Midnight Bites (8 page)

He glared at her, and she froze, hesitating between rushing past him and trying to pretend all this was sitcom-normal.

“About time you dragged your ass home,” her dad said, and popped the top on his beer. He was swaying a little, which meant he was only an hour or two of steady drinking from falling down and
leaving them alone the rest of the night—but it was a dangerous couple of hours. “I had to pick your damn brother up from school. He got in trouble again. Didn't I tell you to keep an eye on him?”

There was no point in explaining, again, that it was pretty tricky to keep an eye on a junior high student while actually attending high school across the street, so she said nothing. He drank two big, quick mouthfuls, then set the beer down on the painfully clean kitchen counter. Her mom kept it spotless, all the time, because if she didn't . . . well. If she didn't.

“What did he do?” Eve asked. It was vital, at this point, to keep Dad talking. It was also important to try to ease away, one small step at a time, to keep distance between them and angle for the hallway so if she had to run, she could.

“Smarted off to some teacher,” he said. “And then he pulled a knife when she tried to march him to the principal's office. Stupid kid. Don't know where he gets this stuff.”

Eve knew. She couldn't believe her dad didn't. “Did he hurt anybody?”

“Why the hell would you say that? No, of course he didn't. The kid's stupid, not crazy. I brought him home and tanned his ass for him. He won't be sitting down for a week.” That brought on another drink from the can, but he returned it to the counter, and his mean, narrow eyes stayed on her. “I told you to watch him, didn't I?”

“Dad—”

“Don't you
Dad
me, and when are you going to grow up and stop painting yourself up like some damn clown?” He charged at her, but there was a kitchen chair in the way, and he bumped into it. Eve skipped past and down the hall, not running but walking fast and hard. She took the right turn to the end of the hall, where her room faced her brother, Jason's. His door was shut, and she didn't hesitate;
she opened her own door, stepped in, and shut it softly, then clicked the dead bolt lock she'd installed herself when she was twelve. It wasn't just on account of her dad, but times like these, it helped.

She dumped her book bag on the bed and turned to stare at the closed door. For fifteen seconds, it was quiet. Twenty. Twenty-five.

And then, a fist hit the door with a bang. Just once, hard enough to make the whole thing jump and shiver, but the lock held tight. He rattled the knob.

“Ingrate!” her dad yelled, and she heard him kicking another door. Jason's.
Oh God.
But she'd helped Jason make his room a fortress, too, and pretty soon she heard her father wandering off toward the kitchen to rescue his forgotten beer.

Eve sank down on her bed, weak at the knees, and reached over for her stuffed gargoyle. She hugged him hard for a while, then reached out and picked up the walkie-talkie from her bedside table. She turned it on. “Earth to Uranus,” she said. “Come in, Uranus.”

Static crackled, and even the comfort of her unconditionally loving stuffed animal felt a little empty, until she heard her brother's voice come through the speaker. “My call sign's Charon, dumbass. In case you forgot.”

“That's just a moon, not even a planet.” She let a second or two go by, and then said, “You okay, Jase?”

“Like you care.” There was a dull resentment in Jason's voice. He was younger than she was, but in some ways he was also way older. And harder. “Anything that takes the heat off you, right?”

“I didn't even know he was here! What the hell, Jase, you pulled a
knife
?”

“So what? I like knives.”

All of Eve's good intentions shriveled, because she knew he did. He'd shown her one six months ago, a long, wicked thing, and he'd cut her with it. Accidentally, he'd said. She hadn't been so sure. Still
wasn't. Jason . . . something had broken in Jason, and she didn't know how to fix it. It made her feel awful and hollow inside.

“How bad did he get you?” she finally asked.

“It won't show.”

“Shit . . .” It felt bad sitting here, separated, not knowing what to say. Not knowing what to do. “I wish—”

“You wish you had a spine, Sis? You wish you could stand up to the old man? Don't worry about it. Next time he raises a hand to me, I'll break it off. Count on it.”

