Dead Girls' Dance

3

Shane wasn’t talking to the cops. Not about his dad, and not about anything. He just sat like a lump, eyes down, and refused to answer any questions from the human patrol officers; Claire didn’t know what to say—or, more importantly, what not to—and stammered out a lot of “I don’t know’” and “I was in my room’” sort of answers. Eve—more self-possessed than Claire had ever seen her—stepped in to say that she’d heard the intruders downstairs breaking things, and she’d pulled Claire into her room and locked the door for protection. It sounded good. Claire supported it with a lot of nodding.

“Is that so?’” A new voice, from behind the cops, and they parted ranks to admit two strangers. Detectives, it looked like, in sport jackets and slacks. One was a woman, frost pale, with eyes like mirrors. The other one was a tall man with gray close-cropped hair.

They were wearing gold badges on their belts. So. Detectives.

Vampire detectives.

Eve had gone very still, hands folded in her lap. She looked carefully friendly. “Yes, ma’am,’” she said. “That’s what happened.’”

“And you have no idea who these mysterious intruders might have been,’” said the male vamp. He looked—scary. Cold and hard and scary. “Never saw them before.’”

“We didn’t see them at all, sir.’”

“Because you were—locked in your room.’” He smiled, and flashed fang. Clear warning. “I can smell fear. You give it off like the stench of your sweat. Delicious.’”

Claire fought back an urge to whimper. The human cops had backed up a step; one or two looked uncomfortable, but they weren’t about to interfere with whatever was about to happen. Which—was nothing, right? There were rules and stuff. And they were the victims!

Then again, she didn’t suppose the vamps cared all that much for victims.

“Leave them alone,’” Shane said.

“It speaks!’” the woman said, and laughed. She sank down into a crouch, elegant and perfectly balanced, and tried to peer into Shane’s face. “A knight-errant, defending the helpless. Charming.’” She had an old-world accent, sort of like blurred German. “Do you not trust us, little knight? Are we not your friends?’”

“That depends,’” Shane said, and looked right at her. “You take your orders from Oliver, or the Founder? Because if you touch us—any of us—you have to take it up with her. You know who I mean.’”

She lost her amused expression.

Her partner made a noise, halfway between a bark of laughter and a growl. “Careful, Gretchen, he snaps. Just like a half-grown puppy. Boy, you don’t know what you’re saying. The Founder’s mark is on the house, yes, but I see no bands on your wrists. Don’t be stupid and make bold claims you can’t back up.’”

“Bite me, Dracula,’” Shane snapped.

Gretchen laughed. “A wolf pup,’” she said. “Oh, I like him, Hans. May I have him, since he’s a stray?’”

One of the uniformed cops cleared his throat. “Ma’am? Sorry, but I can’t allow that. You want to file the paperwork, I’ll see what I can do, but—’”

Gretchen made a frustrated noise and came back to her feet. “Paperwork. Fah. In the old days we would have run him down like a deer for insolence.’”

“In the old days, Gretchen, we were starving,’” Hans said. “Remember? The winters in Bavaria? Let him howl.’” He shrugged and gave Eve and Claire a smile that looked a little less terrifying than before. “Sorry. Gretchen gets carried away. Now, you’re sure none of you knew these intruders? Morganville’s not that big a town. We’re all pretty close-knit, especially the human community.’”

“Strangers,’” Eve said. “I think they might have been strangers. Maybe just…passing through.’”

“Passing through,’” Hans repeated. “We don’t get a lot of casual visitors. Even biker gangs.’” He studied them each in turn, and while his eyes were on her Claire felt as if she were being x-rayed. Surely he couldn’t really see her thoughts, right? Hans finished with his gaze on Shane, fixed and dark. “Your name.’”

“Shane,’” he said. “Shane Collins.’”

“You left Morganville with your family a few years ago, yes? What brought you back?’”

“My friend Michael needed a roommate.’” Shane’s eyes flickered, and Claire realized that he’d just made a mistake. A big one.

“Michael Glass. Ah, yes, the mysterious Michael. Never around when anyone comes calling during the day, but always present at night. Tell me, is Michael a vampire?’”

“Wouldn’t you know?’” Shane shot back. “Last I heard, nobody had made a new vampire in fifty years or more.’”

“True.’” Hans nodded. “Yet it’s curious, isn’t it? That your friend seems so hard to keep around?’”

