Morganville (Justin Bieber)

Chapter 5

Cute. I didn't know whether to be pissed or flattered. On reflection I was pissed. "I'm not a kid!" I told Justin hotly. "I'm only like just under a year younger than Eve! Not even that!"

"And girls are much more mature" Eve nodded wisely. "So you're about ten years older than Justin, then"

"Seriously!" I insisted. "I'm not a kid!"

"Whatever you say, kid" Justin said blandly. "Cheer up, just means you don't have to put up with me telling you how much sex I didn't get"

"I'm telling Micheal" Eve warned.

"About how much sex I didn't get? Go ahead" Justin smirked at Eve.

"No bacon for you" Eve told him.

"Then no eggs for you. Either of you" Justin laughed.

I was about to join in when the front doorbell rang, a lilting silvery sound. It wasn't a scary sound, but Eve and Justin froze and looked at each other, and that was scary, some how. Justin put his plate down on the granite counter top, licked the bacon grease from his fingers and said. "Get her out of sight"

Eve nodded. She dropped her own plate on the counter, grabbed my wrist, and hustled me into the pantry - a door half hidden in the shadow of the awkwardly placed fridge. It was big, dark, and dusty, shelves crowded with old cans of yams and asparagus and glass jars of ancient jellies. There was a light with a string pill above, but Eve didn't turn it on. She reached behind a row of murky- looking cans of fruit and hit some kind of switch. There was a grating rumble, then a click, and a part of the back wall swung open.

Eve pushed it back, reached in, and grabbed a flashlight that she handed to me. "Inside" Eve said. "I'm going to turn the light on out here, but try to keep the flashlight off if you hear voices. It could show through the cracks"

I nodded a little dazed, and crouched down to crawl through the small opening into a big empty room, stone floored, no windows. A few spiderwebs in the corners, and lots of dust, but otherwise it didn't look too bad.

Until Eve shut the door, and then the darkness slammed down, and I hastily flicked on the flashlight, moved to the nearest corner, and knelt down there, breathing fast and hard.

Just one minute ago, we had been laughing about bacon and eggs, and all of a sudden, what the hell had just happened? And why was there a secret compartment to this house? One with - as fast as I could tell - no other entrances or exits.

I heard distant voices, and hastily thumbed off the flashlight. That was bad. I had never really been afraid of the dark, but dark wasn't really dark most of the time.. there were stars, moonlight, distant streetlights.

This was pitch back, take no prisoners kind of dark, and she I had the ice cold thought that anything could be right next to me, reaching out for me, and I wouldn't see it coming.

I bit down hard on my lip, gripped the flashlight tightly, and slid down the wall until my searching hand found the rough wood of the door I had come in through. A little light was leaning in around it, barely a filmed but enough to ease my pounding chest.

Voices. Justin's and someone else's. A mans voice, deeper than Justin's. "standard inventory" they said.

"Sir there's nobody living here but what's on the roster. Just the three of us" Justin sounded subdued and respectful, which didn't seem like him. Not that I knew him that well, but he was kind of a smart ass.

"Which one are you?" The voice asked.

"Justin Bieber, sir" I heard Justin reply.

"Get your third in here" the voice said.