Midnight Alley (21 page)

Claire drummed her short fingernails on the table, glaring at the bar where it seemed like Oliver was taking forever to deliver their drinks. It occurred to her to wonder if it was really safe to drink something prepared by a vampire who'd been threatening her just a couple of hours before, but honestly, if Oliver wanted to get her, it wasn't as though it would be hard for him.

And she really wanted the white mocha.

‘‘Oliver's your Patron now?''

‘‘For now. Until he finds something he wants more than holding on to my contract, anyway.''

‘‘Is he behind your asking about why Amelie signed me up?''

‘‘Do I look like I run somebody else's errands?''

Claire glanced back again at the bar. ‘‘Maybe.''

Monica went quiet. It wasn't the comfortable kind of silence, and Claire was glad when Oliver called out their orders. She jumped up to get hers, hesitated, and then picked up Monica's as well. She managed to do it without making eye contact with Oliver. He was just a dark shape at the corner of her eye, and she turned her back on him as soon as she could.

Monica had gotten up, and she looked honestly surprised when Claire handed her the drink. ‘‘What?'' Claire asked. ‘‘It's called being polite; they probably didn't teach you that at home. Doesn't mean I like you or anything.''

Monica seemed to have to think hard about what to say to that, and finally came up with a simple ‘‘Thanks.'' Which, Claire had to admit, might have been the nicest thing Monica had ever managed to say to her. Claire gave her a nod and sat down again.
Peace in our time,
she thought wryly. And promptly blew it by asking again, ‘‘Did Oliver put you up to it?''

Monica didn't even glance in his direction. ‘‘No.'' But somehow, Claire didn't believe her.

‘‘Do you have to do everything he says?'' she asked, as if Monica hadn't just lied. And Monica lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. No other answer. ‘‘So you don't really want to talk to me, do you? You've just been told to do it.''

‘‘Not exactly. I thought it was a good chance to get my name in front of Amelie, too.'' Monica smiled slightly, and very bitterly. ‘‘Besides, check it out: you're a star. Everybody wants to know about you, vampires and humans. They're looking into your history, your family's history. If you farted in grade school, somebody in Morganville knows it now.''

Claire almost choked on her first mouthful of white mocha. ‘‘
What?
''

‘‘The Founder isn't what you might call accessible
.
And most of the vamps don't understand her any better than we do. They're always looking for clues about who she is, what she's doing here, with this town. This isn't normal, you know. The way they live here.'' Monica's gaze flicked to Oliver, then away. ‘‘
He's
old enough to know more than most, but he still needs inside information. And the word is, you could be the way to get it. If I can't get Protection from Amelie, at least I can get in good with him if I have something new and valuable to tell him.''

Claire rolled her eyes. ‘‘I'm nobody. And if she cared about me at all—which she doesn't—she'd never let anybody know it. I mean, look how she treats—'' She stopped herself cold, heart suddenly hammering fast. She'd almost said
Myrnin,
and that would have been bad. ‘‘Sam,'' she finished lamely. Which was also true, but Monica had to have noticed her stumble.

Which Monica emphasized by waiting for a full ten seconds of silence before she continued. ‘‘Whatever. The point is, you're sort of famous, and by hanging with you, I get seen by the right people doing the right thing, and I do what Oliver wants. Which is all I care about. You're right, I don't care if we're BFFs. We're not going to trade clothes and get matching tattoos. I've got friends. I need allies.'' She sipped her complicated drink, her eyes steady on Claire. ‘‘Oliver wants what you know, yeah. And this''— she tapped her own bracelet—‘‘this says that I do what he says, or else.''

‘‘Or else what?''

Monica looked down. ‘‘You've met him. Best case, it means he hurts me. Bad. Worst case . . . he trades me down.''

‘‘That's
worse
?''

