Rachel Caine - Kiss of Death

All of which led to sign five (STOP).

“You think he’ll go?” Claire asked, and concentrated on setting the right temperature on the washer. The smell of the detergent and bleach was kind of pleasant, like really sharp flowers, the kind that would cut you if you tried to pick them. “To Dallas, I mean?”

“I guess.” Eve sounded even less enthusiastic. “I mean, it’s good for him, right? He can’t just hang around playing at coffee shops in Jugular, Texas. He needs to ...” Her voice faded out, and she looked down at her lap with a focus Claire thought the skirt really didn’t deserve. “He needs to be out there.”

“Hey,” Claire said, and as the washer began chugging away, washing away the stains, she put her hands on Eve’s knees. The kicking stopped, but Eve didn’t look up. “Are you guys breaking up?”

Eve still didn’t look up. “I cry all the time,” she said. “I hate this. I don’t want to lose him. But it’s like he just keeps getting farther and farther away, you know? And I don’t know how he feels. What he feels. If he feels. It’s awful.”

Claire swallowed hard. “I think he still loves you.”

Now she got Eve to look at her—big, vulnerable dark eyes rimmed by all the black. “Really? Because ... I just ...” Eve took a deep breath and shook her head. “I don’t want to get dumped. It’s going to hurt so bad, and I’m so scared he’ll find somebody else. Somebody, you know, better.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Claire said. “Not ever.”

“Easy for you to say. You haven’t seen how the girls throw themselves at him after shows.”

“Yeah, you’d never do that.”

Eve looked up sharply, smiled a little, then looked back down. “Yeah, okay, whatever. But it’s different when he’s my Michael and they’re the ones who are all, you know ... Anyway, he’s just always so nice to them.”

Claire jumped up next to her on the dryer and kicked her feet in rhythm with Eve’s. “He has to be nice, right? That’s his job, kind of. And we were talking about whether you guys were breaking up. Are you?”

“I ... don’t know. It’s weird right now. It hurts, and I want the hurt to be over, one way or another, you know?” Eve’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug that somehow managed to be depressed at the same time. “Besides, now he’s running off to Dallas. They won’t let me go, if he does. I’m just, you know. Human.”

“You’ve got one of the cool frat pins. Nobody would stop you.” The cool frat pins were a gift from Amelie, the town’s Founder, one of the most frighteningly quiet vampires Claire had ever met, and Claire’s boss, technically. They worked like the bracelets most people in town wore, the ones that identified individuals or families as being Protected by a specific vampire, only these were better.... People who wore these pins didn’t have to give blood or take orders. They weren’t owned.

As far as Claire knew, there were fewer than ten people in all of Morganville who had this kind of status, and it meant freedom—in theory—from a lot of the scarier elements of town.

This was all because they’d gotten in over their heads, had to fight their way out of it, and done some good for Amelie in the process. It was heroism by accident, in Claire’s opinion, but she definitely wasn’t turning down the pin or what the pin represented.

“If they decide Michael can go, I’ll still have to file an application for temporary leave,” Eve said. “So would you, or Shane, if you wanted to tag along. And they could turn us down. They probably would.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re mostly asshats? Not to mention bloodsucking vampire asshats, which doesn’t exactly make them fair from the beginning.”

Claire could see her point, actually, which was depressing. The air filled with the smells of laundry, which was homey and didn’t go too well with depressing. Claire remembered her iPod, which was still blaring away at her headphones, and clicked it off. They sat in silence for a while, and then Eve said, “I wish the dryer were running, because man , I could use a good ... tumble dry.”

Claire burst out laughing and, after a second, Eve joined her, and it was all okay.

Even in the dark. Even in the basement.

In the end, the laundry was only a little pink.

Dinner was taco night, and it was Claire’s turn for that, too, which somehow seemed wrong, but she’d switched with Michael when she’d been staying late at the university library, so she was stuck with Chore Day. Not that she minded making tacos; she liked it, actually.

Shane blew in the door just as she was chopping the last of the onions, which was typical Shane timing; five minutes earlier, and she’d have made him do the chopping. Instead, he arrived just as she was wiping tears away from her stinging eyes. Perfect.

He didn’t care that her eyes were red, apparently, because he kicked the kitchen door shut, slammed the dead bolt with a gesture so smooth it looked automatic, set a bag on the counter, and leaned over to kiss her. It was one of those hi-I’m-home kisses, not one of his really good ones, but it still made Claire’s heart flutter a little bit in her chest. Shane looked ... like Shane, she guessed, which was fine with her. Tall, broad, he had sun-streaked slacker hair and a heartbreaker’s smile. He was wearing a Killers T-shirt that smelled like barbecue, from his job.

“Hey!” she protested—not very sincerely—and waved the knife she’d been using to chop onions. “I’m armed!”

“Yeah, but you’re not very dangerous,” he said, and kissed her again, lightly. “You taste like tacos.”

“You taste like barbecue.”

“And that’s a win-win!” He grinned at her, reached over, and rattled the paper bag he’d set on the counter. “How about some brisket tacos?”

“That is so wrong, you know. Brisket does not go in tacos.”

“Twisted, yet delicious. I say yes.”

Claire sighed and dumped the chopped onions into a bowl. “Hand me the brisket.” Secretly, she liked brisket tacos; she just liked giving him a hard time more.

“You know,” Claire said as she got the barbecue out of the bag, “you really ought to talk to Michael.”

“About what?”

“What do you think? About what’s going on with him and Eve!”

“Oh hell no. Guys don’t talk about that crap.”

“You’re serious.”

“Really.”

“What do you talk about?”

Shane looked at her as if she were insane. “You know. Stuff. We’re not girls. We don’t talk about our feelings. I mean, not to other guys.”

Claire rolled her eyes and said, “Fine, be emotionally stunted losers; I don’t care.”

“Good. Thanks. I’ll do that.” The door opened, and Michael shuffled in, rocking the worst bed head Claire had ever seen him with. “Whoa. Dude, you look like crap. You getting enough iron in your diet?”

“Screw you, and thanks. I just woke up. What’s your excuse?”

“I work for a living, man. Unlike the nightwalking dead.”

Michael went straight past them and from the refrigerator took a sports bottle, which he stuck in the microwave for fifteen seconds. Claire was grateful the smell of the onions, brisket, and taco meat covered the smell of what was in the bottle. Well, they all knew what it was, but if she pretended really hard , it didn’t have to be quite as obvious.

Michael drank from his sports bottle, then wandered over to look at what they were doing. “Cool, tacos. How long?”

“Depends on whether or not she lets me do the chopping,” Shane said. “Five minutes, maybe?”