Just like that, he was off the radio. She tried him again, but he didn't answer. Eve slowly stretched out on her bed, pulled a
Nightmare Before Christmas
blanket over herself when the chills set in, and tried to think about what to do. Call the cops? Yeah, she'd tried it. Mom had shut that down right at the door, and nobody was going to listen to bad-kid Jason and his weird Goth sister anyway. Not like the cops in Morganville ever really cared too much.

She was half-asleep when her mother knocked on her door and told her dinner was on the table. Eve rolled out of bed, took her hair out of the pigtails, and shook it down around her face so it mostly covered her eyes—her go-to strategy for dealing with her family—and got ready to endure dinner. Dad would be passed out, so it'd just be a silent affair anyway; Jason would be simmering with rage, Mom would be checked out on a mental vacation, and the meal would be horrible.
So not looking forward to creamed corn and Spam.

Eve heard a sound at the window, and turned, thinking it was a branch, or maybe—insanely—Michael Glass trying to get her attention.

Instead, a vampire smiled at her from the other side of the window. Brandon. Eurotrash sleek, a chin sharp enough to cut. He looked completely normal just now. A completely normal Peeping Tom,
looking in like he wanted to leap through the glass and do terrible, terrible things to her.

Eve bit back a scream. If she yelled, Brandon would be gone in the next instant like a bad dream, and it might even rouse her dad from his alcoholic slumber. Besides, Brandon couldn't get in. Not without an invitation, which she damn sure wasn't going to give.
I'm still underage, you asswipe,
she thought as she yanked the curtains closed to shut him out.
You don't have any right to try to get me.
Not that age mattered much to Brandon. He'd been creeping on her since she was twelve. It still made her feel sick and anxious, but she didn't let it get to her. Not much, anyway.

When she peeked out, he was gone. Probably his idea of a joke.
Ugh.
If she complained about it, he'd say he was patrolling the property; he was, after all, their ink-on-contract family Protector. Nothing she could do about it. Like so much else wrong in her life.

Dinner was, as she'd predicted, silent. Jason picked at his food, staring sullenly down; his hair was hanging in his face, just like Eve's, and although their mom chattered on about nothing, and ignored everything really going on, neither of them said a word beyond a grunt or a one-word answer. When they were done, Eve carried the dishes into the kitchen and washed them. Jason dried. They worked in silence, and when she glanced over, she saw Jase was keeping an eye on the couch in the living room, where their dad was passed out with beer cans on the floor around him.

They were careful not to clatter anything too loudly.

It was a weird fact of life that after all that adrenaline, all that fear, all that strain, Eve fell asleep within seconds once she was in bed. She rarely had nightmares. Maybe bad dreams weren't really necessary when you lived one in real life. . . . But she thought she was having one when she woke up to the sounds of sirens and a flickering glow that wasn't sunrise filtering through the curtains. She got up,
pulled on her black fuzzy bathrobe, and pulled the fabric back to stare outside.

There was a house on fire about six blocks away, blazing, shooting flames into the sky. The clock read two in the morning, and she had a sick feeling that whoever had been in that place might not have gotten away safe. The fire department was already there; she could see the fire trucks and the flashing lights.

There was a knock on her bedroom door. Eve answered it, and found her mother standing there in her own bathrobe. Without asking, Mom pushed past and went to the window.

“Yeah, sure, come on in,” Eve said. She closed the door and dead-bolted it again. “I just woke up. Do you know whose house it is?”

Her mother stared at the fire with dry, empty eyes for a moment, and then said, “It could be Mildred Klein's house—she lives over on that block. Or the Montez family.”

Eve knew Clara Montez, and the name hit her hard. Clara was a junior this year. Pretty and quiet and smart. She had an older brother who'd already graduated, and a sister in junior high, and another one still in elementary school.

Eve grabbed her cell phone from the table and checked contacts; Clara was in her list, and she quickly called. She clutched the phone anxiously while she watched the flames tent higher over the burning bones of the house in the distance.

“It's not me,” Clara said instantly. She sounded breathless and excited. “It's the Collins house! Gotta go!”

