by Rachel Caine
Eve bunched up a fist, and for a second Claire thought she was going to haul off and slug Monica right in her perfect, pouty mouth. But Eve checked herself. Barely.
"You so need to leave our house," Eve said. "Now. Before something bad happens that I won't really regret."
Monica gave her a look that said just how unimpressed she was with the threat. "I'm sorry, were you talking? Because I think I dropped off. Claire? I'm not here to banter with the mentally challenged. I'm just trying to be friendly. If you don't want to go, just say so."
Claire felt ridiculously like laughing, it was so weird. Why was this happening to her?
"What do you really want?" she asked, and Monica's lovely, crazy eyes widened. Just a little.
"I want to talk to you without the Losers Club hanging over my shoulder. I figured we could have breakfast, but if you're allergic to caffeine and pastry ..."
"Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of my friends," Claire said. That brought both of Monica's eyebrows up.
"Ooooo...kay. Your funeral," she said, and glanced at Shane. "So where was your boyfriend last night after midnight?"
"Who? Shane?" What time had she left his room, anyway? Late. But ... not after midnight.
"None of your damn business where I was," Shane said to Monica. "Eve told you to get out. The next step is I throw your skanky ass and see if you bounce when you hit the porch. I don't care whose pet you are, you don't come here and — "
"Shane," Monica interrupted with elaborate calm, "shut the hell up. I saw you, idiot."
Claire waited for Shane to give her a biting comeback, but he just sat there. Watching her. His eyes had gone very dark.
"They don't know, do they?" Monica continued, and tapped her rolled-up copy of Teen People against her hip. "Wow. Shocker. Bad boy keeps secrets. That never happens."
"Shut up, Monica."
"Or you'll what? Kill me?" She smiled. "There wouldn't even be DNA left when they got done with you, Shane. And the rest of you, too. And your families."
"What's she talking about?" Eve asked. "Shane?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing," Monica mocked. "Deny everything. That's a brilliant plan. Then again, it's what I'd expect from someone like you."
Michael was frowning at Shane now, and Claire couldn't resist, either. Shane's dark eyes darted to each of them in turn, Claire last.
"The cops aren't going to find any bodies out there in the alley. And they're not going to find one anywhere else in your house," Monica said, "because Shane moved a body last night, out the back door."
Shane still wasn't saying anything. Claire covered her mouth with her hand. "No," she said. "You're lying."
Monica folded her arms. "Why exactly would I do that? All it takes is for him to deny it. Ask him. Go on." She was staring right at Shane.
Shane's eyes narrowed, but he didn't say anything. For a frozen second or two, nobody moved, and then Michael said, "Christ, Shane, what the hell?"
"Shut up!" Shane snapped. "I had to! I thought I heard something down in the basement last night, when I was getting some water in the kitchen. So I went to check it out. And — " He stopped, and Claire saw his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed, hard. "She was dead down there. At the bottom of the stairs, like somebody had just ... thrown her. For a second I thought it was — " He glanced at Eve, then away. "I just thought it was you. I thought you'd tripped and fallen down the stairs or something. But when I got down there, it wasn't you. And she was dead, not just knocked out."
Eve sank down on the arm of the sofa, looking as stunned as Claire felt. "Who? Who was it?"
"I didn't recognize her. Some college girl, I guess, she didn't look local and she wasn't wearing a bracelet." Shane took in an audible deep breath. "Look, we've been in enough trouble as it is. I had to get rid of her. So I wrapped her up in one of the blankets out of the boxes down there and carried her out. I put her in the trunk of your car — "
"You what?" Michael snapped.
" — and I drove her to the church. I left her there, inside. I didn't want to just — dump her. I thought — " Shane shook his head. "I thought it was the right thing to do."
Monica sighed. She was checking out her fingernails with exaggerated boredom. "Yeah, yeah, touching. The point is, when I saw you, you were hauling a dead chick into the trunk of his car. And I just can't wait to tell my brother. You know my brother, right? The cop?"
Unbelievable. "What do you want?" Claire practically yelled it at her.
