Morganville Vampires 11: Last Breath Read Free Page B

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.
    Very, very bad.
    “So,” she said to Shane as they walked home, arms linked, hands in their pockets to hide from the icy, whipping chill of the wind. “What am I going to say to Eve? Or, God, to