by Rachel Caine
Michael leaned over and kissed the top of her head—now that her hair was tamed again, not such a dangerous proposition—and said, “Be careful.”
“Always am.”
He left in a hurry, carrying both his acoustic and electric guitars. Eve smiled serenely and did her other eye with the mascara in careful, even strokes.
“Can you give me a lift?” Claire asked. “I’ve got classes. And what are we going to do about our visitors, anyway?”
“Nothing,” Eve said. “It’s not our business.”
“But—what if Jenna decides to go public? Or Tyler? They know too much, way too much.”
“They’ve got no proof now. And that’s what I’m going to tell the cops,” Eve said. “It’s not a Glass House problem anymore. It’s a Morganville problem, and it needs to be officially handled. Hell, Jason is the one who made all this happen, not us.”
It still felt wrong; Claire was afraid the official Morganville solution would involve two more bodies in a car crash, the end of the After Death story. But she had to admit, she couldn’t see any way out of it without telling the cops, or Oliver, or Amelie. Things had gone a little too far. And, she had to admit, she was carrying around a staggering load of guilt over Angel’s death. She had the nagging feeling that she could have done something to stop it…even though, in practical terms, she knew she couldn’t have.
It was a tangled mess, and it would take time to sort it out, but one thing was certain: they couldn’t afford to let Jason get away with it. He was already dangerous. If he thought he had a free hand, who knew what he’d do? Well, Claire knew; she knew that eventually, he’d come after Eve. And there was no way she could let that happen.
Eve did look beautiful, in a very Eve-ish way; she’d toned down the skull-themed clothes but kept the Goth color scheme of black, black, and some accent color. Her jewelry remained edgy, and her makeup was something normally seen only on fashion ads and outer-space movies.
She kept the clunky work boots, though, and Claire had to admit that it suited her.
The Car of the Dead looked shiny and new again, and Eve had added a bobblehead Grim Reaper to the front dashboard, complete with scythe and glowing red eyes that flashed when his head bobbed. She’d also swapped stuff for a kickin’ stereo that she cranked up to twelve and a half on a ten-point scale, the better to advertise for Florence + The Machine in a town that, Claire thought, had probably never heard of the band at all.
The music was too loud to talk, and that was okay; Claire was in a brooding mood anyway. She hadn’t slept well, and she was increasingly anxious about Myrnin. The day, by contrast, was a typical hot Texas day, low on humidity and high on sunburn potential. She kept the window rolled down for the arid breeze, such as it was.
Heads turned as they cruised past. Some, mostly older people, of course, were annoyed by the noise; some seemed neutral until they spotted the hearse. It was easily recognizable as Eve’s car; nobody else in Morganville, except the Ransom Funeral Home, owned anything even vaguely like it, certainly not with Death as a dash ornament. Claire, suddenly nervous, reached over and turned down the music.
“What?” Eve asked. She was in a surprisingly sunny mood, considering the events of the night before and her brother’s suddenly murderous turn, but then, Claire imagined she was relieved to be taking some kind of positive action against him for a change. “C’mon, it’s not that emo.”
“No, it’s cool. I just—” Claire couldn’t explain what her unease was, really, except that she definitely had a weird feeling. Maybe it was just all the flyers that they’d seen, and the fact that their front window was still shattered and braced up with plywood.
But it definitely felt personal, the glares they had coming these days.
The car cruised past Common Grounds, and in a glimpse through the front window, she saw that Michael was setting up his guitars. He didn’t get to play as much as he liked, so this was a special event for him. Becoming a vampire might have modified his rock-star ambitions a little, but there was no denying that he was really, really, really good. He’d even had an offer of a recording deal, but he’d turned it down, since touring seemed like a bad idea (and, of course, Amelie had forbidden it). After all, he had a substance problem that even major record labels wouldn’t be able to keep quiet about.
He didn’t say much about that, Claire realized; about how his whole life had been centered on music, and then it had changed without warning, and without his permission. He never complained about how unfair it was—at least not out loud. And not to her.