"I told you. Breakfast." Monica gave her a sunny movie-star smile. "Please. If you say yes, I just could forget all about what I saw. Especially since I was, you know, out after curfew and doing things I really don't want my daddy to know about anyway. Think of it as mutually assured destruction."
It sounded like a deal, but it wasn't, not really. Monica had all the cards, and they had none. None at all.
"There's no body in the alley," Claire said. "The police aren't going to find anything. You're sure?"
"Don't think so, but wouldn't that suck for you if they did?" Monica shrugged, puckered her lips, and blew Shane a mocking kiss. "You've got guts, Shane. No brains, but a whole lot of guts. You thought it out, right? Now that Michael's one of the chosen undead, humans can't get in this house without an invitation. So you have to either blame it on a vampire, or face up that one of you killed her. Either way, it's not going to be pretty, and somebody's going down." She held up her hand. "I vote for Shane. Anybody else?"
"Leave him alone!" Claire said sharply. "You want to go out, fine. We'll go. — No, don't you even start!" Eve hadn't even had a chance to do more than open her mouth, and now she shut it, fast. "You guys work it out between the three of you. I won't be long. Believe me, I probably won't be able to keep anything down, whatever I manage to eat."
Monica nodded, as if she'd known it would happen all along, and did a runway model's walk down the hall toward the front door. From the back, her shorts were barely legal.
And however much they hated her, Shane and Michael were watching her go.
"Guys," Claire muttered, and grabbed her backpack.
###
Claire hadn't been inside of Common Grounds in a while, but it hadn't changed. It was bohemian, warm, packed to the gills with college types grabbing their morning venti-whatever, and if Claire hadn't known better — known very well — she'd never have believed that the nice, smiling hippie type behind the counter was a vampire.
Oliver locked gazes with her and nodded slightly. His face stayed pleasant. "Nice to see you back," he said. "What'll it be?"
Much as she hated to admit it, he made the best drinks in town. Better than Eve, actually. "White mocha," she said. "With whip." She managed to hold back from adding anything more, because she didn't like being nice to him. God, he'd been licking blood off her wrist two hours ago! The least she could do was not say please and thank you.
"No charge," he said, and waved away the five dollar bill she dug out of her jeans pocket. "A welcome-back present, Claire. Ah, Monica. Your usual?"
"Half-caff no foam double pump latte, with pink sugar," she said. "In a real cup, not that foam stuff."
"A simple yes would suffice," he said. As Monica started to turn away, he reached out and grabbed her wrist. He did it in such a way that nobody but Claire would notice, but it was unmistakably threatening. "She doesn't pay. You do, Monica. You may think of yourself as a princess, but trust me. I've met them, and you don't qualify." He grinned just a little, but there was no humor in his eyes. "Well, perhaps met isn't quite the right word."
"Eaten?" Claire supplied acidly. His smiled turned darker.
"Oh, the charm and elegance of the younger generation. It does warm my heart." Oliver let go of Monica's arm and stepped away to make the drinks. Monica backed away, looking flushed. She threw a dirty look at Claire — yeah, like it's my fault, Claire thought —and stalked to the table in the corner. The one the deceased vampire Brandon had once staked out — pun
intended — as his own. There were two young college girls sitting there, with books and papers piled up. Monica folded her arms and took up a belligerent pose.
"You're in my chair," she said. "Move."
The two girls — shorter and pudgier than Monica — stared up with saucer-huge eyes. One of them stammered, "Which one of us?"
"Both," Monica snapped. "I like my space. Get out."
They gathered up papers and books and hurried away, nearly dumping coffee all over Claire in their haste to go. "Did you have to do that?" Claire asked.
"No. It was just fun." Monica sat, crossed her smooth tanned legs, and patted the table. "Come on, Claire. Have a seat. We have so much to talk about."
She didn't want to, but it was stupid to stand there, looking obvious. So she sat, dumped her backpack on the floor next to her feet, and concentrated the scarred wood of the table top. She could see Monica's flip flop living up to its name as the other girl casually jiggled her foot. It reminded her ridiculously of Myrnin, and the dirty flip flops he wore.
"That's better." Monica sounded way too pleased with herself. Not cool. "So. Tell me all about it."
"About what?"
