Midnight Bites (17 page)

There was no sign of Frank Collins.

Later that night—around midnight—Michael and I sat outside on the steps of our house. I had a bottle of most illegal beer; he was guzzling his sixth bottle of blood, which I pretended not to notice. He had his arm around Eve, who had been pelting us both with questions all night in a nonstop machine-gun patter; she'd finally run down, and leaned against Michael with sleepy contentment.

Well, she hadn't quite run down. “Hey,” she said, and looked up at Michael with big, dark-rimmed eyes. “Seriously. You can bring back dead guys with vampire juice? That is so wrong.”

Michael almost spat out the blood he was swallowing. “Vampire juice? Damn, Eve. Thanks for your concern.”

She lost her smile. “If I didn't laugh, I'd scream.”

He hugged her. “I know. But it's over.”

Next to me, Claire had been quiet all night. She wasn't drinking—not that we'd have let her, at sixteen—and she wasn't saying much, either. She also wasn't looking at me. She was staring out at the Morganville night.

“He's coming back,” she finally said. “Your dad's not going to give it up, is he?”

I exchanged a look with Michael. “No,” I said. “Probably not. But it'll be a while before he gets his act together again. He expected to
have me to help him kick off his war, and like he said, his time was running out. He'll need a brand-new plan.”

Claire sighed and linked her arm through mine. “He'll find one.”

“He'll have to do it without me.” I kissed the soft, warm top of her hair.

“I'm glad,” she said. “You deserve better.”

“News flash,” I said. “I've got better. Right here.”

Michael and I clinked glasses, and toasted our survival.

However long it
lasted.

I rarely wrote stories from Claire's point of view, mainly because she's the main character in the books, so it seemed redundant to have her take the lead in the shorts, too. But I did enjoy it from time to time, such as in this short story (free on the Web site) that just gives us a taste of the romance building between Claire and Shane. This is set in that late-romance period somewhere around
Feast of Fools
when things are hot . . . but not yet reaching the boil that they would in
Carpe Corpus
.

One of Shane's many terrible jobs is featured, which is always fun for me. Poor Shane. Poor bosses.

L
unch was always an iffy proposition at the Glass House. Some days all of Claire's housemates were in; most days nobody was. Some days, there was food in the fridge. Most days, not. Claire had made a fine art out of scrounging up crackers and cans of soup. Her favorite was cream of tomato. Yum.

She was slurping up her soup, alone as usual, when she heard a thump from upstairs. Odd. She knew for a fact that Eve was at her job on campus, and Michael was off teaching guitar lessons. Shane . . . Well, she never knew for sure where Shane would be, but she'd looked for him before making lunch and there hadn't been any sign of him.

Not another visitor through the portal. Honestly, having one of those mystic doorways in the house was getting to be a royal pain. “Grand Central Station,” Claire said, then sighed and gulped down the rest of her lunch before dumping the bowl in the sink and heading upstairs. The house was a comfortable mess, but it was slowly creeping toward the
Oh my God, who lives here?
kind of mess, so she'd have to get on everybody's case to do a little picking up. Just to show she wasn't immune, she picked up a stack of books she'd left on the dining table and carried them upstairs with her.

Once she'd dumped the books on top of—well, all the other books she'd been meaning to find a shelf for, Claire grabbed the miniature baseball bat Shane had bought her—aluminum, but electroplated in silver. Good for vampire-whacking, should the need come up. It was surprisingly heavy.

The thump came again. Not, as she would have thought, from Amelie's private room upstairs, or from the attic.

It was coming from Shane's room.

Claire took a firm grip on the bat, and flung open the door. “Freeze!” she yelled. Stress made her voice sound too high, like the squeak of a little girl on helium. Embarrassing. And not intimidating.

There was a half-naked man standing in the middle of Shane's room.

Oh.

Shane, in his underwear, tried to get into his jeans so fast he staggered and tipped over onto the bed. “Hey!” he protested. “What is it with girls busting in on me when I'm getting dressed? Out!”

