Kiss of Death

his hat. She wondered if it was flammable, like the rest of him. Age had made him flame-retardant, but he’d still suffer out in the sun, and eventually burst into flames, if he couldn’t get out of it.

He came in without waiting for an invitation. “Yeah, welcome.” Claire sighed and shut the door. “We’re getting stuff together. Uh, is that all you brought?” It was one bag, smaller even than Michael’s or Shane’s.

Oliver didn’t bother to answer her. He walked past, into the living room, and straight for Michael. Eve and Shane, who were bickering over the placement of the Cokes versus the bottled iced coffees, fell silent, and Claire joined them.

“You’re surely not taking all this,” Oliver said, looking at the pile of stuff on the floor. It was, Claire had to admit, a lot—mainly because Eve’s suitcase was the size of Rhode Island, but they’d all contributed. “Is there room?”

“I have a major trunk,” Eve said. “It’ll fit.”

Oliver shook his head. “I hate traveling with amateurs,” he said. “Very well. Get the car loaded. Michael and I will wait inside until the sun is down.”

He acted as if he were the boss, which was annoying, but the truth was, he was the boss. Amelie had assigned him as escort, and that meant he could boss them around all he wanted. Heaven, for Oliver. Hell, for everybody else.

Claire shrugged silently, then picked up her suitcase and backpack and led the way.

Packing the car was hilariously awful, because trying to get Eve’s suitcase wedged in was a drama nobody needed. It finally worked, and everything else fit in, including the guitars and the coolers. It left the three of them sweaty, annoyed, and exhausted, but by the time they’d worked it all out, the sun was safely down.

Nobody tried to call shotgun. Oliver took the front seat, Michael got in the driver’s seat, and Eve, Claire, and Shane took the back. It wasn’t even all that crowded.

“Passes,” Oliver said, and held out his hand. Michael handed them over, and Oliver examined them as if he didn’t know they’d already been cleared to leave town. “Very well. Proceed.”

“Tunes!” Eve said. “We need—”

“No music,” Oliver said. “I will not be subjected to what you consider tunes.”

“FYI, I know it’s a disguise, but you even suck at being a hippie,” Eve muttered. “At least like the Beatles or something.”

“No.”

“It’s going to be a really long trip,” Shane said, and put his arm around both Claire and Eve, since he was in the middle. “But at least I’ve got all the babes. Backseat, for the win.”

“Shut up,” Michael said.

“Come back here and make me, Dad.”

Michael and Shane exchanged rude gestures, and then Michael started up the car and pulled away from the curb. Eve squirmed in her seat and clapped her hands.

Oliver turned and glared at her. He took off his black hat and set it on the dashboard, next to Eve’s nodding skeletal figurine. “Enough of that,” he said. “It’s bad enough I have to be trapped in a car with you children. You’ll do your best not to act like children.”

“Oliver,” Michael said, “back off. It’s our first time out of town. Let us enjoy it a little.”

“The first time for some of you,” Oliver said, and looked out the window as the houses of Lot Street began to roll by, one after another. “For some of us, this is not quite as life-changing an event.”

That was kind of true, but still, Claire felt Eve’s excitement was contagious. Michael was smiling. Shane was enjoying being the dude in the backseat. And she was ... leaving Morganville behind, at least for a little while.

At the town limits, Claire watched the WELCOME TO MORGANVILLE sign approach. This side said PLEASE DON’T LEAVE US SO SOON!

They rocketed past it doing at least seventy, maybe eighty miles an hour. Beyond the sign sat a police cruiser—one of Hannah Moses’s crew. Claire felt her breath rush out, but the cop behind the wheel just waved them on, and Michael didn’t even slow down.

Morganville, in the rearview mirror.

Just like that.

It shouldn’t have been so easy, Claire thought. After all that, all the fighting and the terror and the threats.

They just ... drove away.

Michael switched on the radio and found a scratchy rock ‘n’ roll station, and although Oliver kept glaring, he turned it up, and before long they were all singing “Born to Be Wild,” out of tune and at the top of their lungs. Oliver didn’t, but he didn’t pitch an übervamp fit, either. Claire was almost certain that once or twice, she saw his lips moving with the lyrics.

The sunset was glorious, spilling colors all over the sky in shades of orange and red and gold, fading into indigo blue. Claire rolled down the window and smelled the cool, crisp air, flavored with dust and sage. Outside of Morganville there was scrub desert, and a lot of it. Nothing to see for miles except flat, empty land, and the two- lane blacktop road stretching into the distance, straight as an arrow.

“We have to do some jogging around on farm roads,” Michael said, once the song was over and the music shifted to something not as karaoke worthy. “Should be on the interstate in about two hours or so.”

“You’re sure you know where you’re going?” Shane asked. “Because I don’t want to wake up in the Gulf of Mexico or something.”

Michael ignored that, and Claire slowly settled into her seat, feeling relaxed and light. They’d left. They’d actually left Morganville. She could feel the same suppressed thrill and relief in Shane, and, on his other side, from Eve, whose dark eyes just glowed with excitement. She’d been dreaming of this her whole life, Claire realized. Maybe not being trapped in a car with Oliver, or that Michael would be a vampire, but leaving town with Michael had always been one of Eve’s top-ten fantasies.

And here they were, more or less, anyway, which just went to show you that your top-ten fantasies might turn out to be completely different experiences than you’d ever thought.

“We’re out,” Eve said, almost to herself. “We’re out, we’re out, we’re out.”

“You’ll go back,” Oliver said, and turned his head to stare out the side window. “You all go back, eventually.”

“Even for a vampire, you’re a ray of sunshine,” Shane said. “So, we should probably talk about what we’re going to do in Dallas.”

“Everything!” Eve said, instantly. “Everything, everything, everything. And then everything else.”

“Whoa, hit the brakes, girl. We’ve got, what, a hundred bucks between the two of us? I’m pretty sure the all- inclusive everything party package costs more.”

“Oh.” Eve looked surprised, as if she hadn’t even thought about money at all. Knowing Eve, she likely hadn’t. “Well, we have to at least go to some of the good clubs, right? And shopping? Oh, and they have some really good movie theaters.”

“Movies?” Michael repeated, looking in the rearview mirror. “Seriously? Eve.”

“What? Stadium seating, Michael. DigitaL With three-D and everything.”

“You’re going to waste your first trip outside of Morganville inside a movie theater?”

“No, well, I—stadium seating! Okay, okay, fine. Museums. Concerts. Culture. Better?”

Shane just shook his head. “Not really. Where’s the fun, Eve?”

“That is fun!”

Oliver sighed and let his head fall against the window glass with a soft thump. “One of you is going to be left to walk to Dallas if you don’t shut up.”

“Wow. Who got up on the wrong side of the coffin this evening?” Eve shot back. “Well? You’re the expert. Where would you go?”

Oliver straightened up and looked back at her. “Excuse me?”

“I’m asking your opinion. You probably know where the best places are to go.”

“I—” Oliver seemed at a loss for words, which was pretty funny; Claire couldn’t imagine the last time that