AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He waved and followed Eve upstairs.
Shane came back from checking all the ground-floor entry points, and dropped into the chair Michael had vacated. "Where'd they go?"
She pointed straight up.
"Oh." He knew, all too well. "So. Want to play a game?"
"I want to call my parents," Claire said. "Do you seriously think Amelie let Mr. Bishop stay in their house?"
"I don't know," he said. "Call if you think it'll help."
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed information; her parents had a new listing, since they'd just arrived in Morganville. While she waited for an answer, Shane reached across the table and took her free hand in his, and the warm touch of his skin made her feel a little less nervous.
Until her mom answered the phone, at least. "Claire! I didn't expect you to call so soon. Are you ready to come home?"
She froze for a second, then said, as calmly as possible, "No, Mom. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Everything all right?"
"Of course everything's all right. Why wouldn't it be?"
Claire squeezed her eyes shut. "No reason," she said. "I just wanted to check in and see how you were settling in. How's the house?"
"Well, it's a fixer-upper, you know. Needs some wiring, and an absolute mountain of decorating, but I'm looking forward to that."
"That's great. And - so, you don't have any guests or anything?"
"Guests?" Her mother laughed. "Claire, honey, we barely have sheets on our mattress right now. I'm not ready for guests!"
That, at least, was a relief. "Great. Well - Mom, I have to go. Good night."
"Good night, sweetheart. I'm looking forward to having you home."
Claire hung up, and Shane slipped an arm around her waist. "Hey," he said. "They're okay?"
"For now. But he could get to them, right? Anytime he wants."
"Maybe. But he could get to us just as easily. Look, you can't help them right now, but he's got no good reason to hurt them. It'll be okay."
Shane was the optimist. That was how you knew things were really bad. . . . Claire forced a smile, opened her eyes, and tried to be a brave little toaster. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, it'll be fine. No problem."
His dark eyes searched hers, and she knew that he could see she was lying. But he didn't call her on it, probably all too familiar with the concept of denial. "So," he said. "Care for a nice, civilized game of chess?"
A thump, and the unmistakable sound of a muffled giggle, drifted through the ceiling from the second floor. Approximately where Eve's room would be.
"Hey!" Shane yelled up. "Turn down the p**n soundtrack! Trying to concentrate here!"
More laughter, quickly stifled. Shane focused back on Claire, and Claire felt her lips curling into a more genuine kind of smile.
"Chess," she said. "Your move, tough guy."
Another thump from upstairs. Shane shook his head and tipped over his king. "What the hell. I surrender. Let's hook up a video game and kill some zombies."
Chapter Three
In the morning, it was ... the morning. For a precious few seconds when Claire woke up, nothing was wrong, nothing at all. Her body hummed with energy, and the birds were singing outside, and the sun burned in warm stripes across her bed.
She squinted at the alarm clock. Seven thirty. Time to get up if she intended to make it to her first class and still have any margin for coffee.
It wasn't until she was in the shower, and the hot water was pounding sense back into her head, that she realized that all was not well. Her parents were in town. Her parents were on the radar screen of the monsters.
And her parents wanted her to move back in with them.
That put an end to her good mood, and by the time she padded down the steps, dragging her textbook-loaded backpack and carrying her shoes, she was frowning. The house was a mess. Nobody had done the chores, including her. The kitchen was still a wreck, with breakfast congealing in the pans. She muttered to herself as the coffee brewed, dumped filthy dishes and pans in the sink to soak in hot water, and left a snarky note for her housemates. Especially Shane, who'd slacked even more than was normal.
Then she put on her shoes and walked to school.
Morganville looked just like any other dusty, sleepy town in the daylight: people out driving to work, jogging, pushing strollers, walking dogs. College students with backpacks as she got closer to the campus. The casual visitor never knew, at least during the daytime, that this place was so vastly screwed up.
Claire supposed that was the point.
She spotted some trucks delivering to local businesses; did those drivers know? Did they just come and go without incident? Was there some off-limits rule for the vamps about whom they could hunt and whom they couldn't? There would have to be. Having the state police descend on Morganville wouldn't be helpful for the vamps. . . .
"Hey."
Claire blinked. A car was idling next to her, barely keeping pace as she walked. A red convertible, harsh and shiny as fresh blood in the sun. In it, three girls with identically false smiles.
The driver was Monica Morrell, the daughter of the town's mayor. Claire's worst human enemy from day one of her tenure in Morganville. Monica had mostly recovered from her recent brush with death by drugs, or at least she looked that way - glossy as the car, and just as hard. Her blond hair was shiny and casually styled, her makeup perfect, and if she looked just a shade more pale than usual, it was hard to tell.
"Hey," Claire said, and made sure to drift farther over on the sidewalk, out of easy grabbing range. "How are you feeling, Monica?"
"Me? Great. Couldn't be better," Monica said brightly. There was something way darker in her eyes than in her tone. "You tried to kill me, freak."
Claire stopped dead in her tracks. "No," she said. "I didn't do that."
"You gave me that drug. It almost killed me."
"You took it from me!" The red crystals, the ones that she'd stolen from Myrnin. The ones that, however briefly, had seemed like a good idea. Not so much once she'd seen their effect on Monica, and her own face in the mirror after taking them. They hadn't hurt her, but their effect on Monica had been shocking.
"Don't give me that. You nearly killed me," Monica said. "I'd file charges, but with you being the Founder's pet and all, that won't do any good. So we'll just have to find some other way to make sure you pay. Just wanted to give you a heads-up, bitch - this isn't done. It isn't even started. It is on."