Claire couldn't help it—she burst out laughing. It was ridiculously funny, the way he was rolling around on the bed trying to wiggle into those jeans, and also—well, yeah. Hot.

She lowered the bat and turned her back. “Sorry. I heard noises. I thought—wait. Girls, plural? Somebody else busts in on you besides me?”

She heard the bed creak, clothes rustling, and he said, “Well, yeah. Eve kind of walked into the bathroom once while I was in the shower. Which is when I got rid of the clear shower curtain and got the dark one.”

“Eve's seen you naked?”

“Um—behind a sheet of plastic with water all over it? There's no safe answer to this, is there?”

Claire turned, unasked. He was just pulling on his old gray
T-shirt. “Not really,” she said. “Anyway. Why are you changing clothes?”

Shane tried for an innocent look, which didn't go well on his face. “Got bored?”

“Shane, I've never seen you change clothes in the middle of the day, ever. You were gone when I got up, and you just got back. What happened?” Because she was thinking the worst. She supposed that the worst in places other than Morganville probably had something to do with him seeing another girl. Here, she was assuming he'd gotten blood all over himself.

He thought about lying to her; she could see it flash across his face. But then he sighed, shook his head, and opened up the closet door. He took out a plastic bag and held it out toward her.

Inside were his Nike cross-trainers, a pair of worn blue jeans, and a shirt that might have once been red, a hundred washings ago. And they stank. Claire pulled back with a choking sound. “What the heck is that?”

“You know how I said I was going to get a job?”

“Yeah?” She found she was holding a hand over her nose and mouth, and her eyes were watering. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I got a job . . . at the city dump. Raking garbage. Hey, did you know there are seagulls out there? Kind of far from the ocean. Anyway, they have showers in the locker room, so I took one before I left, but I forgot to bring a change of clothes.” He tied off the bag and pitched it into his closet. “Also, I've decided to look for a better job.”

“Good idea.” He looked so completely annoyed at the idea of another job search that Claire couldn't stop the giggles that boiled up.

“You laughing at me?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

Shane lunged for her. She squealed and dodged, and made a mock
swing at him with the bat. He caught it easily in one hand, and pressed her up against the wall.

Oh.

“How do I smell?” he asked her, very low in his throat. She felt her whole body tingle in response.

“Good.” That didn't quite cover it. She took a deeper breath. “Great, actually.”

“Glad to hear it.” He brushed her lips with his, very lightly. “Let's be sure. Take a nice, deep breath.”

She took one. “Maybe a little hint of old diapers.”

“Hey!”

She kissed him. He certainly didn't taste like old diapers. He tasted like cinnamon and spices, and his lips were soft and hot under hers, and she forgot all about the bat in her hand until it hit the floor with a heavy thunk.

“You taste like tomato soup,” Shane murmured. “I came home to get lunch, you know.”

“Well, get your own.”

“Maybe later.”

Claire took in another deep breath—he really didn't smell at all like old diapers—and pushed him back. She was nowhere near strong enough to do that, if he didn't want to be pushed, but he obligingly stepped back. “Now,” she said. “And you're doing your own laundry, stinky. Don't even think about asking.”

“Would I do that?” He did the puppy-dog thing with his eyes.

He totally would.

And she knew, as they went downstairs, that she really didn't mind that at all.

It must be love, she thought, and handed him a can of tomato soup.

What goes together better than Morganville and Halloween? Morganville, Halloween, Eve, Shane, a sinister stranger at a rave . . . This short story was originally printed in the
Eternal Kiss
anthology, edited by Trisha Telep, and I was delighted to write it. Michael's a vampire, and Eve's desperately in love and trying to make that Romeo-Juliet thing work.

Miranda delivers another of her eerie prophecies, which hasn't quite come true . . . yet?
But who knows?
More Morganville stories yet to be told.

I always wanted to put the Glass House gang in full costume; we got to do a little with
Feast of Fools
, but I wanted to see what they'd wear if they picked the costumes themselves. Not sure it's a total surprise, but it was a pleasure.

D
ating the undead is a bad idea. Everybody in Morganville knows that—everybody breathing, that is.

