And a door opened on the other side of the wall. It was built into the paneling, and she’d never have even known it was there. She gasped, and Shane beamed like he’d invented the wheel. “Cool, huh? This damn house is full of crap like that. Trust me, in Morganville it pays to be up on the hiding places.” He pushed open the door, revealed another set of stairs, and padded up them. She expected them to be dusty, but they weren’t; the wood was clean and polished. Shane’s feet left prints of the ball of his foot and his toes.

It was a narrow pitch of just eight steps, half a story, really, and there was another door at the top. Shane opened it and flipped on a switch just inside. “First time I saw this, and the room back of the pantry, I figured, yep. Vampire house. What do you think?”

If she believed in vampires, he might have been right. It was a small room, no windows, and it was…old. It wasn’t just the stuff in it, which was antique and dark; it had this sense of…something ancient, something not quite right. And it was cold. Cold, in the middle of a Texas heat wave.

She shivered. “Does everybody know about this room?”

“Oh yeah. Eve says it’s haunted. Can’t really blame her. It creeps me the hell out, too. Cool, though. We’d have stuck you in here when the cops came, only they’d have seen you through the windows coming out of the kitchen. They’re nosy bastards.” Shane wandered across the thick Persian carpet to flop on the dark red Victorian couch. Dust rose in a cloud, and he waved it off, coughing. “So what do you think? Think Michael sleeps off his evil-undead days in here, or what?”

She blinked. “What?”

“Oh, come on. You think he’s one of them, right? ’Cause he doesn’t show up during the day?”

“I—I don’t think anything!”

Shane nodded, eyes downcast. “Right. You weren’t sent here.”

“Sent—sent here by who?”

“I got to thinking…. The cops were looking for you, but maybe they were looking for you to make us want to keep you here, instead of pitch you out. So which is it? Are you working for them?”

“Them?” she echoed thinly. “Them, who?” Shane suddenly looked at her, and she shivered again. He wasn’t like Monica, not at all, but he wasn’t playing around, either. “Shane, I don’t know what you mean. I came to Morganville to go to school, and got beaten up, and I came here because I was scared. If you don’t believe me—well, then I guess I’ll go. Hope you liked the tacos.”

She went to the door, and stopped, confused.

There wasn’t a doorknob.