“He should have more people there,” Eve said.
“What?”
“A crowd. Michael always draws a crowd, but—look back there. Do you see a line of people?” Eve sounded shocked at first, then angry. “Those idiots. They’re not mad at him, are they? Why?”
Because he’s a vampire married to a human, Claire thought, but didn’t say. Eve knew that. She just couldn’t accept that people could hate Michael on principle, without counting who he really was.
“It’ll break his heart if they don’t come to hear him play. It’s all he ever wanted, to play and make people happy. If they take that away from him…” Eve bit her lip, and tears shimmered in her dark eyes. Claire reached over and grabbed her hand, and squeezed, and her best friend sucked in a deep breath and tried for a smile. “Yeah. He’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. Right?”
“Right,” Claire said, and felt the hollow ring of saying something she didn’t quite feel. She covered it with a big smile.
Eve paused at one of the town’s few stoplights, waiting for a few beat-up pickup trucks to crawl through the intersection, and said, “You in a big hurry to get to TPU?”
Claire checked her watch. “My class is in twenty minutes.”
“Oh. I was thinking maybe a coffee at Common Grounds…”
And making Michael feel better by their support, Claire guessed. She hated to do it, but she said, “Aren’t the police waiting for you, though?”
“Yes. Like there’s anything else I can tell them they don’t already have in the five-inch-thick file on my brother.”
“I guess they want to know who his friends are now, things like that.”
“Like I’d know.”
True. Jason and Eve had gone very separate ways from an early age. Claire wondered sometimes what it would be like, having brothers and sisters, but considering how bad Eve’s experience with it was, maybe she ought to be grateful to be an only child….
“Hey!” Eve said sharply. “What are you doing?”
Claire jumped, thinking she’d directed it at her, but no, Eve had rolled down the window and was yelling out. As Claire started to turn her head, she heard a high-pitched screeching sound, metal on metal, and Eve yelped, threw open her car door, and jumped out. Claire fumbled at her seat belt and finally got it loose, then exited after her. “What happened?” she asked, but it was immediately obvious, because a group of teens stood there on the sidewalk next to the intersection, and one of them had keys out and was scraping out letters into the paint of Eve’s car. He had a B and an I already incised. Claire guessed the T-C-H were coming.
“God, it’s like high school all over again!” Eve said, and shoved the boy away from the hearse. “Get your hands off my car, Aaron!”
“How about you get your hands off me, fang-banger?” he sneered, and shoved her back to slam hard against the scratched paint. “What goes around comes around.”
“You know, you weren’t the brightest crayon in the box even before you flunked out of school, but those were your glory days, weren’t they? You really want to get into it with me, dumbass? Biggest mistake of your life!” Eve, color managing to burn bright in her cheeks even through the Goth makeup, was furious, her body tight and shaking, her fists clenched.
“You think you’ve got some kind of magic shield, what with your hot vampire boyfriend?” one of the girls said from the curb. “You don’t.”
“Not boyfriend. Husba
nd,” another one said, and made a retching sound. “God, don’t you have any self-respect? Marrying him? That’s just gross. It’s like a cow marrying a butcher. They ought to throw you both in jail for being sickening.”
Aaron laughed. “Oh, sure, you’d say that, Melanie. You dated the guy in junior high.”
“Sure, before he turned into one of them!”
“My dad says you’re a traitor,” said another boy, and he had a very different tone—quiet, sure, dangerous. “My uncle Jake disappeared the other night. Just another casualty in a town full of them, right? And you helped. You helped put the vamps right back on top where they’ve always been. Just like all the Founder House families. You’re nothing but whores giving it up to the vamps for money.”
Eve lunged at him. Claire darted around the end of the limo with a sinking conviction that she’d never be fast enough to stop her, and she was right: Eve landed a solid slap right across his face. “Don’t you ever, Roy Farmer!” Eve shouted at him. “Don’t you—”
He hit her back, clocking her, hard, right on the point of her jaw, and before Claire could even draw a breath. It was as if some invisible signal had gone out to all the other kids—her age or just a couple of years older—to attack.
