Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(20)

I just called him an idiot. Michael Glass. An idiot. The most gorgeous boy in town. Who’s the idiot now, idiot? Eve bit back the urge to babble out some crazy explanation, like I would, too—I didn’t mean it—I would totally give blood for sick babies. Which would be true, but sounded desperate.

“Maybe one of us should, you know, investigate it,” Eve said, before she could think too hard about what she was saying. “Sign up, get on the bus, check it out.”

“No frigging way,” Shane said. “I’m crazy, but I’m not that—”

“I’ll do it,” she rushed on, before she could think it over. She wanted to—what? Make up for what she’d said? Well, she was doing it by being a total victim-in-training, which wasn’t smart, but at least it made Michael give her a long, very serious look.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” he said slowly. “Not alone, anyway. If you’re doing it, you need backup. I’ll go with you.”

“Together?” Oh, God, was there any other way to make herself sound like a total fool today? “I mean, we’re blood donor buddies?”

“Yeah,” he said, and smiled slowly enough that it made her swallow. Hard. “Together. Okay with you?”

“Sure,” she said, and tried to pretend like it hadn’t just been the pinnacle of her life, right there. “Whatever.”

? ? ?

She floated through the rest of school, and the walk home, even though she didn’t see Michael again the entire time. For the first time, she really, really wanted a best friend to blurt out all her excited feelings to, but she’d long ago decided that no Morganville girls were to be trusted with valuable intel like that. She’d been burned too many times. Hell, once upon a time, she’d thought Jennifer—now one of Monica Morrell’s wing-girls—was a good friend. Granted, that had been elementary school, but betrayal still stung.

Her good feeling faded fast when she got home, because her dad was already there. If he was home early, it meant he’d quit work early, and stopped off at the bar, and worse, they’d already cut him off. Eve paused at seeing his car in the driveway, and thought about heading away again, but this time of year dark came fast, and she didn’t want to be out roaming at night. Sure, technically, she was underage and should be free from predatory vamps, but nobody in Morganville trusted that kind of thing.

She compromised and headed around back, creeping low past the living room window, and made it to the back porch. The door was locked, of course, but she keyed herself in, eased the door closed behind her, thumbed the lock back on, and . . . ran right into her dad, who was standing at the refrigerator, grabbing another beer.

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.