I pulled them toward me, and he calmly shut the door in Brandon"s face. I sat there on the wooden floor, knees pulled in to my
chest, and tried to slow my heart down from triple digits. "G.o.d," I whispered, and rested my forehead on my knees. "That was
close."
I heard the rustle of fabric. Michael had crouched down across from me, back to the opposite wall. He was wearing some comfortable old jeans, a faded green cotton shirt, and his feet were long and narrow and bare. "Eve Rosser, right?" he asked.
"Hi."
"Hi, Michael." I was having trouble getting my breath.
"How have you been?"
"Good. You?"
"Fine. What the h.e.l.l is going on?"
"Um...my eighteenth birthday." I was shivering, and I realized my skull shirt was displaying a whole lot more bra than I"d ever
intended. Kind of a plunge bra. Victoria"s Secret. Not so much of a secret right now. "Brandon"s kind of p.i.s.sed. I didn"t sign."
Michael rested his head against the wall and looked at me with narrowed eyes. "You didn"t sign. Oh, man."
I shook my head, unable to say much more about that. I knew what he was thinking, and he was right: I"d brought trouble right to his door. Some friend. Acquaintance. Whatever. My cousin Bob always used to say No good deed goes unpunished. In Morganville, Bob was d.a.m.n sure right.
Michael said, "You got someplace to go? Relatives, maybe?"
I just looked at him miserably, and I felt tears starting to bubble up again. What had I been hoping for? Some white knight hottie to save me? Well, I wasn"t going to get it from Michael. He hadn"t even come outside to get me, he"d just thrown a chair or something.
Still, he"d opened the door. n.o.body else on this street had or would have.
"Okay," Michael said softly. He stretched out a hand and awkwardly patted me on the knee. "Hey. You"re okay, right? You"re safe in here now. Don"t cry."
I didn"t want to cry, but that was how I vented, and boy, did I need to vent. All the fury and grief and rage and confusion just boiled up inside and forced their way out. I was sobbing like a punk, and after a couple of shaking breaths I felt Michael move across to sit next to me. His arm went around me, and I turned toward his warmth, soaking his shirt with tears. I would have told him everything then, all the bad stuff...the van, my friends, Brandon. I would have told him how Brandon gave my dad a pay raise when I was fifteen in return for unrestricted access to me and Jason. I would have told him everything.
Lucky for him I couldn"t get my breath.
Michael was good at soothing; he knew not to talk, and he knew just how to touch my hair and how to hold me. It wasn"t until the storm became more like occasional showers, and I was able to hiccup steady breaths, that I realized he had a clear view down my bra.
"Hey!" I said, and tried to artfully tuck the torn edges of my shirt under the strap. Michael had an odd look on his face. "Free show"s over, Gla.s.s."
Trent would have snapped back some snazzy insult, but not Michael. Michael just looked uncomfortable and edged away from me. "Sorry," he said. "I wasn"t-"
Well, if he wasn"t, I was offended. I gave good bra: 34B.
He must have seen it in my expression, because Michael held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, yeah. I was. That makes me an a.s.shole, right?"
"No, that makes you male and straight," I said. Was it wrong I felt relieved? "I just need to change my-Oh, d.a.m.n. My suitcase! It"s still out there-"
"Come on." Michael got up and walked down the polished wooden hallway. The house felt warm but strange-old, and despite the big open rooms, kind of claustrophobic. Like it was...watching. I loved it. I had no idea why, but it just felt...right. Strange and odd and right.
The living room was normal stuff-couch, chairs, bookcases, throw rugs. A guitar case lying open on a small dining table, and the acoustic was abandoned on the couch as if he"d put it down to see what the trouble was out in the yard. I"d heard Michael play before, though not recently. People had said he"d given it up...but I guessed he hadn"t. Maybe he"d just given up performing.
Michael pulled the blinds and looked out. "It"s on the lawn," he said. "They"re going through it."
