The Morganville Vampires Collection (The Morganville Vampires #1-4) (44 page)

‘Goodbye, Detective.’

She hung up, put the phone down on the counter, and braced herself with stiffened arms. When she looked up, Eve was watching her with bright, strange eyes.

‘All right,’ Claire said. ‘If I have to be a zombie, I’ll be a zombie.’

Eve smiled. ‘Cutest zombie ever.’

Claire had never worn this much make-up in her life, not even at Halloween. ‘You wear this every day?’ she asked as Eve stepped back to look at her critically, make-up sponge still in hand. ‘It feels weird.’

‘You get used to it. Close your eyes. Powder time.’ Claire obeyed, and felt the feathery touch of the
powder brush as it glided over her face. She fought back an urge to sneeze.

‘OK. Now, eyes,’ Eve said. ‘Hold still.’

It went on like that for a while, with Claire passively sitting and Eve working whatever dark magic she was working. Claire didn’t know. There was no mirror, and she was weirdly reluctant to see what was happening to her, anyway. It felt a little like she was losing herself, although that was stupid, right? How you looked wasn’t you. She’d always believed that, anyway.

Eve finally stepped back, studied her, and nodded. ‘Clothes,’ she said. Eve herself had put on a black corset thing, a tattered black skirt, and a necklace of skulls with matching earrings. Black lipstick. ‘Here you go.’

Claire took off her blue jeans and T-shirt with great reluctance, then sat down to put on the black hose. They had white death’s-head symbols in a line, and she couldn’t figure out if they were supposed to go front or back. ‘Where do you find this stuff?’ she asked.

‘Internet. Skulls go in the back.’

After the adventure of the hose, the black leather skirt – knee-length, jingling with zippers and chains – seemed almost easy. Claire’s legs felt cold and exposed. She hadn’t been in a skirt in…when? Not
since she was twelve, probably. She’d never liked them.

The top was a black net thing, stretchy and tight, see-through with a black skull and crossbones printed on it. ‘No way,’ she said. ‘It’s transparent!’

‘You wear it over a camisole, genius,’ Eve said, and tossed a black silky thing to her. Claire slipped it over her head, then fought her way into the clingy embrace of the skull shirt. ‘Watch the make-up!’ Eve warned. ‘OK, you’re good. Excellent. Ready to take a look?’

She wasn’t, but Eve didn’t seem to notice. She steered her into the bathroom, turned on the light, and put her arm around Claire. ‘Ta da!’ Eve said.

Oh my God
, Claire thought.
I can’t believe I’m
doing this
.

She looked like Eve’s skinny little sister. A dead-on junior freak in training.

Well, at least she’d blend in, and if anybody was looking for her, they’d never, ever recognise her. She wouldn’t recognise herself. And somehow she just knew there’d be pictures on the Internet later.

Claire sighed. ‘Let’s go.’

Eve drove the black Cadillac onto campus and parked in the faculty lot – a blatant violation, but then, Eve didn’t give a crap about campus tickets, either. It
was the closest parking to the frat house. So close, in fact, that Claire could see the lights blazing from every window, and hear the low thudding thump of the bass rattling through the car.

‘Wow,’ Eve said. ‘They’ve gone all out this year. Good old EEK.’

There was a graveyard around the house – tilting tombstones, big creepy-looking mausoleums, some decaying statues. There were also zombies – or, Claire guessed, party guests – lurching around and doing their best
Night of the Living Dead
parody for their friends’ cameras.

The dull roar of the party was audible even through the car’s closed windows.

‘Stay close,’ Eve said. ‘Let’s find Sam, yeah? In and out.’

‘In and out.’ Claire nodded.

They got out and ran the short distance to the graveyard.

At close range, the tombstones were either foam rubber or Styrofoam, and the mausoleum was a dressed-up storage building, but it looked great. Zombie hands were reaching up out of the dirt. Nice touch, Claire thought. She came close to one, and it turned and groped her ankle. Claire screamed and jumped back into Eve, who caught her. ‘Jesus, guys, grow up,’ Eve said, and crouched down to look at the
ground. ‘Where are you?’

‘Right here!’ A trapdoor covered with sod lifted up, and a geeky-looking frat boy wearing a pledge board stuck his head out. ‘Uh, sorry. Just kidding. I have to—’

‘Grope girls and look up their skirts. Yeah. Tough work, pledge.’ Eve stood up and brushed dirt from her knees. ‘Carry on.’

