Fall of Night The Morganville Vampires - By Rachel Caine Page 0,69
it. That would explain the open door, if he took off in pursuit.’
‘Can you – can you track them?’
‘Not them. Just him. And only if he keeps bleeding. What the hell, we can give it a try, I guess.’ Jesse pushed her cap back on and flipped up the black hood. ‘Come on. We’ve got as good a chance of solving this as the police right now, and I don’t really want the cops involved in anything if it traces back to me, or to Irene.’
‘But – what if Liz—’
‘Trust me,’ Jesse said.
Claire hated it when vampires said that, and she was just about to say so, when someone else darkened the doorway at the bottom of the stairs. Tall, broadly built, and she instantly thought Derrick, and felt a surge of fury.
It wasn’t Derrick.
Shane was standing there on the doorstep, staring up at her. His face was set and pale, and his whole body said that he was braced for a painful impact, but he just nodded to her and said, ‘So, I’ve got no doubt that we’re going to talk about this later, and that will be hard, but for right now, you’re going to need my help.’
Jesse frowned at him. ‘Shane?’
Claire somehow descended a whole flight of stairs without even realising she’d done it. All of a sudden she was on the landing outside of Liz’s door, and her hand was hurting from the strength with which she was clutching the railing. Her knees were trembling, but the rest of her felt … numb. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘You know him?’
‘Yeah, of course I do. He’s the dishwasher at Florey’s.’
Claire’s mouth opened and closed, but she couldn’t sort out the whirl of words flying around in her mind. I wasn’t wrong. I did see him there.
That meant that Shane had been here for days. Maybe longer.
Long enough that he’d lied to her about it, and so had Michael. So had Eve.
‘Oh, we’re going to talk,’ she said then, and the chill in her voice surprised her. ‘But for right now, you’d better tell me what you think you know about this.’
‘Outside,’ Shane said. ‘We need to get moving. Now.’
‘Why?’ Jesse asked.
‘Because the people who took Claire’s friend might come back.’
CHAPTER NINE
SHANE
Of all the ways I wanted to come face-to-face with Claire again … this wasn’t the one I’d preferred. I knew that there was a slim chance we might accidentally meet, but this wasn’t any accident; I was showing up on purpose on her doorstep, and there was no way to pretend that I hadn’t been here, hadn’t been interfering in her life, hadn’t been keeping eyes on her.
Because I was about to confess all that.
Jesse’s anti-sun disguise was pretty good; once her oversized sunglasses were on and her hands were in her pockets, most of her pale skin was protected from accidental sun exposure. It helped that today was cloudy and a little rainy. Claire locked the house’s front door and followed Jesse into the street, where I was waiting for them under a tree (that was polite of me, I thought, look at me being all vampire-sensitive). I nodded to both of them and led the way at a brisk walk a couple of blocks, then turned the corner. There was a café there with an awning. I sat down at one of the fragile-looking tables, and Claire and Jesse took seats on the other side of me. Jesse didn’t look pleased.
Claire – actually, I was too scared to look at her directly to tell what she might be feeling. She hadn’t jumped into my arms and declared her eternal love, so I was going to assume that I was in trouble. Big trouble.
Didn’t matter right now, given the situation.
Jesse’s gaze flicked from me to Claire, then back again, and I saw her making the connections. ‘Shane, just to be sure I’ve got this all right: you followed her from Morganville, but didn’t tell her about it. And you, Claire, you didn’t know he was here.’
‘That’s right,’ Claire said. I didn’t say anything, but then again, I didn’t have to; just being here was silent agreement. ‘I didn’t know he was coming.’
‘That’s on me. I didn’t want you to know.’
I could tell that she checked herself right then, and because I knew her, I also knew that she was thinking that our personal relationship issues weren’t the worst thing happening today. ‘Then tell me what happened today.’