"What?" I pushed him out of the way and tried to see for myself, but it was all just a black blur. "They"re going through my stuff? b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" Because I had some lingerie in there that I seriously wanted to keep private. Well, maybe share with one other person. But privately. I yanked the cord on the blinds and moved them up, then unlocked the window and threw up the sash. I leaned out and yelled, "Hey, a.s.sholes, you touch my underwear and-" Michael yanked me back by my belt and slammed the window shut about one second before Brandon"s face appeared there. "Let"s not taunt the angry vampires," he said. "I have to live here."
Deep breaths, Eve. Right. Suitcase not as important as jugular. I sat down in one of the chairs, trying to get hold of myself and not even sure who that was anymore. Myself, I mean. So much had changed in five hours, right? I was an adult now. I was on my own in a town where being alone was a death sentence. I"d made a very bad enemy, and I"d done it deliberately. I"d been disowned by my own family, not that they"d been much of a family in the first place.
"I am so screwed," I said. Michael didn"t say anything to that; it was kind of rhetorical. "So. You look like a nice, nonpsycho kind of guy. Need an unstable roommate with lots of enemies?" I asked, and tried for a mocking smile. Michael hesitated in the act of reaching for his guitar, then settled in on the couch with the instrument cradled in his lap like a favorite pet. He picked out random notes, pure and cool, and bent his head. "Sorry. Bad joke."
"No, it"s not," he said. "Actually-I might consider it."
"What?"
"I didn"t sign, either," he said.
Oh, man. No, I hadn"t known that; I couldn"t remember who his family"s Protector had been, but it couldn"t have been Brandon. Michael wasn"t wearing a symbol bracelet, so no clues there.
"I was thinking," he continued, "that maybe we ought to stick together. Those of us who don"t have contracts. Besides, you and me, we always got along in school. I mean, we didn"t know each other that well, but-" n.o.body had known Michael really well, except his buddy Shane Collins, but Shane had bugged out of Morganville with his parents after his sister"s death. Everybody had wanted to know Michael, but he was private. Shy, maybe. "It"s a big house. Four bedrooms, two baths. Hard to manage it by myself. Bills and c.r.a.p."
Was he offering? Really? I swallowed and leaned forward. My shirt was coming loose again, but I left it that way. I needed every advantage I could get. "I swear, I"m good for rent. I"ll get a job somewhere, at one of the neutral places. And I clean stuff. I"m a demon with the cleaning."
"Cook?" He looked hopeful, but I had to shake my head. "d.a.m.n. I"m not so great at it."
"You"d have to be better than me. I can screw up the recipe for water."
He smiled. He had one of those smiles. You know the ones-the kind that unleashes lethal force on girls in the vicinity. I couldn"t remember him smiling in high school. He was probably aware that it might cause girls to faint or unb.u.t.ton clothes or something.
"We"ll think about it until tomorrow night," he said. "Pick any room but the first one; that"s mine. Sheets are in the closet. Towels are in the bathroom."
"My suitcase-"
"After dawn." He was looking down again, picking out a sweet, quiet melody from the strings. "Look, I"ve got someplace I have to go before then, but you"ll be safe enough if you just go out to get it and come right back inside. I don"t think Brandon"s p.i.s.sed enough to hang around in the sun."
"But you can"t go out in the dark! He could-"
"Brandon? No, he couldn"t. Trust me."
Oh, no. Alarm bells went off. "You"re not-"
He looked up sharply. "I"m not what?"
I mimed fangs.
Michael sighed. "No, I"m not."
"Well, you know, the whole gone-during-daylight thing..."
"I have a job; maybe you"ve heard of it. You leave the house, make money...? Any other questions?"
"Yeah. Then how come you"re up so late if you have to get up so early?"
He looked at me for a second blankly, like he couldn"t believe I"d asked. "Well," he said slowly, "I do get up to eat, shower, that
kind of thing before work. Why? Don"t you?"
Oh. Put like that, it didn"t sound quite as suspiciously vampiric. I swallowed hard, wondering if I could trust him. If I should. Well, idiot, what choices do you have?
I pulled the silver chain around my neck and flipped the tiny silver cross out to hang over the tattered rags of my shirt. "Touch it," I
said.
"What?" He now clearly thought I was crazy.
"Touch the cross, Michael."
"Oh, for Christ"s sake-"
"I have to be sure."
