At some point when we were passing around the champagne and cutting the cake and dancing, I remember Eve twirling in my arms, light and damp with sweat, and she looked me in the eye and said, “This is a lie, Shane. It’s all a lie, and you know it deep down. Wake up. You have to wake up.” But then she was gone, dancing away with Michael, and I forgot.

It was so much easier to just … forget. Let go. Drift.

I think it was around this time that I went to see Claire’s family. Her mom and dad had moved out of Morganville, because of his health problems more than anything else, though she’d been happy to have them out of the fray; they sort of remembered Morganville, but not the vampires. I went by myself, with Amelie’s permission, and ended up standing in front of Claire’s parents—her dad looked a whole lot healthier, which was odd—to tell them what was on my mind.

“I want to marry your daughter,” I said. Pretty much just like that … no hello, no buildup, nothing, because I was nervous and it just came out.

And Mr. Danvers smiled and said, “Of course you do.” There was something great about that smile, and also, something … off. It was exactly what I’d hoped to see. And that was … weird.

No, there wasn’t anything weird about getting what I wanted for a change. I deserved to be happy. I needed to be happy.

It’s a lie, Shane. Wake up.

Mrs. Danvers said, “Shane, she couldn’t have a better young man.” And her husband nodded. I looked at them for a few seconds in silence. I was sitting in their living room, which looked a lot like the living room they’d had back in Morganville—but then, they would have kept the same furniture, wouldn’t they? I even recognized all the pictures on the walls. They’d put them back in the same spots.

The last time I’d sat down with them like this, it hadn’t gone nearly so well. Oh, no. Mr. Danvers had been angry, and I hadn’t blamed him, because I’d never intended all this to go so fast with Claire, but I’d said I loved her and I meant it. I still did.

“You’re not angry?” I finally asked. Mr. Danvers chuckled. He sounded just like one of those fathers on an old TV show, I forget which one.

“Of course not,” he said. “Why would we be? You’ve always been there for her, Shane. You’ve always looked after her. And we know she loves you.”

I found myself saying, “What about the stuff you said last time? That she had to wait until after college? About MIT and a career and everything?”

“Well,” Mrs. Danvers said, with that warm, sweet smile that my own mother had never given me, although she’d done her best, “that’s Claire’s decision, of course, but we’ll support whatever she feels is more important.”