"Whatever Amelie's got you doing," Monica said. "Your super secret stuff. I mean, she picked you for a reason, and it's not for your charm and good looks, right? Obviously. It's for your brains, right? You don't have any family here, you've got nothing anybody wants other than that."
Monica was smarter than she looked. "Amelie's not asking me to do anything," Claire lied. "Maybe she will later, I don't know. But she hasn't yet." She nervously twisted the gold bracelet circling her left wrist. It was starting to remind her of those bands biologists put on endangered species.
And lab animals.
Monica's eyes were half-closed when Claire risked a glance upward. "Huh," she said. "Really. Well, that's disappointing. I really thought you'd have something good I could use. Oh well. Then let's talk about making a deal."
"A deal?" First Jason, now Monica. How had Claire stepped into the role of negotiator?
"I want to negotiate with Amelie for Protection. You can give me an introduction. And a recommendation."
Claire nearly laughed. "Ask her yourself!"
"I would, but she won't let me near her. She doesn't like me."
"I'm shocked," Claire muttered under her breath.
Monica gave her a long look, one strangely missing the usual hip, ironic, contemptuous features. It looked almost ... earnest. "Since Brandon died, Oliver took over his contracts. The thing is, he's not keeping most of them. He's trading them for favors with other vampires. If I don't make a better deal, there's no telling what could happen to me." Monica pointed at Claire's bracelet. "Might as well start at the top."
Claire drummed her short fingernails on the table, glaring at the bar where it seemed like Oliver was taking forever to deliver their drinks. It occurred to her to wonder if it was really safe to drink something prepared by a vampire who'd been threatening her just a couple of hours before, but honestly, if Oliver wanted to get her, it wasn't like it would be hard for him.
And she really wanted the white mocha.
"Oliver's your Patron now?"
"For now. Until he finds something he wants more than holding onto my contract, anyway."
"Is he behind you asking about why Amelie signed me up?"
"Do I look like I run somebody else's errands?"
Claire glanced back again at the bar. "Maybe."
Monica went quiet. It wasn't the comfortable kind of silence, and Claire was glad when Oliver called out their orders. She jumped up to get hers, hesitated, and then picked up Monica's as well. She managed to do it without making eye contact with Oliver. He was just a dark shape at the corner of her eye, and she turned her back on him as soon as she could.
Monica had gotten up, and she looked honestly surprised when Claire handed her the drink. "What?" Claire asked. "It's called being polite, they probably didn't teach you that at home. Doesn't mean I like you or anything."
Monica seemed to have to think hard about what to say to that, and finally came up with a simple "Thanks." Which, Claire had to admit, might have been the nicest thing Monica had ever managed to say to her. Claire gave her a nod and sat down again. Peace in our time, she thought wryly. And promptly blew it by asking again, "Did Oliver put you up to it?"
Monica didn't even glance his direction. "No." But somehow, Claire didn't believe her.
"Do you have to do everything he says?" she asked, as if Monica hadn't just lied. And Monica lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. No other answer. "So you don't really want to talk to me, do you? You've just been told to do it."
"Not exactly." Monica smiled slightly, and very bitterly. "Check it out: you're a star. Everybody wants to know about you, vampires and humans. They're looking into your history, your family's history. If you farted in grade school, somebody in Morganville knows it now."
Claire almost choked on her first mouthful of white mocha. "What?"
"The Founder isn't what you might call accessible. And most of the vamps don't understand her any better than we do. They're always looking for clues about who she is, what she's doing here, with this town. This isn't normal, you know. The way they live here." Monica's gaze flicked to Oliver, then away. "He's old enough to know more than most, but he still needs inside information. And the word is, you could be the way to get it."
Claire rolled her eyes. "I'm nobody. And if she cared about me at all — which she doesn't — she'd never let anybody know it. I mean, look how she treats — " She stopped herself cold, heart suddenly hammering fast. She'd almost said Myrnin, and that would have been bad. " — Sam," she finished lamely. Which was also true, but Monica had to have noticed her stumble.
