by Rachel Caine
“Get moving, before you see my mean look.”
“Scary.”
“You bet it is. Go on.”
He kissed me again, gently, and whispered, “I’m sorry,” one more time before he was suddenly gone.
He left me standing in the middle of the living room of the Glass House, aka Screwed-Up Frat Central, wearing a skin-tight, shiny pleather catsuit, cat ears, and a whip. Not to mention some killer stiletto heels. Add the mask, and I made a super-hot Catwoman.
The costume might have been the reason for Michael’s shiny eyes and out-of-control hunger, actually. I’d intended to push his buttons for Halloween - I just hadn’t intended to push them quite that hard.
I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Shane’s voice drifted down ahead of him.
“Hey, have you seen my meat cleaver-holy shit!”
I turned. Shane was standing frozen on the stairs, wearing a lab coat smeared with fake blood and some gruesome-looking Leatherface mask, which he quickly stripped off in order to stare at me without any latex barriers. What I was wearing suddenly felt like way too little.
“Eve-jeez. Warn a guy, would you?” He shook his head, jammed the mask back on, and came down the rest of the stairs.
“That was not my fault.”
“The leering? I think yes,” I said. And secretly, that was pretty cool, although hey, it was Shane. Not like he was exactly the guy I was hoping to impress. “Totally your fault.”
“It’s a guy thing. We have reactions to women in tight leather with whips. It’s sort of involuntary.” He looked around. “Where’s Michael?”
“He had to go,” I said. “He’ll meet us at the party.” No reason to tell Shane, who still couldn’t quite get over his anti-vamp upbringing, that Michael had gone to snag himself a bag of fresh plasma so he wouldn’t be snacking on mine. “Seriously-do I look okay?”
“No,” Shane said, and flopped down on the sofa. He put his heavy boots up on the coffee table, sending a paper plate with the dried remains of a chili dog close to the edge. I rescued it, gave him a dirty look, and dumped the plate in his lap. “Hey!”
“It’s your chili dog. Clean it up.”
“It’s your turn to clean.”
“The house. Not your trash, which you can walk your Leatherfaced-ass into the kitchen to throw away.”
He batted his long, silky eyelashes at me. “Didn’t I tell you that you look great?” Shane said. “You do.”
“Oh, please. Chili dog. Trash. Now.”
“Seriously. Michael’s going to have to watch himself around you. And watch out for every other guy in the room, too.”
“That’s the idea,” I said. “Hey, it was this or the Naughty Nurse costume.”
Shane sent me a miserable look. “Do you have to say things like that?”
“Guy reaction?”
“You think?” He held out his plate to me, looking so pitiful that I couldn’t help but take it. “You just destroyed my ability to get off this couch.”
I had to laugh. Shane teased, but he wasn’t serious; the two of us never were, and never would be. He was thinking of someone else, and so was I.
I saw the change in his expression when we heard the sound of footsteps upstairs. He looked up and there was a kind of utter focus in him that made me smile. Boy, you have got it bad, I thought, but I was kind enough not to point it out. Yet.
Claire practically floated down the stairs. Our fourth roommate-our booky little nerd, small and fragile enough that she always looked like you could break her in half with a harsh word-looked even more ethereal than usual.
She was dressed as a fairy-a long, pale pink dress in layers of sheer stuff, glitter on her face, her hair streaked with blue and pink and green. Soft pink fairy wings. It made her look both younger than she really was, which was still a year younger than me and Shane, and yet, also older.
But maybe that was just the look in her eyes that got more mature with every day she spent in Morganville, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the vampires.
Claire paused on the steps, looking at Shane. Her mouth fell open, ruining her ethereal fairy look.
“Seriously? Leatherface? Oh God.”
“You were expecting something out of Pride & Prejudice?” Shane shrugged and held up the mask. “You don’t know me very well.”
Claire shook her head, and then caught sight of my own outfit. Her eyes widened. “Holy-“
I sighed. “Don’t say it. Shane already did.”
“That’s really-wow. Tight.”
“Catsuit,” I said. “Kind of the textbook definition of tight.”
