The Morganville Vampires Collection (The Morganville Vampires #1-4) (65 page)

It sounded like a deal, but it wasn’t, not really. Monica had all the cards, and they had none. None at all.

‘There’s no body in the alley,’ Claire said. ‘The police aren’t going to find anything. You’re sure?’

‘Don’t think so, but wouldn’t that suck for you if they did?’ Monica shrugged, puckered her lips, and blew Shane a mocking kiss. ‘You’ve got guts, Shane. No brains, but a whole lot of guts. You thought it out, right? Now that Michael’s one of the chosen undead, humans can’t get in this house without an invitation. So you have to either blame it on a vampire, or face up to the fact that one of you killed her. Either way, it’s not going to be pretty, and somebody’s going down.’ She held up her hand. ‘I vote for Shane.
Anybody else?’

‘Leave him alone!’ Claire said sharply. ‘You want to go out, fine. We’ll go. No, don’t you even start!’ Eve hadn’t even had a chance to do more than open her mouth, and now she shut it, fast. ‘You guys work it out between the three of you. I won’t be long. Believe me, I probably won’t be able to keep anything down, whatever I manage to eat.’

Monica nodded, as if she’d known it would happen all along, and did a runway model’s walk down the hall towards the front door. From the back, her shorts were barely legal.

And however much they hated her, Shane and Michael were watching her go.

‘Guys,’ Claire muttered, and grabbed her backpack.

Claire hadn’t been inside Common Grounds in a while, but it hadn’t changed. It was bohemian, warm, packed to the gills with college types grabbing their morning venti-whatever, and if Claire hadn’t known better – known very well – she’d never have believed that the nice, smiling hippie type behind the counter was a vampire.

Oliver locked gazes with her and nodded slightly. His face stayed pleasant. ‘Nice to see you back,’ he said. ‘What’ll it be?’

Much as she hated to admit it, he made the best drinks in town. Better than Eve, actually. ‘White mocha,’ she said. ‘With whip.’ She managed to hold back from adding anything more, because she didn’t like being nice to him. God, he’d been licking blood off her wrist two hours ago! The least she could do was not say
please
and
thank you
.

‘No charge,’ he said, and waved away the five dollar bill she dug out of her jeans pocket. ‘A welcome-back present, Claire. Ah, Monica. Your usual?’

‘Half-caf no foam double pump latte, with pink sugar,’ she said. ‘In a real cup, not that foam stuff.’

‘A simple yes would suffice,’ he said. As Monica started to turn away, he reached out and grabbed her wrist. He did it in such a way that nobody but Claire would notice, but it was unmistakably threatening. ‘She doesn’t pay. You do, Monica. You may think of yourself as a princess, but trust me, I’ve met them, and you don’t qualify.’ He grinned just a little, but there was no humour in his eyes. ‘Well, perhaps
met
isn’t quite the right word.’

‘Eaten?’ Claire supplied acidly. His smile turned darker.

‘Oh, the charm and eloquence of the younger generation. It does warm my heart.’ Oliver let go of Monica’s arm and stepped away to make the drinks. Monica backed away, looking flushed. She threw a
dirty look at Claire –
Yeah, like it’s my fault
, Claire thought and stalked to the table in the corner. The one the deceased vampire Brandon had once staked out – pun intended – as his own. There were two young college girls sitting there, with books and papers piled up. Monica folded her arms and took up a belligerent pose.

‘You’re in my chair,’ she said. ‘Move.’

The two girls – shorter and pudgier than Monica – stared up with saucer-huge eyes. One of them stammered, ‘Which one of us?’

‘Both,’ Monica snapped. ‘I like my space. Get out.’

They gathered up papers and books and hurried away, nearly dumping coffee all over Claire in their haste to go. ‘Did you have to do that?’ Claire asked.

‘No. It was just fun.’ Monica sat, crossed her smooth tanned legs, and patted the table. ‘Come on, Claire. Have a seat. We have so much to talk about.’

She didn’t want to, but it was stupid to stand there, looking obvious. So she sat, dumped her backpack on the floor next to her feet, and concentrated on the scarred wood of the tabletop. She could see Monica’s flip-flop living up to its name as the other girl casually jiggled her foot. Ridiculously, it reminded her of Myrnin.

‘That’s better.’ Monica sounded way too pleased with herself. Not cool. ‘So. Tell me all about it.’

‘About what?’

‘Whatever Amelie’s got you doing,’ Monica said. ‘Your super-secret stuff. I mean, she picked you for a reason, and it’s not for your charm and good looks, right? Obviously. It’s for your brains. You don’t have any family here; you’ve got nothing anybody wants other than that.’

Monica was smarter than she looked. ‘Amelie’s not asking me to do anything,’ Claire lied. ‘Maybe she will later, I don’t know. But she hasn’t yet.’ She nervously twisted the gold bracelet circling her left wrist. It was starting to remind her of those bands biologists put on endangered species.

