by Rachel Caine
“Don’t forget the sign-up sheet in the cafeteria,” Monica said to all of them, but her attention was totally focused on Shane. “I want to see all of you strapped down and giving it up.”
Now Eve felt like vomiting, too, given the way Monica seemed to roll that around on her tongue. It was a welcome relief to hear Michael say, “Don’t you have some fifth graders to menace, Monica? It’s getting boring now.”
“Watch it, Glass,” Monica’s bestie, Gina, said, and leveled a really well-manicured finger at him. “You can’t talk to her that way.”
“Yeah? Wait until you see how I talk to you,” Michael shot back, and slammed his locker door. Funny. Shane was all instant violence . . . explosive, but quick to be over it. Michael got mad slow, but he burned a long time, and everybody knew when that tone came into his voice, it was time to back the hell away. “Clear off. Now.”
Gina might have pushed, but Monica knew better; she grabbed her friend’s arm and shoved her forward, moving with the flow to the other end of the hall. It was first lunch; the smell of overdone meat loaf and waterlogged vegetables was starting to sour the hallway. “They’re heading for the cafeteria,” Eve said to the boys. “What say you to tacos?”
“I say yea,” Shane said, and held up his hand for a slap. When she went for it, he yanked it too high for her to reach. “Too slow and too low.”
She punched him in the stomach—not hard, just playing—and he let out an exaggerated woof and bent over, still holding up the hand. She slapped it. “I can always cut you down to size, Shane,” she said. “Come on. Primo comida awaits.”
• • •
The taco stand a block away from the school—brilliantly, it just read TACOS in big red and yellow letters—was crowded with teens and adults alike, but Shane shouldered his way up and ordered while Eve and Michael grabbed a small table that had just been abandoned. He came back balancing a bag and three sodas. The bag held nine tacos and about half a gallon of hot sauce, which was a smart move on Shane’s part. They all loved hot sauce.
Lunch didn’t require a lot of chitchat, at least for the first two tacos apiece, and then Shane mumbled around a mouthful of shell and spicy beef, “You think the blood drive’s legit?”
“Hell no,” Michael said. “There’s got to be something going on there. Monica Morrell never did a nice thing in her life unless there was something in it for her.”
“Well, they’re using the Bloodmobile,” Eve pointed out as she slathered more hot sauce on her taco. She liked them gruesome. “That alone tells you the vamps have a stake in it. Pun intended, by the way, because I am awesome like that.”
Michael gave her a smile. A genuine smile, one that made her tingle inside and out. She smiled back, and for a second—a beautiful, amazing second—it felt like they were really communicating.
Then Michael looked away at Shane and said, “What would the vamps get out of a blood drive for the hospital?”
“Maybe they’re planning on having some kind of cocktail party fund-raiser, and we’re providing the drinks.”
“Ugh,” Eve said.
“So I take it neither of you will be signing up on the donation sheet,” said Michael.
“What idiot would volunteer for blood donations in this town, anyway? We have to do it from eighteen on by law. I’ll enjoy my last couple of years of needle-free existence, thanks.”
“I’d do it,” Michael said. He didn’t put any particular emphasis on it, but Eve caught her breath as if he’d gut-punched her, and didn’t dare look at him for a few seconds. “I mean, if the hospital really needed it. But this still sounds sketchy as hell to me, mainly because Monica’s involved.”
I just called him an idiot. Michael Glass. An idiot. The most gorgeous boy in town. Who’s the idiot now, idiot? Eve bit back the urge to babble out some crazy explanation, like I would, too—I didn’t mean it—I would totally give blood for sick babies. Which would be true, but sounded desperate.
“Maybe one of us should, you know, investigate it,” Eve said, before she could think too hard about what she was saying. “Sign up, get on the bus, check it out.”
“No frigging way,” Shane said. “I’m crazy, but I’m not that—”
“I’ll do it,” she rushed on, before she could think it over. She wanted to—what? Make up for what she’d said? Well, she was doing it by being a total victim-in-training, which wasn’t smart, but at least it made Michael give her a long, very serious look.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said slowly. “Not alone, anyway. If you’re doing it, you need backup. I’ll go with you.”
