by Rachel Caine
“So . . . you’re playing a woman who can’t live without a man?”
“It’s a stretch, but the director wanted to do this post-modern kind of take on it, so he went with Goth girls for Blanche and Stella.”
“Goth girls, plural,” Claire repeated. “I kind of thought you were the only one in town.”
“Not quite.”
“Eve? You 911ed me?”
“Oh—uh, yeah, I did. I wanted you to meet—oh, there she is! Kim!”
Claire looked around. A girl had just come in the door of the coffee shop, not quite as Goth as Eve, but quite a bit farther down the curve than anybody else in the room. She had long black hair, dyed jet-black, with bubble-gum pink stripes. Her makeup was mostly eyeliner. She wore less-outrageous stuff, but what she did wear seemed kind of grim—black cargo pants, plain black shirt,black leather wristband, which had (of course) a vampire symbol on it.
Kim had signed up with a vampire named Valerie, apparently. Claire didn’t know much about her, but she supposed that was a good thing. If nobody was talking about her, Valerie was probably playing by the rules. Mostly.
“Hey, Eve,” Kim said, and slid into the third chair at the small table. “Who’s the burn victim?”
Claire felt herself stiffen, she just couldn’t stop herself. “I’m Claire,” she said, and forced a smile. “Hi.”
“Hey,” Kim said, and dropped Claire like a bad boyfriend to focus on Eve. “Oh my God, did you hear they cast Stanley?”
“No! Who?” Eve leaned forward, wide-eyed. “God, tell me it’s not that kid from high school.”
“No. Guess again.”
“Um . . . no clue.”
“Radovic.”
“Get out!” Eve jiggled in her chair, grabbed Kim’s hands, and then they both let out a wild, high-pitched scream of excitement.
Claire blinked as a mocha was thumped down in front of her. She looked up at Oliver, who was studying her with cool, distant eyes. He raised his eyebrows, didn’t speak, and went back to his job.
“Who’s Radovic?” Claire asked, since he seemed to be the most exciting thing since indoor plumbing. She couldn’t remember which character Stanley was, but she thought he was the wife-beating rapist—not somebody she felt inclined to squeal over.
“He runs the motorcycle shop,” Eve said. “Big biker dude, shaved head, muscles TDF.”
“TDF?” Claire cocked her head. “Oh. To die for.” She lowered her voice. “So, is he . . . you know?” She mimed fangs. Both of the Goth girls laughed.
“Hell no,” Kim said. “Rad? He’s just cool, that’s all. In that dangerous kind of way. I think he’s way more scary than any of them I ever met.” By which she meant vampires.
“I guess we don’t meet the same ones,” Claire said.
“Because mine? Plenty scary.” And . . . she knew that all of a sudden, she was trying to one-up Kim, and she didn’t like that about herself. She also didn’t like Eve and Kim being besties all of a sudden while she was sitting like a poor, pathetic lump on the sidelines with her disfigured face, with Oliver bringing her sympathy mocha.
That was just sad.
Kim barely glanced at her. “Yeah?” She sounded totally uninterested. “Hey, E, can I catch a ride to rehearsal tonight? Would you mind?”
“Nope. Hey, can I come in and see what you’re working on?” Eve threw Claire a quick smile. “Kim’s kind of an avant-garde artist. She’s really cool; I love her stuff.” There was a real glow in Eve’s eyes, an excitement that made Claire feel cold and a little pissed off.
I’m your friend, she wanted to say. I’m cool, too, right?
So she wasn’t some weird artist type who made art out of used toilet paper rolls and chicken bones—so what? What made that cool, anyway?
Eve didn’t hear all the mental arguments. Kim said something about the script, and they both got out their copies and flipped pages, talking about theme and motif and things Claire honestly couldn’t care less about, because she was now officially in a miserable mood.
She gulped the mocha as fast as humanly possible, given that Oliver had heated it up to the surface temperature of lava. She felt truly betrayed, not just because Eve had dragged her into the middle of Common Grounds with her face looking like undercooked hamburger, but because she was sitting there chattering away with Kim, ignoring Claire’s presence entirely now.