They knew. They knew something, anyway; Claire supposed Oliver would have no reason to keep secrets, especially Michael’s secrets. He’d probably blabbed it to all of his minions that Michael was a ghost, caught between worlds—not quite vampire, not quite human, not quite anything.

“It’s night,’” Gretchen pointed out. “So where is he? Your friend?’”

Shane swallowed, and it was hard to miss the wave of misery that went through him. “He’s around.’”

“Around where, exactly?’”

Claire exchanged a look of dread with Eve. Shane still thought Michael was dead, buried in the backyard…and Michael had been pretty firm on the idea that Shane shouldn’t know….

“I don’t know,’” Shane said. The tips of his ears were turning red.

Hans the Detective smiled slowly. “You don’t know much, son. And yet you look like you’re not completely stupid, so how exactly does that work? Did you hide in the room with the girls?’” He leaned on the last word, and his vampire partner laughed.

Shane got up. There was something insane in his eyes, and Claire felt her heart stop beating because this was bad, very bad, and Shane was going to do something horribly unwise, and there was no way they could stop him….

“You’re looking for me?’”

They all turned.

Michael was standing at the top of the stairs. He was pulling on a plain black T-shirt with blue jeans, and he looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. His feet, Claire saw, were bare as usual.

Shane sat down. Fast and hard. Michael took his time coming down the stairs, making sure they were all focused on him instead of Shane, to give Shane time to get through what he was feeling—which was, Claire thought, a lot to pack into less than thirty seconds. Relief, of course, which brought a sheen of tears to his eyes. And then, predictably, he got pissed, because, well, he was a guy, he was Shane, and that was how he handled being scared.

So, really, by the time Michael padded down the last step to the wooden floor and crossed over to the couch through the circle of police, things were pretty much just as they’d been, except that Shane wasn’t about to push the button on his nuclear temper.

“Hey,’” Michael said to him. Shane moved over on the couch to make room. Guy room, which left plenty of empty space. “What’s up?’”

Shane looked at him like he might be crazy, not just nearly dead part-time. “Cops, man.’”

“Yeah, man, I can see that. How come?’”

“You’re telling me you actually slept through all that? Dude, you need to see a doctor or something. Maybe you have a disease.’”

“Hey, I need the sleep. Lisa, you know.’” Michael grinned. They were good at this, Claire realized—good at playing normal, even if there wasn’t a normal thing in the world about their situation. “So what happened?’”

“You weren’t aware of intruders in your home?’” asked Gretchen, who’d been watching the exchange—and the correspondingly shrinking chance of bloodshed—with disappointment. “The others described it as quite loud.’”

“He can sleep through World War Three,’” Shane said. “I told you, it’s some kind of sickness or something.’”

“I thought you said you didn’t know where he was,’” Hans said. “Wasn’t he in his room?’”

Shane shrugged. “I’m not his keeper.’”

“Ah,’” Gretchen said, and smiled. “That is where you are wrong, little knight. You are all your brothers’ keepers here in Morganville, and you can all suffer for their crimes. Which you should know and remember.’”

Hans looked bored now. “Sergeant,’” he said, and the most senior uniformed cop stepped out of the ranks. “I leave this in your hands. If you find anything out of the ordinary, let us know.’”

Just like that, the vamps were gone. They moved fast, and silently; they didn’t seem to want to blend in much, Claire thought, and tried not to tremble. She sank down on the couch beside Shane, nearly crawling into his lap. Eve crowded in between the two boys.

“Right.’” The sergeant didn’t look happy with having the whole thing dumped in his lap again, but he also looked resigned. Couldn’t be the easiest thing, Claire thought, having vamps for bosses. They didn’t seem to have a long attention span. “Glass, right? Occupation?’”

“Musician, sir,’” Michael said.

“Play around town, do you?’”

“I’m rehearsing for some upcoming gigs.’”

The cop nodded and flipped pages in a black leather book. He ran a thick finger down a list, frowned, and said, “You’re behind on your donations, Glass. About a month.’”

Michael threw a lightning-fast glance at Shane. “Sorry, sir. I’ll get out there tomorrow.’”

“Better, or you know what happens.’” The cop ran down the roster. “You. Collins. You still unemployed?’” He gave him a stare. A long one. Shane shrugged, looking—Claire thought—as dumb as possible. “Try harder.’”

“Common Grounds,’” Eve volunteered before he could start in on her. “Eve Rosser, sir, thank you.’” She was vibrating all over—she was so nervous—which was funny; when she’d been on her own, she’d been cool and calm. She had hold of both Michael’s and Shane’s hands. “Although, um, I’m thinking of making a change.’”

