That actually earned her a smile. A small one. "Well, you drive a hard bargain, kid. Be careful out there."
"You, too."
She walked out, and Shane fell in step beside her. He had a handful of flyers, but fewer than there had been. "So, was that fun?" he asked. "Kind of an antivamp stronghold, there. Captain Obvious used to be a good friend of the manager." Captain Obvious had once been a figurehead of the antivampire underground, but he was now permanently underground, in the six-feet-under sense. Nobody had yet stepped forward to take up his masked identity, as far as Claire knew - not that she would have been in on the antivampire memo chain. "He give you any trouble?"
"Not once I pointed out there would be free booze."
"Too easy," Shane said. "How are you planning to keep the frat boys out?"
That, Claire had realized early on, was going to be a problem. . . . The Texas Prairie University campus was its own little world, a microcosm inside Morganville's strange alternate reality. And on campus, few people really knew about the vampire world outside. Keeping the frat boys on campus, instead of searching for a free drunk, was a challenge, and one that required absolute attention. There had been too many near misses already. "I talked to Chief Moses," she said. "She said the police would be checking IDs. No town resident card, you don't get into the square at all. That should keep the aspiring partyers out."
"You hope. So, who else we have left?"
They'd covered almost all of their particular sector of Morganville; Michael had taken the more vampire-centric neighborhoods this morning, and Eve had braved it with him, trying to show the vampires she could be well behaved and perfectly acceptable. By common consent, they'd all decided that Claire and Shane had the reputations to win over unwilling humans, or at least get them to listen.
They'd been about seventy percent successful, which was better than Claire had expected, but it had been a long day, and her feet hurt. "We should hit it tomorrow," she said. "I need to lay down."
He raised his eyebrows at her, and she swatted his shoulder. "Rest," she said.
"Well, we could rest together. I swear, I'll be good." He gave her a charming, intensely hot smile. "You can take that any way you want."
So many levels to that, she got dizzy trying to sort them out. But it warmed her, and made the walk home less of a trial . . . at least, until her cell phone rang. The ringtone was a dead giveaway, emphasis on dead . . . creepy organ music. She didn't even have to glance at the image of fanged bunny slippers on the screen to know who was calling. She just sighed, thumbed it on, and held it to her ear.
"Claire! I need you here immediately. Something's wrong with Bob." Myrnin, her mad-scientist, blood-addicted boss, sounded actually shaken. "I can't get him to eat his insects, and I used his favorites. He just sits there."
"Bob," she repeated, looking at Shane in wide-eyed disbelief. "Bob the spider."
"Just because he's a spider doesn't mean he deserves any less concern! Claire, you have a way with him. He likes you."
Just what she needed. Bob the spider liked her. "You do realize that he's a year old, at least. And spiders don't live that long."
"You think he's dead?" Myrnin sounded horrified. So wrong.
"Is he curled up?"
"No. He's just quiet."
"Well, maybe he's not hungry."
"Will you come?" Myrnin asked. He sounded calmer now, but also oddly needy. "It's been very lonely here these past few days. I'd like your company, at least for a little while." When she hesitated, he used the pity card. "Please, Claire."
"Fine," she sighed. "I'm bringing Shane."
After a second of silence, he said, flatly, "Goody," and hung up.
"You're kidding," Shane said. "Do you think I want to visit Crazy McTeeth in his lair of insanity?"
"No," Claire said, "but I'm pretty sure you won't like it if I go alone when I just kind of promised to be with you. So . . . ?"
"Right. I've been missing Nutty McFang anyway."
"Stop making up names for him."
"What about Count Crackula?"
"Just stop."
Chapter Three