Daylighters (The Morganville Vampires #15)(26)

“Why not? He thinks I’m a hysterical little girl. He treats me like I’m a china doll,” Eve said. She’d taken one of the sharpened chopsticks out of her hair and was restlessly scraping the wood of the table with it. Half of her sloppy hairdo came down. “You think I can’t charm it out of him, and make him let Michael go at the same time?”

“I think you’ll get yourself killed,” Shane said quietly. “Or worse.”

“What’s worse?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “But these guys are the worst kind of bastards—the smooth kind. The ones who seem like they’re nice and polite and kind and doing it all for the right reasons. The ones who make you feel like the villain for not going along with it. And I don’t know what Fallon’s really capable of doing. Do you?”

He was right, and it was sobering. Eve frowned, but she didn’t argue. She just yanked the other chopstick out, twisted her hair back into shape, and stabbed the sticks through it again to hold it up. Mostly. The frown stayed, and from the flinty look in her eyes, the subject was closed. She wouldn’t debate it, but she also wasn’t going to change her mind.

Claire sighed. “Much as I love listening to you two snipe at each other all day, we have actual problems to solve. I’m going to get fire extinguishers, and when I get back, Shane, you can go get the fire retardant stuff from Rad. Eve—” She hesitated, then shook her head. “Whatever you plan to do, I know we can’t stop you. But be careful. We’re one 911 text away, and don’t you hesitate to yell for help if it starts looking the least bit weird.”

“I know,” Eve said. She lifted the backpack to her shoulder. “I will.”

Shane couldn’t resist the dig. “I thought you said not all of us needed weapons.”

“I don’t need them,” Eve said. “But I’m not crazy, either. Banzai, bitches.”

She slammed the door behind her, and Claire sucked in a deep breath as she locked eyes with Shane.

“Guess there’s no chance of going back to bed,” he said. “Because being in bed this morning? That was really nice.” It sounded plaintive. She absolutely agreed with that.

She went to him and kissed him—and it felt sweet and warm-verging-on-hot, and even a little desperate. “Later,” she promised him. “I’ll go get the fire extinguishers. It shouldn’t take too long, so please try not to get into any trouble until I get back.”

“There are times when I wish you were slightly less practical, do you know that?”

“God,” she sighed. “Me, too.”

? ? ?

Splitting off from Shane and Eve felt weird. Eve had taken the hearse, which left Claire suddenly worried about how she was going to haul a buttload of fire extinguishers back from Morganville’s local knockoff version of a Home Depot. But then Shane, at the last minute, dashed off and came back with a set of car keys and a note. “Here,” he said. “Go see Rad. He’s got my time-share car at his lot. Tell him I’ll be by later for the other stuff, so he can get it all together.”

“You’re sure he’ll actually give me your car?”

“Don’t let him bullshit you into thinking I owe him money. I don’t. The agreement is I get the car when I want it, and he drives it when I don’t. It’s how I worked off all the extra stuff he put into it. But be careful. It’s a whole lot of car, little lady.”

“Funny,” she said, in a tone that indicated it was not, and kissed him quickly on her way out the door.

She jogged part of the way, just to enjoy the exercise, and the strange fact that people were out on their lawns, waving hello, smiling and cheerful. Morganville had always been exciting, but she couldn’t say it had always been friendly, and this made an unexpectedly nice change. When she stopped, out of breath, she ended up talking to the postal worker delivering mail, and a couple of passing strangers.

Just like a normal town. Which was so not normal.

I’m going to ruin it, she thought, and that horrible feeling swept through her again, that awful knowledge that even if what she was doing felt right, it might be very wrong. But she couldn’t just . . . do nothing.

Maybe there was no right side, but she knew one thing: letting the Daylighters win had to be the worse of two bad choices.

It didn’t take long to arrive at Rad’s motorcycle shop, which also doubled as a mechanic’s shop. The bikes he sold were generally tricked out and customized, though he had a few consumer base models for variety, and in the back he had a line of cars in various stages of disrepair, and a few that he kept under dust covers.

One of those, Claire knew, was Shane’s. His time-share, as he liked to call it. She recognized the shape under the canvas cover.

Rad was sitting behind his battered desk in the office, feet up, sunglasses on. He was a massive guy, tattooed and bare-armed to show them off, and with the glasses blocking out his eyes he looked the exact opposite of all the friendly faces she’d seen coming here. Old Morganville in the flesh. He gave her a nod, put his boots on the floor, and said, “Hey, Claire. Long time no see around here.”

“Not that long.”

“Seems that way.” He shrugged. “Lot’s changed since you left town, and that’s a fact.”

“Not around your lot so much.”