The Morganville Vampires Collection (The Morganville Vampires #1-4) (25 page)

Read on for a peek at Eve Rosser’s diary…
And don’t miss
The Dead Girls’ Dance
, the
second book of the Morganville Vampires,
available from Allison & Busby.

A word about birthdays. I was kinda disappointed when Michael didn’t even hint around that his was coming up and he was all grown-up and everything, turning nineteen – not that we didn’t know! Shane gave him some magazine neither one of them wanted me to see – like, thanks, guys, I can’t figure out porn. Also, a twelve-pack of beer that neither one of them was old enough to buy. Trust Shane to come up with an all-illegal celebration.

Good thing I was on the case, because I bought Michael a cake. OMG, it was totally adorable, too: it was all layers with black and purple icing and the cutest little vampire couple on top. OK, so I think it was a wedding cake, maybe, but when I saw it in the store I had to have it. Anyway, it was cream frosting and really great cake. I got ice cream, too, and we totally skipped dinner and pigged out and the boys drank beer, but I don’t even like the stuff, so I had coffee.

I love living here. I just hope we can hold it together for another month, because the money? Not really coming in that fast. My paycheque stretches to rent and my share of the groceries and utilities, and Shane ponies up his fair share – don’t even ask me how because all I ever see the boy do is slack.

But Michael’s pretty much flat broke now, and taxes are coming due. He could lose the house!!!! We have to think of something fast. He said he’ll call his ’rents, but he’s not sure if they’ll have the money, either. I don’t know why he doesn’t just give up the music thing and go get a day job for a while! I mean, wouldn’t you?

I don’t want to move. 

Weird thing today: couldn’t find Michael. Shane was out doing whatever Shane does, who the hell knows, and the utility company called and left a message that the light bill was overdue, and sheesh, I may be Goth but I don’t want to sit around in the dark by candlelight. So when I came home for lunch I tried to get him up, and yeah, I know he sleeps like the dead but as far as I can tell he’s not
actually
dead, and banging on the door ought to give him a clue. So I got worried. One thing about having Jason the Psycho for a brother, you learn a thing or two about locks…how to pick them, and how to jam them so he doesn’t pick them. So I picked the lock on Michael’s door.

He wasn’t there. The bed hadn’t even been slept in, or he was way neater than any boy I’d ever seen. So granted, maybe he went out shopping or driving or something, but the point is,
why did he lock his
door
? I mean, it locks from the inside.

Weird.

False alarm. Michael’s back tonight, says he went out today to try to land some gigs at clubs (no luck, the bastards) and forgot to unlock his door when he slammed it shut. Guess he’s as good at picking it as I am; he didn’t seem too upset.

Have I mentioned how hot Michael is? Hot, hot, hot. I mean, all guitar players are crushworthy – it’s like it’s issued with the talent – but I’ve been noticing lately that he is totally Hottie McHott of Hotland.

Not that I could tell him that. Luckily, he’s a boy. Hence, too dense to figure out why I’m staring at his ass. 

We have a new
roomie
! Well, I hope, anyway. She’s kind of small and scrawny and I totally felt bad for her standing outside crying on the sidewalk. She had the kind of bruises you don’t get from just being clumsy – I should know, I ran into Dad’s fist a lot, and then Jason’s when he tried to be the man. I didn’t really pick up on Claire’s whole underage vibe, which must have been dumb because it took Michael exactly one second or something when he saw her.
Shane – who knows about Shane? Planet Shane is a lovely place a long way from here.

Michael says she can stay, but only until she finds something else. I think he’s got a soft spot for her, though, ’cause he didn’t toss her out on the street, and he didn’t even know she’d gotten her ass beat by
Monica Morrell
.

I repeat:
Monica Morrell OMG
!!!!!

Shane didn’t take that well, which I can understand. He thought Monica the Monster was out of reach, and now he has to get up tomorrow and think about her being here, maybe right down the street, someplace close enough to hurt. I know Shane wants to hurt her, and hey, I wouldn’t put it all the way past him, either. After listening to his baby sister scream for help when he couldn’t get to her, because of the fire? Hey. If he wants to get a little vengeance, I don’t blame him. I’d hold her down.