“Well, you look -wow. I’d never have the guts.” Claire wafted over in her layers of pink to sit next to Shane, who gallantly moved his Leatherface mask to make room.
“You look fabulous,” he told her, and kissed her. “Oh, crap, now I’ve got glitter, right? Leatherface does not do glitter. It’s not manly.” Claire and I both rolled our eyes, right on cue.
“Right. Small price to pay for the privilege of kissing such a beautiful girl, what was I thinking? Sorry.”
Shane was an idiot, but he was a good idiot, mostly. He’d never hurt Claire intentionally, I knew that. I wondered, though, if she knew that, from the look of concern that flickered across her expression.
“Do you like the costume? Really?”
He stopped goofing and stared right into her eyes. “I love it,” he said, and he wasn’t talking about the costume. “You look beautiful.”
That erased some of the worry from her eyes. “It’s not too, you know, little girl or something?”
I realized that she was comparing herself to my Catwoman suit. “It’s Halloween, not Hello, Slut,” I said.
“You look fantastic, CB. Hot, but not obvious. Classy.” I, on the other hand, was starting to think I looked like a little too obvious, and not at all classy. “So. Are we going, or are we going to waste our amazing fabulousness on this B-movie fool?”
“Hey, Leatherface is an American classic!” Shane objected. Claire and I both smacked him, then she took the right arm, I took the left. “No fair double teaming! Don’t make me hit you with my rubber cleaver!”
“Speaking of double teaming, until Michael catches up to us, you’re both our dates,” I said. “Congratulations. You can be Hefner tonight, if you go throw on a bathrobe and slippers.”
He stared at me, blinked, and then tossed the Leatherface mask over his shoulder as he bounced to his feet.
“Awesome. Back in a minute,” he said, and dashed upstairs. Claire and I exchanged a look of perfect understanding.
“They’re just so easy,” I sighed.
It was the one-year anniversary of the Worst Halloween Ever, aka The Dead Girls’ Dance party at Epsilon Epsilon Kappa’s frat house on campus. And they were throwing it again, although this time it was a rave at one of the abandoned warehouses near the center of town. We’d gotten special invitations. I’d wanted to skip it at first, but Michael and Shane had both assured me that this time, things were under control. The vampires of Morganville were working security, which meant that the human frat boys wouldn’t be slipping anything into anybody’s drinks, and any would-be incoming trouble would be stopped cold, probably at the door.
Not that the EEK boys knew who (or what) they were hiring, of course. Students either didn’t know, didn’t want to know, or were in the know from the beginning, because they’d grown up in Morganville. I thought there were maybe six guys total in EEK who had insider knowledge, and none of them were stupid enough to talk.
Well, not too loudly. Unless the keg was open.
I parked my big, black sedan at the curb between a beaten-up pickup and a sun-faded Pontiac with so many bumper stickers on it I couldn’t tell what their actual causes were. Guns, it looked like. And God. And maybe puppies.
“House rules,” I said, and unlocked the doors. “Stay together. No wandering off. Shane, no fights.”
“Aww,” he said. “Not even one?”
“Are you kidding me? You’ve racked up enough medical frequent flyer miles to get a permanent bed in the emergency room. So no. Not even harsh words, unless somebody else throws the first punch.”
He was happy about that last part.
“No problem.” Because somebody else always threw a punch in Shane’s direction when trouble brewed. He had a rep, one that he’d worked hard to acquire, as a badass. He didn’t look particularly badass tonight, wearing a moth-eaten old tapestry-patterned bathrobe fifty years out of date, old man slippers, silk pajamas that I know he must have found in a box in the attic, and a classic ‘50s pipe. Unlit, of course.
He made a surprisingly good Hefner, and as he offered us his elbows, I felt a rush of the giggles. Claire was blushing.
“I am such a stud,” Shane said, and swept us into the rave.
As the resident dude, Shane was responsible for the acquisition of party favors, like glow-in-the-dark necklaces and drinks. Non-alcoholic drinks for Claire, however, because I am a stern house mother even if I suck as a role model. One thing I had to watch out for was the other kind of party favors being passed around, stranger to stranger-white pills, mostly, although there were the light-em-if-you-got-em kind, too. I let people pass things to me, then dumped them in the trash. It wasn’t because I was Miss Self Restraint; it was more because I knew better than to trust most people in Morganville.