‘‘Yeah. That means I get handed to the bottom-of-the-barrel vamps, the ones too lame to get the good earners and the pretty people. That means I'm a loser.'' She looked down and fidgeted with her ceramic coffee cup, frowning at it. ‘‘Sounds shallow, maybe, but around here, it's survival. If Oliver blackballs me, I can't get anything but the freaks and the skanks, the ones who get their fix the hard way. They'll kill me, if I'm lucky. If not, I end up some strung-out junkie fang-banger.''

She said it with such dry, matter-of-fact intensity that Claire could tell she'd spent a lot of time thinking about it. It was a long way to fall, from the darling daughter of the mayor to some addict trying to please a kinky freak for protection.

‘‘You could be neutral,'' Claire blurted. She felt oddly sympathetic, even after everything Monica had done. She
had
been born here, after all. Not like she'd ever had a real choice in what she was going to be, or do. ‘‘Some people are, right? They're left alone?''

Monica sneered, and the second or two of humanity Claire had imagined she'd seen in that pretty face vanished. ‘‘They're left alone until they're not. Look, officially, they're untouchable because they've done favors, big favors, and their Patrons let them out of contracts. By big favors, I mean the kind they were lucky to live through, get it? I'm not interested in that kind of hero crap.''

Claire shrugged. ‘‘Then go without a contract.''

‘‘Yeah,
right.
That works. I'm really looking forward to a future as second assistant fry wrangler at the Dairy Queen, and decomposing in some ditch before I'm thirty.'' Monica rested her elbows on the table, coffee cup cradled in both hands. ‘‘I thought about leaving. I actually went to Austin for a semester, you know? But . . . it wasn't the same.''

‘‘Meaning you flunked out of school.''

That earned Claire a filthy look. ‘‘Shut up, bitch. I'm here only because I need to be, and you're here only because you have to be. Let's not get too touchy-feely.''

Claire swallowed a mouthful of sweet, rich mocha. If it was poisoned, she'd die happy, at least. ‘‘Fine by me. Look, I can't help you get to Amelie. I don't even know how to get to her myself. And even if I did, I don't think she'd take your contract.''

‘‘Then just shut up and smile. If I don't get anything else out of this wasted morning, at least Oliver can see that I tried.''

‘‘How long do I have to do this?''

Monica checked her watch. ‘‘Ten minutes. Suck it up that long, and I won't call my brother about your boyfriend's little indiscretion.''

‘‘How can I be sure?''

Monica slapped both hands to her cheeks and looked overdramatically horrified. ‘‘Oh no! You don't trust me! I'm crushed.'' She dropped the act. ‘‘I don't care if Shane has opened his own corpse taxi service; I care only about what I can get out of it.''

‘‘Maybe you want revenge,'' Claire said.

Monica smiled. ‘‘If I'd wanted that, I'd have already turned him in. Besides, I hear it's best served cold.''

Claire pulled out a book. ‘‘All right. Ten minutes. I need to study, anyway.'' Monica sat back and began a running, acidly accurate monologue on the outfits of the girls standing in line for coffee, which Claire tried earnestly not to find funny. Which she was able to do, until Monica pointed out a girl wearing a truly horrible polka-dot-leggings-under-shorts ensemble. ‘‘And somewhere in heaven, Versace sheds a single, perfect tear.''

Claire couldn't control a snort of laughter, and hated herself for it. Monica cocked an eyebrow.

‘‘See?'' she said. ‘‘I'm so good I can even charm a hard case like you. It's a waste of my talent, but I need to keep myself sharp.'' She finished her coffee and picked up her little pink purse with the
Teen People
magazine sticking out of it. ‘‘Gotta fly, loser. Tell your boyfriend as far as I'm concerned, we're even. Well, okay, I'm a little bit more than even, and that's the way I like it. Consider this his restraining order: if I see him within fifty feet of me, I'll not only tell my brother about Shane's midnight adventure, but I'll get some football types to pay his kneecaps a visit.''

She walked out, hips swaying dangerously. People got out of her way, and they watched her go. Fear and attraction, in just about equal measure.