As Claire got up, though, Eve blinked and looked at her. “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah.” Claire couldn’t bring herself to sound too apologetic. “I need to get home.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, I just thought—I thought you’d like to meet Kim, that’s all. Because she’s cool.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Kim said. She didn’t sound all that sincere about it, but more like she wished Claire would hurry up and hit the bricks so she could get back to her BFF-fest with Eve. “Hey, you guys live in that house with Michael Glass and Shane Collins, right? What a couple of hotties!”
Claire didn’t like that Kim had even noticed Shane, much less knew his last name. Eve didn’t seem to mind at all. She just nodded, eyes wide. “They are, right? Man candy. We know!”
Claire grabbed her backpack. “I really have to go.”
“Claire—you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said. Kim was kind of smirking at her behind her drink, and Claire had a wild impulse to dump that coffee all over her.
But she didn’t.
“Bye?” Eve said, and made it a kind of pathetic question. Claire didn’t answer. She just pushed past Kim’s chair, not being too careful about it, and headed for the door.
Behind her, she heard Kim’s clear, carrying voice say, “Wow, what crawled up her ass and didn’t die?”
Claire threw a venomous look back over her shoulder, and saw Oliver watching her with a very slight frown grooving his forehead. Eve looked stricken, clearly surprised at Claire’s departure. Kim . . . Kim wasn’t even watching her. She just lifted one shoulder in an I-can’t-be-bothered shrug.
Then Claire was outside, taking deep breaths of the dry air and lifting her face to the sudden, swirling push of the wind. Sand hissed over the sidewalk, blown in from the desert.
Claire, miserably aware that she was in a horrible mood, walked home with the feeling that everyone, absolutely everyone, was watching her.
4
Michael was playing guitar in the living room of the house when Claire stomped down the hall, dumped her backpack without much care for the electronic feelings of the laptop inside, and threw herself full length down on the sofa. Michael stopped in mid-chord, and she sensed he was staring at her, but she didn’t look. Eventually, he started up again. The music spilled over her, beautiful and complicated, and as Claire lay there and just concentrated on breathing, she felt some of the awful tension inside her start to ease up. Still a horrible day, but she could never feel too angry when Michael was playing.
“So,” he said, not looking up from the frets as he tried out a complicated new flood of sound, “I’m thinking of going electric. What do you think?”
“Eve dumped me. I’ve been best-friend dumped.”
Michael’s playing stuttered, then smoothed out again. “Huh. I’m guessing that’s a no?”
“There’s this girl, Kim? You know who she is?” Michael nodded, but didn’t say anything. Claire felt her hands curl into fists, and deliberately, carefully straightened them out. “So this Kim, she’s like perfect and all. Ooooh, she’s an artist.
And all of a sudden she and Eve have everything in common and I’m just—the stranger who doesn’t get the jokes.”
“I’ve met Kim,” Michael said. His voice was neutral, and he kept his gaze on his guitar. “She’s like a black hole; she just pulls people right out of their orbits. Eve’s still your friend. She’s just crushing on Kim because Kim never wanted to hang with her before.”
“So what’s the story of the fantastic Kim, anyway?”
He shrugged, and shot her a quick, unr
eadable look. “She went to OLOM, so I didn’t know her all that well.”
“OLOM?” Claire repeated.
“I forget you didn’t grow up here. Our Lady of Mystery. Catholic school across town run by the scariest nuns you’ve ever seen. Anyway, Kim bailed on school when she was fourteen, I think. She’s our resident funky-artist type, I guess—more likely to flip you off than shake your hand.”
“I’ll bet she sucks.”
It looked like Michael was trying hard to hide a smile. “Art’s always subjective. She may suck to you.”
“She doesn’t to you?” Claire felt a little sinking sensation. Oh, great, of course Michael would like Kim, too. Shane probably not only liked her, but had dated her, and was secretly still in love with her. Claire Danvers, New Girl, was probably the only person in Morganville who didn’t think Kim was all that, supersized.
