“Hey!” I said, and pointed the gun at Slick. “Standing right here!”
Jeremy hadn’t moved his gaze away from his—I guess?—jailer, but somehow, in less time than it took for me to register the blur, he was moving toward me. I didn’t have time to get the gun or knife up in my own defense; he was just that fast.
And then, he was past me.
Jeremy came to a sudden stop next to the unconscious bruiser Michael had left lying on the floor, picked him up like a rag doll, and—before even my vampire husband could stop him—had his fangs buried in the man’s neck.
Michael tried. He grabbed Jeremy by the shoulder and yanked hard, trying to separate victim from predator, but it was useless; the kid’s wiry strength wasn’t going to give, and anyway, it was over fast.
When Jeremy dropped the corpse formerly known to me as Mr. Skinhead, it was paper white and drained of every drop of blood.
Mr. Slick didn’t move for a second, clearly stunned, and then as Jeremy licked his lips clean of the thin smear of red that remained, he dashed around the cage door, threw himself inside, and slammed it behind him. Then he cowered in the center of the cage, eyes as big as headlights and just about as shiny. He’d thought he’d broken this lion he’d caged, but he’d just discovered that was completely wrong.
Michael was looking spooked, too, but he spoke gently. “Hey, man, Amelie sent us. She wants you to come with us, back to Morganville.”
“Morganville,” Jeremy repeated, without so much as a flicker of emotion. He’d just killed somebody, and he didn’t seem to have really cared at all, beyond looking a little less pallid. “Never been there.”
“You’ll be safe there. No one will hurt you.” Michael was being unaccountably gentle; maybe he hadn’t seen the flat, shark-worthy shine of the boy’s eyes as he drank up Mr. Skinhead. “Trust me, man. Please. We need to leave here.”
“You forgot something,” Jeremy said, and pointed one long, skinny, dirty finger at Mr. Slick cowering inside the cage. “He just heard where we’re going. Can’t be safe if he knows. Got to get rid of him.”
“No, we don’t,” Michael said. He moved to the bars and crouched down, and when he spoke next, I heard that scary vampire tone in his voice. He didn’t use it often, but when he busted it out, he had real power. “Look at me.”
He waited, and after a long few breaths, Mr. Slick uncovered his face and met Michael’s eyes. I couldn’t see them, but I knew how they would look—glowing, red, terrifying if you weren’t drowning in that pool of crimson and unable to feel anything at all.
Michael had one of the most powerful forget-about-me abilities Amelie had ever seen, apparently, and he proved it now, because he said, in low, measured tones, “Poor Jeremy starved to death in this cage. Say it back to me.”
“Poor Jeremy starved to death in this cage,” the man repeated in a dull, calm voice.
“And you’re feeling very bad about that.”
“I’m feeling very bad about that.” I watched Mr. Slick’s eyes suddenly fill up with wet, hot tears that spilled over and down his cheeks in messy trails. “Oh God . . .”
“You feel so bad that you’re never going to run this kind of show, ever again. Not with anyone who doesn’t sign up and get paid. And there are no such things as vampires. No real ones.”
“No real ones,” he echoed. His voice was shaking now, and so were his shoulders. Wow. Michael had really rocked his world, and not in a good way. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. . . .”
“How many others knew about Jeremy?”
Mr. Slick named them, but it was a small, tight circle of insiders—himself, Mr. Dead Skinhead, and one other woman named Isis, who was asleep in her trailer near the Ferris wheel.
“Do you have a key to this cage?” Michael finally asked. When the man nodded, he said, “Throw it out to me.”
Mr. Slick tossed it, and Michael effortlessly shagged it out of the air. He dropped it on Skinhead’s body and frowned down at Jeremy’s handiwork. “We need to make it look less—vampire,” he said.
I slowly held up the gun and the knife. “Man, I’m going to regret this,” I said, “but I think I’ve got that covered.”
Best to skip what came next, except to say that I made Mr. Skinhead’s body look like he’d been attacked with a knife to the neck, then shot. A decent coroner—like the ones on TV, say—would have figured out the wounds were postmortem, but it was doubtful that this little burg would have anything like a coroner, much less a good one. If the carnies actually reported the death, which I thought was doubtful.
It’d pass. I felt faint, after, and Michael grabbed me when I staggered while trying to get up. He put his arms around me and held me tight for a few long seconds, and then whispered, “Eve—”
“I’m okay,” I said, and swallowed the nausea that threatened to bubble up. “Just another frakking day in Morganville.”
“You watch way too much TV.”