“No!” Claire screamed as Eve was grabbed, dragged forward, and thrown to the ground. It all happened so fast, and in such chaos, that she didn’t know where to aim a shove or a punch to get to her friend’s rescue. Everyone was moving all at once, and Eve was in the middle of it, and it was all just insane.
It seemed as if it went on forever until Claire grabbed hold of one girl by the hair and yanked. The girl, foot raised to deliver a furious kick, lost her balance and fell backward, and Claire dragged her a few feet away as she screamed and twisted and clawed. Whatever the girl was screaming, it involved a lot of curse words, and Claire wasn’t paying attention. She shoved the girl into a thorny shrub and lunged back toward the circle of attackers. Stopping one hadn’t put an end to the beating. The weapons she had were for vampires, not humans, and she couldn’t use them on people who couldn’t heal…though if this went on any longer, she might have to inflict real and lasting damage to save Eve’s life.
Deep breath. She let herself take a second’s pause, and identified the ringleader, the one Eve had slapped; he was the one laying into her with real viciousness. Claire quickly stepped up behind him, tried to channel Shane as hard as she could, and did two moves he had taught her: first, a hard, fast punch to the kidneys; second, putting the toe of her shoe in the bend of his knee as he twisted in her direction.
It worked. He broke off the attack and fell to his knees; then he got up, staggering, and turned on her. The others were still going after Eve, but as he came after Claire, they began to break off and follow.
She danced backward, screamed for help (probably uselessly), and tore off, running.
They followed.
Everybody in Morganville was pretty good at running, of course, but Claire had motivation; she slowed down just enough to make them believe they could catch her, and still stayed out of easy grabbing range. The ringleader of the group—what was his name? Roy something?—Roy was fast, and she had to work to stay just a few inches past his lunges. If he caught up with her, she had no doubt he’d take out his rage on her just as he had with Eve.
Let her be okay. Please, let her be okay!
Her legs were starting to burn; Claire could run a fair distance, but adrenaline and fear were taking their toll, and she knew that the kids baying like hounds behind her weren’t going to get tired as fast—they had mob mentality to urge them on. There was another intersection ahead, but she didn’t see anyone on the street. No, wait—there was a car, cruising up to the stoplight.
A red, flirty sports car with an open roof.
Monica Morrell’s car.
Monica had a scarf looped over her head to prevent the dry wind from blowing her glossy dark hair all over the place, and she was wearing big rock-star sunglasses; when she turned toward the noise of Claire’s pursuit, it was impossible to read her expression.
Claire took a chance. Jumping over the door of the car and into the passenger seat, she narrowly missed flattening Monica’s expensive designer purse.
Monica stared at her for a second in silence, then looked past her as Roy Farmer skidded to a stop a foot away from the car, breathing hard and crimson with fury.
“What?” Monica demanded. “Touch my car and die, Roy Toy.” And then, without turning her head to even look at the light, or oncoming traffic, she gunned the convertible straight through the intersection with a burning squeal of rubber. The mob—well, it wasn’t actually a mob, Claire realized, so much as six teens fired up with rage—fell behind fast, even though they took a couple of steps in pursuit. Monica watched in the rearview for a couple of seconds, speeding up to a limit-breaking sixty miles per hour and blasting through two more stop signs without slowing down, then said, “Any particular reason for that? Not that I care, except somehow trash blew into my passenger seat.”
“Thanks,” Claire said, because regardless of the insult, Monica really had just done her a solid. She was having trouble catching her breath both from the run and from real worry. “Right turn!”
“Not heading that way, sunshine. I’m going shopping.”
Claire grabbed the wheel and forced it, and Monica swore—honestly, she knew words Claire had never heard of, in interesting and colorful combinations—and smacked Claire’s hand away to manage the turn carefully. “I swear to God, if you make me dent this car, I will end you!”
