Ghost Town

weight of the books and all the assorted junk she kept in it made her feel steadier. Shane turned toward the closed kitchen door. “Yo, undead-for-brains, we’re heading to the Danvers house!”

“I heard that,” Michael yelled back.

“Whole point, bro.” Shane offered Claire his arm, and she took it, and they set out for her parents’ house.

It was a nice day to walk, especially with Shane next to her. Well, truthfully, if it had been forty below and a blizzard, it still would have seemed like a nice day with Shane, but it really was beautiful—sunny, not too hot, a cloud-free, faded-denim sky that seemed to stretch a million miles from horizon to horizon. Wind, of course, like there always seemed to be in Morganville, but more of a breeze than a gust.

It still tasted of sand, though.

“Want a coffee?” she asked. Shane shook his head and kicked a rusted can out of their way.

“If I see Oliver, I’m going to punch him right in the face,” he said. “So no. I’ll skip the coffee.”

“Right, no caffeine for you at all.” There wasn’t much else to do in Morganville besides the coffee shop, anyway. Movies weren’t playing yet, and they were too young for the bars, which also weren’t open yet. She was hoping to delay the inevitable bringing-Shane-to-her-parents tension, but really, there was no getting around it.

She was still working on what she was going to say to her dad when Shane said, “Huh. That’s weird.”

There was something in his voice that made her look up. She saw nothing out of place for a second, but then she saw someone sitting on the curb a block up, head down, shoulders shaking.

Crying.

“Should we . . . ?” she asked. Shane shrugged.

“Probably couldn’t hurt. Maybe he needs help.”

It was a he, after all, a college kid wearing a black knit shirt and scuffed-up jeans. Claire had seen him somewhere before. . . .

It was the boy from the Science Building. The one who’d given her the rave flyer. Alex? She thought his name was Alex.

As they got closer, she felt that stab of anxiety again. Alex was not the kind of guy to be crying in public like some four-year-old, and besides that, he looked really, really upset.

“Alex?” Claire let go of Shane’s hand and motioned for him to stay put while she crossed the last few feet to the boy. “Hey, Alex? Are you okay?”

He gulped and swiped at his eyes, blinking furiously. Then he glared at her. “Leave me alone.” There was so much ferocity in his voice that Claire instinctively held up both hands and took a step back.

“Okay, sure, I’m sorry. I’m Claire, remember? From the Science Building? I just wanted to help.”

He looked confused then, as well as angry. He scrambled to his feet and looked around, then lunged for Claire and grabbed her arm. His eyes were wild. “Who are you?” he said. “Where am I?”

“Hey, man, let go!” Shane stepped in and batted Alex’s hand away. “Chill. She was trying to help, okay?”

That seemed to make him angrier. Alex shouted right in their faces, “Where am I? How did you get me here?”

Shane looked at Claire and mimed drinking, then shook his head. “Must have been one hell of a party,” he whispered. “Who is this guy?”

“Just somebody from school.”

“Hey!” Alex was shouting again, getting red in the face. “You tell me how I got here or I’m calling the cops!”

“Um . . .” Claire pointed behind him. One block away were the gates of Texas Prairie University. “You’re not exactly lost. I don’t know how you got here, but all you have to do is turn around and go back to the dorm—”

Alex looked over his shoulder, then snapped his head back around to focus on her. “I don’t know what kind of sick joke you think you’re playing, but you’d better tell me what’s going on right now.”

“Hey, enough. Back off,” Shane said, and pulled Claire out of easy reach. “Go sober up, man. And find some kind of rehab, because, damn.”

“I’m not drunk!”

Shane steered Claire away, then across the street to the other sidewalk. Alex just stood there, shouting at them like a crazy man. Shane shook his head. “Man. Frat guys. They really can screw up their lives.”

“I don’t think he was drunk,” Claire said doubtfully. “He didn’t really look drunk.”

“Yeah, because you’d be the expert on that.” Shane sent her an ironic look, and she remembered, with a flash of shame, that he was the expert; his dad had been a drunk, and so had his mom, toward the end. Shane wasn’t exactly a saint, either. “Okay, maybe he wasn’t drinking, but he was definitely wrecked. What are the fratties taking these days? Maybe it was meth.”

Well, Claire really didn’t know anything much about drugs. It wasn’t that she was a prude; she just had a fear of anything that would screw up the way she thought. “This is your brain on drugs” and all that. “He probably needs help,” she decided, and pulled out her phone to dial Chief Moses. She told Hannah about the boy, feeling more than a little like maybe she ought to have minded her own business, but still. That had not been the Alex she’d met at school.

As she put the phone away, Claire remembered hearing that voice—Michael’s voice—through the bathroom door this morning. Mom?

She shivered as a cool breeze skittered by.

But really, it was a beautiful day, and she didn’t know why she was feeling so weird.

Visiting her folks was every bit as awkward as Claire had imagined. First, her mom opened the door, got a look of delight on her face as she saw Claire, and then immediately dimmed it down to a strained welcome when she spotted Shane standing behind her. “Claire, honey, so glad you’re here! And Shane, of course.” Somehow, that last part sounded like a total lie. “Come in; I was just cleaning up the kitchen. I’m grilling chicken for lunch; can you stay?”

That was Mom all over, offering food in the second breath. It made Claire feel at home. She traded a quick look with Shane, and then said, “Well, actually, we’ve already got plans, Mom, but thanks.”

“Oh. Of course.” Her mother was looking better these days—not as thin and haunted as she had been when they’d first come to Morganville. In fact, she looked like she’d gained a little weight, which was good, and she was dressing a bit less like a character in one of those black-and-white movies where women wore pearls to vacuum— more normal. Claire actually kind of liked her shirt. For Mom clothes.

“How’s Dad?” Claire asked, as they followed her down the hall and turned right into the kitchen. It was the exact same layout as the Glass House, since they were both Founder Houses, but the Danvers house had an open entrance to the kitchen, and her mother had painted the room in sunny yellows that cheered it up a lot. Ugh, she still liked the ducks, though. Lots of ceramic ducks. Well, at least it wasn’t the cheesy ceramic roosters; that was an awful memory. Claire and Shane took seats at the small kitchen table—a lot nicer than the battered one they had back at the Glass House—and Mom fussed around with cups and saucers (Shane held up a saucer with his eyebrows raised, like he’d never seen one) and got them coffee.

“Mom? How’s Dad?”

Her mom poured coffee without meeting her eyes. “He’s doing all right, honey. I wish you’d come see us more often.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s been . . . kind of busy these last few days.”

Her mom straightened up, frowning. “Is anything wrong?”

“No.” Claire slurped coffee, which was too hot, and her mom never made it strong enough. It tasted like coffee-flavored milk. “Not now. There was some trouble in town; that was all.”

“Claire killed a vampire,” Shane said. “She had to, but it could have gone bad for her with Amelie. As it was, she had to do a job for the vamps that almost killed her.”

She could not believe that he’d just blurted that out. Shane raised his eyebrows at her again in a silent, What? Like he couldn’t believe she wasn’t going to say all of that herself.

Her mother just stood there, mouth open, holding the steaming pot of coffee.