Like always, time slipped away; when I looked up next, it was night outside the windows, and the crowd in the coffee shop had switched over from studious to chatty. Eve was busy at the bar, talking and smiling and generally being about as cheerful as a goth chick could be.
She went quiet though, when Brandon slouched in from the back of he room and took his accustomed seat at the table in the darkest corner. Oliver bright him some kind of drink - god I hoped it wasn't blood - and sat down to have some intense and quiet conversation. I tried to look like I wasn't there. Me and Eve exchanged a few glances between customers at the bar.
Putting together the book, I had learnt during the long research marathon, was work for experts, not seventeen year old wannabes. I could put something together, but to my vast disappointment - anybody with an eye for rare books could spot a fake pretty easily, unless it was expertly done. I suspected that my leather working and book binding skills needed work.
All of which brought me back to square one, Justin gets bitten. Not acceptable. A line in one of the dozens of windows I'd had open caught my eye.
Nearly anything can be created for the movies, including reproductions of ancient books, because the reproduction only had to fool one of the senses: vision
I didn't have time - or cash - to get some Hollywood prop house to make a book for me, but it gave me an idea. A really good idea. Or a really bad one, if it didn't work. I didn't need the book. I just needed a picture.
By the time midnight rolled around - and the Common Grounds ushered the last caffeine addict out into the night - I was reasonably sure I could pull it off, and I was too tired to care if I couldn't. I packed up the laptop, and leant my head on my hand, watching while Eve cleaned up cups and glasses, loaded the dishwasher, chatted with Oliver and deliberately ignored the dark shadow sitting in the corner.
Brandon hadn't taken off after his walking snacks. Instead, he kept sitting here, nursing a fresh cup of whatever it was he was drinking, smiling that cruel, weird little smile at Eve, then me, then Eve.
Oliver, drying ceramic cups, had been watching the watcher. "Brandon" be said, and tossed the towel across his shoulder as he began slotting cups into their pull racks. "Closing time"
"You didn't even call the last round, old man". Brandon said, and turned to smile on Oliver. Where it died fast, after a moment of silence. Brandon stood up to stalk away.
"Wait" Oliver said, very quietly. "Cup"
Brandon looked at him in utter disbelief, then picked up the cup - disposable paper - and dumped it in the trash can. First time he'd bused his own table in a few dozen years, I guessed. If ever. I hid a nervous grin, because he didn't seem like the kind of guy who'd appreciate my sense of humour.
"Anything else?" Brandon asked acidly. Not as if he actually cared.
"Actually, yes. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like the ladies to leave first" he said.
Even in the shadows, I saw the gleam of sharp teeth when Brandon silently opened his mouth - flashing his fangs. Showing off. Oliver didn't seem impressed.
"If you wouldn't mind" he repeated. Brandon shrugged and leant against the wall, arms folded. He was wearing a black leather jacket that drank in light, a black knit shirt, dark jeans. Dressed to kill.
"I'll wait" he said. "But they don't need to worry about me, old man. The boy made me deal. I'll stick to it"
"Thats what I'm worried about" Oliver said. "Eve, Ana, get home safe. Go"
Eve slammed the door on the dishwasher and turned it on; she grabbed her purse from behind the counter and ducked out to take my hand and pull me toward the door. She flipped the front sign from OPEN to CLOSED and unlocked the door to let me out. She locked it behind us with a set of keys, then hustled me quickly to the car, which sat in the warm glow of the street light. The street looked deserted; wind whipped trash and dust into clattering ghosts, and the blinking red stoplights danced and swayed along. Eve unlocked he car in record time, and both of us slammed down the locks once we were inside. Eve started up the caddy and motored away from the curb.
Another car turned the corner and whipped past us in a black blur, stopping at the curb where we'd been parked.
"What the hell?" Eve blurted, and slowed down. I turned to look back.
"It's a limo" I said. I didn't even think Morganville had a limo, but then I thought about funeral homes and funerals and got the chills. For all I knew, maybe Morganville had more limos than any city in Texas.
