Carpe Corpus

yet.”

One thing about Hannah: when she said something like that, she clearly meant it. In the silence that fell, Claire felt the weight of both her parents’ stares directly on her, so she looked down at her clasped hands instead. “I can’t,” she said. “It’s complicated.”

“No, it’s not,” her dad said, with a steely undertone in his voice she couldn’t remember hearing before. “It’s absolutely simple. I’m your father, you’re under eighteen, and you’re coming with us. I’m sorry, Chief Moses, but she’s too young to be here on her own.”

“Dad, you sent me here on my own!” Claire said.

“Why do you think we were fighting, Claire?” her mom replied. “Your father was just reminding me that I was the one who thought sending you to a school close by, just to get some experience with it, would be a good idea. He wanted you to go straight to MIT, although how we were going to pay for that, I really don’t have any—”

Dad interrupted her. “We’re not going to start this up again. Claire, we were wrong to let you go off on your own here in the first place, no matter how safe we thought it would be. And we’re fixing that now. You’re coming with us, and things will be better once we’re out of this town.”

Claire’s hands formed into fists as frustration boiled up inside her. “Are you listening to me? It’s too late for all that stuff! I can’t go with you!”

She should have guessed that they’d make the wrong assumptions . . . and, in a way, the right one. “It’s the boy, isn’t it?” Claire’s mother said. “Shane?”

“What? No!” Claire blurted out a denial that, even to her own ears, sounded lame and guilty. “No, not really. It’s something else. Like I said, it’s complicated.”

“Oh my God . . . Claire, are you pregnant?”

“Mom!” She knew she looked as mortified as she felt, especially with Hannah looking on.

“Honey, has that boy taken advantage of you?” Her father was charging full speed down the wrong path; he even stood up to make it more dramatic. “Well?”

Claire stared at him, openmouthed, unable to even try to speak. She knew she should lie, but she just couldn’t find the words.

In the ringing silence, her father said, “I want him arrested.”

Hannah asked, “On what charge, sir?”

“Are you kidding? He had sex with my underage daughter!” He gave Claire a look that was partly angry, partly wounded, and all over dangerous. “Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong, Claire.”

“It . . . wasn’t like that!”

Her dad transferred his glare over to Hannah. “You see? I’ll swear out a complaint if I need to.”

Hannah looked perfectly comfortable. “Sir, there’s no complaint to be sworn out here. Fact is, Claire is seventeen years old, which by Texas law makes her able to give consent on her own. Shane’s only a year older than she is. There’s no laws being broken here, beyond maybe the law of good sense, which I think you’ll admit is often a casualty of our teen years. This is a family matter, not a matter for the police.”

Her father looked shocked, then even angrier. “That’s insane! It has to be illegal!”

“Well, it’s not, sir, and it has nothing to do with why I’m telling you Claire needs to stay in Morganville. That has to do with the vampires.” Hannah had deftly moved the whole thing off the subject of Shane and sex, for which Claire was spine-meltingly grateful. “I’m telling you this for your own good, and for Claire’s own good: she stays here. She won’t be unprotected; I promise you that. We’re committed to keeping her safe.”

“Who’s we?” Claire’s dad wasn’t giving up without a fight.

“Everybody who counts,” Hannah said, and raised her eyebrows. “Time’s a-wastin’, Mr. Danvers. We really can’t debate this. You need to go right now. Please go pack.”

In the end, they did. Claire went to help her mother, reluctantly; she didn’t want the subject to come back to her and Shane, but it did as soon as the door was closed. At least her father wasn’t in the room. God, that had been awkward.

“Honey.” Claire paused in the act of dragging a suitcase out from under her parents’ bed, took one look at the serious expression on her mother’s face, and kept on with what she was doing. “Honey, I really don’t like your getting involved with that boy—that man. And it’s not appropriate for you to be living in that house with him. I just can’t allow that.”

“Mom, could we please focus on not getting killed today? I promise, you can give me the I’m-so-disappointed-in-you speech tomorrow, and every day after, if you will just pack!”

Her mother opened a drawer of the dresser by the window, grabbed a few handfuls of things at random, and threw them into the open suitcase. Not normal. Mom made those people who worked retail clothing stores look sloppy about how they folded things. She moved on to the next drawer, then the next. Claire struggled to neaten up the mess.

“Just tell me this,” her mother said as she dumped an armload of clothes from the closet onto the bed. “Are you being safe?”

Oh lord, Claire did not want to have the birds-and-bees part two conversation with her mother. Not now. Not ever, to be honest; they’d suffered through it once, awkwardly, and once was enough. “Yes,” she said, with as calm and decisive a tone as she could manage. “He insisted.” She meant that to reflect well on Shane. Of course, Mom took it the wrong way.

“You mean you didn’t? Oh, Claire. It’s your body!”

“Mom, of course I—” Claire took a deep breath. “Can we just pack? Please?”

She winced as a rain of shoes descended on the bed.

Hannah was waiting when she finally dragged the suitcase downstairs. Claire’s father had come in for a few minutes, just long enough to add his few things to the pile, and then he’d tried to tote the bag himself, but Claire had insisted on doing it. The thing was fifty pounds, at least.

Hannah raised her eyebrows at Claire. What happened?

Claire rolled her eyes. Don’t ask.

It was a cold, silent ride to the bus.

Richard Morrell had commandeered two genuine Grey-hound buses, with plush seats and tinted windows. According to the hand-lettered sign in the front window, it was a charter heading to Midland/Odessa, but Claire suspected they’d go somewhere else as a destination.

The first bus was already being loaded by the time Claire arrived with her parents; in line to board were most of the town officials and Founder House residents, including the Morrells. Eve was there, too, holding a clipboard and checking people in at a folding table.

“Oh, look, there’s your friend,” Claire’s mom said, and pointed. “She doesn’t look very happy.”

She wasn’t pointing at Eve, but at Monica. Monica definitely wasn’t happy. She had to be forced onto the bus, arguing the entire time with her brother, who looked harassed and angry. She’d somehow managed to shoe-horn her two friends into the evacuation along with her, although Gina and Jennifer looked a lot more relieved at being given a chance to leave town. Monica was probably thinking that she stood a better chance of social queen bee- ness with Bishop than if Amelie was in charge, but she was thinking short-term; if what Myrnin said was right, and Claire had no reason to think it wasn’t, then the entire social order of Morganville was about to get shattered, and being the most popular wouldn’t get you anything but more face time with the firing squad.

The argument with Monica came from the fact that Richard Morrell refused to get on the bus. Well, Claire had seen that coming. He wasn’t the type to run. “There’s a whole town here that can’t get out,” he snapped at his sister, who was stubbornly resisting getting pushed toward the idling bus. “People who need looking after. I’m the mayor. I have to stay. Besides, since Dad’s gone, I’m on the town council. I can’t just go.”

“You have got such an ego, Richard! Nobody’s counting on you. Most of the stupid people in this town would claw one another apart to get out, if they thought they could.”

“That’s why I’m staying,” he said. “Because those people need order. But I need for you to go, Monica. Please. You need to look after our mom.”

Monica wavered. Claire, looking up, could see Mrs. Morrell sitting on the bus, looking out the window with a distant, remote expression. Monica had said her mother wasn’t dealing very well, and she did look thin and frail and not entirely in this world.