Rachel Caine - Fall of Night

Oh, great. I winced, but I asked the question. ‘So, do you feel like screaming? Specifically, at me?’

‘A little bit,’ she said. ‘But God, this doesn’t matter right now, does it? What about Liz? What’s going to happen to her? I mean, even Derrick doesn’t deserve … Jesse didn’t mean it about crossfires, did she?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Claire, this is not a good place to stay. Jesse said to keep you safe, and in my opinion an open table on the sidewalk isn’t exactly the textbook definition of secure …’

‘Do you have an apartment?’

‘I’ve got a room at Florey’s. It’s not spacious. Or clean. But it’s cheap, and the work’s solid. It’ll do until things settle down, if you’re, ah, not too picky.’

‘Well, it couldn’t be much worse than where I was living,’ Claire sighed. ‘All my stuff is back there, though. All my clothes, anyway. I’ve got my computer and books, and that’s what’s important. Hey … did you know Jesse was …’ Claire gave the universal Morganville sign for teeth in the neck, and I smiled, just a little. Carefully. Not just because it hurt like a son of a bitch.

‘Hey, it’s me,’ I said. ‘I can spot ’em a mile away.’ I only wished that was true; it would have avoided so many problems over the years. My dad was the one with the nose for the Nosferatu … not me. ‘Pete’s human, by the way. In case you were wondering. He cut himself on a bottle the other day, and I helped him dress the wound. Didn’t heal immediately.’

Claire nodded, because it was a good piece of proof, at that, because vampires couldn’t control the speed at which they healed, not without putting something on the wound that held it open or continued to burn, like silver. ‘Is Jesse the only one you’ve spotted?’

‘Yeah, so far. Though it’s pretty rare to find one on her own out here, isn’t it? Vampires like safety in numbers, because they’re so rare, especially these days. If she feels confident enough to be out here on her own, I’m pretty sure she’s nobody we want to cross.’ I shifted, because my arm was hurting again, bone-deep throbs as if I’d just slammed it hard into a brick wall. And it itched like mad. I clenched and released my fist, and then shook it out, hoping that it’d get better. It didn’t.

‘What’s wrong?’ Claire asked. She still sounded distant, and a little unwilling to ask, but she was asking. Which was encouraging.

‘Well, when you get a major-league ass-kicking from a bunch of guys, even if they generally suck at it, you do feel it later,’ I said. ‘No big thing. I’ll live.’ Yes, I was trying to be a tough guy. I didn’t feel like it, right at that moment; I wanted to curl up against her, feel those wonderful soft hands touching my face and tracing lightly over the hurts. She always, always made it better. There was something so healing in being with her; it felt like standing in the sunlight when I’d spent my whole life in the dark.

But the best I could feel from her right now was … shade.

We sat in silence for a long, painful moment, and then a waiter came up and asked us if we wanted anything, in that annoyed voice that waiters develop in college towns when they figure you’re only marginally good for the cheque in the first place, and tips are out of the question. I tried to order a plain coffee, Claire tried to order a mocha, we talked over each other, and we both looked up at the same moment, and …

… And we stopped, just staring at each other. Because all of a sudden it was real. The moment was real, and there was no avoiding it any more. The waiter’s annoyed sighs finally sparked me to say, flatly, ‘Beat it,’ and he did, muttering under his breath the whole time. I didn’t care. I didn’t care if Jesse descended on us, fangs out, and the entire zombie horde from Dead Rising suddenly started shambling through the restaurant. They could wait.

Claire said, ‘I really thought you were back in Morganville. You got Michael and Eve to lie to me.’

‘I just asked them not to volunteer where I was, that’s all. I know it was the wrong thing to do, but sometimes – sometimes it doesn’t matter. Right, wrong, it’s just the thing you have to do. And I had to see you. I had to know you were okay. I’ll apologise for basically hovering, but I can’t be sorry for being worried about you. I didn’t crash your door and demand to see you. I just … stayed close.’

‘Watching me from a distance,’ she said. ‘You didn’t trust me enough to let go.’

I felt a surge of panic, followed by a confused bolt of realisation. Was she right? Was it a trust thing, and not a worry thing? How did it look from her side … like I’d been following her, spying on her, judging her? Yeah, it probably did look that way, horribly enough. It wasn’t what I’d been doing, or at least I didn’t think it was.

I leant forward, elbows on the table, and I held her gaze as I said, ‘Claire, I don’t want to let you go. But that has nothing to do with not trusting you. I trust you with my life. Always have.’

I didn’t keep talking, because that pretty much said everything I meant to say. She blinked slowly, thinking about it, and then sighed, shook her head, and said, ‘You’re an idiot, but I know you mean that. And you’re not angry, I know that too. You just …’

‘Wanted you,’ I said. ‘Needed you. That’s why I’m here. Maybe it’s a bad thing, I don’t know; if you look me in the eyes and tell me to go back to Morganville, I’ll go. I won’t like it, but—’

She suddenly sat straight up, eyes growing wide, as if someone had jabbed a pin in her, and she lunged forward and caught hold of my hands. I was surprised, but not too surprised to wrap mine around hers. Touching her stilled some voice inside me I hadn’t even known was screaming.

‘Michael and Eve,’ she said. ‘Did they call you?’

‘Not for a couple of days – wait.’ I checked the phone’s call log, and there it was, a missed call from Eve. No voicemail. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Even if you went back there, you’d end up here again,’ she said. ‘Michael and Eve are on their way. Amelie sent them after Myrnin.’

‘ Myrnin is coming here? By himself?’ I admit it, that gave me a surge of tired frustration so strong I wanted to stake him myself. ‘What the hell is he doing?’

‘I’ve got no idea, and neither did Eve, but they’re following. They’re supposed to get him to come home.’

‘I am not driving back home in a car with Bipolar Man,’ I said, and I meant it. ‘Seriously. I’ve got weapons.’

She hadn’t let go of my hands, after the rush subsided, and I thought that was a good sign. I tried to think what I was going to do if she tried to pull away and sit back. Let her go, I guessed, even though my instinct was to try to hold on.

But she didn’t pull back this time.

‘You screwed up,’ she told me. ‘I can’t believe you stalked me like this.’

‘If I’d been stalking you, I’d have been bumming cigarettes from Derrick across the street,’ I pointed out. ‘I was working independently in the same town, not calling and not talking to you. If you want to call that stalking, I have to ask for an on-the-field review of the play by the ref.’

‘Too bad for you that relationships don’t have referees.’

‘You’re right, that does suck. I could use a slow-motion replay right now.’

‘You’re an idiot,’ Claire said, and I went cold inside, and very still. Here it was, the moment I’d been trying so hard to avoid thinking about, when Claire wised up, realised that I wasn’t the smart guy with prospects she needed to be with … but then she smiled, just a little, and the ice freezing my lungs and heart started to thaw a little. ‘You’re an idiot, but I know why you came. You’re conditioned to think that everything is a threat, and you were afraid that I was going to be in trouble here on my own. You were trying to save me. But Shane, I don’t always need saving . Understand?’