I flashed him a grin. 'Did you really think you needed to?'
He backslapped me as he passed me. 'Come on, criminal. Eve will kill me if I don't let her say goodbye.'
'Oh man, that means she's gonna cry. Again.'
'Like a river,' he assured me. 'Good thing you wore a black shirt. That mascara never comes out.'
I stopped him at the top of the stairs, and for a moment we just looked at each other. Then he set the backpack down, and hugged me hard. No need for words or speeches or anything like that; he just offered me a fist to bump, I bumped, we were good.
And then we went downstairs to where Eve was pacing the floor, chewing on a neon-coloured thumbnail. Sometime in the past couple of years girls had started painting their nails weird, so the neon thumb didn't match the other four fingers, which were standard Goth black. She'd tied her colour-streaked hair back in a ponytail so tight that I wondered how it didn't give her a migraine, and she looked pale even though she'd gone light on the rice powder today. In fact, she didn't look particularly Gothed out any more - dramatic eye shadow and liner, but not a lot else.
Although she was wearing her combat gear - tight black shirt, cargo pants, heavy boots. Everything but bandoliers.
'So you're going after all,' she said. She didn't sound particularly surprised about it, and I recognised the dangerously flat tone of her voice. 'I'm not sure if you're crazy or just in love.'
'Not much difference right now, Eve. I take a couple of weeks, head up to Boston, stay close in case she needs me ... and if she doesn't, if all's well and she doesn't want to see me, I come home.' I was trying really hard to avoid feeling like a stalker, because something inside me was hard-core bent on seeing her, even at a distance. I wanted her to have her freedom - she wanted it, and needed it. But I also just couldn't shake the idea that letting trouble-magnet Claire go off across the country without backup was ... a very bad idea. 'I just need to make sure she's okay.'
'Me too,' Eve said. She bit her lip, and somehow held back the tears I knew were lurking just under the surface. 'At least you didn't sneak off in the middle of the night without a word.'
'She was trying to make it easier,' I said. 'It isn't that she doesn't love us. You know that.'
'I know. Didn't make it any better to wake up and find her gone, did it?' She nailed me with a dark look, and I had to agree. The feeling came back to me: shock, abandonment, my stomach dropping toward the centre of the earth. Before I could deal with that, Eve hugged me, and I hugged her back. She felt as familiar and warm to me as the sister I'd lost so long ago now, and all of a sudden it dawned on me that for any number of reasons, I might not make it back to Morganville once I'd left. Accidents happened. They could happen anywhere. 'You watch your back, Shane. I mean it.' Her voice was muffled against my shoulder, and it sounded unsteady. 'You come back to us or I swear, I'll find you, dig up your stinky corpse and kick its ass until it freaking disintegrates.'
I patted her on the back and kissed her cheek. She smelt like flowers, but not the sweet and innocent kind ... more like the night-blooming ones. 'You watch Michael's back and don't worry about mine, tough girl. And damn sure watch your own.'
She sniffled a little, but the tears didn't quite break free, and she compensated by giving me a hard shot to the shoulder as she stepped back. 'Don't I always? What are you going to do when you get there? If you get there, I mean, because knowing you, you'll end up in a bar fight before you're out of Texas.'
'Not fair. I never go into bars.' I wouldn't be allowed in one at my age, anyway. 'My fights are always in the parking lots. Get it right.'
'Idiot.'
'That's the best you've got, Gothika? Because I expect quality insults from you, and that's not really measuring up.'
'Look, Steroid Brain-'
'Okay, that's better, but work on it.'
'You are such a tool! I love you, you know, right?'
'Right,' I said softly. 'Scary girl.'
She blew me a kiss and turned away so I wouldn't see her cry. I glanced at Mikey, who was waiting near the door with my bag.
One last look around at the Glass House, my house ... at the couch where I'd played countless hours of video games, at the kitchen where we'd yelled at each other over whose turn it was to do dishes and trash duty, at the carpet we always said we'd steam clean one of these days. At the scars on the walls from battles that had almost cost us our lives.
One last look at home.
'I'll be back,' I promised them, and myself, and then Michael and I walked out the doorway and into the cold, vast world beyond.
On the way down the steps I checked my phone, again. Nothing from Claire. It was late now. Maybe she hadn't seen my video. Maybe she'd seen it, and hadn't cared. Maybe she was angrier than I'd ever thought.
Maybe she was out having fun and had already forgotten all about me. That was the scariest thought of all. Sure, I might be charming by Morganville standards, but she wasn't locked into the shallow end of the pool now, and there were plenty more to choose from. Genuinely smart college boys.
Thinking about that made me stupid. I knew better than to check my phone and forget my surroundings - we lived in Morganville, after all, and one thing you didn't do was get distracted in public, at night.
And as Michael headed for the car with my backpack, and I fumbled with the phone and tried to see if I'd missed a call, it cost me, because a dark shape rushed at me from the darkness, and I was unprepared.
Not a vampire, as it turned out. I could have handled a vampire. This was a dog. A big, scary dog, something like a Rottweiler, maybe, and it wasn't barking; it was intent on biting. I heard the growl coming at me, and next thing I knew jaws had clamped down on my arm, and my phone went flying. I dimly heard the crunch of metal and glass, but that was not the biggest problem I had at the moment. I'd put on my heavy coat, which was helping, but this dog had a seriously painful grip on me, and a lot of weight behind it; he shook his massive head, and I saw a shine of red in his eyes. Not natural.