“Together?” Oh, God, was there any other way to make herself sound like a total fool today? “I mean, we’re blood donor buddies?”
“Yeah,” he said, and smiled slowly enough that it made her swallow. Hard. “Together. Okay with you?”
“Sure,” she said, and tried to pretend like it hadn’t just been the pinnacle of her life, right there. “Whatever.”
• • •
She floated through the rest of school, and the walk home, even though she didn’t see Michael again the entire time. For the first time, she really, really wanted a best friend to blurt out all her excited feelings to, but she’d long ago decided that no Morganville girls were to be trusted with valuable intel like that. She’d been burned too many times. Hell, once upon a time, she’d thought Jennifer—now one of Monica Morrell’s wing-girls—was a good friend. Granted, that had been elementary school, but betrayal still stung.
Her good feeling faded fast when she got home, because her dad was already there. If he was home early, it meant he’d quit work early, and stopped off at the bar, and worse, they’d already cut him off. Eve paused at seeing his car in the driveway, and thought about heading away again, but this time of year dark came fast, and she didn’t want to be out roaming at night. Sure, technically, she was underage and should be free from predatory vamps, but nobody in Morganville trusted that kind of thing.
She compromised and headed around back, creeping low past the living room window, and made it to the back porch. The door was locked, of course, but she keyed herself in, eased the door closed behind her, thumbed the lock back on, and . . . ran right into her dad, who was standing at the refrigerator, grabbing another beer.
He glared at her, and she froze, hesitating between rushing past him and trying to pretend all this was sitcom-normal.
“About time you dragged your ass home,” her dad said, and popped the top on his beer. He was swaying a little, which meant he was only an hour or two of steady drinking from falling down and leaving them alone the rest of the night—but it was a dangerous couple of hours. “I had to pick your damn brother up from school. He got in trouble again. Didn’t I tell you to keep an eye on him?”
There was no point in explaining, again, that it was pretty tricky to keep an eye on a junior high student while actually attending high school across the street, so she said nothing. He drank two big, quick mouthfuls, then set the beer down on the painfully clean kitchen counter. Her mom kept it spotless, all the time, because if she didn’t . . . well. If she didn’t.
“What did he do?” Eve asked. It was vital, at this point, to keep Dad talking. It was also important to try to ease away, one small step at a time, to keep distance between them and angle for the hallway so if she had to run, she could.
“Smarted off to some teacher,” he said. “And then he pulled a knife when she tried to march him to the principal’s office. Stupid kid. Don’t know where he gets this stuff.”
Eve knew. She couldn’t believe her dad didn’t. “Did he hurt anybody?”
“Why the hell would you say that? No, of course he didn’t. The kid’s stupid, not crazy. I brought him home and tanned his ass for him. He won’t be sitting down for a week.” That brought on another drink from the can, but he returned it to the counter, an
d his mean, narrow eyes stayed on her. “I told you to watch him, didn’t I?”
“Dad—”
“Don’t you Dad me, and when are you going to grow up and stop painting yourself up like some damn clown?” He charged at her, but there was a kitchen chair in the way, and he bumped into it. Eve skipped past and down the hall, not running but walking fast and hard. She took the right turn to the end of the hall, where her room faced her brother, Jason’s. His door was shut, and she didn’t hesitate; she opened her own door, stepped in, and shut it softly, then clicked the dead bolt lock she’d installed herself when she was twelve. It wasn’t just on account of her dad, but times like these, it helped.
She dumped her book bag on the bed and turned to stare at the closed door. For fifteen seconds, it was quiet. Twenty. Twenty-five.
And then, a fist hit the door with a bang. Just once, hard enough to make the whole thing jump and shiver, but the lock held tight. He rattled the knob.
“Ingrate!” her dad yelled, and she heard him kicking another door. Jason’s. Oh God. But she’d helped Jason make his room a fortress, too, and pretty soon she heard her father wandering off toward the kitchen to rescue his forgotten beer.
