Carpe Corpus (29 page)

The bronze statue of Bishop was gone from the university. In fact, all traces of Bishop were gone. Claire didn’t know where François and Ysandre had ended up, but Myrnin assured her, with a perfectly straight face, that she didn’t
want
to know. Sometimes, she was content to be ignorant. Not often, true. But sometimes.

Shane, however, needed to know about his father. Frank Collins, as far as Claire knew, had just vanished into thin air. If Amelie knew, she wasn’t saying.

This was a moment that Claire actually had wanted to avoid, in a way. She’d put it off as long as she could, but Shane was getting more aggressive about asking people if there was any sign of Frank Collins in Morganville, and she really couldn’t put it off any longer.

“I have something to tell you about that,” she said, and cleared her throat. “Your dad—I . . . I saw him.”

He froze, coffee cup halfway to his lips. “When?”

“A while ago.” She didn’t want to be too specific. She hated that she’d hidden it from him for so long. “He . . . ah . . . he could have killed me, but he didn’t. He said to tell you that . . . that he loved you. And he was sorry.”

Shane blinked at her, as if he couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. “Where did you see him?”

“In the cells where the sick vampires were being kept. He’s not there anymore. I looked. He’s just . . . gone.” She swallowed hard. “I didn’t want to tell you, but I think . . . I think he was going to kill himself, Shane.”

Something changed inside of Shane for a long second—she didn’t recognize the look in his eyes or on his face. And then she did. It was his dad’s look, the one that came before he lashed out at someone.

Shane closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and bowed his head. She didn’t dare move for a few seconds, then carefully reached out and put her hand on the table, just a few inches from his.

His fingers twined with hers.

“Dammit,” he whispered. “No, I’m not mad. I just feel . . . I guess I feel relieved. I wanted to know. Nobody would talk to me.”

“I should have said something,” she said. “I know. I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know how. But I didn’t want you to hear it from Oliver or something, because that would just . . . bite.”

“No kidding.” He took another deep breath, then raised his head. His dark eyes were glittering with un-shed tears, but he blinked them back. “He wouldn’t have wanted to go on like that. He made a choice. I guess that’s something.”

She nodded. “That’s something.”

She’d ripped off the bandage, and now at least he could start healing.

It was the same everywhere. Healing. All over Morganville, burned buildings were being demolished and rebuilt. City Hall, destroyed by a tornado, was getting a municipal makeover, with plenty of marble and fancy new furniture. All of the surviving Founder Houses—even the Glass House—were getting repaired and repainted. The ones that hadn’t survived were being rebuilt from the ground up.

In an amazingly short time, Morganville life had gone back to normal. As normal as it ever was, anyway. And if the vampires weren’t happy about things changing, well, they were—so far—keeping their objections on their side of the fence.

Shane sipped his coffee—plain coffee, not the fancy milky stuff she liked—and watched people go by outside the front windows. She let him sit in silence and come to terms with what she’d said; he was still holding her hand, and she figured that had to be a good sign.

“Oh, great,” Shane said, and nodded to the door. “Trouble, twelve o’clock. Just what we needed.”

Monica Morrell posed in the doorway, making sure the light caught her best side. She’d returned to town, along with her BFFs, and slipped right back into her role as Morganville’s queen bitch without a pause. It helped that Richard Morrell was still mayor, of course, and that Monica’s family had always been rich.

Monica surveyed the busy room disdainfully, snapped her fingers, and sent Gina to stand in the coffee line. Then she and Jennifer made a beeline for the table where Claire and Shane sat.

Nobody spoke. It was a war of stares.

“Bitch, please,” Shane said finally. “You can’t be serious. Out of all the people in here, you pick us to evict? Really not in the mood today.”

“I’m not evicting you,” Monica said, and slid into the chair next to him. Jennifer looked deeply shocked, then put out, but she bullied some poor freshman out of his chair at the next table, and yanked it over to plop down as well. “I thought since you had extra chairs, you wouldn’t be a complete dick about it. Should have known you’d be a bad winner or something.”

He blinked.

“Not that you
won
,” she said quickly. “Just that you’re, you know, still here. Which is a form of winning. Not the best one.”

