"That is so wrong, you know. Brisket does not go in tacos."
"Twisted, yet delicious. I say yes." Claire sighed and dumped the chopped onions into a bowl. "Hand me the brisket." Secretly, she liked brisket tacos; she just liked giving him a hard time more. "You know," Claire said as she got the barbecue out of the bag, "you really ought to talk to Michael."
"About what?"
"What do you think? About what's going on with him and Eve!"
"Oh hell no. Guys don't talk about that crap."
"You're serious."
"Really."
"What do you talk about?" Shane looked at her as if she were insane. "You know. Stuff. We're not girls. We don't talk about our feelings. I mean, not to other guys." Claire rolled her eyes and said, "Fine, be emotionally stunted losers; I don't care."
"Good. Thanks. I'll do that." The door opened, and Michael shuffled in, rocking the worst bed head Claire had ever seen him with. "Whoa. Dude, you look like crap. You getting enough iron in your diet?"
"Screw you, and thanks. I just woke up. What's your excuse?"
"I work for a living, man. Unlike the nightwalking dead." Michael went straight past them and from the refrigerator took a sports bottle, which he stuck in the microwave for fifteen seconds. Claire was grateful the smell of the onions, brisket, and taco meat covered the smell of what was in the bottle. Well, they all knew what it was, but if she pretended really hard, it didn't have to be quite as obvious. Michael drank from his sports bottle, then wandered over to look at what they were doing. "Cool, tacos. How long?"
"Depends on whether or not she lets me do the chopping," Shane said. "Five minutes, maybe?" The doorbell rang. "I'll get it!" Eve yelled, and there was something in her voice that really didn't sound quite right. More ... desperate than eager, as if she wanted to stop them from getting to it first. Claire glanced over at Shane, and he raised his eyebrows. "Uh-oh," he said. "Either she's finally dumping you, Mikey, and her new boy's coming for dinner, or--" It was the or, of course. After a short delay, Eve opened the swinging door just wide enough to stick her face inside. She tried for a smile. It almost worked. "Uh--so I invited someone to dinner,"
"Nice time to tell us," Shane said. "Shut up. You've got enough food for the Fifth Armored Division and all of us. We can fill one more plate." But she was having trouble keeping eye contact, and as Claire watched, Eve bit her lip and looked away completely. "Crap," Michael said. "I'm not going to like this, am I? Who is it?" Eve silently opened the door the rest of the way. Behind her, standing with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans jacket, head down, was her brother, Jason Rosser. Jason looked--different, Claire thought. For one thing, he usually looked strung out and dirty and violent, and now he looked almost sober, and he was definitely on speaking terms with showers. Still skinny, and she couldn't say much for the baggy clothes he was wearing, but he looked ... better than she'd ever seen him. And even so, something inside her flinched, hard, at the sight of him. Jason was associated with several of her worst, scariest memories, and even if he hadn't actually hurt her, he hadn't helped her, either--or any of the girls who'd been hurt, or killed. Jason was a bad, bad kid. He'd been an accomplice to at least three murders and to an attack on Claire. And neither Shane nor Michael had forgotten any of that. "Get him out of here," Shane said in a low, dangerous-sounding tone. "Now."
"It's Michael's house," Eve said, without looking at any of them directly. "Michael?"
"Wait a second--it's our house! I live here, too!" Shane shot back. "You don't get to drag his low-life ass in here and act as if nothing happened with him!"
"He's my brother! And he's trying, Shane. God, you can be such a--"
"It's okay," Claire said. Her hands were shaking, and she felt cold, but she also saw Jason lift his head, and for a second their eyes met. It was like a physical shock, and she wasn't sure what she saw, or what he saw, but neither one of them could hold it for long. "It's just dinner. It's not a big deal." Shane turned toward her, eyes wide, and put his hands on her shoulders. "Claire, he hurt you. Hell, he hurt me, too! Jason is not some stray mutt you can take in and feed, okay? He's psycho. And she knows it better than anybody." He glared at Eve, who frowned but didn't glare back as she normally would have. "You expect us all to just play nice with him now that he figures out the bad guys aren't winning, so he cranks out a quick apology? Because it's not happening. It's just not."
"Yeah, I figured it would go this way. Sorry I bothered you," Jason said. His voice sounded faint and rusty, and he turned and walked away, toward the front door and out of their line of sight. Eve went after him, and she must have tried to stop him, because Claire heard his soft voice say, "No, he's not wrong. I've got no right to be here. I did bad things, sis. This was a mistake." Of all of them, only Michael hadn't spoken--hadn't moved, in fact. He was staring at the swinging door as it swayed back and forth, and finally he took a deep breath, set down his sports bottle, and went out into the hallway. Claire smacked at Shane's arm. "What the hell was that, macho man? You have to come to my rescue all the time, even when nobody's trying to hurt me?" He seemed honestly surprised. "I was just--"
"I know what you were just doing. You don't speak for me!"
"I wasn't trying to--"
"Yes, you were. Look, I know Jason's no saint, but he got himself together, and he stuck with Eve when all of us were--out of commission, when Bishop was in charge. He protected her."
"And he let his crazy buddy Dan grab you and almost kill you, and he didn't do anything!"
