Dead Girls' Dance

“Oh, God, Michael, you didn’t. You didn’t! She’ll never forgive you!’”

“As long as she lives to hate me later,’” he said. “Rest. I mean it.’”

She didn’t intend to sleep; her brain was whirling like a tire rim scraping pavement, shooting off sparks in every direction. Lots of energy being expended, but she wasn’t going anywhere fast. Have to think of something. Have to…

Michael started playing, something soft that sounded melancholy, all in minor keys, and she felt herself begin to drift…

…and then, without any sense of going, she was gone.

The blanket around her smelled like Shane.

Claire burrowed deeper into its warmth, murmuring something that might have been his name as she woke; she felt good, relaxed, safe in his embrace. The way she’d been the other night when they’d spent it here on the couch, kissing…

All that faded fast when the events of the past day flooded back, stripping away the comfort and leaving her cold and scared. Claire sat up, clutching the blanket, and looked around. Michael’s guitar was back in its case, and the sun was over the horizon. So, he was gone again, and she and Eve…she and Eve were on their own.

“Right,’” she whispered. “Time to get to work.’” She still needed to find some kind of viable strategy to break Shane out of that cage on Founder’s Square. Which meant research…maybe Detective Hess could tell her something about how many guards there were, and where. Clearly, there was some kind of security process for keeping out the human losers like her, but any security could be broken, right? At least, that’s what she’d always heard. Maybe Eve knew something that could help.

If Eve wasn’t back on suicide watch this morning, anyway. Claire thought wistfully about a hot shower, decided maybe it could wait, and wandered into the kitchen to put on coffee. Eve wasn’t going to be happy, but she’d be even less happy without caffeine. Claire waited while the pot filled, then carried a black mug full of the stuff upstairs. The key to Eve’s door was hanging on a hook, with a note taped to it. Michael’s handwriting. It read, Don’t let her leave the house. By implication, of course, it meant Claire was supposed to stay here, too.

As if she could even think about doing that, with Shane’s last hours ru

Eve was sitting, fully dressed and made-up in zombified glory, on the edge of her bed. She’d put her hair into two pigtails, one on each side, and she’d done her makeup with great care. She looked like a scary porcelain doll.

An angry scary porcelain doll. The kind that they made horror movies about, with stabby knives.

“Coffee?’” Claire asked weakly. Eve looked at her for a second, took the coffee, got up, and walked out of the bedroom toward the stairs. “Oh boy.’”

By the time Claire made it downstairs, Eve was standing in the middle of the living room, looking up at nothing. She’d put the coffee down, and her hands were on her hips. Claire paused, one hand still clutching the banister, and watched Eve turn a slow circle as if she was looking for something.

“I know you’re there, you coward,’” she said. “Now hear this, crazy supernatural boy. If you ever fuck with me again, I swear, I will walk out this door and never come back. You get me? One for yes, two for no.’”

He must have said yes, because some of the stiffness went out of Eve’s shoulders. She was still mad, though. “I don’t know what’s lower, you playing vamp tricks on me, or locking me in my room, but either way, you are so busted, man. Being dead can’t save you. When you get back tonight, I am completely kicking your ass.’”

“He was sorry,’” Claire said. She sat down on the first step as Eve turned a glare of righteous anger in her direction. “He knew you were going to be mad, but he couldn’t—he cares about you, Eve. He couldn’t just let you go out and get yourself killed.’”

“Last time I checked, I was over eighteen and nobody’s property!’” Eve yelled, and stomped her foot. “I don’t care if you’re sorry, Michael—you’re going to have to work really hard to make this up to me! Really hard!’”

Claire saw the breeze ruffle Eve’s hair. Eve closed her eyes for a second, swaying, mouth open in a round, red O.

“Okay,’” she said weakly. “That was different.’”

“What?’” Claire asked, and jumped to her feet.

“Nothing. Um, nothing at all. Right.’” Eve cleared her throat. “What happened last night? Did you get them to let Shane go?’”

Claire’s throat just locked up on her in misery. She shook her head and looked down. “But it’s no use going out there with stakes and crosses,’” she said. “They’d be ready. We need another plan.’”

“What about Joe? Detective Hess?’”

Claire shook her head again. “He can’t.’”

“Then let’s go talk to some people who can,’” Eve said reasonably. She picked up her coffee and drained it in long, chugging gulps, set the mug aside, and nodded. “Ready.’”

“Who are we going to see?’”

“It may shock you, but living in Morganville my entire pathetic life isn’t a complete waste. I know people, okay? And some of them actually have backbones.’”

Claire blinked. “Um…okay. Two minutes.’”

She dashed upstairs for the fastest shower and change of clothes in her life.

9

It stood to reason that Eve would know places to go that Claire didn’t, but for some reason it surprised Claire where those places were. A Laundromat, for instance. And a photo-processing place. In each case, Eve made her wait in the car while she talked to somebody—a human somebody, Claire was almost sure. But nothing came out of it, either time.

Eve got back in her big, dusty Cadillac looking grim and already wilting in the morning’s heat. “Father Jonathan’s on a trip,’” she said. “I was hoping we could get him to talk to the mayor. They go back.’”

“Father Jonathan? There’s a priest in town?’”

Eve nodded. “The vampires don’t care about whether or not he celebrates Mass, as long as he doesn’t display any crosses. Communion’s kind of interesting; the vamps keep the wafers and wine under guard. Oh, and forget about the holy water. If they ever caught him making the sign of the cross over anything liquid, they’d make sure his next congregation has an address behind the pearly gates.’”

Claire blinked, trying to get her head around it. “But—he’s on a trip? Out of town? What?’”

“Gone to the Vatican. Special dispensation.’”

“The Vatican knows about Morganville?’”

“No, idiot. When he leaves town, he’s like anybody else: no memory of the vamps. So I don’t think we can count on the Vatican Strike Team storming in to save Shane, if that’s what you were thinking.’”

It wasn’t, but it was kind of comforting to imagine paramilitary priests in bulletproof armor, with crosses on the vests. “So what now, then? If you can’t get to Father Jonathan?’”

Eve started the car. They were parked in the tiny photo-store parking lot, next to a big industrial-sized Dumpster. They were the only car in the parking lot, although a white van was just turning into the lot and squealing to a stop in the space next to them. It was still pretty early—before nine a.m.—and what passed for traffic in Morganville was slowly filtering around the streets. The photo-processing place claimed to be open twenty-four hours; now, that was a job Claire figured she didn’t want. Did vampires take pictures? What kind? Maybe the trick was not to look at what came spitting out of the machine, just shuffle the prints into an envelope and hand them over…but then, that was probably the trick outside of Morganville, too.

She checked the clock again. “Eve! What about your job?’”