Michael stilled the strings on his guitar with the flat of his palm and sat back, finally looking right at her. “You should get to know her,” he said. “She’s—interesting. Just don’t get too close.”
“She treated me like crap.”
“She does that,” he agreed. “Did you know she survived a vampire attack when she was homeless and sixteen?”
Claire swallowed whatever she’d been about to say, which would have been snarky and sarcastic. Instead, she said, “Survived how?”
“Killed the vamp trying to drain her. She could have been executed—town rules. Instead, she was acquitted. No jail time. Brandon wasn’t happy about it—he was Amelie’s second-in-command at the time—but he had to swallow it. So really, there are only two humans in Morganville who’ve ever killed a vampire and gotten away with it.”
“Kim and who else?”
Michael raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Richard Morrell,” he said.
“Seriously?” Because Richard Morrell was now the mayor of Morganville, one of the three most important people in town, and it boggled Claire’s mind to think that the vamps had allowed him to just . . . walk away from that. “When?”
Michael didn’t have time to answer, because his cell phone started playing “Born to Be Wild,” and he pulled it to check the screen. “Got to get ready,” he said. “Sorry. Story time later. Hey, trust me, Kim’s a force of nature, but like a storm, she moves on. Eve will be fascinated for a while, but Kim will find somebody else soon enough. It’s how she rolls.”
Claire had the really strong impression that he wasn’t telling her everything. Or anything, really. But he didn’t give her time to go into it, either, just storing his guitar in the case and heading upstairs.
“Get ready,” she repeated, still simmering. “Yeah, everybody’s got somewhere to be but me. You should get to know Kim; she’s interesting.” Claire put a load of mockery into her Michael impression. “Yeah right.”
The back door opened and closed, floorboards creaked in the kitchen, and Claire smelled the delicious wood-smoke aroma of barbecue. She couldn’t help but smile, because hey—barbecue.
And, of course, the one bringing it.
“Hey,” Shane said, and leaned over the couch to stare down at her. His hair was getting longer, and even more slacker-messy, as if he’d gone after the most annoying bits with a pair of scissors. Or garden trimmers. It should have looked horrible, but on him, somehow . . . it looked hot.
Not that she was in any way prejudiced.
“Hey,” she replied, and held up her hand for him to smack. Instead, he took it and kissed it lightly.
“Why the mopey face? Did I forget to say something?”
“From you, hey is good enough.” She sighed. Complaining about Kim hadn’t been the great release she’d thought it would be; Michael had been on the fence, at best, and she had no reason to think Shane would be any different. “I’m just in a terrible mood.”
“This I’ve got to see.” Shane leaned over and stared into her eyes. “Wow. Yeah, that’s terrifying. I can see that you’re one second from snapping, Hannibal Lecter.”
She sighed. “Nobody’s scared of me.”
“Nope. Nobody. That’s a good thing, Claire.”
“Says the guy who scares everybody.”
Shane considered that and smiled slowly. She loved the way one side of his smile pulled higher than the other, and the little dimple that formed there. “I don’t scare you.”
“Well. Only a little, maybe.”
“I’ll have to work on getting rid of that little bit,” he said. “Speaking of scary, how’s your freaky boss?”
“Don’t know, didn’t go, don’t care,” she said. “My face hurts.”
“So you’re moping because your face hurts?”
“I’m ugly and nobody loves me.”
“Wrong,” he said, “and really wrong.” He kissed her fingers again, and this time, his lips stayed warm on her skin for a long time. “Michael’s getting ready?”
Claire let out an annoyed breath. “Yeah. Everybody’s got somewhere to go but me, and—what?” Because she was getting an odd look.
“The theater at TPU? He’s playing tonight? Packed house? Remember?”
Oh crap. No, she’d forgotten all about it, and now she felt—if possible—even worse. “I’m an idiot,” she said. “Oh man. I’ve been whining like a two-year-old about Kim. I forgot he was trying to get himself together for the show.”