Poor Claire, caught in the middle. She doesn’t even know what she’s stepped into. She doesn’t even know about the vamps.

Sure hope she makes it. I like her, and we can kind of use the rent money. 

OMG OMG OMG, Shane is totally crushing on the new roomie! I can’t believe it. Somehow I always pictured Shane going after the blond beach hotties. Who knew he liked big brains in teeny little bodies? Although, to be fair, she is cute as a button. (Why do we say that? What’s so cute about a button,
anyway?) She’s like a little wee pocket fairy, only fierce and stubborn. I’ve never really been hanging with the smart geeks before. Goths tend to be more artsy-fartsy, less brainy-wainy. It’s sorta fun trying to freak Claire out, ‘cause she totally doesn’t believe in the supernatural.

Or she didn’t, anyway. Kinda hard to stick to that once you get to Morganville.

Man, when Claire flips, she just
flips
. Yesterday she was all,
Oh
,
poo,
supernatural
! And today she’s all
Let
’
s talk about how to kill vamps
. Which I love, don’t get me wrong, but she scares me a little. I wasn’t really ready to join the Morganville Vampire Hunter’s Club. Not sure Michael’s signing up for it, either, and by the way, did I mention again how hot that boy is? I stare at him all the time now; I’m sure he’s going to notice, but Michael seems to be happily living in the zip code of Oblivious.

Which, hey – more free staring for me, right?

Anyway, back to Claire: she thinks she’s going to find the Book!!!!! I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she might as well ask Santa Claus for it. My family used to devote like six weeks a year, twenty-four/seven, to looking for the Book, because there’s this enormous reward for any Protected family that finds it. It’s what we did instead of vacations. Poor Claire. Well, at least it’ll keep her busy and away from Monica Morrell, hopefully.

Saw a vamp today…average height, dark hair, dark eyes. He was buying sheets at McMann’s. I wanted to ask him, ‘Don’t you have people to do that for you?’ but he seemed embarrassed enough to be there without me piling it on. I mean, sure, there are a few vamps who slum it with the breathing population, but not a lot, and I didn’t recognise this one. If he comes into Common Grounds, he does it during VIP hours, when it’s vamps only (and Oliver, of course).

The vamp in McMann’s stared at me. I guess he didn’t like the Goth look. Most of them don’t; somehow they think I’m making fun of them.

Which I totally am.

Otherwise, I bought a new toothbrush and did my blood donation. Nothing to report.

Claire totally almost got us killed today. She got into something with Brandon, and next thing you know, he’s all stalky and he
follows us home
! I can’t believe that I’m back in this nightmare again – I really thought that I’d gotten out of it. Brandon was my family’s Protector (ha!) and I had this horrible crush on him until I was nearly sixteen, and then he did things…things he shouldn’t have done. That’s when I dyed my hair and turned Goth, since he liked that innocent-little-schoolgirl thing, and I figured it might turn him off. Seemed to work, mostly. At least it got me thrown out of the house early, which was a bonus, because at least then I could fight back!

But now all of a sudden Brandon’s back, and he’s got a hard-on for Claire. I think he was really just messing with us. If he’d wanted, he could have picked us off outside the house – me, Claire, and Shane. Michael didn’t come out, which was smart. Did I mention that Shane totally got all hero-type, charging out to the rescue? I take it all back, what I said about him being slacker-boy.

Michael held me when I got inside, because I was shaking all over. That felt so good. Warm all the way down. Did I mention Michael’s feet? They’re all the way sexy, and he’s always barefoot – he hates shoes. I wish he hated pants and shirts, too.

See, that totally made me feel better about almost getting killed.

If I didn’t hate Monica before, now I absolutely for certain hate her. I mean, it was possible she’d reformed a little, right? Evolved from flesh-eating amoeba to some kind of higher form, like penicillin, right? But, no, she has her pet crazy person Gina what’s-her-face throw acid on my
friend
! I can’t believe it. Shane sounded awful when he called; he was totally freaked out. He says it was just a little bit that got on Claire, but he’s pissed and he’s scared. Can’t find Michael anywhere,
again
, and this time I think Shane’s not going to forgive him, because right now Shane needs his buds.

