire pointed behind him. One block away were the gates of Texas Prairie University. “You’re not exactly lost. I don’t know how you got here, but all you have to do is turn around and go back to the dorm—”
Alex looked over his shoulder, then snapped his head back around to focus on her. “I don’t know what kind of sick joke you think you’re playing, but you’d better tell me what’s going on right now.”
“Hey, enough. Back off,” Shane said, and pulled Claire out of easy reach. “Go sober up, man. And find some kind of rehab, because, damn.”
