Eve slammed the door on the dishwasher and turned it on; she grabbed her purse from behind the counter and ducked out to take Claire’s hand and pull her toward the door. She flipped the front sign from OPEN to CLOSED and unlocked the door to let Claire out. She locked it back behind them with a set of keys, then hustled Claire quickly to the car, which sat in the warm glow of the streetlight. The street looked deserted; wind whipped trash and dust into clattering ghosts, and the blinking red stoplights danced and swayed along. Eve unlocked the car in record time, and both of them slammed down the locks once they were inside. Eve started up the Caddy and motored away from the curb; only then did she sigh a little in relief.

And then she gasped, because another car turned the corner and whipped past them in a black blur, stopping at the curb where they’d been parked. “What the hell?” Eve blurted, and slowed down. Claire turned to look back.

“It’s a limo,” she said. She didn’t even think Morganville had a limo, but then she thought about funeral homes and funerals, and got chills. For all she knew, maybe Morganville had more limos than any city in Texas….

This one wasn’t part of a procession, though. It was big and black and gleamed like the finish on a cockroach, and as the Caddy inched along, Claire saw a uniformed driver get out and walk around to the back.

“Who is it?” Eve asked. “Can you see?”

The driver handed out a woman. Small—not much taller than Claire herself, she guessed. Pale, with hair that glowed white or blond in the streetlights. They were too far for Claire to get a really good look, but she thought the woman looked…sad. Sad, and cold.

“She’s not very tall—white hair? And kind of elegant?”

Eve shrugged. “Nobody I’ve met, but most of the vamps don’t mingle with the little people. Kind of like the Hiltons don’t shop at Wal-Mart.”

Claire snorted. As Eve turned the corner, she saw the woman standing in front of the door of Common Grounds, and saw Oliver opening it for her. No sign of Brandon. She wondered if Oliver had already sent him out, or if he was making the vamp give them a head start. “How does Oliver do this?” she asked. “I mean, why don’t they just…?”

“Kill him? I wish I knew. He’s got balls of platinum, for one thing,” Eve said. Passing streetlights strobed across her face. “You saw how he did Brandon back there? Dissing him? Unbelievable. Anybody else would be dead by dawn. Oliver…just gets away with it.”