Everybody but me, apparently. Eve Rosser, dater of the undead, dumb-ass breaker of rules. Yeah, I'm a rebel. But rebel or not, I froze, because that was what you did when a vampire looked at you with those scary red eyes, even if the vampire was your hunky best guy, Michael Glass.

None of them were fluffy bunnies at the best of times, but you really did not want to cross them when they were angry. It was like the Incredible Hulk, times infinity. And even though my sweet Michael had been a vampire for only a few months, that just made it worse; he hadn't had time to get used to his impulses, and I wasn't sure, right at this second, that he could control himself.

Controlling myself seemed like the least I could do.

“Hey,” I breathed, and slowly stepped back from him. I spread my hands out in obvious surrender. “Michael, stop.”

He closed those awful, scary eyes and went very, very still. Eyes closed, he looked much more like the Michael I'd grown up around— dreamy, with curling blond hair in a surfer's careless mop around a
face that made girls swoon, tall and not just when he was onstage playing guitar.

He still looked human. That made it worse, somehow.

I tried to decide whether I ought to totally back off or stand my ground. I stayed, mainly because, well, I've been in love with him since I was fourteen. Too late to run now, just because of a little thing like him being technically, you know, dead.

I wasn't in any real danger, or at least, that was what I told myself. After all, I was standing in the warm, cozy living room of the Glass House, and my housemates were around, and Michael wasn't a monster.

Technically, maybe yes, but actually, no.

When Michael's eyes opened again, they were back to clear, quiet blue, just the way I loved them. He took another breath and scrubbed his face with both hands, like he was trying to wash something off. “I scared you,” he said. “Sorry. Caught me by surprise.”

I nodded, not really ready to talk again quite yet. When he held out his hand, though, I put mine in it. I was the one in black nail polish, rice-powder makeup, and dyed-black hair; what with my fondness for Goth style, you'd think that I'd have been the one to end up with the fangs. Michael was way too gorgeous, too human to end up with immortality on his hands.

It hurt, sometimes. Both ways.

“You need to eat something,” I said, in that careful tone I found myself using when speaking about sucking blood. “There's some O neg in the fridge. I could warm it up.”

He looked mortally embarrassed. “I don't want you to do that. I'll go to the clinic,” he said. “Eve? I'm really sorry. Really. I didn't think I'd need anything for another day or so.”

I could tell that he was sorry. The light in his eyes was pure, hot
love, and if there was any hunger complicating all that, he kept it well hidden deep inside.

“Hey, it's like being diabetic, right? Something goes wrong with your blood, you gotta take care of that,” I said. “It's not a problem. We can all wait until you get back.”

He was already shaking his head. “No,” he said. “I want you guys to go on to the party. I'll meet you there.”

I touched his face gently, then kissed him. His lips were cool, cooler than most people's, but they warmed up under mine. Ectothermic, according to Claire, the resident scholarly nerd girl in our screwed-up little frat house of four. One vampire, one Goth, one nerd, and one wannabe vampire slayer. Yeah. Screwed up, ain't it? Especially living in Morganville, where the relationship between humans and vampires is sometimes like that between deer and deer hunters. Even when vampires weren't hunting us, they had that look, like they were wondering when open season might start.

Not Michael, though.

Not usually, anyway.

He kissed the back of my hand. “Save the first dance for me?” he asked.

“Like I could say no, when you give me that
oh baby
look, you dog.”

He smiled, and that was a pure Michael smile, the kind that laid girls out in the aisles when he played. “I can't look at you any other way,” he said. “It's my Eve look.”

I batted at his arm, which had zero effect. “Get moving, before you see my mean look.”

“Scary.”

“You bet it is. Go on.”

He kissed me again, gently, and whispered, “I'm sorry,” one more time before he was suddenly gone.

He left me standing in the middle of the living room of the Glass
House, aka Screwed-Up Frat Central, wearing a skintight, pleather catsuit, cat ears, and a whip. Not to mention some killer stiletto heels. Add the mask, and I made a superhot Catwoman.

