Elizabeth was, as it turned out, a movie fanatic, and six hours later, Claire finally begged off from the video assault and climbed the stairs, feeling more like a zombie than a survivor of the living-dead attack. Watching gory horror movies on the first night in a creaky old house, with a flaky roommate, was not nearly as much fun as it had been in the Glass House, surrounded by people she loved and trusted. That house had always seemed - and been, on some level - alive, and protective of them.
This one felt cold, alien, and utterly indifferent to her life or death, which made imagining the creaks and bangs to be serial killers intent on murder all too easy.
Claire made it up the steep climb, turned on the lights, and climbed in bed with her phone. She thought about shutting the lights off again, but in her sleep-deprived, overstimulated state, every shadow looked like a monster, and she thought she could see things moving at the corners of her eyes.
Better to leave them on.
She dialled Shane's number and snuggled down in the pillows, warm and safe, finally, beneath the covers even if the mattress felt weirdly hard, and the sheets smelt of unfamiliar detergent.
His cell rang, and rang, and rang, and finally it went to voicemail.
That was like an ice dagger to the heart; she felt numbed and destroyed, all at once. He didn't answer. She'd called, she'd watched the video, and he wasn't there, wasn't answering. She was too tired to think rationally, so the next thing in her mind was that he'd gotten angry, turned his phone off, maybe even blocked her calls. What if he'd gone out? When she'd moved to Morganville, Shane had been dating other girls, though not seriously ... maybe he'd already called one of them, gone out to the movies, or ...
... Or worse. Maybe he was already forgetting her, laughing at some other girl's jokes. Someone older and prettier.
Stop it, she told herself angrily, and shut off the phone. Just stop it.
Claire shut off the ringer, tucked the phone under her pillow, and tried very, very hard not to cry.
She'd never felt so abandoned, or so lonely, in her life.
CHAPTER THREE
SHANE
It hadn't taken me long to pack most of my crap up. Truthfully, I didn't have that much; I wasn't a fashion victim like Eve - hell, even Michael had more clothes than I did - or a collector of stuff. A few well-aged tees, some jeans that had seen the worst of acids and bloodstains and buckshot, and not in that fancy-ass designer way. More the 'I survived that' way.
I decided to ditch the stereo - it was a third-hand ancient thing anyway, and cheap - and that was the biggest thing I owned, besides weapons.
It was the weapons that were going to be tricky. A shotgun weighs a decent amount. Throw in multiple other deadly sharp things, some stakes, a couple of crossbows, and you've got a problem ... particularly if you're planning on having no fixed address for a while. In other words, I had to pick what I could easily carry in the battered camping backpack my dad had once used for the same purpose. Turned out that minus the clothes, my phone, some basic stuff for not smelling gross, the pack weighed about fifty pounds when I finally got it on to test it.
Doable. Soldiers pack that much plus body armour, and I wasn't exactly humping it through the mountains of Afghanistan.
As I shucked the backpack and leant it against the wall, I sensed someone watching me ... and I was right. Michael. 'Can't talk you out of this,' he said. It was a statement, not a question.
'Nope.'
'You're sure this is the right thing to do.'
'Yep. You and the missus need some alone time. Last thing you need is me hanging around here like the new house ghost, haunting Claire's room. Besides, man, I don't do emo.'
'I never said you had to go.'
'Never had to,' I said, and checked my phone again. No calls. Every time I checked and I didn't see Claire's name, I felt the dark, jagged ball of anxiety inside get a little bigger, choke me a little more. 'You giving me a ride to the border or what?'
'Shane-'
I gave him a long look, and he shut up. 'We've been through a lot, Michael, but I'm not going to collapse into your manly arms and cry about it, okay? I already said I don't blame you. I don't. It's not your fault she left us ... it's mine. I should have trusted her more. I should have believed in you more. I got some things to make up for, not just to her but to you. And it's probably better I do that away, so you and Eve can get to feel actually married without me lurking around in the background.' That still hurt, the idea I was holding them back; I knew that was part of why Claire had decided to go, too. But he and Eve did need alone time. It was just truth, hard as it was.
'I'll give you a ride,' Michael said. He walked over to my backpack and picked it up like I'd loaded it up with feathers. 'You got weapons in here?'
'A few.'
'You know that it'll get your ass arrested out there, right?'
'Only if I've got really bad luck, or I decide to hold up a liquor store with 'em.'
'You are a cocky bastard, did I ever tell you that, bro?'