Shane and Claire exchanged looks. Claire shrugged. “Oliver take you back?” she asked. Monica traced some old carving on the tabletop with a perfectly manicured fingernail, and then flipped her still-dark hair over her shoulders.

“Of course,” she said. “What would Morganville be without the Morrell family?”

“Wouldn’t I like to know?” Shane muttered. Monica sent him a freezing glare. “Kidding.” Not.

“I heard you’re working,” she said. “Wow. Good for you. Shane Collins, actually earning a paycheck. Somebody should alert the press.”

He flipped her off, then checked his watch. “Speaking of the job, damn,” he said. “Claire—”

“I know. Time to go.”

He leaned over and kissed her. He made it extraspecial good, with Monica watching, which made Claire warm all the way down to her toes; he took his time, to the extent that people at other tables started clapping and hooting.

“Watch your back,” he murmured, his lips still against hers. “Love you.”

“Watch yours,” she said. “Love you, too.”

She watched him walk away with an expression she was sure made her look like a total fool, and she didn’t care. Other girls watched him go, too—they always did, and he rarely noticed these days.

Monica made a retching noise into the coffee that Gina thumped down in front of her. “God, you two are disgusting. You know it’s not going to last, right?”

“Why, because you’re going to take him away?” Claire asked, and smiled slowly. “Too much car for you, rich girl.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“Sure. Knock yourself out. No, really. Hammer to the head, works every time.” Claire drained the rest of her mocha as Gina settled into Shane’s vacated chair. “Hey, kid. Here.” Claire scooted her chair back over to the bewildered freshman Jennifer had bullied out of a seat; he settled gratefully into it, nodded, and put his headphones back on. Studying.

Claire had a stack of that to do, too. She’d aced the semester, but that was just the beginning of her challenges. Ada had a lot to teach her, although the computer still hated her and probably always would. Myrnin . . . Myrnin had absorbed so much of Bishop’s blood that he was a walking serum factory, to Dr. Mills’s delight; the vampires of Morganville were being cured, one by one.

All except Sam. Sam’s absence was a hole in everyone’s life. Amelie hadn’t left her home except for official appearances; she’d become a hermit again, dressed in formal white, back to being the ice queen Claire had first met. If she grieved, she didn’t show it to the unwashed public.

But Claire knew she did.

She knew Amelie always would.

As Claire headed for the door, someone caught the strap on her backpack. “Hey, Claire!” The voice wasn’t familiar, but it seemed cheerful and happy to see her. She turned. It took her a few seconds to place the face barely visible over a pile of books.

It was the awkward boy with the emo haircut—the one she and Eve had met at the University Center before everything had blown up in Morganville. The one who’d once been friends with Shane.

“It’s Dean, remember? Do you have a minute?”

She wasn’t too sure it was a good idea. There was something odd about him, something she’d filed away in her memory . . . Oh yeah. “Before we get into that, how do you know Jason Rosser?” she asked.

Dean froze in the act of clearing his backpack from the chair next to him. “Oh. Uh . . . busted, I guess. When I moved here, me and Jason hung out when he got out of jail. I mean, my theory was his sister was living in the house with Shane, so he’d be a way to keep track. Only he was kind of nuts, you know?”

Claire kept watching him. He seemed honest enough. “He must have shown you some things. Secrets, I mean. About the town.”

Dean’s ears turned red. “You mean—yeah. The short-cuts ? The ones that take you from one place to another? Honestly, I never used them except that once. Scared the holy crap out of me.”

He sounded ashamed of himself, but Claire could fully get behind the concept of finding Morganville terrifying. Granted she thought it was kind of fascinating, but then, she was a freak of nature.

Dean looked pathetic. “Let me guess. I blew it, right? You’ll never talk to me again.”

“No, it’s okay.” She sighed and slid into the chair. “It’s just that Jason’s not what I would call a great character reference.”

“I hear you. But then, I was working for Frank Collins, and my brother was a crazy biker dude, so it really wasn’t that much of a stretch.” He shrugged. “Thanks for cutting me some slack, Claire.”

“Everybody deserves a second chance. Hey, did you see Shane? I thought you wanted to talk to him.”

“I did. Where is he?”

“Gone to work. He just left.”

