They closed around her, strong and warm. “I’m home, Shane.
We’re home.”
“Yeah,” he said, and let out a long, slow breath. “Home. But it’s not exactly what we left behind, is it?”
“The house, or Morganville?”
“Either one.”
“Seems the same in here.”
“Not quite,” he said. “Not without Michael.”
He was right about that.
Eve didn’t want to eat, but Shane found enough stuff in the kitchen to pull together a meal of spaghetti and meat sauce, although the meat sauce tasted suspiciously like it had a chili- type origin.
Canned chili, at that. Eve forked it mechanically into her mouth, chewed and swallowed, which was about as much as Claire thought they could reasonably expect from her just now. She looked hollow- eyed and exhausted and just . . . empty.
Shane tried to ask her things that normally would have gotten a snappy Eve- style comeback, but she either ignored them or re- sponded with shrugs, until he finally put down his fork and said, “So, Eve, what’s your plan, then? Sit there and look sad and de- pressed until someone just feels so bad about your bruised little fee- fees that they give Michael back?”
“Screw you,” she said. It sounded mechanical, but then a fire came on behind her eyes and started blazing hotter and hotter.
“Seriously, man, screw you. How dare you?”
“How dare you?” he replied. “Because the Eve I know wouldn’t just sit there and become the poster child for therapy. ‘Ask your doctor today for Depressia, the drug that makes you not freaking care about anything.’ ”
“You think I don’t care?” She stood up suddenly, fists clenched, and honestly, Claire thought Eve might lunge right across the table at him. Color was high and hot in Eve’s cheeks, and she shook with fury. “How can you even think that, you jackhole? You’re the one who walked out in the first place! And maybe if you’d helped me back there—”
“If I’d stayed in that mall, I would’ve started shit that would’ve got us all killed, and you know it,” Shane said flatly, and Eve pulled in a sharp breath to retort, then let it out, slowly, without a reply.
She stared at him for a long moment.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
But he was lying, and Claire could see it; she could see that Eve did, too, and the two of them shared quick, confirming glances.
His attention was fixed on Eve, and Claire quickly reached over, grabbed his arm, and pulled up the sleeve of his jeans jacket. It was the arm he’d kept rubbing earlier.
On it, she saw a vivid red scar in the shape of a bite. Healed, but inflamed, as if it was infected. “What is that?”
He yanked free of her, frowned, and pulled his sleeve back down to hide it. “Nothing.”
“It’s where the weird dog bit him,” Eve said. “I remember. It was when you left that night. It wasn’t normal, was it? Some kind of weirdo vamp dog.”
“It wasn’t a vampire dog.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I just know. Because if it was some dog the vamps sent out to bite people, then I wouldn’t want to kill vamps, would I?” Shane blurted out. He looked pale, suddenly, and a little shaky, and when he picked up his fork it rattled against the plate, so he dropped it again. “Look, it was all I could do to not go after them on the way back here from Cambridge. I couldn’t even stand to be around Mikey in the van for long without wanting— wanting to go at him. Hurt him. But that was noth- ing to how it feels back here. And in the mall . . . it was too much. It was like I had to attack. Needed to rip them apart.
And no, I don’t know what it is, and yeah, I’m fucking afraid, okay? I’m terrified.”
That left a ringing silence in the room. Eve opened her mouth again, closed it, and slowly sat down in her chair. Claire felt frozen in place, unable to think what to say. Her throat felt thick and tight, and she swallowed to clear it, then stretched out a hand toward him.
He flinched, but it was just a small move, not a real withdrawal.
She rested her fingers gently on his shoulder, then stroked his hair.
He felt hot, the way he had back at the mall. Feverish. “Shane, you’re sick,” she said. “Something happened to you. And we need to find out what it is and how to help you.”
“Sick or not, at least I’m not the one locked in a cage with a shock collar around my neck,” he said. “Eve’s right. We can’t leave him like that. I’ll be okay.”
“You’re not,” Eve said, and gave a bitter, brittle laugh. “Okay, none of us are okay. We need to do a lot of things, but first of all, Shane, we need to find out what’s happening with you. I may be depressed, but at least I’m not Mr. McMurdery Wolfenstein.” She paused for a second, and then shook her head. “Okay, I was about to say we should see if Myrnin knows what it could be, but . . . no.
