“Claire needs to go to bed,” Michael said, and flopped down. “Scoot over, man. I don’t like you that much.”

“Dick. That’s not what you said last night.”

“Bite me.”

“I want another beer.”

“You’re cut off. It was my birthday present, not yours.”

“Oh, that’s low. You really are a dick, and just for that, I’m totally thrashing you.”

“Promises, promises.” Michael glanced at Claire. “You’re still here. No beer. I’m not corrupting a minor.”

“But you’re a minor,” she pointed out. “At least for beer.”

“Yeah, and by the way? How much does it suck that I’m an adult if I kill somebody, and not if I want a beer?” Shane jumped in. “They’re all dicks.”

“Man, seriously, you are one cheap drunk. Three beers? My junior high girlfriend could hold her liquor better.”

“Your junior high girlfriend—” Shane brought himself up short without finishing that sentence, and flushed bright red. Must have been good, whatever it was. “Claire, get the hell out of here. You’re making me nervous.”

“Dick!” she flung at him, and went up the stairs before he could nail her with the pillow he grabbed. It plunked into the wall behind her and slithered down to the bottom of the stairs. She was laughing, but she stopped when a shadow suddenly blocked access to the hallway at the top.

Eve. And Miranda, looking weirder than ever.

“Miranda’s leaving!” Claire called down. Which wasn’t such a great idea, because Eve looked upset, and Shane was drunk, and letting some vampire-crazy maybe-psychic kid walk home by herself was…bad, at best.

“Miranda’s not leaving,” Eve said, and clunked down the stairs, with Miranda drifting like a black-and-white ghost behind her. “Miranda’s going to do aséance.”

Below, in the living room, she heard Michael say, in outright horror, “Oh, shit.”

12

Eve was so intense about it that not even Shane, three beers down, was able to exactly say no. Michael didn’t say anything, just watched Miranda with eyes that were way too clear for somebody who’d had the same amount to drink as Shane. As Eve cleared stuff off the dining room table and set up a single black candle in the center, Claire wrung her hands nervously, trying to get Michael’s attention. When she did, she mouthed, What do we do?

He shrugged. Nothing, she guessed. Well, nobody but Eve believed in it, anyway. She supposed it couldn’t really hurt.

“Okay,” Eve said, and sat Miranda down in a chair at the end. “Shane, Michael, Claire—sit down.”

“This is bullshit,” Shane said.

“Just—please. Just do it, okay?” Eve looked stressed. Scared. Whatever she and Miranda had been doing upstairs with those tarot cards had really made her nervous. “Just do it for me.”