Going to go pick Shane and Claire up at the hospital. No way is it safe for anybody to be walking home. It’s getting dark.

I can’t believe Shane did that. He made a deal with Brandon. With
Brandon
. Claire says we have to stop him, and I agree, we do. I’m not letting Brandon get his fangs in my friends. No way. I’ll kill him first.

To make things even more festive, Michael and Shane got in a fight, and Miranda showed up, OMG, all wigged out about some visions she’d had. I know the kid’s got real ability, but she is so annoying. And Shane really, really doesn’t like her, which doesn’t surprise me a bit.

She’s just a kid, and the vamps are starting to chow down on her. She’s never going to last.

Poor Mir.

I want to stab this town
right through the heart
.

Don’t even know where to start, but I’ll try.

Michael’s a ghost, which…OK, I still think is pretty amazingly cool, but – he’s a ghost. Can’t leave the house, misty half the day. Which completely explains all those times I looked for him, now that I think about it. Out looking for gigs, right. I asked him, straight up, if he ever floated around invisible and watched us, watched – me – when we thought he wasn’t around. He got this funny look on his face that I could have sworn was guilty, guilty, guilty, but then he changed the subject and we had plenty

of other subjects to talk about.

Like, for one, my boss. Oliver. Kind, friendly, funny Oliver, who gives me days off and takes my side when the preppies get in my face and–

He’s a vamp. I never knew, or if I did, he made me forget. He could have made me do a lot of things, it looks like, and I haven’t felt this sick and empty since Brandon…since Brandon. Oliver wants the Book. He thinks Claire has it, which doesn’t seem real likely, but so long as he thinks it, we’re in big, big trouble because if Oliver is who he says he is, he can just tear this house apart. And us with it. We’ve got nobody on our side.

Nobody but each other.

I cried a lot while Claire was asleep, and Michael held me. I tried to tell him how bad I felt, but there just aren’t any words for this stuff, and in the end I just curled up in his arms and it felt good, so good, and when I looked up, he kissed me. Fast and wild, like he couldn’t believe he was doing it and he wasn’t sure I wouldn’t freak out about it but he couldn’t stop himself. OMG, our world was coming apart and it was the best kiss I’ve ever had. Sweet and hot and it made me tremble all the way to my toes. I think Michael would have dragged me back to his room right then and there, but we were kind of in a crisis, and it would have been kind of rude to Shane and Claire. Still, there was kissing. Lots of kissing and holding and touching, and wow. I was right. Boy is
hottttt
.

Of course, we could all die soon. I’m writing this because Michael’s patrolling the house and Shane and Claire are asleep. It may be the last chance I have to write anything down.

So in case that’s true, I want to say that I love Shane and Claire, and I love Michael, and staying here in the Glass House has been the best time of my entire life. I’d like to say I’ll miss my folks, but I won’t. And they won’t miss me, either. But if it all ends here, at least it’s ending with the people I really love.

I don’t think I can write this down, but I’m going to try, because maybe the sorta nice vamp Amelie will read it later, when this is all over. It wasn’t Shane’s fault, OK? He never meant for any of this to happen, and if he could have stopped it, he would have. I know that. I have to believe that.

I think something happened to Michael, but I can’t remember what it was, and I can’t stop crying when I try to think about it. Claire tells me it’s OK, but it’s not, I know it’s not. Shane isn’t saying anything, just staring at the floor. His dad – the dad from hell! – hit him a couple of times for trying to stand up to him.

They’re here to kill vamps, I guess, which makes sense – Morganville screwed their family royally, didn’t it? First Lyssa dying in the fire, and then Shane’s mom just drifting off like she couldn’t deal with anything. And then taking a razor to the bath 
to drift off forever. I can’t understand how Shane’s dad remembered Morganville, though, or what he’d be dealing with. Guess they figured out some way to make it work. No wonder Shane came back to town – he was doing advance work for his dad, the Great White Vamp Hunter.

Shane looks like he’s lost the taste for it. Too late now.

We’re in trouble. Bad trouble. All those vamps out there, they’ve got no idea what’s coming for them, and we’re going to be caught in the middle.