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Michael looked smug. "Shut up and eat."
Shane shot him the finger.
All in all, it was a pretty good time.
Michael and Eve washed dishes, having lost out on the coin toss, and Claire hovered in the living room, not sure what she wanted to do. Studying sounded - boring, which surprised her. Shane was concentrating on the video game selection, bare feet propped up on the coffee table. Without looking directly at Claire, he asked, "You want to see something cool?"
"Sure," she said. She expected him to put a game in, but he dumped it back in the pile, got up off the couch, and padded up the stairs. She stood at the bottom, staring up, wondering what to do. Shane appeared at the top of the stairs again and gestured, and she followed.
The second floor was quiet, of course, and dimly lit; she blinked and saw Shane already halfway down the hall. Was he heading for her room? Not that she didn't have a crazy hot picture in her head of sitting on the bed with him, making out...and she had no idea why that popped into her head, except that, well, he was just...yeah.
Shane moved aside a picture hanging on the wall between her room and Eve's, and pressed a button underneath.
And a door opened on the other side of the wall. It was built into the paneling, and she'd never have even known it was there. She gasped, and Shane beamed like he'd invented the wheel. "Cool, huh? This damn house is full of crap like that. Trust me, in Morganville it pays to be up on the hiding places." He pushed open the door, revealed another set of stairs, and padded up them. She expected them to be dusty, but they weren't; the wood was clean and polished. Shane's feet left prints of the ball of his foot and his toes.
It was a narrow pitch of just eight steps, half a story, really, and there was another door at the top. Shane opened it and flipped on a switch just inside. "First time I saw this, and the room back of the pantry, I figured, yep. Vampire house. What do you think?"
If she believed in vampires, he might have been right. It was a small room, no windows, and it was...old.
It wasn't just the stuff in it, which was antique and dark; it had this sense of...something ancient, something not quite right. And it was cold. Cold, in the middle of a Texas heat wave.
She shivered. "Does everybody know about this room?"
"Oh yeah. Eve says it's haunted. Can't really blame her. It creeps me the hell out, too. Cool, though.
We'd have stuck you in here when the cops came, only they'd have seen you through the windows coming out of the kitchen. They're nosy bastards." Shane wandered across the thick Persian carpet to flop on the dark red Victorian couch. Dust rose in a cloud, and he waved it off, coughing. "So what do you think? Think Michael sleeps off his evil-undead days in here, or what?"
She blinked. "What?"
"Oh, come on. You think he's one of them, right? 'Cause he doesn't show up during the day?"
"I - I don't think anything!"
Shane nodded, eyes downcast. "Right. You weren't sent here."
"Sent - sent here by who?"
"I got to thinking.... The cops were looking for you, but maybe they were looking for you to make us want to keep you here, instead of pitch you out. So which is it? Are you working for them?"
"Them?" she echoed thinly. "Them, who?" Shane suddenly looked at her, and she shivered again. He wasn't like Monica, not at all, but he wasn't playing around, either. "Shane, I don't know what you mean. I came to Morganville to go to school, and got beaten up, and I came here because I was scared.
If you don't believe me - well, then I guess I'll go. Hope you liked the tacos."
She went to the door, and stopped, confused.
There wasn't a doorknob.
Behind her, Shane said quietly, "The reason I think this is a vampire's room? You can't get out of it unless you know the secret. That's real convenient, if you like to bring victims up here for a little munch session."
She whirled around, expecting to see him standing there with that huge knife he'd used on the onions, and she'd broken the first rule of horror movies, hadn't she, or was it the second one? She'd trusted someone she shouldn't have....
But he was still sitting on the couch, slumped at ease, arms flung over the back on both sides.
Not even looking at her.
"Let me out," she said. Her heart was hammering.
"In a minute. First, you tell me the truth."
"I have!" And, to her fury and humiliation, she started to cry. Again. "Dammit! You think I'm trying to hurt you? Hurt Michael? How could I? I'm the one everybody hurts!"
He looked at her then, and she saw the hardness melt away. His voice was a lot gentler when he spoke.
"And if I was somebody who wanted to kill Michael, I'd put somebody like you in to do it. Be real easy for you to kill somebody, Claire. Poison some food, slip a knife in his back...and I have to look out for Michael."
"I thought he looked out for you." She swiped angrily at her eyes. "Why do you think somebody wants to kill him?"
Shane raised his eyebrows. "Always somebody wanting to kill a vampire."
"But - he's not. Eve said - "
"Yeah, I know he's not a vampire, but he doesn't get up during the day, he doesn't go out of the house, and I can't get him to tell me what happened, so he might as well be. And somebody's going to think so, sooner or later. Most people in Morganville are either Protected or clueless - kind of like you can raise rabbits for either pets or meat. But some of them fight back."
She blinked the last of the brief storm of tears away. "Like you?"
He cocked his head to one side. "Maybe. How about you? You a fighter, Claire?"
"I'm not working for anybody. And I wouldn't kill Michael even if he was a vampire."
Shane laughed. "Why not? Besides the fact that he'd snap you in two like a twig if he was."
"Because - because - " She couldn't put it into words, exactly. "Because I like him."
Shane watched her for another few, long seconds, and then pressed a raised spot on the head of the lion-carving armrest of the couch.
The door clicked and popped open half an inch.
"Good enough for me," he said. "So. Dessert?"
Chapter Seven
She couldn't sleep.
Maybe it was the memory of that creepy little Gothic room - which she suspected Eve really, deeply loved - but all of a sudden, her lovely cozy room seemed full of shadows, and the creaks of old wood in the wind sounded...stealthy. Maybe the house eats people, Claire thought, lying there alone in the dark, watching the bone-thin shadows of branches shudder on the far wall. The wind made twigs tap her window, like something trying to get in. Eve had said vampires couldn't get in, but what if they could?