He grinned at her and thumped the trapdoor back down. His hand came up again through a hole in the ground.

‘Wow,’ Claire said. ‘How many of them are there? In the ground?’

‘Just the pledges,’ Eve said. ‘Come on. If Sam’s here, he’ll be talking to people. He loves to talk.’

If Sam could talk, and anyone could hear him, it was more than Claire could imagine. The music was pounding so loud that she felt it like physical waves through her body, and she had to fight back an urge to cover her ears. Eve had put Claire’s hair up in little pigtails, and she missed having it over her ears to block out the roar. ‘I need earplugs!’ she yelled in Eve’s ear. Eve mimed a
What did you say?
‘Never mind!’

The Epsilon Epsilon Kappa fraternity house was trashed. Claire suspected it was usually trashed, but this was extra special – plastic cups everywhere,
drinks soaking into carpet, a chair broken in the corner, and drunks sleeping on the sofa. And this was just the foyer. Two guys stepped into their path and held out their hands in the universal gesture for
Don’t even think about it
; they were big, muscular guys dressed in white face paint with black T-shirts that said U
NDEAD
S
ECURITY
on them. ‘Invitations?’ one of them yelled. Claire exchanged a look with Eve.

‘Ian Jameson invited me!’ she screamed back. ‘Ian Jameson!’

The security guys had a list. They checked it, and nodded. ‘Upstairs!’ one yelled. ‘Last door on the left!’

She didn’t intend to find Ian, but she nodded anyway. She and Eve pressed between the two security guys – who were maybe a
little
too close and stepped over the threshold into the wildest party Claire had ever seen in her entire life.

Not that her experience was wide, but still…she was pretty sure Paris Hilton would have classified this as wild. Despite the fact that alcohol was banned on campus, she was also pretty sure the punch that was being ladled out of gigantic coolers was alcoholic (it also had severed hands, eyeballs, and assorted plastic gross-outs floating in it, and was blood red). A lot of the people at the party already showed the telltale signs of being wasted – stumbling, laughing too loud, making wild gestures. Spilling drinks all
over themselves and others, which really didn’t seem to bother people because, hey, zombies! Not neat freaks. Everybody wore white make-up, or had some kind of rubbery disgusting mask (though that was mostly the guys).

The main room was kind of a dance floor, people pressed up against each other and swaying. Claire stood in the doorway, frozen with sudden dread. It looked like a room full of dead people. Worse – dead, drunk,
horny
people.

‘Come on,’ Eve yelled impatiently, and grabbed her by the hand. She plunged into the crowd without hesitation, craning her head to look around. ‘At least he’s a redhead!’ Because most of those at the party were wearing black wigs, or had dyed their hair like Eve’s. Claire’s had suffered a temporary blacking from some kind of spray-on stuff Eve had assured her would wash right out. Claire tried to shield herself from unnecessary body-to-body contact, but it was pretty much useless; she was closer to a whole bunch of guys than she’d ever been in her life.

A hand tried to go up her skirt as she pressed through the crowd. She yelped and jumped, moving faster. Somebody else swatted her on the ass.

‘Faster!’ she yelled at Eve, who had slowed down to get her bearings. ‘God, I can’t breathe in here!’

‘This way!’

Claire felt filthy – not just from getting groped, which continued to happen, but because she was sopping with other people’s sweat by the time Eve squirmed them through to a small clear space on the other side of the room, next to the stairs. It must have been the Wallflower Corner; there were some shy-looking girls, all dressed in mock-Goth finery, grouped together for comfort and (Claire suspected) protection. She felt an instant sympathy for them. ‘Great party!’ Eve screamed over the pounding beat of the music. ‘Wish I could enjoy it!’

‘Any sign of Sam?’

‘No! Not in here! Let’s try the other rooms!’

After the chaos of the main dance room, the kitchen felt like a study hall, even though it was still filled with people talking too loud and gesturing too much. More punch-filled coolers in here, which was driving Claire crazy; she was thirsty, but no way was she adding being drunk to her problems just now. Too much was at stake.

Her ears were still ringing. At least, in here, there was room to breathe. Claire reflexively searched for her cell phone, remembered it getting crunched under the wheels of the white van, and cursed under her breath. ‘What time is it?’ she asked Eve, who consulted her own black Razr (decorated, of course, with skulls).

‘Ten,’ she said. ‘I know. We have to hurry.’

