That was like an ice dagger to the heart; she felt numbed and destroyed, all at once. He didn’t answer. She’d called, she’d watched the video, and he wasn’t there, wasn’t answering. She was too tired to think rationally, so the next thing in her mind was that he’d gotten angry, turned his phone off, maybe even blocked her calls. What if he’d gone out? When she’d moved to Morganville, Shane had been dating other girls, though not seriously … maybe he’d already called one of them, gone out to the movies, or …

… Or worse. Maybe he was already forgetting her, laughing at some other girl’s jokes. Someone older and prettier.

Stop it, she told herself angrily, and shut off the phone. Just stop it.

Claire shut off the ringer, tucked the phone under her pillow, and tried very, very hard not to cry.

She’d never felt so abandoned, or so lonely, in her life.

CHAPTER THREE

SHANE

It hadn’t taken me long to pack most of my crap up. Truthfully, I didn’t have that much; I wasn’t a fashion victim like Eve – hell, even Michael had more clothes than I did – or a collector of stuff. A few well-aged tees, some jeans that had seen the worst of acids and bloodstains and buckshot, and not in that fancy-ass designer way. More the ‘I survived that’ way.

I decided to ditch the stereo – it was a third-hand ancient thing anyway, and cheap – and that was the biggest thing I owned, besides weapons.

It was the weapons that were going to be tricky. A shotgun weighs a decent amount. Throw in multiple other deadly sharp things, some stakes, a couple of crossbows, and you’ve got a problem … particularly if you’re planning on having no fixed address for a while. In other words, I had to pick what I could easily carry in the battered camping backpack my dad had once used for the same purpose. Turned out that minus the clothes, my phone, some basic stuff for not smelling gross, the pack weighed about fifty pounds when I finally got it on to test it.

Doable. Soldiers pack that much plus body armour, and I wasn’t exactly humping it through the mountains of Afghanistan.

As I shucked the backpack and leant it against the wall, I sensed someone watching me … and I was right. Michael. ‘Can’t talk you out of this,’ he said. It was a statement, not a question.

‘Nope.’

‘You’re sure this is the right thing to do.’

‘Yep. You and the missus need some alone time. Last thing you need is me hanging around here like the new house ghost, haunting Claire’s room. Besides, man, I don’t do emo.’

‘I never said you had to go.’