Midnight Bites by Rachel Caine Page B

Brandon. Eurotrash sleek, a chin sharp enough to cut. He looked completely normal just now. A completely normal Peeping Tom,looking in like he wanted to leap through the glass and do terrible, terrible things to her.
    Eve bit back a scream. If she yelled, Brandon would be gone in the next instant like a bad dream, and it might even rouse her dad from his alcoholic slumber. Besides, Brandon couldn’t get in. Not without an invitation, which she damn sure wasn’t going to give.
I’m still underage, you asswipe,
she thought as she yanked the curtains closed to shut him out.
You don’t have any right to try to get me.
Not that age mattered much to Brandon. He’d been creeping on her since she was twelve. It still made her feel sick and anxious, but she didn’t let it get to her. Not much, anyway.
    When she peeked out, he was gone. Probably his idea of a joke.
Ugh.
If she complained about it, he’d say he was patrolling the property; he was, after all, their ink-on-contract family Protector. Nothing she could do about it. Like so much else wrong in her life.
    Dinner was, as she’d predicted, silent. Jason picked at his food, staring sullenly down; his hair was hanging in his face, just like Eve’s, and although their mom chattered on about nothing, and ignored everything really going on, neither of them said a word beyond a grunt or a one-word answer. When they were done, Eve carried the dishes into the kitchen and washed them. Jason dried. They worked in silence, and when she glanced over, she saw Jase was keeping an eye on the couch in the living room, where their dad was passed out with beer cans on the floor around him.
    They were careful not to clatter anything too loudly.
    It was a weird fact of life that after all that adrenaline, all that fear, all that strain, Eve fell asleep within seconds once she was in bed. She rarely had nightmares. Maybe bad dreams weren’t really necessary when you lived one in real life. . . . But she thought she was having one when she woke up to the sounds of sirens and a flickering glow that wasn’t sunrise filtering through the curtains. She got up,pulled on her black fuzzy bathrobe, and pulled the fabric back to stare outside.
    There was a house on fire about six blocks away, blazing, shooting flames into the sky. The clock read two in the morning, and she had a sick feeling that whoever had been in that place might not have gotten away safe. The fire department was already there; she could see the fire trucks and the flashing lights.
    There was a knock on her bedroom door. Eve answered it, and found her mother standing there in her own bathrobe. Without asking, Mom pushed past and went to the window.
    â€œYeah, sure, come on in,” Eve said. She closed the door and dead-bolted it again. “I just woke up. Do you know whose house it is?”
    Her mother stared at the fire with dry, empty eyes for a moment, and then said, “It could be Mildred Klein’s house—she lives over on that block. Or the Montez family.”
    Eve knew Clara Montez, and the name hit her hard. Clara was a junior this year. Pretty and quiet and smart. She had an older brother who’d already graduated, and a sister in junior high, and another one still in elementary school.
    Eve grabbed her cell phone from the table and checked contacts; Clara was in her list, and she quickly called. She clutched the phone anxiously while she watched the flames tent higher over the burning bones of the house in the distance.
    â€œIt’s not me,” Clara said instantly. She sounded breathless and excited. “It’s the Collins house! Gotta go!”
    Eve must have made some kind of a sound, because the next thing she knew, her mother was holding her by the shoulders, asking her what was wrong. Eve’s hands were shaking. She looked back at the fire, heart pounding, mouth dry.
Collins.
    It was Shane’s house burning.
    â€œI have to go,”