I didn’t see a soul on the streets. No cars, no lights in windows, no shadows trailing me. It was eerily quiet outside, and my heart was racing. I wished I had weapons, but those were hard to come by in Morganville, and besides, I had nosy parents who trashed my room regularly looking for contraband of all kinds. Being under eighteen sucked.
Being over eighteen wasn’t looking so great, either.
I heard the hiss of tires behind me, over the puffing of my breath, and the low growl of a car engine. I looked back, hoping to see Richard Morrell following me in the police car, but no such luck; it was a nondescript black sports car with dark-tinted windows.
Vampire car. No question.
Two more blocks.
The car seemed content to creep along behind me, tires crunching over pavement, and I had plenty of panic-time to wonder who was inside. Brandon, in the back, almost certainly; he’d be cruising with his friends, and when he took me, he’d do it in front of an audience.
The suitcase hit a crack in the sidewalk and tipped over, dragging me to an off-balance halt. I saw a light go on in one of the houses I was passing, and a curtain twitch aside, and then the blinds snapped shut and the lights flicked off. No help there. But then, in Morganville, that wasn’t unusual.
I wasn’t crying, but it was close; I could feel tears burning in my throat, right above the terror twisting my guts. This was your choice, I told myself. You couldn’t do anything else.
Right now, that wasn’t much comfort.
Up ahead, I saw the looming bulk of the Glass House—one more block to go. I could make it, I could. I had to. Jane and Trent and Guy were gone. I owed it to them to live through this.
The car sped up behind me as I crossed the street to the next corner. Four houses to go, all still and lightless.
There was a porch light on in front of 716, and it cast a glow on the pillars framing the porch, picked out the boards in the white fence in front. There were lights on inside, and I saw someone pass in front of a window.
“Michael!” I screamed it and put everything into one last sprint. The car eased ahead of me and pulled in at the curb with a squeal of brakes, tires bumping concrete. A door flew open to block the sidewalk, and I gasped, picked up my suitcase, and tossed it over the fence. It weighed about fifty pounds, but I managed to pick it up and throw it. I grabbed the rough whitewashed boards with their sharp tops and vaulted over, got my shirt caught on the way and ripped it open. No time to worry about that. I grabbed my suitcase and started dragging it over the night-damp grass toward the pool of light. I yelled again, with even more of an edge of panic. “Michael! It’s Eve! Open the door!”
They were behind me. They were right behind me. I knew it, even though I didn’t dare look back and they made no sound. I could feel it. I felt something grab the suitcase, nearly twisting my arm out of the socket, and I let go, stumbling against the porch stairs. The house stretched above me, gray and ghostly in the dark, but that porch light, that was life.
Something caught my foot. I screamed and kicked, fighting to get free, but I went down to my hands and knees, then flat as whoever had me pulled. My searching fingers scratched at the closed wood of the door, and I tasted dust again. I’d been close, so close….
The door opened, and warm yellow light spilled out over me. Too late. I tried to grab for a handhold but I was being yanked backward…and I could feel breath on the back of my neck. Cold, rancid breath.
Something flew over my head and slammed into the vampire pulling on me, knocking him backward. I crawled back toward the door and got a hand over the threshold.
Michael Glass grabbed my fingers and dragged me inside with one long pull. My feet made it over the line just a fraction of a second before another vampire slammed into the invisible barrier there.
That vampire was Brandon. Oh, damn, he was angry. Really angry. Our vampires were all about fitting in, but right now he clearly didn’t care what we saw. His eyes had turned bloodred, and his face was whiter than I’d ever made mine. And I could see fangs, fangs a viper would have envied, flicking down from their hiding place to flash in menace.
And Michael Glass didn’t flinch. In fact…he smiled. “You’re not coming in, Brandon, so save it,” he said. “Leave.”
He looked like I remembered him from high school, from the concerts, only…better, somehow. Stronger. Tall, built, golden hair that waved and curled surfer-style. He had blue eyes, and they were fixed on Brandon. Wary, but definitely not afraid.
“You okay?” he asked me. I nodded, unable to say anything that would really cover how I felt. “Then get out of the way.”
“Huh?”
“Your legs. Please.”
I pulled them toward me, and he calmly shut the door in Brandon’s face. I sat there on the wooden floor, knees pulled in to my chest, and tried to slow my heart down from triple digits. “God,” I whispered, and rested my forehead on my knees. “That was close.”
I heard the rustle of fabric. Michael had crouched down across from me, back to the opposite wall. He was wearing some comfortable old jeans, a faded green cotton shirt, and his feet were long and narrow and bare. “Eve Rosser, right?” he asked. “Hi.”
“Hi, Michael.” I was having trouble getting my breath.
“How have you been?”
“Good. You?”
“Fine. What the hell is going on?”
“Um…my eighteenth birthday.” I was shivering, and I realized my skull shirt was displaying a whole lot more bra than I’d ever intended. Kind of a plunge bra. Victoria’s Secret. Not so much of a secret right now. “Brandon’s kind of pissed. I didn’t sign.”
Michael rested his head against the wall and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You didn’t sign. Oh, man.”
I shook my head, unable to say much more about that. I knew what he was thinking, and he was right: I’d brought trouble right to his door. Some friend. Acquaintance. Whatever. My cousin Bob always used to say No good deed goes unpunished. In Morganville, Bob was damn sure right.
Michael said, “You got someplace to go? Relatives, maybe?”
I just looked at him miserably, and I felt tears starting to bubble up again. What had I been hoping for? Some white knight hottie to save me? Well, I wasn’t going to get it from Michael. He hadn’t even come outside to get me, he’d just thrown a chair or something.
Still, he’d opened the door. Nobody else on this street had or would have.
“Okay,” Michael said softly. He stretched out a hand and awkwardly patted me on the knee. “Hey. You’re okay, right? You’re safe in here now. Don’t cry.”
I didn’t want to cry, but that was how I vented, and boy, did I need to vent. All the fury and grief and rage and confusion just boiled up inside and forced their way out. I was sobbing like a punk, and after a couple of shaking breaths I felt Michael move across to sit next to me. His arm went around me, and I turned toward his warmth, soaking his shirt with tears. I would have told him everything then, all the bad stuff…the van, my friends, Brandon. I would have told him how Brandon gave my dad a pay raise when I was fifteen in return for unrestricted access to me and Jason. I would have told him everything.
Lucky for him I couldn’t get my breath.
Michael was good at soothing; he knew not to talk, and he knew just how to touch my hair and how to hold me. It wasn’t until the storm became more like occasional showers, and I was able to hiccup steady breaths, that I realized he had a clear view down my bra.
“Hey!” I said, and tried to artfully tuck the torn edges of my shirt under the strap. Michael had an odd look on his face. “Free show’s over, Glass.”
Trent would have snapped back some snazzy insult, but not Michael. Michael just looked uncomfortable and edged away from me. “Sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t—”
Well, if he wasn’t, I was offended. I gave good bra: 34B.