Somebody grabbed Claire by the arm, and she recoiled in fright, but then she recognised him under the make-up – Ian, the guy who’d told her about the party. The one whose name they’d used to get inside. ‘Claire?’ he asked. ‘Wow. You look great!’

He looked less geeky now, more edgy, with spiked black hair and vampire-style make-up. Claire wondered uneasily how many actual vampires were infiltrating this party tonight. Not a pleasant thought. ‘Oh…hi, Ian!’ Eve was scanning the room, and as Claire glanced at her, Eve shook her head and mimed going to the next room. Claire begged her not to go, at least with her eyes, but the thick make-up probably disguised her desperation.

‘I’m so glad you came!’ Ian said. He hardly had to raise his voice at all to be heard over the roar; he just had that kind of voice, and plus, it was a blessedly dull roar in here. ‘Can I get you some punch?’

‘Um…do you have anything that’s not, you know…?’

‘Right, yeah. How about some water?’

‘Water would be wonderful.’ Where the hell was Eve? She’d ducked behind two tall guys and now Claire couldn’t see her, and she felt alone and very vulnerable just standing here in her fake Goth getup, and God, this make-up itched; how did Eve stand
it? Claire wanted a shower, wanted to scrub her face clean, and wanted to put on plain jeans and a plain T-shirt and never be adventurous again.

Shane. Think about Shane
. She felt an uncomfortable twist of guilt that she’d ever let him slip out of her thoughts, even for a minute.

Ian came back with a bottle of water, the top already off. ‘Here you go,’ he said, and handed it over. He was drinking water, too, not the punch stuff. ‘Crazy, huh?’

‘Crazy,’ she agreed. In a town full of vampires, this was just about the craziest idea she could imagine, putting a bunch of drunk, horny college kids in a place where vampires could blend right in. ‘Did you see where my friend went?’

‘Girls,’ Ian sighed. ‘Always travel in packs. Yeah, she went into the library. Come on.’

Claire gulped water as she followed him, stepping carefully over the legs of several people who’d decided the kitchen floor looked like a good place to sit down for a chat. And oh God, what was that couple in the corner doing? She blushed under the make-up and looked quickly away, focusing on the back of Ian’s neck. He’d missed a spot on the make-up. It looked pink.

The next room had people, too, but not quite as many as the kitchen and it was practically deserted
compared to the dance room.
Library
was a generous word. It had books, but not as many as Claire would have thought, and most of them were old textbooks. Some were being defaced by people wielding black markers and pens, giggling with one another over the results.

No sign of Eve.

‘Huh,’ Ian said. ‘Hang on.’ He went to ask a question of another guy, taller, dressed in a silky-looking black shirt open halfway down to reveal a strong, muscular chest. It took a while. Claire swigged more water, grateful for the moisture because even the library was steaming hot, and almost wiped at her face before she remembered the careful make-up job.

There was no sign of Sam in this room, either. While Ian was talking, Claire went over to one of the girls defacing books. She looked vaguely familiar – maybe somebody from chemistry? Anna something?

‘Hi…Anna?’ It must have been right; the girl looked up. ‘Have you seen Sam? Red hair…maybe wearing a brown leather jacket…?’ Although he had to have taken it off, in this heat. ‘Blue eyes?’

‘Oh, sure. Sam. He’s upstairs somewhere.’ Anna went back to her book sabotage, which seemed to involve drawing devils and pitchforks.
Upstairs
. Claire needed to get upstairs, but most importantly,
she needed to find Eve. Fast.

Ian came back. ‘She went upstairs,’ he said. ‘She’s looking for a guy named Sam, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Claire said. ‘Would you mind if—?’

‘No, sure, I’ll go with you.’ He looked at the drained bottle in Claire’s hand. ‘Want some more?’

She nodded. He grabbed a bottle from an ice-filled cooler and handed it over. She cracked the seal and took another life-giving mouthful as Ian led the way to the stairs.

The heat was making her feel slow and disconnected. She wanted to pour the cold water over her face, but realised just in time – again – about the make-up. Stupid make-up.

The stairs seemed to go on forever, and it was like dancing around land mines; people were sitting on just about every step, some talking, some mumbling to themselves, some passing joints back and forth.
Oh man
. She really needed to get out of here, fast.

The upstairs landing seemed like a paradise of open space, and Claire clung to the handrail and breathed for a few seconds. Ian came back to get her. ‘You OK?’ he asked. She nodded. ‘I don’t know which room he’s in. We’ll just have to look.’