Fall of Night The Morganville Vampires - By Rachel Caine Page 0,51

for my needs, and if I get peckish for a little different fare, there are always people willing to make a donation. You just have to know where to go, and when to stop.’

It sounded good, but I was still wary. She was suitably wary of me, too; I saw it in her last look at me as she went through the door to the bar area. Well, that was out in the open, at least. Now I would have to watch my back around her, and Pete too, if Pete was in on Jesse’s secret. I had to assume he was.

Then one of the other bartenders bawled out that he was running low on shot glasses, and I had to get back to work.

The glamorous life.

Closing time was when all the patrons went home, or staggered out the door, anyway, but it wasn’t the end of shift for the rest of us. The battle-weary troops in the kitchen cleaned up there, then bussed tables and loaded the rest of the glasses into the dishwashers before heading out. The bartenders tallied their registers, deposited the take with the manager, and counted out their tips, yawning and bleary-eyed. Pete and his other two bouncers helped with the trash pickup and general straightening, and by the time we were done it was after three in the morning, the streets were cold and empty, and I took out the trash to the dumpster before heading upstairs to bed. Hated the accommodations, but damn, the commute was great.

The mattress was cold and lumpy, and the whole place (and me) smelt like industrial soap and beer, an uneasy and toxic mixture. Mick, the manager of Florey’s, let me know that if a brew went missing out of the cooler from time to time, well, that was probably just breakage, but if it got too extensive he’d have to start checking.

The beer I took upstairs was the first one I’d snagged. It was a dark brew, imported, and it tasted much better than the rough, cheap whiz that Michael and I had started out drinking back in Morganville when we were stealing it from my dad’s fridge. When my dad had a fridge. And a house. And a family.

I’m living just like my dad, I thought, and took a swig of the beer. It burned a little going down – hoppy and malty and dark, like my mood. I’ve got nothing but a backpack and some stashed weapons and a bad attitude. And I keep running into vampires. Must be the Collins luck.

That brought up way too many things I’d bolted down over the last few years. The Collins luck. Yeah, we were a lucky tribe, all right. My sister burnt with the house. My mother died in a bathtub of blood, maybe at the hands of the vamps, maybe not. My dad had gotten turned into a vampire, plugged into a computer, and died back in Morganville, or at least I hoped he had. You never could tell, with those bastards.

I had no family left. Well, except for Michael and Eve, who had adopted me and all my traumas … and Claire, who I’d thought was going to be my home, forever. Only she had made it really clear that home had boundaries, and I’d crossed them, and now I was outside looking in. It hurt. It hurt really deeply, in a self-pitying, angry kind of way. I knew I was guilty, and it was my own damn fault, but that didn’t stop some little-boy part of me from blaming her for freezing me out. She was supposed to forgive me, right? The way your mom forgave your dad when he hit her? Is that what you want? God, I hated that damn voice of reason, the one that kept the selfish little angry boy in check most of the time.

I took another pull from the beer, and another, and before too long all the walls I’d built so carefully around my pain were mud, soft and flowing and sticky. I remembered seeing Claire for the first time, fragile and wounded and needy. I remembered the first time I’d kissed her, and the trembling intensity of it. I remembered the first, breathless, anxious time in bed with her, the beautiful imperfection of it, terror and lust and joy all mixed together. I remembered a thousand wonderful things, and then all the bad things invaded right after them, because when the wall comes down it’s too