The costume might have been the reason for Michael's shiny eyes and out-of-control hunger, actually. I'd intended to push his buttons for Halloween. . . . I just hadn't intended to push them quite that hard.

I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Shane's voice drifted down ahead of him. “Hey, have you seen my meat cleaver—holy shit!”

I turned. Shane was standing frozen on the stairs, wearing a lab coat smeared with fake blood and some gruesome-looking Leatherface mask, which he quickly stripped off in order to stare at me without any latex barriers. What I was wearing suddenly felt like way too little.

“Eve—jeez. Warn a guy, would you?” He shook his head, jammed the mask back on, and came down the rest of the stairs. “That was not my fault.”

“The leering? I think yes,” I said. And secretly, that was pretty cool, although, hey, it was Shane. Not like he was exactly the guy I was hoping to impress. “Totally your fault.”

“It's a guy thing. We have reactions to women in tight leather with whips. It's sort of involuntary.” He looked around. “Where's Michael?”

“He had to go,” I said. “He'll meet us at the party.” No reason to tell Shane, who still couldn't quite get over his anti-vamp upbringing, that Michael had gone to snag himself a bag of fresh plasma so he wouldn't be snacking on mine. “Seriously, do I look okay?”

“No,” Shane said, and flopped down on the sofa. He put his heavy boots up on the coffee table, sending a paper plate with the dried remains of a chili dog close to the edge. I rescued it, gave him a dirty look, and dumped the plate in his lap. “Hey!”

“It's your chili dog. Clean it up.”

“It's your turn to clean.”

“The house. Not your trash, which you can walk your Leatherfaced ass into the kitchen to throw away.”

He batted his long, silky eyelashes at me. “Didn't I tell you that you look great?” Shane said. “You do.”

“Oh, please. Chili dog. Trash. Now.”

“Seriously. Michael's going to have to watch himself around you. And watch out for every other guy in the room, too.”

“That's the idea,” I said. “Hey, it was this or the Naughty Nurse costume.”

Shane sent me a miserable look. “Do you have to say things like that?”

“Guy reaction?”

“You think?” He held out his plate to me, looking so pitiful that I couldn't help but take it. “You just destroyed my ability to get off this couch.”

I had to laugh. Shane teased, but he wasn't serious; the two of us never were, and never would be. He was thinking of someone else, and so was I.

I saw the change in his expression when we heard the sound of footsteps upstairs. He looked up and there was a kind of utter focus in him that made me smile.
Boy, you have got it bad,
I thought, but I was kind enough not to point it out. Yet.

Claire practically floated down the stairs. Our fourth roommate—our booky little nerd, small and fragile enough that she always looked like you could break her in half with a harsh word—looked even more ethereal than usual.

She was dressed as a fairy—a long, pale pink dress in layers of sheer stuff, glitter on her face, her hair streaked with blue and pink and green. Soft pink fairy wings. It made her look both younger than
she really was, which was still a year younger than me and Shane, and yet also older.

But maybe that was just the look in her eyes that got more mature with every day she spent in Morganville, working shoulder to shoulder with the vampires.

Claire paused on the steps, looking at Shane. Her mouth fell open, ruining her ethereal fairy look. “Seriously? Leatherface? Oh God.”

“You were expecting something out of
Pride and Prejudice
?” Shane shrugged and held up the mask. “You don't know me very well.”

Claire shook her head, and then caught sight of my own outfit. Her eyes widened. “Holy—”

I sighed. “Don't say it. Shane already did.”

“That's really—wow. Tight.”

“Catsuit,” I said. “Kind of the textbook definition of tight.”

“Well, you look . . . wow. I'd never have the guts.” Claire wafted over in her layers of pink to sit next to Shane, who gallantly moved his Leatherface mask to make room.

“You look fabulous,” he told her, and kissed her. “Oh, crap, now I've got glitter, right? Leatherface does not do glitter. It's not manly.” Claire and I both rolled our eyes, right on cue. “Right. Small price to pay for the privilege of kissing such a beautiful girl—what was I thinking? Sorry.”