Eve must have made some kind of a sound, because the next thing she knew, her mother was holding her by the shoulders, asking her what was wrong. Eve's hands were shaking. She looked back at the fire, heart pounding, mouth dry.
Collins.

It was Shane's house burning.

“I have to go,” she said, and tore free of her mom's grasp to start
yanking things out of drawers. She didn't care what she came up with—mismatched underwear, a torn pair of sweatpants, a Powerpuff Girls T-shirt. Whatever came out of the drawer, she pulled on. Her mother was talking, but it was just noise. Eve looked at her phone. Another call had come in. This one was from Michael. She checked the voice mail. “It's Shane,” he said. “His house is on fire!” The call cut off. She could hear the roaring flames in the background.

It was like a kick to the gut that just kept kicking. She didn't know what to do, what to say, what to ask . . . and finally slipped on shoes. They might have been slippers. She didn't really care.

When she tried to stand, her mother grabbed her by the shoulders and held her in place.

“No!” her mom said, too loudly. “Eve, you're not going out there!”

“Mom,” Eve said. “That's the Collins house.
Shane's
house.”

“I don't care whose house it is! You can't go out there!”

Eve shook free and left the room. She hesitated, looking at Jason's door, then kept going. She heard her dad snoring away as she passed her parents' bedroom. Mom continued to follow her, still arguing, but quietly now; nobody wanted to wake up Dad.

Eve went to the hall closet, pulled up a loose floorboard, and found one of the carved sharp-pointed stakes she'd hidden there. She grabbed her black hoodie and threw it on; it would hold the stake in the pocket without trouble. Her mom's complaints had changed tone, more of the
Why do you have that? Don't you know what kind of trouble you could get us into?
sort of rhythm now, which Eve also ignored.

She was out in the dark before the
Don't blame me if you get yourself killed
chorus kicked in, and headed at a run for the fire.

She was about a block away when someone stepped out of the dark into her path, and she yelped, flailed to a stop, and pulled the stake out of her pocket. The shadow stepped into the shallow pool of
light from a streetlamp, and she recognized her own brother. “Jason! Jesus, what are you doing out here? Are you crazy?”

“Are you?” he asked. He seemed perfectly at home in the dark, all night-stalking black clothing and bad attitude. “I'm out here all the time. I know how to get around.”

“Are you insane? You're too young to be out on your own—”

“You heading for the fire?” he interrupted, and she caught her breath and nodded. “Then stop wasting breath and come on.”

They jogged the rest of the way together, and Eve wanted to ask Jason why he went out at night, what he did when he was out here, but the answers sounded like something she really, really didn't want to know. Besides, her stomach was all in knots thinking about Shane and his family, and as they came closer to the fire, it got worse. The stink of the smoke became horribly real, for one thing; it wasn't like a pile of wood you burned in a fireplace. It had an acrid, searing stench to it. Burning plastics, cloth, foam, paint . . . all the things that made a building into a home, going up in black, bellowing clouds.

The Collins house was a total loss already. The fire department was really piling water on it to keep it from spreading to other nearby homes, and the heat was intense as Eve got closer. She could feel it battering at her skin like a physical force. The police had set up barriers, and she crowded up against one with a bunch of neighborhood people, some still in pajamas and bathrobes; she spotted the Montez family huddled together, watching in horrified fascination. There were some vampires lurking, but like the humans at the barricades, they were just gawking. Bloodsuckers liked to keep their distance from fire.

“What happened?” Eve asked Mrs. Montez. The older woman had her hair up in curlers under some kind of net bag, and a pink robe wrapped around her plump body. “Do you know?”

Mrs. Montez shook her head. “People say it was set, that fire. I don't know.”

“Did everybody get out?” Eve was straining to see Shane, or his little sister, Alyssa, or their parents, but she couldn't spot anybody.

“Not the little girl. She didn't.” Mrs. Montez shook her head in somber regret, and Eve caught her breath. The night, for all the heat and cinders, felt suddenly very cold.
Alyssa?
No, that couldn't be right. It just couldn't. There was some mistake. Mrs. Montez just didn't know, that was all. She was just . . . mistaken.