Kiss of Death Page 0,1

a messy pile on top of her head, with stray bits sticking up in all directions. She looked creepy/adorable. As Claire reloaded the laundry, with a shot of bleach, Eve climbed up on the dryer and kicked her feet idly. "So, you heard the news, right?"

"What news?" Claire asked. "Do I do hot? Is hot good?"

"Hot is good," Eve confirmed. "Michael got another call from that music producer guy. You know, the one from Dallas? The important one, with the daughter at school here. He wants to set Michael up with some club dates in Dallas and a couple of days at a recording studio. I think he's serious." Eve was trying to sound excited about it, but Claire could follow the road signs. Sign one (shaped like an Exit sign): Michael Glass was Eve's serious, longtime crush/boyfriend. Sign two (DANGER, CURVES): Michael Glass was hot, talented, and sweet. Sign three (yellow, CAUTION): Michael Glass was a vampire, which made everything a million times more complicated.

Sign four (flashing red): Michael had begun acting more like a vampire than the boy Eve loved, and they'd already had some pretty spectacular fights about it--so bad, in fact, that Claire was not sure Eve wasn't thinking about breaking up with him. All of which led to sign five (STOP). "You think he'll go?" Claire asked, and concentrated on setting the right temperature on the washer.

The smell of the detergent and bleach was kind of pleasant, like really sharp flowers, the kind that would cut you if you tried to pick them. "To Dallas, I mean?"

"I guess." Eve sounded even less enthusiastic. "I mean, it's good for him, right? He can't just hang around playing at coffee shops in Jugular, Texas. He needs to ..." Her voice faded out, and she looked down at her lap with a focus Claire thought the skirt really didn't deserve. "He needs to be out there."

"Hey," Claire said, and as the washer began chugging away, washing away the stains, she put her hands on Eve's knees. The kicking stopped, but Eve didn't look up. "Are you guys breaking up?" Eve still didn't look up. "I cry all the time," she said. "I hate this. I don't want to lose him. But it's like he just keeps getting farther and farther away, you know? And I don't know how he feels. What he feels. If he feels. It's awful." Claire swallowed hard. "I think he still loves you." Now she got Eve to look at her--big, vulnerable dark eyes rimmed by all the black. "Really? Because ... I just ..." Eve took a deep breath and shook her head. "I don't want to get dumped. It's going to hurt so bad, and I'm so scared he'll find somebody else. Somebody, you know, better."

"Well, that's not going to happen," Claire said. "Not ever."

"Easy for you to say. You haven't seen how the girls throw themselves at him after shows."

"Yeah, you'd never do that." Eve looked up sharply, smiled a little, then looked back down. "Yeah, okay, whatever. But it's different when he's my Michael and they're the ones who are all, you know ... Anyway, he's just always so nice to them." Claire jumped up next to her on the dryer and kicked her feet in rhythm with Eve's. "He has to be nice, right? That's his job, kind of. And we were talking about whether you guys were breaking up. Are you?"

"I ... don't know. It's weird right now. It hurts, and I want the hurt to be over, one way or another, you know?" Eve's shoulders rose and fell in a shrug that somehow managed to be depressed at the same time. "Besides, now he's running off to Dallas. They won't let me go, if he does. I'm just, you know. Human."

"You've got one of the cool frat pins. Nobody would stop you." The cool frat pins were a gift from Amelie, the town's Founder, one of the most frighteningly quiet vampires Claire had ever met, and Claire's boss, technically. They worked like the bracelets most people in town wore, the ones that identified individuals or families as being Protected by a specific vampire, only these were better.... People who wore these pins didn't have to give blood or take orders. They weren't owned. As far as Claire knew, there were fewer than ten people in all of Morganville who had this kind of status, and it meant freedom--in theory--from a lot of the scarier elements of town.