The cop seemed bored now. “Yeah, okay. You, the kid. Name?’”

“Claire,’” she said faintly. “Um…Danvers. I’m a student.’”

He looked at her again, and kept looking. “Shouldn’t you be in the dorm?’”

“I have permission to live off campus.’” She didn’t say from whom, because it was primarily herself.

He watched her for another few seconds, then shrugged. “You live off campus, you follow the town rules. Your friends here’ll tell you what they are. Watch on campus about how much you pass along—we got enough problems without panicking students. And we’re real good at finding blabbermouths.’”

She nodded.

That wasn’t the end of it, but it was the end of her discussions with them; the police poked around a little, took some pictures, and left the house a few minutes later without another word to any of them.

For a good ten seconds after the police closed the front door—or closed it as much as was possible with a busted lock—there was silence, and then Shane turned to Michael and said, “You fucking bastard.’” Claire swallowed hard at the tight fury in his voice.

“You want to take this outside?’” Michael asked. He sounded neutral, almost calm. His eyes were anything but.

“What, you can leave the house now?’”

“No, I meant another room, Shane.’”

“Hey,’” Eve said, “don’t—’”

“Shut up, Eve!’” Shane snapped.

Michael came off the couch like somebody had pushed him; he reached down, grabbed Shane by the T-shirt, and yanked him upright. “Don’t,’” he said, and gave him one hard shake. “Your father’s an asshole. It’s not a disease. You don’t have to catch it.’”

Shane grabbed him in a hug. Michael rocked back a little from the impact, but he closed his eyes and hung on for a moment, then slapped Shane’s back. And of course Shane slapped his back, too, and they stepped way apart. Manly. Claire rolled her eyes.

“I thought you were dead,’” Shane said. His eyes looked suspiciously bright and wet. “I saw you die, man.’”

“I die all the time. It doesn’t really take.’” Michael gave him a half smile that looked more grim than amused. “I figured it was better to let your dad think he’d taken me out. Maybe he wouldn’t be so hard on the rest of you.’” His gaze swept over the bruises on Shane’s face. “Brilliant plan. I’m sorry, man. Once I was dead, I couldn’t do much until night came around again.’”

He said it so matter-of-factly that Claire felt a shiver. “Do you remember…you know, what they did to you?’”

Michael glanced at her. “Yeah,’” he said. “I remember.’”

“Oh hell.’” Shane collapsed back on the sofa and put his head in his hands. “God, man, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’”

“Not your fault.’”

“I called him.’”

“You called him because it looked like we were all pulling an Alamo. You didn’t know—’”

“I know my dad,’” Shane said grimly. “Michael, I want you to know, I wasn’t—I didn’t come here to do his dirty work. Not…not after the first week or so.’”

Michael didn’t answer him. Maybe there was no answer to that, Claire thought. She scooted closer to Shane and stroked his ragged, shoulder-length fine hair. “Hey,’” she said. “It’s okay. We’re all okay.’”

“No, we’re not.’” Shane’s voice was muffled by his hands. “We’re totally screwed. Right, Mike?’”

“Pretty much,’” Michael sighed. “Yeah.’”

“The cops will find them,’” Eve said in an undertone to Claire as both girls stood in the kitchen making pasta. Pasta, apparently, was a new thing that Eve wanted to try. She frowned down at the package of spaghetti, then at the not-yet-bubbling pot of water. “Shane’s dad and his merry band of assholes, I mean.’”

“Yeah,’” Claire agreed, not because she thought they would, but because, well, it seemed like the thing to say. “Want me to warm up the sauce?’”

“Do we do that? I mean, it’s in a jar, right? Can’t you just dump it over the pasta?’”

“Well, you can, but it tastes better if you warm it up.’”

“Oh.’” Eve sighed. “This is complicated. No wonder I never cook.’”

“You make breakfast!’”

“I make two things: bacon and eggs. And sometimes sandwiches. I hate cooking. Cooking reminds me of my mother.’” Eve took another pot from the rack and banged it down onto the massive stove. “Here.’”

Claire struggled with the top on the spaghetti sauce jar, and finally got it to release with a pop. “You think they’re going to stay mad at each other?’” she asked.

“Michael and Shane?’”

