Black Dawn

because somehow she managed to throw it to me. I tossed it back. On the second try she hit Monica Morrell, Bitch Queen, which was so not going to happen; no man in his right mind would go there.

At some point when we were passing around the champagne and cutting the cake and dancing, I remember Eve twirling in my arms, light and damp with sweat, and she looked me in the eye and said, “This is a lie, Shane. It’s all a lie, and you know it deep down. Wake up. You have to wake up.” But then she was gone, dancing away with Michael, and I forgot.

It was so much easier to just … forget. Let go. Drift.

I think it was around this time that I went to see Claire’s family. Her mom and dad had moved out of Morganville, because of his health problems more than anything else, though she’d been happy to have them out of the fray; they sort of remembered Morganville, but not the vampires. I went by myself, with Amelie’s permission, and ended up standing in front of Claire’s parents—her dad looked a whole lot healthier, which was odd—to tell them what was on my mind.

“I want to marry your daughter,” I said. Pretty much just like that … no hello, no buildup, nothing, because I was nervous and it just came out.

And Mr. Danvers smiled and said, “Of course you do.” There was something great about that smile, and also, something … off. It was exactly what I’d hoped to see. And that was … weird.

No, there wasn’t anything weird about getting what I wanted for a change. I deserved to be happy. I needed to be happy.

It’s a lie, Shane. Wake up.

Mrs. Danvers said, “Shane, she couldn’t have a better young man.” And her husband nodded. I looked at them for a few seconds in silence. I was sitting in their living room, which looked a lot like the living room they’d had back in Morganville—but then, they would have kept the same furniture, wouldn’t they? I even recognized all the pictures on the walls. They’d put them back in the same spots.

The last time I’d sat down with them like this, it hadn’t gone nearly so well. Oh, no. Mr. Danvers had been angry, and I hadn’t blamed him, because I’d never intended all this to go so fast with Claire, but I’d said I loved her and I meant it. I still did.

“You’re not angry?” I finally asked. Mr. Danvers chuckled. He sounded just like one of those fathers on an old TV show, I forget which one.

“Of course not,” he said. “Why would we be? You’ve always been there for her, Shane. You’ve always looked after her. And we know she loves you.”

I found myself saying, “What about the stuff you said last time? That she had to wait until after college? About MIT and a career and everything?”

“Well,” Mrs. Danvers said, with that warm, sweet smile that my own mother had never given me, although she’d done her best, “that’s Claire’s decision, of course, but we’ll support whatever she feels is more important.”

It’s all so easy, isn’t it? Like a dream. Exactly like a dream. Wake up.

I didn’t want to wake up. I liked it here.

I found myself shaking Mr. Danvers’s hand, and getting a hug from Claire’s mom, and promising to work with her on the wedding, and all of a sudden I was in my car—when had I gotten the car? I couldn’t remember, but it seemed like I’d had it all along, my own black, shiny, murdered-out car—and driving back to Morganville, with Claire’s grandmother’s wedding ring in my pocket. It was a diamond with rubies on both sides.

No, that was your mother’s ring. Your dad pawned it, remember? To get the money to send you back to Morganville. You didn’t want him to do it. You can’t have it now, can you?

Of course I could.

I was getting married.

The only problem was, none of it seemed real as it sped forward. Not the days that passed in a haze, not when Michael and Eve moved out on their own and left me and Claire the Glass House (and why would they do that, it was Michael’s house, why would he leave it to us?).

Newlyweds needed their own place, Eve told me, and winked. But she didn’t seem like Eve anymore. She was almost … a shadow. Threadbare. A memory of someone I’d known once.

But Claire … Claire was still real. Wasn’t she? I couldn’t tell anymore. It was as if I was watching us, not being us. A voyeur in my own body.

Not that that was a bad thing, sometimes, but there were other times when time just seemed to slip sideways, and the walls seemed to sag, and everything flickered … but it was just the machines in Myrnin’s lab, Claire said. They malfunctioned. She had to fix them. She was in charge of them now. Amelie said she was smarter than Myrnin had ever been. The savior of Morganville.

Wake up! Can’t you see how wrong this is?

Claire and I were married in the church by Father Joe, and Eve and Michael were our maid of honor and best man. Eve wore red, and Michael had on the same tux, and we stood under the flower arch, the same flower arch they’d been married beneath, and when I turned around it seemed like it was the same people, sitting in the same places, wearing the same clothes, and everything was pale and patchwork for a moment and I felt panic tearing at me …

And then Claire took my hand. Her fingers felt cool and gentle, but they stung a little bit, too. She kissed me, and it tasted sweet and salty and it stung, too, like lemon on a cut, but this was Claire and I had to love it, because I loved her. The gold ring with its diamond and rubies winked on her hand, and she was my wife.

My mother’s ring. I can’t have my mother’s ring—it’s gone ….

WAKE UP.

Then the vampires left Morganville. One day they were just … gone. Amelie left a note, saying that she was leaving the town to us and that she trusted us to run it properly. Eve inherited the coffee shop where she’d worked so many years. Michael became a rock star overnight and went on tour, and I never thought to wonder how he was managing that, given the blood drinking and all, much less the sunlight. I was busy, you see. Busy being the new mayor of Morganville. The rule of the Morrell family was over, and Richard owned a used-car lot and Monica worked at a nail salon, until one day she got run over by a bus. Very sad.

You’re making it up, Shane, in your head. You have to wake up now, or it’s too late.

And Claire, my sweet and beautiful Claire, she got pregnant six months after we were married. I only remember parts of that, little parts where I listened to the baby’s heartbeat and saw the sonograms and Claire in labor and crying with joy after all the screaming, and then the weight of my daughter in my arms and her eyes, water-blue eyes wide and staring up at me.

It had a threadbare beauty to it, like an old film, and it kept feeling less and less like my life and more like dreams, dreams that sagged around the edges at the corners of my eyes, dreams that melted and puddled and hid in the shadows.

Because it isn’t real.

Then it was like a jump cut in a movie, no transition. I was walking, and it was raining, just a light, cold mist that beaded up in fine drops on my leather jacket. I was shivering, and I didn’t know why I was out in the rain when the Glass House was right behind me, with its warm lights and Claire smiling from the window with our daughter in her arms. Where was I going? What was I doing? I felt a bubbling sense of panic, and then I turned the corner and stopped, because my father, Frank Collins, was standing there in front of me, and he said, “Hello, son. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

It wasn’t the Frank that had abused me and betrayed me and used me. It was the Frank I never knew, who never existed. A kind man with Frank’s face, and a TV dad’s smile, and eyes the relentless color of water on glass. “Dad,” I said. I didn’t feel all that surprised to see him, which was strange, because he was kind of dead. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, Shane. I heard you got married.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you happy?”

I was supposed to be happy. No, I was happy. I was.