Rachel Caine - Fall of Night

And then she was in the security line, and leaving her past behind her with a finality that was more than a little terrifying. I’m alone . Funny. She’d faced so much these past few years – life and death and all the stages in between. Loss and love. Heartache and joy. Most of all, danger, constant and unremitting danger …

… Yet, she was shaking all over as she handed the TSA agent her ID card and her ticket, and frantically wondering if she’d scrubbed her backpack clean of all the usual Morganville survival aids – silver nitrate, stakes, blades, the works. What if she’d overlooked something? What if …

‘Miss? What’s this supposed to be?’ The uniformed officer frowned at her and held out her ID card.

Oh. Her Morganville ID card. She’d grabbed the wrong one, and quickly blushed and fished out the Texas driver’s licence instead. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Uh – library card.’

He hadn’t read the text, luckily, and he just shrugged, scrutinised her face long enough to make her even more nervous, then waved her through.

Shoes were hard to get off – she hadn’t planned for that – and her hoodie had to come off, too. Her backpack passed through scanners without trouble, thankfully, and then she was clutching all her stuff, breathless with relief, on the other side of the barriers. Claire walked barefoot to some seats, donned her hoodie and her Skechers, put her ID back in her wallet (moving the Morganville ID safely to the back to avoid confusion with legit state-issued stuff) and then, finally, took a moment to let the enormity of it hit her.

She was committed. Checked in. Bags headed for the plane. Her dad was shipping the rest of the boxes to her directly to her new apartment.

She was on her own. Completely, utterly, totally on her own, going into a new world without Shane, without parents. Without enemies, even.

Nobody cared. People walked past her, and ignored her existence.

Claire sat for a moment in silence, taking that in and adjusting herself to the reality that outside of Morganville, she was just some mildly pretty eighteen-year-old girl headed up to college, like ten thousand other girls she’d see along the way. Not someone special at all.

It was, she thought as she picked up her backpack and headed toward her departure gate, the scariest thing she’d ever done, and the most freedom she’d ever had.

Ironic.

Elizabeth Porter met Claire at the baggage claim, holding a giant sign that said BEST FRIENDS 4EVA and waving excitedly, which was good, because otherwise Claire probably wouldn’t have recognised her. The chubby, shy Elizabeth from school was gone, replaced by a sleek, tall girl with short platinum-blonde hair. Her fashion sense had changed, too, from geeky to sexy … she had on a button-down shirt, pleated schoolgirl miniskirt, knee socks, loafers, even the required Smart Librarian glasses. Guys watched as she jumped up and down, squealed, and threw her arms around Claire with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader at a championship game. A winning team cheerleader, at that.

‘You’re here, oh my God, I’m so excited! Claire!’ Elizabeth suddenly pushed her out to arm’s length and stared at her. She’d gotten taller, and now topped Claire by at least three inches. ‘You look … different.’

‘You don’t?’ Claire said, and laughed. Elizabeth joined in, and it was like they’d never spent a moment apart … but only for that second, because then Elizabeth stopped laughing, and something strange flashed over her face. Two years ago, Claire wouldn’t have recognised it, but now she knew fear when she saw it. Well, that’s weird.

It was only a flash, and Elizabeth pasted on the bright smile again. ‘I just wanted a change,’ she said. ‘You know, leaving Texas, becoming a new person – you want that, too, right?’

‘Right,’ Claire said. Her heart wasn’t in it; she didn’t want to change any more, really, but she wanted to be more of what she already had become – more Claire . Elizabeth, on the other hand, seemed to have bent herself to becoming someone completely different, from the outside in. It hadn’t stifled that spark Claire had always liked about her, though. It still showed in the bouncy way Elizabeth helped her drag her luggage off the carousel, and chattered all the way out to the parking lot.

‘Why do you do that?’ Elizabeth suddenly asked, very seriously, as Claire loaded her suitcase into the trunk of Liz’s ancient Ford Taurus.

‘Do what? Um … doesn’t the luggage go in the trunk?’ Surely the world hadn’t changed that much.

‘Look over your shoulder,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You’ve done it every few seconds since you came out of the terminal. Are you worried about someone? Did someone follow you?’ She looked very serious again, and earnest, and Claire suddenly realised that her friend was right – she’d been checking routinely, automatically, to be sure nothing was sneaking up on her.

Morganville caution.

‘Oh,’ she said, and mustered up an apologetic laugh. ‘I guess – well, the part of town I’ve been living in isn’t that safe, I guess. I got used to looking out for myself.’

‘Well, you’re in civilisation now, not Backwardstown,’ Elizabeth said, and slammed the trunk lid. ‘Banzai, bitch, we are moving !’

Claire climbed in the car, and Elizabeth got in, whooped in excitement, and turned the music up loud and sang along at the top of her lungs as she steered them out of the parking garage and into a weak afternoon sunlight.

The drive was really educational, because Cambridge didn’t look anything like Dallas. Dallas had been steel and glass, heat and angles; Cambridge was age-rounded, grassy, still virulently green even though fall chill was thick in the air. The trees were so much taller than she’d expected, and the colours … Claire gaped like a kid at Christmas, too stunned with the beauty of it to join in the sing-along, even though she liked the song Elizabeth was currently belting out. The houses were small and square and so neat and at the same time so … old. Everything in Morganville looked old, too, but in a falling-apart way. This looked more like lovingly cared-for history.

‘You’re going to need a car,’ Elizabeth said suddenly, turning the radio way down. ‘I know you walked all the time in Hicksville, but we’re not going to be living that close. You’re going to really love the apartment, it’s super cute and yeah, it’s kind of small, but cosy, really … okay, it’s a pit, but we’ll have fun, right? So. Tell me about this boy .’

The switch of topics was sudden, but that was Liz; she’d always been like that, leapfrogging from one thing to another without much in the way of traffic signals. ‘The boy’s name is Shane,’ Claire said. Just saying it twisted hard inside her, and for a second she could hardly breathe; it felt like a fist closing over her heart and crushing it flat. Tears suddenly gathered in her eyes, and she had to breathe deeply to get herself under control again. ‘He’s – he’s—’

‘Super cute?’ Elizabeth supplied, when Claire hesitated. ‘Adorable like a fluffy bunny? A giant dickhead? What, girl, come on! Spill!’

‘Perfect,’ Claire said. No, that wasn’t right. He was far from perfect, that was the whole point of why she’d come here to put some space between them. Perfect for me, though . ‘He’s taller than me, and has really broad shoulders, and yes he’s super cute – and he makes me happy.’ There. She’d said it. ‘I love him.’

‘Love,’ Elizabeth sighed, and shook her head. ‘Snap out of it, girlfriend. I don’t want you mooning over some Texas loser when you’ve come to prime dating territory! I thought you said you wanted to get some distance?’