Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(133)
“Hey, let me bask in my spotlight for a minute.” Eve put the finishing touches on the tattoo and sat back, tilting her head to consider it. Michael tilted his head, too, trying to see what it was she’d drawn. It looked like a skull with all kinds of ornate flourishes and a way-too-cute bow on top. Girly Goth. It did kind of fit Claire, he had to admit. “Okay, basking’s over. What the hell does he want with me? Because I am the very definition of not useful to them. It’s been kind of my mantra.”
Eve wasn’t kidding. She’d spent her life since the age of about sixteen trying hard to piss off the vampires, mock them, and be utterly uncooperative. It was why she was steadfastly Goth in her look; the vampires found that whole trend distasteful and downright disrespectful. Right now, she was rocking a complex confection of braids that curled and stuck out at odd angles around her head. She’d tinted her midnight-black hair with dark blue in streaks. Between the careful pale makeup, dark eyeliner, pale blue lipstick, and skull-and-spike clothes, she looked intimidating to anyone who didn’t know her.
Of course, if you did know her, Michael thought, you probably loved the holy hell out of her. Eve was just like that.
“I don’t know what he wants,” he said, and reached out to take her hand in his. She gave him a quick, warm smile and leaned in to fit her warmth against his side—sunlight in flesh, his own portable sun that heated but never burned him. “I just know that whatever it is, it can’t be good for you.”
“Well, yeah, that’s kind of a given. I’ve never known a vamp to drop in to make it rain fun. I just can’t figure out . . . me. Why me? Claire’s the one who usually gets that honor.”
“Trust me,” Claire said, inspecting her henna tattoo with a mixture of bemusement and delight. “I’m happy to share that.” She held her forearm out to Shane, who ran his fingers over the ink. Michael saw her shiver, and heard the faint whisper of her heartbeat speed faster. “Do you like it?”
“Is it a training tat?”
She laughed. “Kind of.”
“Then I like it. Hey, want to see my new one?”
“Where is it?” Michael, Eve, and Claire somehow managed to say it in unison, and they all dissolved into laughter at Shane’s wounded expression.
“My back, jackasses. C’mon. Do you think I’m that desperate for attention I tattoo my—”
“Let’s just leave it right there,” Eve interrupted. “Because I’m really afraid I might have to think about that one way too hard.” She looked up at Michael, and for a second he lost himself in the shine of her dark eyes, the intoxicating, exotic spice of her scent. “Michael doesn’t have any tats.”
“Michael doesn’t like needles,” he told her.
“Ironic, coming from a dude who bites people for a living,” Shane said.
“Why do you think I don’t like needles?”
Michael was sitting in his comfortable armchair, with Eve snugged against him like a happy cat, and Shane and Claire had the sagging, much-abused sofa. Not for the first time, Michael considered that they’d really have to start taking better care of the place. Home improvement never seemed to get high up on the priority list, though. Or, at least, not as high as staying alive in a town that wanted to kill them at least twelve hours of every day. Tonight, though, it seemed quiet. Gentle. Normal. The TV was playing silently in the background; Shane had turned it on, which meant he was going to be loading up a game anytime now, and soon they’d be taking turns shooting zombies and trash-talking each other.
But Michael’s mind kept worrying at the problem of Kiril Rozhkov, and what the vampire wanted with his wife. For all her attitude and toughness, she was still human, and fragile. And precious to him.
“Claire,” he said. “How do you feel about asking Amelie for a favor?”
“Not so good,” she replied. “Why can’t you?”
It was a fair question. He was, after all, her creature; she’d made him a vampire, and he was part of her own bloodline. That entitled him to certain privileges, normally. “She’s keeping her distance,” he said. “We had a—difference of opinion.”
By which he meant she was still cold toward him because of his marriage to Eve. She still didn’t approve, though she hadn’t actively stopped him from doing it; it had nothing to do with Eve herself, but more with the principle of humans and vampires making those kinds of commitments, and the general attitude of vampires (and humans) about it. Amelie needed to stay above the fray, and right now, he was the fray.
“I guess,” Claire said. “You want me to ask her about Rozhkov?”
“Yes. I just need a clue about the guy—how dangerous he is, how worried I should be.”
“We,” Eve said, without raising her head from where it rested against his chest. “How worried we should be.”
“We,” he agreed, and looked at Claire. “Please?”
She grinned. Even though she’d grown up over the years he’d known her—grown into a capable, calm, intimidating young woman, really—she still looked like she was ten when she smiled like that. “Since you said please,” she said. “Thanks for the tat, Eve. It’s supercool.”
She excused herself and went upstairs to make the call, and Shane (as Michael had predicted) loaded up Dead Rising and went to work slaughtering the undead. Eve uncurled herself from her place at Michael’s side and took up the other controller, and before a minute had gone by, they were insulting each other nonstop, in colorfully hilarious ways.