He reached out and put a fingertip squarely on the cross, then spread his whole hand over it.
That came comfortably close to the top of my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Not what I"d intended, but...wow. Bonus.
We sat there for a long second, and then Michael cleared his throat and sat back. "Satisfied?" He seemed to realize it was a trick
question and didn"t wait for an answer. "I"ll be back by dark. We"ll talk about the rent then. But for now, you should-" He looked up. His gaze reached the level of my chest, stopped, and then lowered again. The smile this time was directed at the guitar. "Put on a new shirt or something."
"Well, I would, but all my shirts are in my suitcase, getting molested by Brandon and his funboys." I flipped a finger at the window, in case they were watching.
"Get something out of my closet," he said. I thought he was playing something from Coldplay"s catalog now, something soft and contemplative. "Sorry about the, uh, staring. I know you"ve had a tough night."
There was something so d.a.m.n sweet about that, it made me want to cry. Again. I swallowed the impulse. "You don"t know the half of it," I said.
This time, when he looked up, his gaze actually made it to my face. And stayed there. "I"m guessing that means bad."
"Oh, whole new definitions of bad. But you don"t want to hear about that."
"You"d tell me if I was a friend, right? And not just some guy whose door you randomly knocked on in the middle of the night?"
I thought about Jane, poor sweet Jane, my best and only real friend. Trent and Guy, who probably had been destined for nothing but still had been, for tonight at least, my buds. "I"m not so good for my friends," I said. "Maybe we ought to just call you a really
nice stranger." I took a deep breath. "I lost three people tonight, and it was my fault."
He kept looking at me. Really looking. It was a little bit hot, and a little bit disconcerting. "Then would you talk to a really nice stranger about it? For-" He checked his watch. "Forty minutes? I need to leave, but I want you to be okay before I do."
It only took thirty minutes to tell him about the Life and Times of Me, actually. Michael didn"t say very much, and I felt so tired afterward that I hardly knew it when he got up and went into the kitchen. I must have dozed off a little, because when I woke up, he was kneeling next to my chair, and he had a chocolate brownie on a plate. With a semimelted pink candle sputtering away on top.
"It"s a leftover," he warned me. "It was c.r.a.p in the first place, so I don"t know how good it is. But happy birthday, anyway. I promise you, things will get better."
I had news for him. They just had.
When the sun came up, I"d have a whole new set of problems. Not the least of which would be finding a workplace not afraid to hire a girl with serious vampire relations issues and a wardrobe that leaned toward the macabre.
But for now?
I took a bite of brownie, smiled at my new housemate, and celebrated my freedom.
The Witch and the Wicked Jeanne C. Stein Jeanne C. Stein is the author of the Anna Strong series, the first of which, The Becoming, was released in December 2006. The second book, Blood Drive, was published in July. She lives in Colorado, where, when not working on her novels, she edits a newsletter for a beer importer and takes kickboxing cla.s.ses to stay in shape. She can be reached through her website, www.jeannestein.com.
The idea came to Sophie during Jonathon Deveraux"s one hundred fiftieth birthday party.
She was not there as a guest, of course. Witches are seldom invited to vampire functions, their magics dismissed as parlor tricks to amuse the ma.s.ses. No, she was catering the event. Her business, Weird and Wonderful Catering (voted number one in the latest Supernatural Hot Ticket poll as the caterer for that special event), made her the only choice for a party of this scope and magnitude. For the moment, at least, her questionable heritage as a witch was forgotten.
Sophie blew on the tip of her finger and muttered, "Extinguishe."
The small lick of flame sputtered and died. She waved her hand in the air in a vaguely distracted way, looking down at the cake and its many candles.
"d.a.m.n vamps," she said to no one in particular. Well, to no one at all, really, since she was alone in the room. Still, that didn"t stop her from rambling on. "Why did I agree to this? I almost burned my finger off lighting all those d.a.m.ned candles."
She turned from the table with a rustle of silk, her long burgundy skirt swirling around her legs. She wasn"t an old witch, as witches go. Only eighty years. Her back was still straight, her dark hair barely touched with gray. She didn"t look a day over forty, really. Good genes. And even better cosmetics, most of her own making.