“Mmm-hmmm.’” The sauce plopped into the pot, chunky and wet and vaguely nauseating. Claire considered the second jar, decided that if two of the four of them were boys, more was better. She got it opened and in the pot, as well, then turned on the burner and set it to simmer.

“Who knows?’” Eve shrugged. “Boys are idiots. You’d think Shane could just say, ‘Oh man, I’m glad you’re alive,’ but no. It’s either guilt or amateur night at the Drama Queen Theater.’” She blew out a frustrated breath. “Boys. I’d turn gay if they weren’t so sexy.’”

Claire tried not to laugh, but she couldn’t help it, and after a second Eve smiled and chuckled, too. The water started boiling. In went the pasta.

“Um…Eve…can I ask…?’”

“About what?’” Eve was still frowning at the pasta like she suspected it was going to do something clever, like try to escape from the pot.

“You and Michael.’”

“Oh.’” A surge of pink to Eve’s cheeks. Between that and the fact that she was wearing colors outside of the Goth red and black rainbow, she looked young and very cute. “Well. I don’t know if it’s—God, he’s just so—’”

“Hot?’” Claire asked.

“Hot,’” Eve admitted. “Nuclear hot. Surface of the sun hot. And—’”

She stopped, the flush in her cheeks getting darker. Claire picked up a wooden spoon and poked the pasta, which was beginning to loosen up. “And?’”

“And I was planning on putting the moves on him before all this happened. That’s why I had on the garters and stuff. Planning ahead.’”

“Oh, wow.’”

“Yeah, embarrassing. Did he peek?’”

“When you were changing?’” Claire asked. “I don’t think so. But I think he wanted to.’”

“That’s okay, then.’” Eve blinked down at the pasta, which had formed a thick white foam on top. “Is it supposed to be doing that?’”

Claire hadn’t ever seen it happen at her parents’ house. But then again, they hadn’t made spaghetti much. “I don’t know.’”

“Oh crap!’” The white foam kept growing, like in one of those cheesy science fiction movies. The foam that ate the Glass House…it mushroomed up over the top of the pot and down over the sides, and both girls yelped as it hit the burners and began to sizzle and pop. Claire grabbed the pot and moved it. Eve turned down the burner. “Right, pasta makes foam, good to know. Too hot. Way too hot.’”

“Who? Michael?’” Claire asked, and they dissolved in giggles.

Which only got worse when Michael walked in, went to the refrigerator, and retrieved the last two beers from his birthday pack. “Ladies,’” he said. “Did I miss something?’”

“Pasta boiled over,’” Claire gulped, trying not to giggle even harder. Michael looked at them for a second, curious, and then shrugged and left again. “Do you think he’s telling Shane right now that we’re insane?’”

“Probably.’” Eve managed to control herself, and put the pasta back on the burner. “Is this shock? Are we in shock right now?’”

“I don’t know,’” Claire said. “Let’s see, we’ve been barricaded in the house, attacked, nearly burned to death. Michael was murdered right in front of us, then came back, and we got interrogated by the big, scary vampire cops? Yeah, maybe shock.’”

Eve choked on another snort/giggle. “Maybe that’s why I decided to cook.’”

They watched the pasta bubble in silence. The whole room was starting to smell warm with spices and tomato sauce, a comforting and homey sort of smell. Claire stirred the spaghetti sauce, which was looking delicious now that it was simmering.

The kitchen door banged open again. Shane, this time, a beer in one hand. “What’s burning?’”

“Your brain. So, did you two girls kiss and make up?’” Eve asked, stirring the pasta.

He glowered at her, then turned to Claire. “What the hell is she making?’”

“Spaghetti.’” And technically, it was Claire mostly, but she decided not to mention it. “Um, about your dad—do you think they’re going to catch him?’”

“No.’” Shane hip-bumped Eve out of the way at the stove and did some spaghetti maintenance. “Morganville’s got a lot of hiding places. That’s mostly for the vamps’ benefit, but it’ll work for him, too. He’ll go to ground. I’ve been sending him maps. He’ll know where to go.’”

“Maybe he’ll just leave?’” Eve sounded hopeful. Shane dragged a piece of spaghetti out of the tangle in the pot and pressed it against the metal with the spoon. It sliced cleanly.

“No,’” Shane said again. “He definitely won’t leave. He’s got no place else to go. He always said that if he crossed the border into Morganville again, he was here until it was done.’”

“You mean until he’s done.’” Eve crossed her arms, not as if she was angry, more like she was cold. “Shane, if he goes after even one vampire, we are dead. You know that, right?’”

