The kitchen door banged open again. Shane, this time, a beer in one hand. Whats burning?
Your brain. So, did you two girls kiss and make up? Eve asked, stirring the pasta.
He glowered at her, then turned to Claire. What the hell is she making?
Spaghetti. And technically, it was Claire mostly, but she decided not to mention it. Um, about your daddo you think theyre going to catch him?
No. Shane hip-bumped Eve out of the way at the stove and did some spaghetti maintenance. Morganvilles got a lot of hiding places. Thats mostly for the vamps benefit, but itll work for him, too. Hell go to ground. Ive been sending him maps. Hell know where to go.
Maybe hell just leave? Eve sounded hopeful. Shane dragged a piece of spaghetti out of the tangle in the pot and pressed it against the metal with the spoon. It sliced cleanly.
No, Shane said again. He definitely wont leave. Hes got no place else to go. He always said that if he crossed the border into Morganville again, he was here until it was done.
You mean until hes done. Eve crossed her arms, not as if she was angry, more like she was cold. Shane, if he goes after even one vampire, we are dead. You know that, right?
He picked up the beer bottle and drank, avoiding an answer. He flipped off the burner under the spaghetti, took the pot to the sink, and drained it with the edge of a lid. Like a real chef or something.
Which, Claire had to admit, was pretty much totally hot, the way he moved so confidently. She liked to cook, but he had authority. In fact, she was paying a lot more attention to what Shane did todaythe way he moved, the way his clothes fitor didnt, in his case, because Shane was wearing his jeans loose and just baggy enough to give her fantasies about them sliding down. Which made her blush.
She concentrated on getting down the bowls from the cupboard. Mismatched bowls, two out of four of them chipped. She put them out on the counter as Shane returned with the spaghetti and began portioning it out. Eve grabbed the sauce and followed him down the line, ladling.
It looked pretty tasty, actually. Claire picked up two bowls and carried them into the living room, where Michael was tuning his guitar as if nothing had happened, as if he hadnt been stabbed through the heart and dragged outside andoh my God, she didnt want to finish that thought at all.
She handed him the bowl. He set the guitar carefully back in its casesomehow, with all the mayhem that had gone on in the past two days, it had escaped damageand dug in as Eve and Shane trailed in with their own dinner. Eve had two chilled bottles of water under one arm. She tossed one to Claire as she sat down cross-legged on the floor, next to Michaels knee.
Shane settled on the couch, and Claire joined him. For a few minutes nobody said anything. Claire hadnt realized that she was hungry, not really, but the second the sauce hit her tongue and exploded into flavors, she was starving. She couldnt gobble it fast enough.
Hells put in a skating rink, Shane said. This is actually edible, Eve.
Again, Claire had the impulse to claim creditand managed not to, mostly because that would have required her to stop shoveling pasta into her mouth.
Claire, Eve said. Shes the cook, not me. I just, you know, supervised. Which gave Claire a pleasant little spurt of gratitude and surprise.
See? I knew that.
Eve flipped him off and noisily sucked some spaghetti into her mouth.
Claire got to the bottom of the bowl firsteven before Michael or Shaneand sat back with a sigh of utter contentment. Nap, she thought. I could take a nap.
Guys, Michael said. Were still in trouble. You know that, right?
Yeah, Eve said. But now we have catered trouble.
He ignored her, except for a brief little quirk of a smile, and focused on Shane. You need to tell me everything, Michael said.
No bullshit, man. Every last thing, from the time you left Morganville.
Shane seemed to lose his appetite.
Which, for Shane, was not a good sign at all.
The vampires had offered them money. Cash compensation. It was Morganvilles version of Allstate, only it wasnt insuranceit was blood money for a dead child.
And the Collins familyDad, Mom, and Shanehad packed up whatever had survived the fire that had taken Alyssa, and left town in the middle of the night. Running. That probably would have been that, Shane explained; people did leave town from time to time, and it was rarely any trouble. Michaels own parents had taken off. Butsomething went wrong with Molly Collins.
At first, shed just space, Shane said. Hed drained his beer, and now he was just rolling the bottle between his palms. Stare at things, like she was trying to remember something. Dad didnt notice. He was drinking a lot. We ended up in Odessa, and Dad got a job at the recycling plant. He wasnt home much.
That must have been an improvement, Eve muttered.
Hey, let me get through it, okay?
Sorry.
Shane took another deep breath. Momshe kept talking about Alyssa. You have to understand, we didntI couldnt remember anything, except that shed died. It was all just sort of a blur, but not the kind of blur you worry about, if you know what I mean?
Claire was fairly certain nobody did, but she remembered her conversation with her own parents. Theyd forgotten things, and somehow, they hadnt really cared. So maybe she did understand.
I started working, too. Momshe just stayed in the motel. Wouldnt do anything except eat, sleep, sometimes take a bath if we yelled at her long enough. I figured, you know, depressionbut it was more than that. One day, out of nowhere, she grabs me by the arm and she says, Shane, do you remember your sister? So I go, Yeah, Mom, of course I do. And she says the weirdest thing. She says, Do you remember the vampires? I didnt remember, but it felt like something in me was trying to. I got a bad headache, and I felt sick. And Momshe just kept on talking, about how there was something wrong with us, something going wrong in our heads. About the vampires. About Lyssa dying in the fire.