"I am bleeding into a bag," he pointed out. "I think I've achieved some kind of anticoward merit badge."
She threw her red rubber ball at him.
Not that Claire hadn't secretly seen all this coming.
She hadn't wanted to believe it. She'd been involved in all the party preparations - Eve had insisted. Between the two of them, they'd planned absolutely everything, from the napkins (black) on the tablecloths (silver) to the paper color on the invitations (black, again, with silver ink). It had been fun, of course, sitting there having girl time, picking out flowers and food and party favors, setting up playlists for the music, and best of all picking out clothes.
It had been only this week, as everything got . . . well, real . . . that Claire had begun feeling that maybe it wasn't all just fairy tales and ice cream. Walking with Eve downtown had turned into a whole new experience, a shocking one; Claire was used to being ignored, or (more recently) being looked at with some weird wariness - wearing the Founder of Morganville's pin in her collar had earned her an entirely unwanted (possibly undeserved) reputation as a badass.
But this week, walking with Eve, she'd seen hate close up.
Oh, it wasn't obvious or anything.... It came in sidelong glances, in the tightening of people's lips and the clipped way people spoke to Eve, if they spoke at all. Morganville had changed somewhat, in these past couple of years, and one of the most important changes had been that people were no longer afraid to show what they felt. Claire had thought that was a positive change.
At first, Claire had figured the dissing was just isolated incidents, and then she'd thought that maybe it was just the normal small-town politics at work. Eve was a Goth, she was easily recognizable, and although she was crushingly funny, she could also piss people off who didn't get her.
This was different, though. The look people had in their eyes for Eve . . . That had been contempt. Or anger. Or disgust.
Eve hadn't seemed to notice at first, but Claire detected a weakening in her usual glossy armor of humor about midway through their last shopping trip - about the time that an unpleasant lady with church hair had walked away from the counter while Eve was checking out with a bagful of stuff for the party. As she walked away, the Church Lady had reached out to mess with a stacked display of sunglasses, and Claire had caught sight of something odd.
The woman was too old for a tattoo - at least, too old for a fresh one - but there was a design inked on her arm that was still red around the edges. Claire saw only a glimpse of it, but it looked like some kind of familiar shape.
A stake. It was a symbol of a stake.
Another, younger lady had come hustling from the back of the shop to wait on Eve, flushed and flustered. She'd avoided meeting their eyes, and had said the bare minimum to get them out of the store. Church Lady hadn't bothered to look at them at all.
Claire had waited until they were safely out of earshot of any passersby before she said, "So, did you see the tat? Freaky."
"The stake?" Eve's black-painted lips were tight, and even in sunlight, her kohl-rimmed eyes looked shadowed. Her Urban Decay makeup normally looked really cool, but in the harsh winter sunlight, Claire thought it looked a little . . . desperate. Not just crying out for attention, but screaming for it. "Yeah, it's the new big thing. Stake tats. Even the geezers are lining up for them. Human pride and all that crap."
"Is that why - "
"Why the bitch refused to wait on me?" Eve tossed her black-dyed shag hair back from her pale face in a defiant shake. "Yeah, probs. Because I'm a traitor."
"Not any more than I am!"
"No, you signed up for Protection, and you made a really good deal at it, too - they respect that. What they don't respect is sleeping with the enemy." Eve looked stubborn, but there was despair in it, too. "Being a fang-banger."
"Michael's not the enemy, and you're not - how can anybody think that?"
"There's always been this undercurrent in Morganville. Us and them, you know. The us doesn't have fangs."
"But - you love each other." Claire didn't know what surprised her more . . . that the Morganville folks were turning on Eve, of all people, or that she wasn't more surprised by that herself. People were petty and stupid sometimes, and even as fabulous as Michael was, some people just would never see him as anything but a walking pair of fangs.
True, he was no fluffy puppy; Michael was capable of really bringing the violence, but only when he absolutely had to do it. He liked avoiding fights, not causing them, and at his heart, he was loyal and kind and shy.
Hard to lump all that under the vampire, therefore evil label.
An old cowboy, complete with hat and boots and a sheepskin-lined jeans jacket, passed the two of them on the sidewalk. He gave Eve a bitter, narrow glare, and spat up something nasty right in front of her shiny, high-heeled, patent leather shoes.
Eve lifted her chin and kept walking.
"Hey!" Claire said, turning toward the cowboy in an outraged fury, but Eve grabbed her arm and dragged her along. "Wait - he - "
"Lesson number one in Morganville," Eve said. "Keep walking. Just keep walking."
And they had. Eve hadn't said another word about it; she'd put on bright, fragile smiles, and when Michael had come home from teaching at the music store, they'd sat together on the couch and cuddled and whispered, but Claire didn't think Eve had told him about the attitudes.
Now this thing with Oliver, telling her outright that the marriage was off, or else.