We’d had hard lessons about that last year. Especially Claire. This year, she was still polite, but fending off the weirdos with much more ease. Of course, having her own personal shaggy-haired Hefner at her side might have had something to do with that.
I started to worry about Michael. Usually, a side trip to the blood bank didn’t take up more than thirty minutes, but by the time an hour had passed, he still wasn’t in the house.
I went in search of a quiet corner to call him. My mistake was that I didn’t tell Shane or Claire, who had their arms wrapped around each other and were dancing their hearts out. No, I struck out on my own.
Hear that sound? It’s Eve Rosser and her backup band, The Spectacular Lapse of Judgment.
The warehouse was loud, tinny, and crowded; dark spaces were already filled with the make-out brigade. I kept going, down a narrow little hallway, until the noise was only a thud, not a roar, and took out my phone from its hiding place (yes, in my costume, and I’m not telling you where). I started to dial Michael’s phone.
Something touched my shoulder. It felt like an ice-cold electric shock.
“Hey!” I yelped, and whirled around. There was a vampire facing me.
Not Michael.
My heart rate went from sixty to five hundred in two seconds flat, because I knew this guy, and he wasn’t exactly Mr. Congeniality.
“Mr. Ransom,” I said, and carefully nodded. I knew him because he was one of Oliver’s crew, but I’d rarely seen him, even at Common Grounds, the coffee shop where the vampires felt free to mingle with the humans according to strict ground rules. He avoided humans as much as possible, in fact.
“Eve,” Mr. Ransom said. He was a tall, thin guy with straw-brittle hair and a kind of vague look in his eyes. Tonight, he was dressed in a black jacket, black shirt, black pants, all straight out of the Goodwill box. Nothing quite fit him.
Mr. Ransom owned the funeral parlor, although he didn’t work there. He was kind of a vampire hermit. He didn’t get out much.
“Sorry, I’m on the phone,” I said. I waved the phone for evidence, pressed DIAL, and listened. Come on, come on -
He didn’t pick up.
“He will not answer,” Mr. Ransom said. “Michael.”
I quietly folded the phone and stared at him. “Why? What’s happened?”
“He has been delayed.”
“And you came all this way to tell me? Um, thanks. Message received.” I decided to try to tough it out and walked right past him.
He grabbed me again. I spun, meaning to smack him good (a super-bad move on my part), and he caught my hand effortlessly in his. Now I was face to face with a vampire I hardly knew, with my hand restrained, and the noise from the rave had kicked up again to metal-melting levels, which meant screaming would get me nowhere but hoarse, and dead.
“Let me go,” I said as calmly as I could. “Now, please.”
He raised pale eyebrows, staring right into my eyes. His were dark, like puddles of oil, full of shine but nothing else. It looked like he was searching for something to say. What he came up with was, “Do you want to become a vampire?”
“Do I-what? No! Hell no!” I yanked, but I couldn’t break his grip. “And even if I did, it wouldn’t be you doing it, Mister Creepy!”
“Then do you wish Protection?” he asked, and reached into his jacket. He took out a bracelet, standard Morganville issue-a plain silver thing with a symbol engraved on the front of it. Mr. Ransom’s symbol, I guessed, which would mark me as his property. If I took the bracelet, I’d be free from casual fanging by all the other bloodsuckers, but not from him, if he took a notion.
I made a throwing-up sound.
“No. Let go, you ice-cold moron freak!”
He did let go. It surprised me so much that I scrambled backward, tottering on my high heels, and bounced into the wall behind me. Great, I thought. The one time I don’t wear vampire-killing accessories. Maybe I could use the shoes? No, wait, that would mean bending over in the catsuit. Really not possible. I settled for sliding against the wall, heading for the safety of the crowds.
Ransom slowly sank down to a crouch, his back to the wall, and put his head in his hands. It was so surprising that I stopped moving away and just stared at him. He looked … sad. And dejected.
