Carpe Corpus Page 0,50

wake up in Morganville."

She kissed him, and tasted the sadness in him. His sigh seemed to come all the way from his toes. "God, I needed you," he murmured. "I can't even tell you how many times I thought about this. The funny thing is, I don't need you any less now. I think I need you more."

That, Claire thought, was a pretty good definition of love: needing someone even after you got what you thought you wanted.

After a long moment, he said, "Your dad is going to kill me. And he's probably got a right to."

She hadn't thought about her parents, but now it flooded in with a vengeance. This was going to get messy. And complicated. "It'll be okay," she whispered, and spread her hand out over his chest. He put his own hand over hers. "We'll be okay."

They fell asleep in each other's arms, and woke up late in the morning to the sound of birds.

Not grackles.

Songbirds.

Chapter Eight

"You are so busted," Eve said, as Claire, fresh from a shower, ran down the steps shouldering her book bag.

Eve was sitting at the dining table, sipping a Coke and reading a Cosmo article with great concentration. She was wearing pink today - or, as Eve liked to call it, Ironic Pink. Pink shirt with poison skull and bones logo. Matching pink pedal-pushers with skulls embossed at the hems. Little pink skull hair ties on her pigtails, which stood out from her head aggressively, daring someone to mock them.

"Excuse me?" Claire kept moving. Eve barely glanced up from the article.

"Don't even try," she said. "I know that look."

"What look?" Claire shoved open the kitchen door.

"The now-I-am-a-woman look. Oh God, don't tell me, please, because then I have to feel guilty that you're seventeen and I should have been more of a den mom, right?" Claire couldn't think of anything to say. Eve sighed. "He'd better have been a good, sweet boy to you, or I swear, I'll kick his ass from here to - Hey, is that Shane's shirt?"

It was. "No." Claire hurried into the kitchen.

Michael was standing at the coffeepot, pushing buttons. He looked over at her and raised his eyebrows, but he didn't say anything.

"What?" she demanded, and dumped her book bag on the table as she poured herself a glass of orange juice. "Do I owe back rent?"

"We've got some things to talk about other than the rent."

"Like what?" She kept her stare focused on her OJ."Like how far you're going to take this whole undercover-cop thing with Bishop, and whether or not you're going to get yourself killed? Because I'm wondering, Michael."

He took in a deep breath and ran his hands through his curly golden hair as if he wanted to rip a handful out in frustration. The cut on his hand, Claire noticed, was neatly healed without any trace of a scar. "I can't tell you anything else. I already took a huge risk telling you what I did, understand?"

"And did I rat you out? No. Because according to Patience Goldman, this" - she yanked back her sleeve and showed him the tattoo, which was barely a shadow now under her skin, and hardly moving at all - "this thing is running out of juice. I don't think he's noticed yet, but he probably will soon."

"That's why I told you to stay away from him."

"Not like I came on my own! Theo . . . " It struck her hard that she hadn't even asked, and she felt all of her good vibes of the morning flee in horror. "Oh God. Theo and his family - "

"They're okay," Michael said. "They were taken to a holding cell. I checked on them, and I told Sam. He'll get word to Amelie."

"That'll do a lot of good."

Michael glanced up at her as he poured his coffee. "You seem different today."

She was struck speechless, and she felt a blush burn its crimson onto her face. Michael's eyebrows rose, slowly, but he didn't say anything.

"Okay, that's . . . not what I meant. And don't ever play poker." He gave her a half smile to show her he wasn't going to harass her about it. Yet. "You moving back in?"

"I don't know." She swallowed and tried to get her racing heartbeat under control. "I need to talk to my parents. They're really . . . I'm just scared for them, that's all. I thought that maybe if I stayed with them, it would make things better, but I