Eve sank down on her bed, weak at the knees, and reached over for her stuffed gargoyle. She hugged him hard for a while, then reached out and picked up the walkie-talkie from her bedside table. She turned it on. “Earth to Uranus,” she said. “Come in, Uranus.”
Static crackled, and even the comfort of her unconditionally loving stuffed animal felt a little empty, until she heard her brother’s voice come through the speaker. “My call sign’s Charon, dumbass. In case you forgot.”
“That’s just a moon, not even a planet.” She let a second or two go by, and then said, “You okay, Jase?”
“Like you care.” There was a dull resentment in Jason’s voice. He was younger than she was, but in some ways he was also way older. And harder. “Anything that takes the heat off you, right?”
“I didn’t even know he was here! What the hell, Jase, you pulled a knife?”
“So what? I like knives.”
All of Eve’s good intentions shriveled, because she knew he did. He’d shown her one six months ago, a long, wicked thing, and he’d cut her with it. Accidentally, he’d said. She hadn’t been so sure. Still wasn’t. Jason . . . something had broken in Jason, and she didn’t know how to fix it. It made her feel awful and hollow inside.
“How bad did he get you?” she finally asked.
“It won’t show.”
“Shit . . .” It felt bad sitting here, separated, not knowing what to say. Not knowing what to do. “I wish—”
“You wish you had a spine, Sis? You wish you could stand up to the old man? Don’t worry about it. Next time he raises a hand to me, I’ll break it off. Count on it.”
Just like that, he was off the radio. She tried him again, but he didn’t answer. Eve slowly stretched out on her bed, pulled a Nightmare Before Christmas blanket over herself when the chills set in, and tried to think about what to do. Call the cops? Yeah, she’d tried it. Mom had shut that down right at the door, and nobody was going to listen to bad-kid Jason and his weird Goth sister anyway. Not like the cops in Morganville ever really cared too much.
She was half-asleep when her mother knocked on her door and told her dinner was on the table. Eve rolled out of bed, took her hair out of the pigtails, and shook it down around her face so it mostly covered her eyes—her go-to strategy for dealing with her family—and got ready to endure dinner. Dad would be passed out, so it’d just be a silent affair anyway; Jason would be simmering with rage, Mom would be checked out on a mental vacation, and the meal would be horrible. So not looking forward to creamed corn and Spam.
Eve heard a sound at the window, and turned, thinking it was a branch, or maybe—insanely—Michael Glass trying to get her attention.
Instead, a vampire smiled at her from the other side of the window. Brandon. Eurotrash sleek, a chin sharp enough to cut. He looked completely normal just now. A completely normal Peeping Tom, looking in like he wanted to leap through the glass and do terrible, terrible things to her.
Eve bit back a scream. If she yelled, Brandon would be gone in the next instant like a bad dream, and it might even rouse her dad from his alcoholic slumber. Besides, Brandon couldn’t get in. Not without an invitation, which she damn sure wasn’t going to give. I’m still underage, you asswipe, she thought as she yanked the curtains closed to shut him out. You don’t have any right to try to get me. Not that age mattered much to Brandon. He’d been creeping on her since she was twelve. It still made her feel sick and anxious, but she didn’t let it get to her. Not much, anyway.
When she peeked out, he was gone. Probably his idea of a joke. Ugh. If she complained about it, he’d say he was patrolling the property; he was, after all, their ink-on-contract family Protector. Nothing she could do about it. Like so much else wrong in her life.
Dinner was, as she’d predicted, silent. Jason picked at his food, staring sullenly down; his hair was hanging in his face, just like Eve’s, and although their mom chattered on about nothing, and ignored everything really going on, neither of them said a word beyond a grunt or a one-word answer. When they were done, Eve carried the dishes into the kitchen and washed them. Jason dried. They worked in silence, and when she glanced over, she saw Jase was keeping an eye on the couch in the living room, where their dad was passed out with beer cans on the floor around him.