“Ah-” I wet my lips. “Are you okay?” What a stupid question! And why did I even care? I didn’t. I couldn’t care less about his bruised feelings.
But I wasn’t leaving, either.
“Yes,” he said. His voice was soft and muffled. “I apologize. This is … difficult. Moving among humans in this way. I thought you wished to be turned.”
“Why?”
He raised his head and mutely indicated his face, then mine, which was made up very pale under my Catwoman mask. “You seem to be playing at being one of us.”
“Okay, first, I’m goth, not a vampire wannabe. Second, it’s a fashion thing, okay? So, no. I don’t. Ewwww.” My pulse was slowing down some as I realized that maybe I’d read the situation all wrong after all. Mr. Ransom was a refreshing change from the vampires that tried to eat me first, talk later.
“Why offer me Protection?” That was the equivalent of becoming part of a vampire’s household. He would have to provide certain things, like food and shelter, and in return, the human paid part of their income to him, like a tax. Also, at the blood bank, their donations would be earmarked for him.
In short: ugh. Not for me.
“You don’t have a bracelet,” he said. “I thought perhaps your Protector had died in the late unpleasantness. I was being polite. In my day-“
“Well, it isn’t your day,” I snapped. “And I’m not shopping for a vamp daddy, so just - leave me alone. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said. He still looked dejected, like some shabby street person whose bottle of booze had run out.
I thought of something less uncomfortable to ask. At least, I thought it was.
“You said Michael had been delayed,” I said. “Where? At the blood bank?”
“Near there,” Ransom said. “He was taken away.”
I forgot all about Ransom and his weirdness.
“Taken away where? How? Who took him?” I advanced on the vampire, and all of a sudden the leather catsuit didn’t seem ridiculous at all. I was practically channeling the soul of a supervillain. “Hey! Answer me!”
Ransom looked up. “Five young men,” he said. “Wearing the jackets with the snake.”
Five guys wearing Morganville High letter jackets. Jocks, probably.
“Did he want to go?” I asked. Michael had never been p
art of the jock crowd, even in high school. This was just odd.
“At first, they wanted me to go,” Ransom said. “I didn’t understand why. Michael told them he would go with them instead, and told me to tell you that he would be delayed.” Ransom gave a heavy sigh.
“That I have done.” In about half a heartbeat, he went from a sad little man crouched against the wall to a tall, dangerous vampire standing up and facing me. Never underestimate a vampire’s ability to change moods. “Now I will leave.”
I worked it out a second too late to stop him from going. I guess five jocks had been hassling this sad, weird vampire, and he hadn’t even realized what they were doing because, like he said, he wasn’t out in the human world that much. He hadn’t realized the danger he was in-he literally hadn’t.
Michael definitely had. That was why he’d stepped in, sent Ransom to find me, and gone off without a fight.
Saving somebody, as usual. Although I wondered why he hadn’t just flattened the creeps outright. He could have. Any vampire could.
“Wait, can you tell me where exactly-” But I was talking to the empty hall because Ransom had already beat it. Anyway, my words were just about lost in the thunder of a new tune spinning at the rave on the other side of the bricks.
I hurried out of the hallway, back to the rave, and found Shane and Claire still so into each other they might as well have been dancing at home. I dragged them out of the building, past impassive vampire bouncers, into the cool night air.
“Hey!” Shane protested, and settled his bathrobe more comfortably with a shake. “If you want to leave, all you have to do is say so! Respect the threads. Vintage.”
“Michael may need help,” I said, and I got their attention, immediately. “You want to come with?”
“I’m not exactly dressed for hand-to-hand,” Shane said, “but what the hell. If I have to hit somebody, maybe they’ll be too embarrassed to trade punches with Hugh Hefner-guy’s got to be about a hundred years old or something.”
I was more worried about Claire. Fairy wings and glitter weren’t exactly going to intimidate anybody - but then again, Claire had other skills.
“You drive,” I said to Shane, and tossed him the car keys. He fielded them with a blinding grin. “Don’t get used to it, loser.”