"He did," Claire said flatly. "He left me to find help. I know because Richard Morrell told me later. Jason went to the cops and tried to tell them. They didn't believe him or they'd have gotten help to me a lot earlier." Earlier would have meant a lot less terror and pain and despair. It wasn't Jason's fault that they'd figured him for crazy. Shane was thrown, a little, but he came back swinging. "Yeah, well, what about those other girls? He didn't help them, did he? I'm not friending up somebody like that."
"Nobody said you had to," Claire shot back. "Jason's done his time in jail. Sitting at the same table isn't like swearing eternal brotherhood." He opened his mouth, closed it, and then said, very tightly, "I just wanted to make sure he didn't have a chance to hurt you again."
"Unless he uses a taco as a deadly weapon, he hasn't got much of a shot. Having you, Michael, and Eve here is about the best protection I could want. Anyway, would you rather have him where you can see him, or where you can't?" Some of the fire faded out of his eyes. "Oh. Yeah, okay." He still looked uncomfortable, though. "You do crazy crap, you know. And it's contagious."
"I know." She put her hand on his cheek, and got a very small smile in return. "Thanks for wanting to keep me safe. But don't overdo it, okay?" Shane made a sound of frustration deep in his throat, but he didn't argue. The kitchen door swung open again. It was Michael, looking fully awake and very calm, as if bracing for a fight. "I talked to him," he said. "He's sincere enough. But if you don't want him here, Shane--"
"I damn sure don't," Shane said, then glanced at Claire and continued. "But if she's willing to give it a shot, I will." Michael blinked, then raised his eyebrows. "Huh," he said. "The universe explodes, hell freezes, and Shane does something reasonable." Shane silently offered him the finger. Michael grinned and backed out of the kitchen again. Claire handed Shane the biggest knife they had. "Chop brisket," she said. "Take out your frustrations." The brisket didn't stand a chance.
Chapter Three
Jason didn't say much at dinner. In fact, he was almost completely silent, though he ate four tacos as if he'd been starving for a month, and when Eve brought out ice cream for dessert, he ate a double helping of that, too. Shane was right. The brisket was delicious in the tacos. Eve, compensating for her brother, chattered like a magpie on crack the whole time--about dumb-asses at the coffee shop where she worked, Common Grounds; about Oliver, her vampire boss, who was a full-time jerk, as far as Claire was concerned, although apparently he was a surprisingly fair supervisor; gossip about people in town. Michael contributed some juicy stuff about the vampire side of town (Claire, for one, had never considered that vampires could fall in and out of love just like regular people--well, vampires other than Michael, and maybe Amelie.) Shane finally loosened up on his glares and brought up some embarrassing stories from Michael's and Eve's pasts. If there were embarrassing stories he knew about Jason, he didn't get into telling them. It started out deeply uncomfortable, but by the time the ice cream bowls were empty, it felt kind of--normal. Not great--there was still a cautious tension around the table--but there was guarded acceptance. Jason finally said, "Thanks for the food." They all stopped talking and looked at him, and he kept his own gaze down on the empty dessert bowl. "Shane's right. I got no right to think I can just show up here and expect you not to hate my guts. You should."
"Damn straight," Shane muttered. Claire and Eve both glared at him. "What? Just sayin'." Jason didn't seem to mind. "I needed to come and tell you that I'm sorry. It's been--things got weird, man. Real weird. And I got real screwed up, in all kinds of ways. Until that thing happened with Claire ... Look, I never meant--she wasn't part of it. That was all on him." Him meant the other guy, the one none of them mentioned, ever. Claire felt her palms sweating and wiped them against her jeans. Her mouth felt dry. "But I'm guilty of other stuff, and I confessed to all of it to the cops, and I did time for it. I never killed anybody, though. I just--wanted to be somebody who got respect." Michael said, "That's how you think you get respect around here? As a killer?" Jason looked up, and it was eerie, seeing eyes exactly like Eve's in such a different face, simmering with anger. "Yeah," he said. "I did. I still do. And I don't need a frigging vampire to set me straight about that, either. In Morganville, when you're not one of the sheep, and you're not one of the wolves, you'd better be one mean-ass junkyard dog." Claire glanced over at Shane and was surprised to see that he wasn't hopping on the angry train. In fact, he was looking at Jason as if he understood what he was saying. Maybe he did. Maybe it was a guy thing. Nobody spoke, and finally Jason said, "So anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for helping get me out of jail. I'd be dead by now if you hadn't. I won't forget." He scraped his chair back and stood up. "Thanks for the tacos. Dinner was real good. I haven't--I haven't sat at a table with people for a really long time." Then, without making eye contact with any of them, he walked away, down the hall. Eve jumped up and ran after him, but before she got to him, he was out the front door and slamming it behind him. She opened it and looked out, but didn't follow. "Jason!" she called, but without any real hope he'd come back. Then, finally, hopelessly, she called again, "Be careful!" She slowly closed the door again, locked it, and came back to flop in her chair at the dinner table, staring at the remains of their taco feast. "Hey," Shane said. "Eve." She looked up. "It took guts for him to come here and try to apologize. I respect that." She looked surprised, and for a second she smiled. "Thanks. I know Jason's never going to be ... well, a good guy in any kind of way, but he's--I can't just turn my back on him. He needs somebody to keep him from going off the rails." Michael took a drink from his sports bottle. "He's the train," he said. "You're on the tracks. Think about what's going to happen, Eve." Her smile faded. "What are you saying?"