Morganville Vampires 02 - Dead Girls Dance by Rachel Caine

Author:Rachel Caine [Caine, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-08-13T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

It stood to reason that Eve would know places to go that Claire didn’t, but for some reason it surprised Claire where those places were. A Laundromat, for instance. And a photo-processing place. In each case, Eve made her wait in the car while she talked to somebody—a human somebody, Claire was almost sure. But nothing came out of it, either time.

Eve got back in her big, dusty Cadillac looking grim and already wilting in the morning’s heat. “Father 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’s kind of interesting; the 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.’”

Claire blinked, trying to get her head around it. “But—he’s on a trip? Out of town? What?’”

“Gone to the 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 Shane, if that’s what you were thinking.’”

It wasn’t, but it was kind of comforting to imagine paramilitary priests in bulletproof armor, with crosses on the vests. “So what now, then? If you can’t get to Father Jonathan?’”

Eve started the car. They were parked in the tiny photo-store parking lot, next to a big industrial-sized Dumpster. They were the only car in the parking lot, although a white van was just turning into the lot and squealing to a stop in the space next to them. It was still pretty early—before nine a.m.—and what passed for traffic in Morganville was slowly filtering around the streets. The photo-processing place claimed to be open twenty-four hours; now, that was a job Claire figured she 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 hand them over…but then, that was probably the trick outside of Morganville, too.

She checked the clock again. “Eve! What about your job?’”

“I can get another one.’”

“But—’”

“Claire, it wasn’t that good of a job. Look at what I had to put up with. Jocks. Jerks. Monica.’”

Eve started to back out of the parking lot, then slammed on the brakes when another car pulled in behind her, blocking her in. “Dammit,’” she breathed, and fumbled for her cell phone. She pitched it to Claire. “Call the cops.’”

“Why?’” Claire twisted to look out the back, but she couldn’t see who was driving the other car.

She was looking in the wrong place. The threat wasn’t the car behind them; it was the white

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