Claire sighed. She supposed people always did like that sort of girl, and always would. And secretly? She envied Monica's confidence. Maybe just a little, traitorous bit.

10

The dead girl that Shane had taken to the church was Jeanne Jackson, a sophomore who'd gone missing from a sorority party two nights before. The papers said that she'd been raped and strangled, but nothing about suspects, and no cops showed up to interrogate Shane, much to Claire's relief. He'd done a dumbass thing, but she could understand his paranoia. In Morganville, he was one suspicion away from taking up residence in Jason's old cell, whether he'd actually done anything or not.

That was if the vampires didn't decide to hold their own brand of frontier justice.

Captain Obvious's
Fang Report
had a much more detailed article on the killings, linking the other two that Claire knew about with this one, and speculating that instead of a vampire menace, they might be dealing with a human one this time. He didn't seem as enthusiastic about forming vigilante parties for someone with a pulse, Claire noticed. Not that it mattered to the dead girls which type of monster had killed them.

She got a note from Amelie giving her time off from working with Myrnin for the rest of the week, so she devoted herself to keeping up with classes. They were tougher than she was used to, which was kind of a relief. She loved a good challenge, and the professors seemed to actually care whether or not their students had a clue. Myth and Legend wasn't what she'd expected, not at all; it wasn't Greek gods, or even Native American Trickster stories. No, it was about . . . vampires. Comparative vampires, actually, examining the literature and folklore from earliest recorded history to the latest vampire-as-hero in pop culture. (Which, now that Claire thought about it, kind of was the modern-day version of myth and legend.) Oddly, for Morganville, the professor wasn't skipping the parts about vampire-killing methods, but Claire guessed that she was one of the few in the class who'd ever know the score about the town, anyway. The rest would bumble cluelessly through their one or two years, transfer out to bigger schools, and never know they'd rubbed elbows at parties with real monsters.

She kept her mouth shut about anything that might get her in trouble, because the professor had a bracelet, too. She was trying to match up glyphs with vampires, and she thought he probably belonged to a female vamp named Susan, who seemed to be into finance. Susan owned a lot of property, anyway, and was some kind of bigwig at the Morganville Bank and Trust.

Claire began keeping notes in a special book about glyphs, vampires, who owned what. Not because she had any agenda, but just because it was interesting, and could be useful someday. She supposed if she'd asked, Amelie would have told her all about it, but it was more challenging to figure it out herself—and this way, Amelie couldn't be really sure how much Claire knew, which couldn't be a bad thing.
She's nice when it suits her. That doesn't mean she's nice.

And on Friday, Eve left a note stuck to the bathroom mirror for Claire to find when she got up.

 
The outfit was nothing Claire would ever, ever,
ever
have bought for herself. For one thing, the black leather skirt was . . . short. Like, really short. There were some kind of patterned panty hose and a sheer red shirt with big red roses woven into the fabric in flocked material. And a black cami to go under it.

There was another sticky note attached to the skirt.
Shoes under the cabinet.
Claire looked. They were thick clunky platforms, in her size, in shiny patent leather.

She took it all back into her bedroom and put it down, backed off, and stared at it for a few seconds.
I can't wear that. It's not me.

Eve would totally mock her if she wore her blue jeans to the party. And she'd gone to a lot of trouble, because all of this stuff was Claire's size, not Eve's. Even the shoes.

And . . . it really
would
burn Monica if Claire looked hot. (She'd never be hotter than Monica; that was a fantasy, but still.) Imagining the expression on Monica's face, Claire slowly stroked her fingers down the soft leather of the skirt.
No. I can't.

And then she imagined Shane's face when he saw her.

Well. Maybe she could, after all.

 
She hadn't gotten his expression quite right in her imagination, because the stunned, vacant expression on Shane's face when she started down the stairs was even better than fantasy. His mouth actually
dropped open.
Next to him, Michael turned around, and although she hadn't counted on it, there was a warm fuzzy feeling to making a hot golden-angel vampire blink and give her a quick, involuntary once-over.