He picked up the beer bottle and drank, avoiding an answer. He flipped off the burner under the spaghetti, took the pot to the sink, and drained it with the edge of a lid. Like a real chef or something.

Which, Claire had to admit, was pretty much totally hot, the way he moved so confidently. She liked to cook, but he had authority. In fact, she was paying a lot more attention to what Shane did today—the way he moved, the way his clothes fit—or didn’t, in his case, because Shane was wearing his jeans loose and just baggy enough to give her fantasies about them sliding down. Which made her blush.

She concentrated on getting down the bowls from the cupboard. Mismatched bowls, two out of four of them chipped. She put them out on the counter as Shane returned with the spaghetti and began portioning it out. Eve grabbed the sauce and followed him down the line, ladling.

It looked pretty tasty, actually. Claire picked up two bowls and carried them into the living room, where Michael was tuning his guitar as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t been stabbed through the heart and dragged outside and—oh my God, she didn’t want to finish that thought at all.

She handed him the bowl. He set the guitar carefully back in its case—somehow, with all the mayhem that had gone on in the past two days, it had escaped damage—and dug in as Eve and Shane trailed in with their own dinner. Eve had two chilled bottles of water under one arm. She tossed one to Claire as she sat down cross-legged on the floor, next to Michael’s knee.

Shane settled on the couch, and Claire joined him. For a few minutes nobody said anything. Claire hadn’t realized that she was hungry, not really, but the second the sauce hit her tongue and exploded into flavors, she was starving. She couldn’t gobble it fast enough.

“Hell’s put in a skating rink,’” Shane said. “This is actually edible, Eve.’”

Again, Claire had the impulse to claim credit…and managed not to, mostly because that would have required her to stop shoveling pasta into her mouth.

“Claire,’” Eve said. “She’s the cook, not me. I just, you know, supervised.’” Which gave Claire a pleasant little spurt of gratitude and surprise.

“See? I knew that.’”

Eve flipped him off and noisily sucked some spaghetti into her mouth.

Claire got to the bottom of the bowl first—even before Michael or Shane—and sat back with a sigh of utter contentment. Nap, she thought. I could take a nap.

“Guys,’” Michael said. “We’re still in trouble. You know that, right?’”

“Yeah,’” Eve said. “But now we have catered trouble.’”

He ignored her, except for a brief little quirk of a smile, and focused on Shane. “You need to tell me everything,’” Michael said. “No bullshit, man. Every last thing, from the time you left Morganville.’”

Shane seemed to lose his appetite.

Which, for Shane, was not a good sign at all.

The vampires had offered them money. Cash compensation. It was Morganville’s version of Allstate, only it wasn’t insurance—it was blood money for a dead child.

And the Collins family—Dad, Mom, and Shane—had packed up whatever had survived the fire that had taken Alyssa, and left town in the middle of the night. Running. That probably would have been that, Shane explained; people did leave town from time to time, and it was rarely any trouble. Michael’s own parents had taken off. But…something went wrong with Molly Collins.

“At first, she’d just space,’” Shane said. He’d drained his beer, and now he was just rolling the bottle between his palms. “Stare at things, like she was trying to remember something. Dad didn’t notice. He was drinking a lot. We ended up in Odessa, and Dad got a job at the recycling plant. He wasn’t home much.’”

“That must have been an improvement,’” Eve muttered.

“Hey, let me get through it, okay?’”

“Sorry.’”

Shane took another deep breath. “Mom…she kept talking about Alyssa. You have to understand, we didn’t—I couldn’t remember anything, except that she’d died. It was all just sort of a blur, but not the kind of blur you worry about, if you know what I mean…?’”

Claire was fairly certain nobody did, but she remembered her conversation with her own parents. They’d forgotten things, and somehow, they hadn’t really cared. So maybe she did understand.

“I started working, too. Mom…she just stayed in the motel. Wouldn’t do anything except eat, sleep, sometimes take a bath if we yelled at her long enough. I figured, you know, depression…but it was more than that. One day, out of nowhere, she grabs me by the arm and she says, ‘Shane, do you remember your sister?’ So I go, ‘Yeah, Mom, of course I do.’ And she says the weirdest thing. She says, ‘Do you remember the vampires?’ I didn’t remember, but it felt—like something in me was trying to. I got a bad headache, and I felt sick. And Mom…she just kept on talking, about how there was something wrong with us, something going wrong in our heads. About the vampires. About Lyssa dying in the fire.’”