“I missed him?” Dean looked around, as if Shane would just materialize out of thin air. He looked disappointed when that didn’t happen. “Damn.”

“Well, it’s pretty busy in here. If you didn’t see him, he probably didn’t see you, either. It’s not like he’s avoiding you or anything.”

“Yeah, probably. So. You’re, ah, staying on? In Morganville?”

“Yes.” She left it at that. Between her new, completely amazing relationship with Shane, and the fact that Myrnin was teaching her physics so advanced that most Nobel Prize-winners would weep, no way was she leaving now. “You?”

He shrugged. “Got no place else to be. You still living at the Glass House?”

“Uh, no. I made a deal with my parents. I have to live at home with them until I’m eighteen, and then I can move back. Eve promised that they’d keep my room for me, though.” The truth was, she pretty much still lived there, and she looked forward to the time she spent with her friends—shared dinners, board games, zombie-smashing video games, and Wii tennis . . . And Eve doing dramatic readings from her favorite vampire books as Michael squirmed in embarrassment.

She looked forward to everything.

Morganville wasn’t perfect. It would never be perfect. But Amelie had kept her promise, and humans were starting to feel like equal citizens, not possessions. Not walking blood banks.

It was a start. Claire had plans for more, in time.

“Hey,” she said. “Maybe you could come over tonight, to the Glass House? Have dinner with us? I’m sure Shane would love to see you. It’d be a great surprise.”

“It would,” Dean said, and gave her a matching grin. “Yeah, okay. Seven o’clock?”

“Fine,” she said. “Listen, I have to get to work. See you then!”

He hastily stood up and shoveled his books and papers into his backpack. “I’m going too,” he said. “Just a sec.”

Is he hitting on me?
Claire wondered. She knew what Eve would say, but she couldn’t quite believe it. Dean seemed like a nice guy—but there was a glint in his eye when he looked at her.

She wondered if she should just take off, but that seemed rude.

Oliver was watching her from his place at the bar. She nodded to him, and he gave her a cool look that told her just what he thought of her. No, they were never going to be friends. And that was fine with Claire. She still thought he was a creep.

Dean stumbled over his own feet getting up, jostled the arm of a jock at the next table, and had to apologize his way out of trouble, backing into Claire as he did so. She sighed, grabbed his backpack, and towed him toward the door.

She was surprised he didn’t fall over the cracks in the sidewalk, but once he was out of public view, he seemed to straighten up and be a little more coordinated. Huh. He was taller than she’d thought. Broader, too. Not Shane-broad, but solid, after all. It was the hair that fooled her—emo hair always made guys look kind of wimpy.

“Where are you heading?” she asked Dean. He adjusted the weight of his backpack on his shoulder.

“Oh, you know,” he said vaguely, and pointed down the street. She was starting to think that he really was trying to hit on her. The going-my-way routine must have been old when Rome was still building roads. “You all done with classes and stuff?”

“Mostly. I have a couple of labs still to finish out, extra credit stuff, really. You looked like you were studying hard.”

“Not really,” Dean said. “I mostly carry the books around just to make stupid girls like you think I’m safe to be around.”

She blinked, not sure she’d heard that right. He’d said it exactly the same way he’d said everything else. Like a nice, normal guy.

They were just passing an alley between the buildings. Nobody in sight.

“What—”

She turned her head toward him, and the last thing she saw was his backpack, full of books, heading at full speed toward her head.

Claire woke up not really sure she was waking up at all—everything seemed weird, smeared, dreamlike. She couldn’t move, and her head hurt so bad she started to cry.

She heard voices.

“. . . can’t believe you brought her here,” one said—she knew the voice, but she couldn’t place it; the headache was too huge to think around. “Are you mental? That’s not just
anybody.
She’s going to be missed, Dean!”

“That’s the point.” Dean. That was Dean’s voice. “I want them to miss her. I want them to look all over. They won’t find her until I want them to. Come on, Jason. Man up, already.”

“Dude, I knew you were crazy. I didn’t know you were stupid, too. We have to let her go.”

Sound of scuffling. Feet on wood. Grunts. Two men fighting.

One went down.

“Shut up,” Dean snapped. “You’re always whining. All you ever had to do was carry the bodies. I’m not even asking you to get your hands dirty.”