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"Or else what?"
Monica looked down. "You've met him. Best case, it means he hurts me. Bad. Worst case ... he trades me down."
"That's worse?"
"Yeah. That means I get handed to the bottom-of-the-barrel vamps, the ones too lame to get the good earners and the pretty people. That means I'm a loser." She looked down and fidgeted with her ceramic coffee cup, frowning at it. "Sounds shallow, maybe, but around here, it's survival. If Oliver blackballs me, I can't get anything but the freaks and the skanks, the ones who get their fix the hard way. They'll kill me, if I'm lucky. If not, I end up some strung-out junkie fang-banger."
She said it with such dry, matter-of-fact intensity that Claire could tell she'd spent a lot of time thinking about it. It was a long way to fall, from the darling daughter of the mayor to some addict trying to please a kinky freak for protection.
"You could be neutral," Claire blurted. She felt oddly sympathetic, even after everything Monica had done. She had been born here, after all. Not like she'd ever had a real choice in what she was going to be, or do. "Some people are, right? They're left alone?"
Monica sneered, and the second of two of humanity Claire had imagined she'd seen in that pretty face vanished. "They're left alone until they're not. Look, officially, they're untouchable because they've done favors, big favors, and their Patrons let them out of contracts. By big favors, I mean the kind they were lucky to live through, get it? I'm not interested in that kind of hero crap."
Claire shrugged. "Then go without a contract."
"Yeah, right. That works. I'm really looking forward to a future as second assistant fry wrangler at the Dairy Queen, and decomposing in some ditch before I'm thirty." Monica rested her elbows on the table, coffee cup cradled in both hands. "I thought about leaving. I actually went to Austin for a semester, you know? But --it wasn't the same."
"Meaning you flunked out of school."
That earned Claire a filthy look. "Shut up, bitch, I'm only here because I need to be, and you're only here because you have to be. Let's not get too touchy-feely."
Claire swallowed a mouthful of sweet, rich mocha. If it was poisoned, she'd die happy, at least. "Fine by me. Look, I can't help you get to Amelie. I don't even know how to get to her myself. And even if I did, I don't think she'd take your contract."
"Then just shut up and smile. If I don't get anything else out of this wasted morning, at least Oliver can see that I tried."
"How long do I have to do this?"
Monica checked her watch. "Ten minutes. Suck it up that long, and I won't call my brother about your boyfriend's little indiscretion."
"How can I be sure?"
Monica slapped both hands to her cheeks and looked over-dramatically horrified. "Oh no! You don't trust me! I'm crushed." She dropped the act as suddenly as she'd taken it on. "I don't care if Shane has opened his own corpse taxi service, I only care about what I can get out of it."
"Maybe you want revenge," Claire said.
Monica smiled. "If I'd wanted that, I'd have already turned him in. Besides, I hear it's best served cold."
Claire pulled out a book. "All right. Ten minutes. I need to study anyway." Monica sat back and began a running, acidly accurate monologue on the outfits of the girls standing in line for coffee, which Claire tried earnestly not to find funny. Which she was able to do, until Monica pointed out a girl wearing a truly horrible polka-dot-leggings-under-shorts ensemble. "And somewhere in heaven, Versace sheds a single, perfect tear."
Claire couldn't control a snort of laughter, and hated herself for it. Monica cocked an eyebrow.
"See?" she said. "I'm so good I can even charm a hard-case like you. It's a waste of my talent, but I need to keep myself sharp." She finished her coffee, and picked up her little pink purse with the Teen People magazine sticking out of it. "Gotta fly, loser. Tell your boyfriend as far as I'm concerned, we're even. Well, okay, I'm a little bit more than even, and that's the way I like it. Consider this his restraining order: if I see him within fifty feet of me, I'll not only tell my brother about Shane's midnight adventure, I'll get some football types to pay his kneecaps a visit."
She walked out, hips swaying dangerously. People got out of her way, and they watched her go. Fear and attraction, in just about equal measure.
Claire sighed. She supposed people always did like that sort of girl, and always would. And secretly? She envied Monica's confidence. Maybe just a little, traitorous bit.
Chapter Ten
The dead girl that Shane had taken to the church was Jeanne Jackson, a sophomore who'd gone missing from a sorority party two nights before. The papers said that she'd been raped and strangled, but nothing about suspects, and no cops showed up to interrogate Shane, much to Claire's relief. He'd done a dumbass thing, but she could understand his paranoia. In Morganville, he was one suspicion away from taking up residence in Jason's old cell, whether he'd actually done anything or not.
That was, if the vampires didn't decide to hold their own brand of frontier justice.
Captain Obvious's Fang Report had a much more detailed article on the killings, linking the other two that Claire knew about with this one, and speculating that instead of a vampire menace, they might be dealing with a human one this time. He didn't seem as enthusiastic about forming up vigilante parties for someone with a pulse, Claire noticed. Not that it mattered to the dead girls which type of monster had killed them.
She got a note from Amelie giving her time off from working with Myrnin for the rest of the week, so she devoted herself to keeping up with classes. They were tougher than she was used to, which was kind of a relief. She loved a good challenge, and the professors seemed to actually care whether or not their students had a clue. Myth and Legend wasn't what she'd expected, not at all; it wasn't Greek gods, or even Native American Trickster stories. No, it was about ... vampires. Comparative vampires, actually, examining the literature and folklore from earliest recorded history to the latest vampire-as-hero in pop culture. (Which, now that Claire thought about it, kind of was the modern-day version of myth and legend.) Oddly, for Morganville, the professor wasn't skipping the parts about vampire-killing methods, but Claire guessed that she was one of the few in the class who'd ever know the score about the town, anyway. The rest would bumble cluelessly through their one or two years, transfer out to bigger schools, and never know they'd rubbed elbows at parties with real monsters.