“Kim?” Shane’s attention snapped into bright focus. “Kim. Goth Kim?”
“Yeah, what’s her last name, anyway? Weird Kim. That one.”
“Where’d you meet Kim?”
“Eve. I guess they’re in the play together?”
“Oh, crap,” Shane said. His expression changed, went guarded. “So you talked to her.”
“I wasn’t worth talking to.”
Was she wrong, or was that a little flicker of relief? “Probably a good thing. She’s kind of a flake.”
“Kind of?” Claire’s eyes narrowed. “Did you date her?”
His eyes went wide, and there was a fatal second of silence before he said, “Not—exactly. No. I—no.”
“Did you hook up?”
He started to answer, then shook his head. “I’ve got no good options here,” he said. “Whatever I say, you’re going to believe I did, right? But even if I did, it was a long time ago, and anyway, I’m with you now. All right?”
“All right,” she said. She felt as if pieces of herself were breaking off, and somehow, it was all Kim’s fault. I’m an adult, she told herself. Adults don’t get stressed out about ex-girlfriends or ex-hookups or whatever. Except she wanted to go find Kim and punch her out, which was not good, because she was pretty sure Kim would punch back, and harder. “Sure. It’s all good.”
Shane didn’t believe that for a second, but she saw him decide to fake it. “Right,” he said. “So. Barbecue. You in?”
“I can’t believe you eat barbecue after you serve it all day long. Doesn’t that get old?”
“It’s barbecue,” he said. “What’s your point? Come on, mopey. Come eat.”
He half dragged her off the couch, tickled her into giggles, and chased her into the kitchen.
He was right. Barbecue really was kind of a magic cure for the mopeys.
Claire dressed up for Michael’s show at TPU, but given the state of her sunburn, she wasn’t sure it was worth the effort—at least, until she got downstairs. Shane and Michael were standing together, talking, and wow. Claire lingered on the stairs, admiring.
“What?” Shane asked, catching her.
“Nothing. You guys look great.”
Michael shrugged, as if it were no big thing. So did Shane, even though he’d taken the time to put on his good black shirt and black leather jacket, and even sort of comb his hair.
Michael, though—rock star. Not in the glam hair-band sense, no, but he just looked . . . important. Claire wondered if Eve had picked his clothes for him; if she had, she really loved him, because they were comp
letely perfect. Speaking of which—“Where’s Eve?”
“Running late,” Michael said. “She’s meeting us there.”
Eve passed up barbecue? That was odd. Claire came down the rest of the steps and did a little inspection twirl for Shane. “Okay?”
“Spectacular,” he said, and kissed her—carefully, because of the sunburn. “You know I love that skirt.”
She blushed under the burn. “Yes. I know.” It was a short, pleated skirt. Plaid. The shoes she had on with it were the ones that Eve had bought for her last Halloween—funky, but cool and kind of sexy. Claire still felt a little uncomfortable with her body in general, but there was something about the signals Shane was giving her that made her feel less awkward. More—confident.
“You guys going with me?” Michael asked, juggling his car keys. “If so, the bus is leaving.”
They were, of course; with Eve MIA, they had no other car, and walking in the dark was still not the best idea in the world, even in the new, calmer Morganville. It wasn’t a long trip, and Michael drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as if he were practicing fingerings for his guitar; nobody said much. Claire leaned against Shane in the back, her head on his shoulder, and his presence went a long way toward making her forget about how bad her day had been.
At least, until she remembered that he’d once sat like this with Kim, back in undefined olden times. “Hey,” she said. “About Kim—”
“Oh man, I knew it. You’re not letting it go, are you?”
“I just want to know—did you guys date, or—”
“No,” Shane said, and looked away. He’d have been staring out the window, except that the dark tinting prevented him from actually seeing anything out there. “Okay, I took her bowling once. She was pretty good at it. Does that count as a date?”
“It does if you hooked up after.”
He hesitated, and finally sighed. “Yes,” he said. “Guilty. Dated. Hooked up. She moved on to the next guy. Anything else?”