And lab animals.

Monica’s eyes were half-closed when Claire risked a glance upward. ‘Huh,’ she said. ‘Really. Well, that’s disappointing. I really thought you’d have something good I could use. Oh well. Then let’s talk about making a deal.’

‘A deal?’ First Jason, now Monica. How had Claire stepped into the role of negotiator?

‘I want to talk to Amelie about Protection. You can give me an introduction. And a recommendation.’

Claire nearly laughed. ‘Ask her yourself!’

‘I would, but she won’t let me near her. She doesn’t like me.’

‘I’m shocked,’ Claire muttered under her breath.

Monica gave her a long look, one strangely missing the usual hip, ironic, contemptuous features. It looked almost…earnest. ‘Since Brandon died, Oliver took over his contracts. The thing is, he’s not keeping most of them. He’s trading them for favours with other vampires. If I don’t make a better deal, there’s no telling what could happen to me.’ Monica pointed at Claire’s bracelet. ‘Might as well start at the top.’

Claire drummed her short fingernails on the table, glaring at the bar where it seemed like Oliver was taking for ever to deliver their drinks. It occurred to her to wonder if it was really safe to drink something prepared by a vampire who’d been threatening her just a couple of hours before, but honestly, if Oliver wanted to get her, it wasn’t as though it would be hard for him.

And she really wanted the white mocha.

‘Oliver’s your Patron now?’

‘For now. Until he finds something he wants more than holding on to my contract, anyway.’

‘Is he behind your asking about why Amelie signed me up?’

‘Do I look like I run somebody else’s errands?’

Claire glanced back again at the bar. ‘Maybe.’

Monica went quiet. It wasn’t the comfortable kind of silence, and Claire was glad when Oliver called out their orders. She jumped up to get hers, hesitated,
and then picked up Monica’s as well. She managed to do it without making eye contact with Oliver. He was just a dark shape at the corner of her eye, and she turned her back on him as soon as she could.

Monica got up, and she looked honestly surprised when Claire handed her the drink. ‘What?’ Claire asked. ‘It’s called being polite; they probably didn’t teach you that at home. Doesn’t mean I like you or anything.’

Monica seemed to have to think hard about what to say to that, and finally came up with a simple ‘Thanks.’ Which, Claire had to admit, might have been the nicest thing Monica had ever managed to say to her. Claire gave her a nod and sat down again.

Peace in our time
, she thought wryly. And promptly blew it by asking again, ‘Did Oliver put you up to it?’

Monica didn’t even glance in his direction. ‘No.’ But somehow, Claire didn’t believe her.

‘Do you have to do everything he says?’ she asked, as if Monica hadn’t just lied. And Monica lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. No other answer. ‘So you don’t really want to talk to me, do you? You’ve just been told to do it.’

‘Not exactly. I thought it was a good chance to get my name in front of Amelie, too.’ Monica smiled
slightly, and very bitterly. ‘Besides, check it out: you’re a star. Everybody wants to know about you, vampires and humans. They’re looking into your history, your family’s history. If you farted in grade school, somebody in Morganville knows it now.’

Claire almost choked on her first mouthful of white mocha. ‘
What?
’

‘The Founder isn’t what you might call accessible. And most of the vamps don’t understand her any better than we do. They’re always looking for clues about who she is, what she’s doing here, with this town. This isn’t normal, you know. The way they live here.’ Monica’s gaze flicked to Oliver, then away. ‘
He’s
old enough to know more than most, but he still needs inside information. And the word is, you could be the way to get it. If I can’t get Protection from Amelie, at least I can get in good with him if I have something new and valuable to tell him.’

Claire rolled her eyes. ‘I’m nobody. And if she cared about me at all – which she doesn’t – she’d never let anybody know it. I mean, look how she treats—’

She stopped herself cold, heart suddenly hammering fast. She’d almost said
Myrnin
, and that would have been bad. ‘Sam,’ she finished lamely. Which was also true, but Monica had to have noticed her stumble.

Which Monica emphasised by waiting for a full ten
seconds of silence before she continued. ‘Whatever. The point is, you’re sort of famous, and by hanging with you, I get seen by the right people doing the right thing, and I do what Oliver wants. Which is all I care about. You’re right, I don’t care if we’re BFFs. We’re not going to trade clothes and get matching tattoos. I’ve got friends. I need allies.’ She sipped her complicated drink, her eyes steady on Claire. ‘Oliver wants what you know, yeah. And this’ – she tapped her own bracelet – ‘this says that I do what he says, or else.’

‘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 or 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 favours, big favours, and their Patrons let them out of contracts. By big favours, 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 here only because I need to be, and you’re here only 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 overdramatically horrified. ‘Oh no! You don’t trust me! I’m crushed.’ She dropped the act. ‘I don’t care if Shane has opened his own corpse taxi service; I care only 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, OK, 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, but I’ll get some football types to pay his kneecaps a visit.’