Shane was an idiot, but he was a good idiot, mostly. He'd never hurt Claire intentionally; I knew that. I wondered, though, if she knew that, from the look of concern that flickered across her expression. “Do you like the costume? Really?”

He stopped goofing and stared right into her eyes. “I love it,” he said, and he wasn't talking about the costume. “You look beautiful.”

That erased some of the worry from her eyes. “It's not too, you know, little girl or something?”

I realized that she was comparing what she was wearing with my Catwoman suit. “It's Halloween, not ‘Hello, Slut,'” I said. “You look fantastic, CB. Hot, but not obvious. Classy.” I, on the other hand, was starting to think I looked a little too obvious, and not at all classy. “So, are we going, or are we going to waste our amazing fabulousness on this B-movie fool?”

“Hey, Leatherface is an American classic!” Shane objected. Claire and I both smacked him. Then she took the right arm; I took the left. “No fair double-teaming! Don't make me hit you with my rubber cleaver!”

“Speaking of double-teaming, until Michael catches up to us, you're both our dates,” I said. “Congratulations. You can be Hefner tonight if you go throw on a bathrobe and slippers.”

He stared at me, blinked, and then tossed the Leatherface mask over his shoulder as he bounced to his feet. “Awesome. Back in a minute,” he said, and dashed upstairs. Claire and I exchanged a look of perfect understanding.

“They're just so easy.” I sighed.

•   •   •

It was the one-year anniversary of the Worst Halloween Ever, aka the Dead Girls' Dance party at Epsilon Epsilon Kappa's frat house on campus . . . and they were throwing it again, although this time it was a rave at one of the abandoned warehouses near the center of town. We'd gotten special invitations. I'd wanted to skip it at first, but Michael and Shane had both assured me that this time things were under control. The vampires of Morganville were working security, which meant that the human frat boys wouldn't be slipping anything into anybody's drinks, and any would-be incoming trouble would be stopped cold, probably at the door.

Not that the EEK boys knew who (or what) they were hiring, of
course. Students either didn't know, didn't want to know, or were in the know from the beginning, because they'd grown up in Morganville. I thought there were maybe six guys total in EEK who had insider knowledge, and none of them was stupid enough to talk.

Well, not too loudly. Unless the keg was open.

I parked my big, black sedan at the curb between a beat-up pickup and a sun-faded Pontiac with so many bumper stickers on it I couldn't tell what their actual causes were. Guns, looked like. And God. And maybe puppies.

“House rules,” I said, and unlocked the doors. “Stay together. No wandering off. Shane, no fights.”

“Aww,” he said. “Not even one?”

“Are you kidding me? You've racked up enough medical frequent-flier miles to get a permanent bed in the emergency room. So no. Not even harsh words, unless somebody else throws the first punch.”

He was happy about that last part. “No problem.” Because somebody else always threw a punch in Shane's direction when trouble brewed. He had a rep, one that he'd worked hard to acquire, as a badass. He didn't look particularly badass tonight, wearing a moth-eaten old tapestry-patterned bathrobe fifty years out-of-date, old-man slippers, silk pajamas—which I know he must have found in a box in the attic—and a classic fifties pipe. Unlit, of course.

He made a surprisingly good Hefner, and as he offered us his elbows, I felt a rush of the giggles. Claire was blushing.

“I am such a stud,” Shane said, and swept us into the rave.

As the resident dude, Shane was responsible for the acquisition of party favors, like glow-in-the-dark necklaces and drinks. Nonalcoholic drinks for Claire, of course, because I am a stern house mother even if I suck as a role model. One thing I had to watch out for was the other kind of party favors being passed around, stranger to
stranger—white pills, mostly, although there was the light-'em-if-you-got-'em kind, too. I let people pass things to me, then dumped them in the trash. It wasn't because I was Miss Self-Restraint; it was more because I knew better than to trust most people in Morganville.

We'd had hard lessons about that last year. Especially Claire. This year, she was still polite, but fending off the weirdos with much more ease. Of course, having her own personal shaggy-haired Hefner at her side might have had something to do with that.