Morganville (Justin Bieber)

Chapter 44

It stood to reason that Eve would know places to go that I didn't, but for some reason it surprised me where those places were. A laundromat, for instance. A photoprocessing place. In each case, she made me wait in the car so she could talk to somebody, a human somebody, I was almost sure. But nothing came of it, each time.

Eve got back in her big, dusty Cadillac looking grim and already wilting in the morning's heat.

"Farther Jonathan's on a trip" she said. "I was hoping we could get him to talk to the mayor. They go back"

"Father Jonathan? There's a priest in town?"

Eve nodded. "The vampires don't care about whether or not he celebrates mass, as long as he doesn't display any crosses. Communion is kind of interesting; vamps keep the wafers and wine under guard. Oh, and forget about the holy water. If they ever caught him making the sign of the cross over anything liquid, they'd make sure his next congregation has an address behind the Pearly Gates"

I blinked, trying to get my head around it. "But...he's on a trip? Out of town? What?"

"Gone to Vatican. Special dispensation"

"The Vatican knows about Morganville?"

"No, idiot. When he leaves town, he's like anybody else, no memory of the vamps. So I don't think we can count on the Vatican strike team storming in to save Justin, if that's what you were thinking"

It wasn't, but it was kind of comforting to imagine paramilitary priest in bullet-proof armour, with crosses on the vests. "So what now, then? If you can't get to Farther Jonathan?"

Eve started the car. We were parked in the tiny photo store parking lot, next to a big industrial size dumpster. We were the only car in the parking lot, although a white van was just turning into the lot and squeaking to a stop, in the space next to us. It was still pretty early and what passed for traffic in Morganville was slowly filtering around the streets. The photoprocessing place claim to be open 24 hours; no, that was a job I figured I didn't want. Did vampires take pictures? What kind? Maybe the trick was not to look at what came spitting out of the machine, just shuffle the prints into an envelope and ham over but then, that was probably the trick outside of Morganville, too.

I checked the clock again. "Eve! What about your job?"

"I can get another one"

"But-"

"Ana, it wasn't that good of a job. Look at what I had to put up with. Jocks. Jerks. Monica"

He started to back out of the parking lot, then slammed on the brakes when another car pulled in behind us, blocking us in.

"Damn it" she breathed, and fumbled for her cell phone. She pitched it to me. "Call the cops"

"Why?" I twisted to look out the back, but I couldn't see who was driving the other car.

I was looking in the wrong place. The threat wasn't in the car behind us; it was the white van next to the passenger side of the Cadillac, and as I started punching 911, a sliding panel came open, and someone reached out and put their hand on the handle of my door.

It was locked. I wasn't a total idiot. Two seconds later, it didn't matter, because the crowbar hit the window behind me, smashing it into 1 million Little sparkly pieces, and I reflexively jerked forward, hands over my head. I stumbled the phone into the floorboards, and try to frantically find it. Eve was cursing breathlessly.

"Get us out of here!" I yelled.

"I can't! We're blocked in!"

I grabbed the phone triumphantly, finish pushing buttons for 911, and pressed send just as a hand reached in from the back seat and slammed me face first into the dash.