They were careful not to clatter anything too loudly.
It was a weird fact of life that after all that adrenaline, all that fear, all that strain, Eve fell asleep within seconds once she was in bed. She rarely had nightmares. Maybe bad dreams weren’t really necessary when you lived one in real life. . . . But she thought she was having one when she woke up to the sounds of sirens and a flickering glow that wasn’t sunrise filtering through the curtains. She got up, pulled on her black fuzzy bathrobe, and pulled the fabric back to stare outside.
There was a house on fire about six blocks away, blazing, shooting flames into the sky. The clock read two in the morning, and she had a sick feeling that whoever had been in that place might not have gotten away safe. The fire department was already there; she could see the fire trucks and the flashing lights.
There was a knock on her bedroom door. Eve answered it, and found her mother standing there in her own bathrobe. Without asking, Mom pushed past and went to the window.
“Yeah, sure, come on in,” Eve said. She closed the door and dead-bolted it again. “I just woke up. Do you know whose house it is?”
Her mother stared at the fire with dry, empty eyes for a moment, and then said, “It could be Mildred Klein’s house—she lives over on that block. Or the Montez family.”
Eve knew Clara Montez, and the name hit her hard. Clara was a junior this year. Pretty and quiet and smart. She had an older brother who’d already graduated, and a sister in junior high, and another one still in elementary school.
Eve grabbed her cell phone from the table and checked contacts; Clara was in her list, and she quickly called. She clutched the phone anxiously while she watched the flames tent higher over the burning bones of the house in the distance.
“It’s not me,” Clara said instantly. She sounded breathless and excited. “It’s the Collins house! Gotta go!”
Eve must have made some kind of a sound, because the next thing she knew, her mother was holding her by the shoulders, asking her what was wrong. Eve’s hands were shaking. She looked back at the fire, heart pounding, mouth dry. Collins.
It was Shane’s house burning.
“I have to go,” she said, and tore free of her mom’s grasp to start yanking things out of drawers. She didn’t care what she came up with—mismatched underwear, a torn pair of sweatpants, a Powerpuff Girls T-shirt. Whatever came out of the drawer, she pulled on. Her mother was talk
ing, but it was just noise. Eve looked at her phone. Another call had come in. This one was from Michael. She checked the voice mail. “It’s Shane,” he said. “His house is on fire!” The call cut off. She could hear the roaring flames in the background.
It was like a kick to the gut that just kept kicking. She didn’t know what to do, what to say, what to ask . . . and finally slipped on shoes. They might have been slippers. She didn’t really care.
When she tried to stand, her mother grabbed her by the shoulders and held her in place.
“No!” her mom said, too loudly. “Eve, you’re not going out there!”
“Mom,” Eve said. “That’s the Collins house. Shane’s house.”
“I don’t care whose house it is! You can’t go out there!”
Eve shook free and left the room. She hesitated, looking at Jason’s door, then kept going. She heard her dad snoring away as she passed her parents’ bedroom. Mom continued to follow her, still arguing, but quietly now; nobody wanted to wake up Dad.
Eve went to the hall closet, pulled up a loose floorboard, and found one of the carved sharp-pointed stakes she’d hidden there. She grabbed her black hoodie and threw it on; it would hold the stake in the pocket without trouble. Her mom’s complaints had changed tone, more of the Why do you have that? Don’t you know what kind of trouble you could get us into? sort of rhythm now, which Eve also ignored.
She was out in the dark before the Don’t blame me if you get yourself killed chorus kicked in, and headed at a run for the fire.
She was about a block away when someone stepped out of the dark into her path, and she yelped, flailed to a stop, and pulled the stake out of her pocket. The shadow stepped into the shallow pool of light from a streetlamp, and she recognized her own brother. “Jason! Jesus, what are you doing out here? Are you crazy?”
“Are you?” he asked. He seemed perfectly at home in the dark, all night-stalking black clothing and bad attitude. “I’m out here all the time. I know how to get around.”
“Are you insane? You’re too young to be out on your own—”