This one wasn't part of a procession, though. It was big and black and gleamed like the finish on a cockroach, and as the caddy inched along, I saw a uniform driver get out and walk around to the back.
"Who is it?" Eve asked. "Can you see?"
The driver handed out a woman. Small - not much taller than me, I guessed. Pale, with hair that glowed white or blond in the street lights. We were too far along for me to get a proper look, but I thought the woman looked sad and cold.
"She's not very tall - white hair? And kind of elegant?" I say.
Eve shrugged. "Nobody I've met, but most of the vamps don't mingle with the little people. Kind of like the Hiltons don't shop at Walmart" she says laughing to herself.
I snorted. As Eve turned the corner, I saw the woman standing in front of the door of the Common Grounds, and saw Oliver opening it for her. No sign of Brandon. I wondered if Oliver had already sent him out, or if he was making the vamp give us a head start.
"How does Oliver do this?" I asked. "I mean, why don't they just...?"
"Kill him? I wish I knew. He's got balls of platinum, for one thing" Eve said. "You saw how he did Brandon back there? Dissing him? Unbelievable. Anybody else would be dead by dawn. Oliver gets away with it"
Which made me even more curious as why. Or at least how. If Oliver could get away with it, maybe other people could too. Then again, maybe other people had already tried and ended up organ donors.
I turned back forward, lost in thought, as Eve sped through the silent streets. A police car prowled a side street, but somehow in Morganville I thought they weren't looking for criminals as potential victims.
At first, I thought I was tired and imagining things - that happened when you didn't sleep; you saw ghosts in mirrors and spooky faces at the window - but then I saw something moving fast through the glow of a street light. Something pale.
"They're following" Eve said grimly.
"Brandon?" I tried to scan the sides of the street, but Eve pressed the gas and went faster.
"Not Brandon. Then again, he doesn't have to get his fangs dirty personally-"
Fifty feet ahead, someone stepped in front of the car. We both screamed, and Eve stamped on the breaks. I pitched forward against the seat belt, which snapped right and grabbed so hard I just knew I was going to pass out from the pain as the acid burn on my back rubbed against the seat. But the pain flashed away, buried by fear, because the car was fishtailing to a stop on the dark street, and there was a vampire standing there, resting his hands on the hood. Grinning with way too many teeth.
"Ana!" Eve yelled. "Don't look at him! Don't look at him!"
Too late. I had, and felt something going soft in my head. The fear went away. So did all of my good sense. I reached for the lock on the door, but Eve reached across and grabbed my arm.
"No!" She screamed, and held on as she slammed the car into reverse and burnt rubber backwards. She didn't get far. Another vampire stepped out, blocking the street. This one was tall, ugly, and old. Same number of gleaming teeth.
"Oh god" I heard Eve say.
I kept fumbling for the lock on the door. Eve muttered something that would have definitely gotten me grounded at home, hit the brakes again, and said, "Ana, honey, this is going to hurt" and then she pushed me forward and slapped on my burn. Hard.
I screeched loud enough to deafen dogs three counties away, nearly fainted, and quit trying to get out of the car. Even the two vampires outside the car - who were all of a sudden right there at the doors - flinched and stepped back.
Eve gunned the engine. I was half fainting from the red hot throbbing agony in my back, heard noise like iron nails on a chalkboard, but then it stopped and we were moving, driving, flying through the night.
"Ana? Ana?" Eve was shaking me by my other shoulder, the one that didn't feel like I'd taken another acid bath. "Oh god, I'm sorry! It was just- he was going to make you open the door, and I couldn't- I'm sorry!"
Panic was still hot wire through my nerves, but I managed to nod a weak, sick smile. I understood. I'd always wondered how anybody could be stupid enough to open up a door to a scary bad thing in the movies. But now I knew. Sometimes, you didn't have a choice.
Eve was gasping for breath and crying furiously between. "I hate this!" She said and slammed her hand into the hard plastic steering wheel over and over. "I hate this town! I hate them!"
I got that. I was starting to really hate them, too.