He fell silent, still rolling the beer bottle like some kind of magic talisman. Nobody moved.

“And I remembered.’”

Shane’s whisper sounded raw, somehow, vulnerable and exposed. Michael wasn’t looking at him. He was looking down, at his own beer bottle, and the label he was peeling off in strips.

“It was like some wall coming down, and then it all just flooded in. I mean, it’s bad enough to live through it and sort of cope with it, but when it comes back like that…’” Shane visibly shuddered. “It was like I’d just watched Lyss die all over again.’”

“Oh,’” Eve said faintly. “Oh God.’”

“Mom—’” He shook his head. “I couldn’t handle it. I left her. I had to get away, I couldn’t just—I had to go. You know? So I left. I ran.’” A hollow rattle of a laugh. “Saved my life.’”

“Shane—’” Michael cleared his throat. “I was wrong. You don’t have to—’”

“Shut up, man. Just shut up.’” Shane tipped the bottle to his lips for the last few drops, then swallowed hard. Claire didn’t know what was coming, but she could see from the look on Michael’s face that he did, and it twisted her stomach into a knot. “So anyway, I came back a few hours later and she was in the tub, just floating there, and the water was red—razor blades on the floor—’”

“Oh, honey.’” Eve got up and stood there, hovering next to him, reaching out to touch him and then pulling back in jerky motions without making contact, like he had some force field of grief shielding him. “It wasn’t your fault. You said she was depressed.’”

“Don’t you get it?’” He glared up at her, then at Michael. “She didn’t do it. She wouldn’t. It was them. You know how they work: they close in; they kill; they cover it up. They must have gotten there right after I left. I don’t know—’”

“Shane.’”

“—I don’t know how they got her in the tub. There weren’t any bruises, but the cuts were—’”

“Shane! Christ, man!’” Michael looked outright horrified this time, and Shane stopped. The two of them looked at each other for a long, wordless moment, and then Michael—visibly tense—eased back into his chair. “Shit. I don’t even know what to say.’”

Shane shook his head and looked away. “Nothing to say. It is what it is. I couldn’t—shit. Let me just finish, okay?’”

As if they could stop him. Claire felt cold. She could feel Shane’s body shaking next to her, and if she felt cold, how must he be feeling? Frozen. Numb. She reached out to touch him and, like Eve, just…stopped. There was something about Shane right now that didn’t want to be touched.

“Anyway, my dad came home, eventually. Cops said it was a suicide, but after they were gone I told him. He didn’t exactly want to hear it. Things got…ugly.’” Claire couldn’t imagine how ugly that had been, for Shane to actually admit it. “But I made him remember.’”

Eve sat on the floor, hugging her knees close to her chest. She looked at him with anime-wide eyes. “And?’”

“He got drunk. A lot.’” Bitterness ran black through Shane’s voice, and all of a sudden the beer bottle in his hand seemed to get a whole lot of significance for him, beyond just something to occupy his nervous hands. He set it down on the floor and wiped his palms on his blue jeans. “He started hooking up with these bikers and stuff. I—wasn’t in a real good place; I don’t remember some of that. Couple of weeks later we got a visit from these guys in suits. Not vamps, lawyers. They gave us money, lots of it. Insurance. Except we both knew who it was from, and the point was, they were trying to figure out what we knew and remembered. I was too drugged out to know what was going on, and Dad was drunk, so I guess that saved our lives. They decided we were no threat.’” He wiped his forehead with the heel of his hand and laughed—a bitter, broken sound like glass in a blender.

Shane on drugs. Claire saw that Michael had caught it, too. She wondered if he was going to say something, but maybe it wasn’t the best time to say, Hey, man, you using now? Or something like that.

He didn’t need to ask, as it turned out. Shane answered anyway. “But I kicked it, and Dad sobered up, and we planned this out. Thing is, even though we remembered a lot of stuff, the personal stuff, we couldn’t remember things about how to find vamps, or the layout of the town, or even who we were looking for. So that was my job. Come back, scout it out, find out where the vamps hide during the day. Report back. It wasn’t supposed to take this long, and I wasn’t supposed to—get tangled up.’”

“With us,’” Eve supplied softly. “Right? He didn’t want you to have any friends.’”

“Friends get you killed in Morganville.’”

“No.’” Eve put a pale hand on his knee. “Shane, honey, in Morganville, friends are the only things that keep you alive.’”