He was still watching her, trying to figure her out, as she walked out into the weak winter sun. There were still pools of dirty water at the edges of the uneven parking lot, and the ground remained soaked.
When she looked back, the camera shop owner nodded, once.
She put her hands in her pockets and walked home.
Home was chaos, and for a moment, Claire was truly worried that something awful had happened; Eve was stomping around the house slamming things around, and Shane was saying, in a thin and raspy voice, "It's not a big deal, man; calm down."
"I'm not your man and I will not calm down!" Eve yelled, and gave a piercing, full-throated shriek of frustration.
Claire dumped her stuff in the hall and raced into the living room, expecting to see . . . Well, she didn't know what she expected to see, except disaster in some form.
What she saw was a cake sitting on the dining table that was . . . well, a disaster. In cake form.
The two-tiered dessert itself was uneven and leaning, the icing was messy, the red flowers had melted into the white and left unsettling bloodlike stains, and, worst of all, as Claire got closer, she realized that the writing on top said MICHAEL & EVA in a big, lopsided, amateurish outline of a heart with an arrow through it.
Eva. Not Eve.
Eve kicked the sofa with her Doc Martens boots and burst into tears, and really, Claire didn't blame her a bit. Shane was looking helpless as he stood there watching her, not sure what to do.
So he did, of course, the wrong thing, and said, "Look, it's just a cake. I'm sure it's still delicious."
Eve glared at him. Claire walked over and put her arms around her friend, and sent Shane an irritated look.
"What did I do?" he croaked. His throat was turning a spectacular sunset purple now, with hints of blue. "Cake! It's cake! Delicious cake!"
"Honey, it's okay, really," Claire said. "We can - fix it."
"We can't," Eve managed to gasp out between sobs. "I shouldn't have made the trim red - it's all runny. . . ."
It did look a little bit slaughterrific, actually, but Claire put on a brave face. "So we scrape it all off, get some store-bought icing, and put it on," she said. "Can't be any worse, right? And we decorate it ourselves. It'll be fun!"
"It's horrible!" Eve cried, and buried her face in Claire's puffy coat. "It looks like Dracula's wedding cake!"
"Which should be a plus, shouldn't it?" Shane asked. "I mean, thematically?"
"Really not helping, Shane!" Claire said.
"I am helping! I even carried it in!"
"Yeah, good job." Claire sighed and shook her head. "Go upstairs or something. We'll find a way to fix this. Eve - just calm down and relax, okay? Breathe. I'll get the frosting and be back in a little while."
She got Eve to sit on the couch. She'd stopped sobbing, which was good, but she was staring at the cake with a dead-eyed, horrified look. The sooner the icing was scraped and the whole cake redone, the better.
Shane said, "Want me to go with?"
Her first impulse was to say no . . . but he'd survived the morning running around with Eve, and Eve was more consumed with party planning than watching his back. Besides, it was still broad daylight. The safest he'd be, even from Amelie.
He gave her puppy-dog eyes and said, "Please?"
She could never resist the puppy-dog eyes, and he knew it. "All right," she said. "But wear a scarf. Your throat makes you look like a zombie."
"I hear zombies are hot right now," Shane said, straight-faced. "They've got their own TV show and everything. Okay. Scarf."
She supervised, making sure the scarf was looped high enough to cover up the worst of the bruising. "Just tell anyone who asks that you got a wicked new tattoo and you're still healing up," she said. She stopped and brushed her fingertips lightly over the discolored skin. "Does it hurt?"
He bent his head and lightly kissed her forehead. "Only when I laugh."
"I'll try not to be funny."
"Epic fail, beautiful." She tingled all over when he called her beautiful. He didn't do it often, but when he did, he said it in this tone that was . . . just so incredibly intimate. "You know I need to watch your back, right?"
"I'm buying icing, Shane. I'm not going on safari. Besides, you're the one with the target on his back, not me."
"Then you can protect me." He kissed her on the nose, lightly.
The idea of her - small, not-very-physical Claire - protecting big, strong, very physical Shane . . . Well, that was just funny, somehow, and she couldn't help but laugh.
But he kept looking at her, very warm and very serious, and after her giggles faded, he said, "I mean it, Claire. I trust you."
She put her hand on his cheek and, without speaking, led him out the door.
At the grocery store, the first thing Claire noticed was that there was some kind of a crisis . . . not a we're-out-of-milk crisis, but something bigger. Management-style. As she and Shane walked in the door, they were almost knocked down by a very agitated man with that store-manager look about him. He was on his cell phone. His tie was pulled askew, and there were sweat stains under his arms. He was saying, "Yes, I know you need payment for deliveries, and I'm trying to reach our owner - I've been trying for days! . . . No, I don't have another number. Look, I'm sure nothing's wrong. I'm going over there myself to see. If you can just go ahead and make the scheduled delivery . . ." His voice faded out as he kept walking, heading for the office. Claire exchanged a look with Shane, who shrugged, and then they went in search of cake supplies.
Claire could tell that the shelves were badly in need of restocking. . . . Not that there was ever a huge selection in the store, but when the cake mixes were down to one or two boxes, and entirely out in most of the really good flavors . . . well, that didn't bode well. No wonder the manager was freaking out.
Like in most businesses in town, Claire suspected the owner was a vampire.... They liked to keep a tight grip on the purse strings of their investments, too. So why was the manager having so much trouble getting money for his store? Not like vamps went broke, not in Morganville.
"Did he say he couldn't get in touch with the owner?" Shane asked her, very quietly. "Because that's weird."
"Very," she agreed. "You think he might have been part of Bishop's, ah, support group?" Bishop, Amelie's father, had gathered up a nice little cadre of backstabbing traitors to help him on his most recent bid for power; Amelie and Oliver had responded by basically making most of those people disappear. And Bishop had done his share of damage, too.... He'd grabbed some of Amelie's supporters, and they hadn't survived the experience.
Civil war among the vampires: not pretty.
"Possible," Shane said. His voice sounded rougher than before, like he was starting to really hurt. "But that should have been taken care of weeks ago. Amelie doesn't let things go like that."
He was right. This sounded recent, and pretty dire. Amelie certainly wouldn't want one of the town's main grocery stores to crater; she'd fund it first. So this had to be something happening under her radar.
Claire shook her head and checked the frosting. There was enough white available, and she found some red candy flowers, too. The red decorator writing stuff looked doubtful, though Claire grabbed some of that. "Done," she said, and turned around.
Shane was gone.
"Shane?" She clutched the stuff to her chest, suddenly feeling very cold, and turned in a circle. He wasn't at either end of the aisle. In fact, he wasn't anywhere in sight. Claire hurried up toward the registers, hoping to catch sight of him.
Nothing. Her heart sped up, painfully fast. She started walking, fast, pacing past aisle after aisle. There were a dozen or so shoppers, but no sign of her boyfriend.
And then, off to the side, she saw a flash of a blue scarf. She backed up, stared, and saw that Shane was standing close to the office door, head down, listening. He looked up and saw her, and her heartbeat slowly began to ease up. Sweet relief flooded through her. God. She'd thought . . . Well, she'd thought someone had taken him right behind her back. Which was ridiculous, now that she thought about it - he wasn't some defenseless kid; he was a big guy, and he'd make noise, at the very least.
No, of course he'd gone off on his own. Jackass.
She got in line to pay for her stuff, and he came to join her by the time she reached the register. "Jerk," she told him, without the usual lighter edge of humor. "You scared me to death!"