Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(52)

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It was the one-year anniversary of the Worst Halloween Ever, aka the Dead Girls’ Dance party at Epsilon Epsilon Kappa’s frat house on campus . . . and they were throwing it again, although this time it was a rave at one of the abandoned warehouses near the center of town. We’d gotten special invitations. I’d wanted to skip it at first, but Michael and Shane had both assured me that this time things were under control. The vampires of Morganville were working security, which meant that the human frat boys wouldn’t be slipping anything into anybody’s drinks, and any would-be incoming trouble would be stopped cold, probably at the door.

Not that the EEK boys knew who (or what) they were hiring, of course. Students either didn’t know, didn’t want to know, or were in the know from the beginning, because they’d grown up in Morganville. I thought there were maybe six guys total in EEK who had insider knowledge, and none of them was stupid enough to talk.

Well, not too loudly. Unless the keg was open.

I parked my big, black sedan at the curb between a beat-up pickup and a sun-faded Pontiac with so many bumper stickers on it I couldn’t tell what their actual causes were. Guns, looked like. And God. And maybe puppies.

“House rules,” I said, and unlocked the doors. “Stay together. No wandering off. Shane, no fights.”

“Aww,” he said. “Not even one?”

“Are you kidding me? You’ve racked up enough medical frequent-flier miles to get a permanent bed in the emergency room. So no. Not even harsh words, unless somebody else throws the first punch.”

He was happy about that last part. “No problem.” Because somebody else always threw a punch in Shane’s direction when trouble brewed. He had a rep, one that he’d worked hard to acquire, as a badass. He didn’t look particularly badass tonight, wearing a moth-eaten old tapestry-patterned bathrobe fifty years out-of-date, old-man slippers, silk pajamas—which I know he must have found in a box in the attic—and a classic fifties pipe. Unlit, of course.

He made a surprisingly good Hefner, and as he offered us his elbows, I felt a rush of the giggles. Claire was blushing.

“I am such a stud,” Shane said, and swept us into the rave.

As the resident dude, Shane was responsible for the acquisition of party favors, like glow-in-the-dark necklaces and drinks. Nonalcoholic drinks for Claire, of course, because I am a stern house mother even if I suck as a role model. One thing I had to watch out for was the other kind of party favors being passed around, stranger to stranger—white pills, mostly, although there was the light-’em-if-you-got-’em kind, too. I let people pass things to me, then dumped them in the trash. It wasn’t because I was Miss Self-Restraint; it was more because I knew better than to trust most people in Morganville.

We’d had hard lessons about that last year. Especially Claire. This year, she was still polite, but fending off the weirdos with much more ease. Of course, having her own personal shaggy-haired Hefner at her side might have had something to do with that.

I started to worry about Michael. Usually, a side trip to the blood bank didn’t take up more than thirty minutes, but by the time an hour had passed, he still wasn’t in the house.

I went in search of a quiet corner to call him. My mistake was that I didn’t tell Shane or Claire, who had their arms wrapped around each other and were dancing their hearts out. No, I struck out on my own.

Hear that sound? It’s Eve Rosser and her backup band, the Spectacular Lapse of Judgment.

The warehouse was loud, tinny, and crowded; dark spaces were already filled with the make-out brigade. I kept going, down a narrow little hallway, until the noise was only a thud, not a roar, and took out my phone from its hiding place (yes, in my costume, and I’m not telling you where). I started to dial Michael’s phone.

Something touched my shoulder. It felt like an ice-cold electric shock.

“Hey!” I yelped, and whirled around. There was a vampire facing me.

Not Michael.

My heart rate went from sixty to five hundred in two seconds flat, because I knew this guy, and he wasn’t exactly Mr. Congeniality. “Mr. Ransom,” I said, and carefully nodded. I knew him because he was one of Oliver’s crew, but I’d rarely seen him, even at Common Grounds, the coffee shop where the vampires felt free to mingle with the humans according to strict ground rules. He avoided humans as much as possible, in fact.

“Eve,” Mr. Ransom said. He was a tall, thin guy with straw-brittle hair and a kind of vague look in his eyes. Tonight, he was dressed in a black jacket, a black shirt, black pants, all straight out of the Goodwill box. Nothing quite fit him.

Mr. Ransom owned the funeral parlor, although he didn’t work there. He was kind of a vampire hermit. He didn’t get out much.

“Sorry, I’m on the phone,” I said. I waved the phone for evidence, pressed dial, and listened. Come on, come on . . .

He didn’t pick up.

“He will not answer,” Mr. Ransom said. “Michael.”

I quietly folded the phone and stared at him. “Why? What’s happened?”

“He has been delayed.”

“And you came all this way to tell me? Um, thanks. Message received.” I decided to try to tough it out, and walked right past him.

He grabbed me again. I spun, meaning to smack him good (a superbad move on my part), and he caught my hand effortlessly in his. Now I was face-to-face with a vampire I hardly knew, with my hand restrained, and the noise from the rave had kicked up again to metal-melting levels, which meant screaming would get me nowhere but hoarse, and dead.