Rachel Caine - Feast of Fools

It hit her again: He’d stabbed her boyfriend. Tried to kill him. The cops said it was self-defense, but she knew better.

Jason took his hands out of his coat pockets and held them up. “Don’t scream,” he said. “Unless you really feel like it. I’m not going to hurt you. Not in broad daylight on a busy street, anyway.”

He sounded . . . different. Odder than usual, and that was a pretty high standard of odd.

“What do you want?” She clutched the strap of her backpack in a white-knuckled fist. In an emergency, it would make a respectable blunt object. She might knock him down with it, or at least trip him. It was only about a block to Common Grounds—Oliver owed her Protection once she was inside the building, even from human enemies.

“Stop freaking, genius. I’m not here to hurt you.” He put his hands back in his jacket pockets. “How’s Shane?”

“Why do you care?”

“Because—” He frowned and shrugged. “Look, that was self-defense, okay?”

“You baited him. You threatened me and Eve. You wanted him to come after you.”

“Yeah, well, granted, I was tweaking, but the guy took a home-run swing at my head, in case you missed it.”

Uncomfortably, that was true. “What about the other people you’ve killed? Were those all self-defense, too?”

“Who says I’ve killed people?”

“You did. Remember? You left a dead girl in our basement for Shane to find. You tried to put him in prison.”

Jason didn’t say a word to that. He just stared at her, and in the shadows his dark eyes were like holes in his still, pale face. He looked . . . dead. Deader than most vampires.

“I need to talk to my sister,” he said.

“Eve doesn’t want to talk to you, you psycho. Leave us alone!”

“It’s about our dad,” he said, and even though Claire was walking away, leaving him and all his psycho problems behind, she slowed to look back. “I need to talk to Eve. Tell her I’ll call. Tell her not to hang up.”

Claire nodded, once. She didn’t hate him any less, but there was something different about him right now—something that asked for a truce, but didn’t get down on its knees and beg for it, either. “No promises, ” she said.

Jason nodded back. “Didn’t expect any.”

He didn’t say thanks. She kept walking.

When she looked back, the doorway was empty. She caught a glimpse of a black jacket turning the corner at the end of the block. Damn, he moves fast, she thought, and that gave her another kind of chill. What if Jason had gotten his wish? What if someone had made him a full-fledged vampire, as hard as that seemed?

She decided she’d ask Amelie, first chance she got.

The morning classes came and went. It wasn’t like any of them were especially difficult, even the high-level physics courses she’d tested herself into. She’d traded out some of her lame core classes for a mythology course, or rather Amelie had insisted on it—that was a fairly cool thing, and she found herself looking forward to it. No discussions of vampires just now, unfortunately. It was all about zombies, voodoo, and popular media on the subject. They were going to watch Night of the Living Dead next week. Claire didn’t know nearly as much about zombies as most of the other students; except for the first-person-shooter game that Shane liked to play, she couldn’t remember ever really paying attention to the idea.

Of course, since moving to Morganville, she wasn’t ruling anything out as unlikely.

After mythology, which turned out to be a wealth of information about voodoo, if she ever needed that, Claire had a break before lab sessions began. She took herself off to the UniversityCenter. It was a sprawling building, home to a large study area with long tables and groupings of chairs, and it featured a bookstore, a cafeteria that served fantastic grilled cheese sandwiches and salads, and a pretty decent coffee bar.

There wasn’t a line today. Claire paid for her mocha and moved around to the barista side, where Eve was working. Eve looked great today, and not just because of the care she’d taken with her outfit and makeup; she kind of radiated satisfaction.

Oh. Right.

Eve gave her an absolutely stunning smile and handed over her drink. “Hey, bookworm. Doing okay?”

“Sure. You?”

“Not bad. It’s even been kind of slow and steady today, after the morning rush.” That smile had a secret.

“So? How was your night?” Claire prodded. The secret wanted to be shared, and besides, she was kind of . . . curious.

“Fantastic,” Eve sighed. “I just—yeah. Since I was fourteen, I’ve had a crush on that boy, you know? And he never knew I existed. I went to every one of his concerts, from the time he first started playing, up to the last time he headlined at Common Grounds. I never thought—I just never thought it’d work out.”

“And how was . . . ?” Claire raised her eyebrows and left the question open to anything Eve wanted to make it mean.

Eve’s smile got wicked. “Fantastic.”

They shared muffled squeals. Eve did a little happy-dance behind the counter, dumped shots in a drink, and twirled. Claire had never seen her look so full-stop happy.

Reality came back, and she remembered why she’d come in the first place. She had the strong suspicion she was about to blow all that happiness sky-high.

Eve’s smile was fading, like someone had turned down her dimmer switch. “Claire, you’re wearing the worried face. What’s wrong?”

“I . . .” Claire hesitated, then plunged in. “I saw Jason. This morning.”

Eve’s dark eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything. She waited.

“He wanted me to tell you that he’s going to call. It’s something about your dad, he says. He says not to hang up.”

“My dad,” Eve repeated. “You’re sure.”

“That’s what he said. I told him, no promises.” Claire sipped her mocha, which was perfect, and watched Eve’s expression. Not too easy to read, right now. “He didn’t try to hurt me.”

“Broad daylight, on a main street? Yeah, well, he’s bug-out crazy, but he’s not stupid.” Eve seemed very far away, suddenly. And all her happy glow was gone. “I haven’t talked to either one of my parents since my eighteenth birthday.”

“Why not?”

“They tried to sell me to Brandon,” she said flatly. “Like a piece of meat on the hoof. I don’t know why Jason’s suddenly all nostalgic about the fam; it’s not like there were good times to remember.”

“But they’re still your parents.”

“Yeah, unfortunately. Look, here’s the story of the Rosser clan: we’re the original nuclear family. As in, nuclear bomb. Toxic even when it doesn’t explode.” Eve shook her head. “Whatever Dad’s damage is, I don’t care. And I don’t know why Jason would, either.”

Another student had paid for coffee, and Eve cast him an absent, empty smile and started pulling espresso shots with mechanical precision. “It’s nothing, ” she said. “And I’m hanging up on him when he calls. If he calls. And even if it’s something, I don’t give a damn anyway.”

Claire just nodded. She had no idea what to say. Eve was clearly upset, a lot more upset than she’d expected her to be. She waved good-bye and took herself off to a nearby study table, and began plowing through a book she’d borrowed from the library. Somebody’s PhD paper, which read like the guy had never bothered to attend a single English Composition class.

Good equations, though. She was heavily involved in them when her cell phone rang.

“Hello?” She didn’t recognize the number, but it was local, and not her parents.

“Claire Danvers?”

“Yes, who’s this?”

“My name’s Dr. Robert Mills. I’m the one who treated your friend Shane in the hospital.”