Which Monica emphasized by waiting for a full ten seconds of silence before she continued. "Whatever. The point is, you're sort of famous, and by hanging with you, I get seen by the right people doing the right thing. Which is all I care about. You're right, I don't care if we're BFFs. We're not going to trade clothes and get matching tattoos. I've got friends. I need allies." She sipped her complicated drink, her eyes steady on Claire. "Oliver wants what you know, yeah. And this — " She tapped her own bracelet. " — This says that I do what he says, or else."
"Or else what?"
Monica looked down. "You've met him. Best case, it means he hurts me. Bad. Worst case ... he trades me down."
"That's worse?"
"Yeah. That means I get handed to the bottom-of-the-barrel vamps, the ones too lame to get the good earners and the pretty people. That means I'm a loser." She looked down and fidgeted with her ceramic coffee cup, frowning at it. "Sounds shallow, maybe, but around here, it's survival. If Oliver blackballs me, I can't get anything but the freaks and the skanks, the ones who get their fix the hard way. They'll kill me, if I'm lucky. If not, I end up some strung-out junkie fang-banger."
She said it with such dry, matter-of-fact intensity that Claire could tell she'd spent a lot of time thinking about it. It was a long way to fall, from the darling daughter of the mayor to some addict trying to please a kinky freak for protection.
"You could be neutral," Claire blurted. She felt oddly sympathetic, even after everything Monica had done. She had been born here, after all. Not like she'd ever had a real choice in what she was going to be, or do. "Some people are, right? They're left alone?"
Monica sneered, and the second of two of humanity Claire had imagined she'd seen in that pretty face vanished. "They're left alone until they're not. Look, officially, they're untouchable because they've done favors, big favors, and their Patrons let them out of contracts. By big favors, I mean the kind they were lucky to live through, get it? I'm not interested in that kind of hero crap."
Claire shrugged. "Then go without a contract."
"Yeah, right. That works. I'm really looking forward to a future as second assistant fry wrangler at the Dairy Queen, and decomposing in some ditch before I'm thirty." Monica
rested her elbows on the table, coffee cup cradled in both hands. "I thought about leaving. I actually went to Austin for a semester, you know? But —it wasn't the same."
"Meaning you flunked out of school."
That earned Claire a filthy look. "Shut up, bitch, I'm only here because I need to be, and you're only here because you have to be. Let's not get too touchy-feely."
Claire swallowed a mouthful of sweet, rich mocha. If it was poisoned, she'd die happy, at least. "Fine by me. Look, I can't help you get to Amelie. I don't even know how to get to her myself. And even if I did, I don't think she'd take your contract."
"Then just shut up and smile. If I don't get anything else out of this wasted morning, at least Oliver can see that I tried."
"How long do I have to do this?"
Monica checked her watch. "Ten minutes. Suck it up that long, and I won't call my brother about your boyfriend's little indiscretion."
"How can I be sure?"
Monica slapped both hands to her cheeks and looked over-dramatically horrified. "Oh no! You don't trust me! I'm crushed." She dropped the act as suddenly as she'd taken it on. "I don't care if Shane has opened his own corpse taxi service, I only care about what I can get out of it."
"Maybe you want revenge," Claire said.
Monica smiled. "If I'd wanted that, I'd have already turned him in. Besides, I hear it's best served cold."
Claire pulled out a book. "All right. Ten minutes. I need to study anyway." Monica sat back and began a running, acidly accurate monologue on the outfits of the girls standing in line for coffee, which Claire tried earnestly not to find funny. Which she was able to do, until Monica pointed out a girl wearing a truly horrible polka-dot-leggings-under-shorts ensemble. "And somewhere in heaven, Versace sheds a single, perfect tear."
Claire couldn't control a snort of laughter, and hated herself for it. Monica cocked an eyebrow.
"See?" she said. "I'm so good I can even charm a hard-case like you. It's a waste of my talent, but I need to keep myself sharp." She finished her coffee, and picked up her little pink purse with the Teen People magazine sticking out of it. "Gotta fly, loser. Tell your boyfriend as far as I'm concerned, we're even. Well, okay, I'm a little bit more than even, and that's the way I like it. Consider this his restraining order: if I see him within fifty feet of me, I'll not only tell my brother about Shane's midnight adventure, I'll get some football types to pay his kneecaps a visit."
