Midnight Alley

Nice, the brutally honest part of her mocked. You'd sacrifice Shane's life for what you want, because you know that's what would happen. Eventually, the vampires would find an excuse to kill him. You're not any better than the vampires if you don't do everything you can to prevent that.

The bitterness left, but regret wasn't following any time soon. She hoped Shane never knew how she felt about it, deep down.

"Mom, sorry, I've got to go, I have class. I love you — tell Dad I love him too, will you?"

Claire hung up on her mother's protests, heaved a sigh, and looked at Michael. Who was looking a little sympathetic.

"That's not easy, talking to the folks," he offered. "Sorry."

"Don't you ever talk to your parents?" Claire asked, and slid into the chair at the small breakfast table across from him. Michael had a cup of something; she was afraid it was blood for a second, but then she smelled coffee. Hazelnut. Vampires could, and did, enjoy food; it just didn't sustain them.

Michael looked suspiciously good this morning — a little color in his face, an energy to his movements that hadn't been there last night.

He'd had more than coffee this morning.

"Yeah, I call my folks sometimes," Michael said. He folded the newspaper — the local rag, run by vampires — and picked up a smaller, rolled bundle of letter-sized pages secured by a rubber band. "They're Morganville exiles, so they have a lot to forget. It's better if I don't keep in contact too much, it could make trouble. I mostly write. The mail and email gets read before it goes on, you know that, right? And most of the phone calls get monitored, especially long distance."

He stripped off the rubber band and unfolded the cheap pages of the second newspaper. Claire read the masthead upside down: The Fang Report. The logo was two stakes at right angles making up a cross. Wild.

"What's that?"

"This?" Michael rattled the paper and shrugged. "Captain Obvious."

"What?"

"Captain Obvious. That's his handle. He's been doing these papers every week for about two years now. It's an underground thing."

Underground in Morganville had a lot of meanings. Claire raised her eyebrows. "So ... Captain Obvious is a vampire?"

"Not unless he's got a serious self-image problem," Michael said. "Captain Obvious hates vampires. If somebody steps out of line, he documents it — " Michael froze, reading the headline, and his mouth opened, then closed. His face set like stone, and his blue eyes looked stricken.

Claire reached over and took the newspaper from his hands, turned it, and read.

NEW BLOODSUCKER IN TOWN

Michael Glass, once a rising musical star with too much talent for this twisted town, has fallen to the Dark Side. Details are sketchy, but Glass, who's been keeping to himself for the past year, has definitely joined the Fang Gang. Nobody knows how or where it happened, and I doubt Glass will be talking, but we should all be worried: does this mean more vamps, fewer humans? After all, he is the first newly risen undead in generations.

Beware, boys and girls: Glass may look like an angel, but he's got a demon inside now. Memorize the face, kibbles. He's the newest addition to the Better Off Dead club!

"The Better Off Dead club?" Claire repeated aloud, horrified. "He's kidding, right?" There was Michael's picture, probably right out of the Morganville High yearbook, inset as a graphic into a tombstone.

With crudely drawn-in fangs.

"Captain Obvious never comes out and tells anyone to kill," Michael said. "He's pretty careful about how he phrases things." Her friend was angry, Claire saw. And scared. "He's got our address listed. And all your names, too, though he at least he points out none of you are really vampires. Jesus. That's not good." Michael was getting past the shock of seeing himself outed in the paper, and was getting worried. Claire was already there.

"Well ... why don't the vampires do something about him? Stop him?"

"They've tried. They've arrested three people in the last two years and said they were Captain Obvious. Turned out they didn't know anything. The Captain could teach the CIA a thing or two about ru

"So he's not that obvious," Claire said.

"I think he means it in the ironic sense." Michael swallowed a quick gulp of coffee. "Claire, I don't like this. Not like we didn't have enough trouble without this kind of — "

Eve slammed in the kitchen door, which hit the wall with a thunderous boom, startling both of them. She clomped across the kitchen floor, and leaned on the breakfast table. She wasn't very Goth today; her hair was still matte-block, but it was worn back in a simple ponytail, and the plain knit shirt and black pants didn't have a skull anywhere in view. No makeup, either. She almost looked ... normal. Which was so wrong.

"All right," she said, and slapped down a second copy of The Fang Report in front of Michael. "Please tell me you have a snappy comeback for this."

"I'll make sure the three of you are safe."

"Oh, so not what I was looking for! Look, I'm not worried about us! We're not the ones Photoshopped into tombstones!" Eve looked at the picture again. "Although yes, better dead than that hairdo ... God, was that your prom photo?"

Michael grabbed the paper back and put it face down on the table. "Eve, nothing is going to happen. Captain Obvious just loves to talk. Nobody's going to come after me."

"Right," a new voice said. It was Shane. He'd come in behind Eve, clearly wanting to watch the fireworks, and now he leaned against the wall next to the stove and crossed his arms. "By all means, let's keep on shoveling the bull," he said. "It's trouble, and you know it." Claire waited for him to come over to the table and join the three of them, the way things used to be.

He didn't. He crossed his arms. Shane hadn't willingly stayed long in the same room with Michael since ... the change. And he wouldn't look at him, except in angles and side glances. He'd also taken to wearing one of Eve's silver crosses, although just now it was hidden beneath the neck of the gray t-shirt he was wearing. Claire found her eyes fixing on the just-visible outline of it.

Eve ignored Shane; her big, dark eyes were fixed on Michael. "You know they'll all be gu

"Like you?" Michael said. He still hadn't forgotten the arsenal of stakes and crosses that Eve kept hidden in her room. In the old days, that had seemed like good sense, living in Morganville. Now, it seemed like a recipe for domestic violence.

Eve looked stricken. "I'd never — "

"I know." He took her hand gently in his. "I know."

She softened, but then she shook it off and went back to frowning at him. "Look, this is dangerous. They know you're an easier target than those other guys, and they're going to hate you even worse, because you're one of us. Our age."

"Maybe," Michael said. "Eve, come on, sit. Sit down."

She did, but it was more like a collapse, and she didn't stop jittering her heel up and down in agitation, or drumming her black-painted fingernails on the table. "This is bad," she said. "You know that, right? Nine point five on the ten point scale of make-me-yak."