glass houses by rachel caine

Author:rachel caine
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: vampyre
ISBN: 9781101128503
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2005-06-21T05:00:00+00:00

There were a lot of rules to Morganville Claire hadn’t even thought about. The blood donation, that was one—and she was starting to wonder how Michael was getting away with not paying his taxes. He couldn’t, right? If he couldn’t leave the house?

She sat down cross-legged on the floor with a ledger notebook, turned to a fresh sheet of paper, and made a heading that read Pluses for Vampires. Under that column, she wrote down blood donation, Protection, favors, deals.

“Oh, put down curfew,” Eve said.

“There’s a curfew?”

“Well, yeah, of course. Except for the school. They don’t care if the students roam around all night, because, you know—” Eve mimed fangs in the neck. Claire swallowed and nodded. “But for locals? Oh yeah.”

“How is that a plus for them?”

“They don’t have to worry about who’s safe to bite and who’s not. If you’re out running around, you’re lunch.”

She wrote down curfew. Then she turned the page and wrote down Minuses for Vampires.

“What are they afraid of?” she asked.

“I don’t think we were done with the pluses,” Michael said. He sat down on the floor next to the two girls—well, closer to Eve, Claire noticed. “Probably a lot you didn’t write down.”

“Oh, let the girl feel better about it,” Eve said. “It’s not all gloomy. Obviously, they don’t like daytime—”

Claire wrote it down.

“And garlic…silver…um, holy water—”

“You sure about those?” Michael asked. “I always thought they pretended on a lot of that, just in case.”

“Why would they do that?”

Claire answered without looking up. “Because it makes it easier to hide what really can hurt them. I’m writing it down anyway, but it may not be right.”

“Fire is for real,” Michael said. “I saw a vampire die once, when I was just a kid. One of those revenge deals.”

Eve pulled in a deep breath. “Oh, yeah. I remember hearing about it. Tom Sullivan.”

Claire asked, wide-eyed, “The vampire was named—?”

“Not the vampire,” Michael said. “The guy who killed him. Tommy Sullivan. He was kind of a screwup, drank a lot, which isn’t too unusual around here. He had a kid. She died. He blamed the vampires, so he doused one with gas and set him on fire, sitting right in the middle of the restaurant.”

“You saw that?” Claire asked. “How old were you?”

“You grow up fast in Morganville. The point is, there was a trial the next night. Not much chance for Tommy. He was dead before morning. But…fire works. Just don’t get caught.”

Claire wrote down fire. “What about stakes?”

“You’ve seen Brandon,” Eve said. “You want to try to get close enough to stake him? Yeah, me neither.”

“But do they work?”

“Guess so. You have to fill out a form when you buy wood.”

Claire wrote it down. “Crosses?”

“Definitely.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re evil, soulless, bloodsucking fiends?”

“So was my sixth-grade gym teacher, but he wasn’t afraid of a cross.”

“Funny,” Eve said, in the way that meant not. “Because there are hardly any churches, and so far as I know, crosses are impossible to come by unless you make ’em yourself.

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