Can’t go to any vampires, I suppose. Emergency room?”
“They won’t know anything,” Shane said. “But I know some- one who does. Hannah. She was there when I was bitten. She said there were more dogs, more bites. She’d know something, anyway.”
“I don’t trust Hannah.”
“No kidding. I don’t, either, but it’s not like we have a ton of options, Eve. I don’t want to go save Michael and end up— doing something I’d regret. Which right now seems really likely. I nearly lost it back there. And I might do it again, and I swear to God I don’t want to.” His face tightened, and his eyes darkened until they looked almost black. “So if Hannah knows something about what’s happening to me, then she’s going to tell me.”
That was ominous, and Claire’s sense of disquiet grew stron- ger. “Shane, don’t—”
He was already up from the table, with his plate and fork in his hand. It wasn’t like him not to finish a meal, but there was still a small twisty mountain of spaghetti left when he carried it into the kitchen.
Eve pushed her food around some more and said, “Claire, we’re in trouble. You know that, right?”
“Yes,” Claire said. “Eat your spaghetti.”
Eve obediently lifted a forkful to her mouth, chewed, and swal- lowed, then said, “You know I love you, but trust me, one thing your fancy Boston trip didn’t teach that boy? How to make decent spaghetti sauce.”
Eve’s critiquing the food was, for some odd reason, funny, and Claire’s breath hiccuped into a laugh that just kept going. And Eve started laughing, too. Shane slammed back through the kitchen doors and glared at them, which only made them keep helplessly, hopelessly giggling at the look on his face. “Sorry,” Claire gasped.
“It’s not funny.”
“I know! But— the food— was—”
“Pretty bad.” Shane’s body language relaxed, just a little.
“Yeah, I forgot the art of combining crappy ingredients into an awesome whole while I was off in Fancytown, didn’t I?”
“Fancytown? You saw where I lived!” Her giggles finally drib- bled away, but at least she was left with a happier afterglow than before. Eve managed another bite, for solidarity, probably.
“Good point.” He sat down and leaned his elbows on the empty spot where his plate had been. “You guys need to keep a leash on me, okay? I don’t think I can trust myself right now.”
“An actual leash? Because I have one,” Eve said. “It has spikes on the collar and everything.”
“Been there,” he said. “Remember?” And with a shock Claire did remember; it seemed like a long time ago now, but a wicked awful female vampire had once led him around on a leash at a party, and the memory of it still turned her stomach. And his. And Eve’s, apparently, because she dropped her fork onto the plate, shoved the whole thing away, and rested her forehead on her palms.
“Sorry,” she sighed. “Mine’s more for recreational purposes anyway. I don’t think it would do much to hold you back.”
“Recreational— okay, freak, I don’t even want to know that,”
Shane said. “Let’s pretend that never happened. What I meant was, I’m counting on the two of you to check me if I’m heading for the cliff.”
“Roger that,” Eve said. “I’ll T- bone your ass right off that course.”
“Try not to break anything while you’re at it.”
“Like a nail?” She inspected her black- painted nails, which were looking a little ragged— not a lot of manicure time recently.
“I see your point.” Then she folded her hands and looked at him, with all the banter put aside. “What are we doing, then? Going to see Hannah, or not?”
“Going,” Claire said. “But, Shane, you’re not doing the talking.
I am. Clear?”
“Clear,” he said and nodded. “One request.”
“What?”
“Can we stop for a burger? Because, seriously, I am starving.”
Everything in Morganville, even the burger places, either had been given a face- lift or was in the process of getting one, and as Eve piloted her big black vintage hearse around the town, they spent a lot of time slowing down, gawking, and shaking their heads. “Wish I’d invested in the hardware store now,” Shane said. “I’d be rolling in money just from paint sales.” He was right about that. Almost every building had a gleaming new coat already or had people on ladders applying one. The few buildings that didn’t had bright, fluttering orange stickers applied to them— either a sign that their paint jobs were on the way or that they were being fined for not having one.
“It’s worse than that,” Eve said, and pointed straight ahead.
“Check out Dog King.”
The Dog King was a relic from the 1950s, complete with vin- tage sign— a little drive- through hot dog and burger joint that had, at its best, looked sketchy, except for its totally awesome sign of a dachshund wearing a crown, a hot dog bun, and a cocky grin.