“They got Eve,” Claire said. “Right turn! Make the block!”
“Why should I?”
“They beat her up. She’s hurt. They could go back!”
“And I care because…?”
“Monica, they could kill her! Just do it!”
Monica hesitated just long enough to make Claire consider diving out of the car while it was speeding, but then she hit the brakes and fishtailed into a hard right, then another one, then U-turned to squeal to a halt in the intersection where Eve’s hearse still idled.
Monica didn’t say anything at all. Claire took one look at Eve lying on the pavement in a pool of her own blood, time just seemed to freeze into a block of ice for a long breath. Then it shattered, and Claire scrambled out to kneel beside her. Eve’s eyes were closed. She was breathing, but her skin looked ashen, and she was bleeding freely from cuts on her head; Claire didn’t dare move her, but she could see the livid red marks on her arms where she’d been kicked and stomped. There could be internal injuries, broken bones….
Ambulance, she thought, but even as she reached for her phone, she heard Monica saying, “Yeah, 911? There’s somebody bleeding all over the sidewalk at Fifth and Stillwater. Just look for the hearse.”
Claire looked up at her as Monica shut off her cell phone and tossed it into her purse. Monica returned the glance, shrugged, and checked her lipstick in the mirror. “Hey,” she said. “Never let it be said I’m not civic-minded. That sidewalk might stain.”
Then she drove off with a roar of the convertible’s engine.
Claire was right about Roy leading the others back, but by the time they arrived, half of his friends had come to their senses, and the ones still with him weren’t enough to really work up a good frenzy. They were further held back by the sound of the ambulance siren piercing the air and moving closer. Claire sat back on her heels as she stared at Roy. He was a nondescript boy, nothing really—an okay kind of face, neutral hair, standard high school clothes. The only thing that really made him stand out at all was the blood on his hands, and even as she noticed, he must have, too, because he pulled out his shirttail and scrubbed the skin clean, then tucked the fabric back into his pants. Evidence gone, except for the bruises on his knuckles.
He pointed at Claire as the ambulance pulled to a stop, siren winding down, behind the hearse. “This ain’t over,” he said. “Captain Obvious says vamp lovers get what they dese
rve. You do, too, for sticking up for her.”
She had an almost-uncontrollable desire to scream at him, but she could see it wouldn’t do any good. They were all looking at her as if she were the monster and as if Eve were some kind of pervert that deserved to die. Shane might have known what to say, but Shane wasn’t here. Michael wasn’t here. It was just her, alone, holding the limp and bloody hand of her best friend.
She met his gaze squarely and said, “Bring it, Roy Toy.”
“Later,” he promised, and jerked his head at his posse. They headed out at a jog and split up.
It was only as the ambulance attendants asked her to move back and started evaluating Eve’s condition that she realized exactly what Roy had said.
Captain Obvious says…
Captain Obvious.
Oh God. Claire remembered the flyers, the brick, the gasoline thrown on their house, and the paper with the tombstones on it, and their names.
All their names.
Maybe Pennyfeather hadn’t used the gas at all; he’d just taken advantage of the distraction. Maybe humans had already tried to kill them all.
She tried Michael’s phone, but of course it was turned off; it would be, if he was playing. She dialed Shane, instead. He picked up on the fifth ring. “Hey,” he said, “kinda busy trying to get an actual job here….”
“Eve’s been hurt,” she said. “Get to Michael. Captain Obvious has us on some kind of hit list. And watch your back.”
“Jesus.” Shane was quiet for a second; then he said, “Is Eve okay?”
“I don’t know.” For the first time, the reality of it was hitting her as the adrenaline rush faded away, and she felt panic choke her up. “God, Shane, they were kicking her so hard—”
“Who?” She could read the fury in the single word.
“I don’t know. Roy Farmer, some guy named Aaron, a girl named Melanie—three others. Shane, please, get to Michael. He’s at Common Grounds….”
“On it,” he said. “You safe right now?”