Feast of Fools by Rachel Caine Page A

to her, barely keeping pace as she walked. A red convertible, harsh and shiny as fresh blood in the sun. In it, three girls with identically false smiles.
    The driver was Monica Morrell, the daughter of the town’s mayor. Claire’s worst human enemy from day one of her tenure in Morganville. Monica had mostly recovered from her recent brush with death by drugs, or at least she looked that way—glossy as the car, and just as hard. Her blond hair was shiny and casually styled, her makeup perfect, and if she looked just a shade more pale than usual, it was hard to tell.
    â€˜â€˜Hey,’’ Claire said, and made sure to drift farther over on the sidewalk, out of easy grabbing range. ‘‘How are you feeling, Monica?’’
    â€˜â€˜Me? Great. Couldn’t be better,’’ Monica said brightly. There was something way darker in her eyes than in her tone. ‘‘You tried to kill me, freak.’’
    Claire stopped dead in her tracks. ‘‘No,’’ she said. ‘‘I didn’t do that.’’
    â€˜â€˜You gave me that drug. It almost killed me.’’
    â€˜â€˜You took it from me!’’ The red crystals, the ones that she’d stolen from Myrnin. The ones that, however briefly, had seemed like a good idea. Not so much once she’d seen their effect on Monica, and her own face in the mirror after taking them. They hadn’t hurt her, but their effect on Monica had been shocking.
    â€˜â€˜Don’t give me that. You nearly killed me,’’ Monica said. ‘‘I’d file charges, but with you being the Founder’s pet and all, that won’t do any good. So we’ll just have to find some other way to make sure you pay. Just wanted to give you a heads-up, bitch—this isn’t done. It isn’t even started. It is on. ’’
    She gave Claire a cold, hard smile, and accelerated away with a screech of rubber on pavement.
    Claire shifted her backpack nervously and looked around. Nobody had paid attention, of course. It didn’t pay, in Morganville, to get into anybody else’s business.
    She was on her own out here. Eve worked on campus, but Claire didn’t want to drag her friends into this. They had enough problems already, and Monica was all her own.
    Like it or not.
    But as she passed the recessed doorway of a boarded-up shop, she sensed someone watching her.
    She tried to dismiss it as imagination, but there really was someone watching her. She couldn’t make him out for a few seconds, and then she did, with another unpleasant shock. Heroin-addict-skinny, pale, stringy hair. Wearing black. Eve’s brother.
    â€˜â€˜Jason,’’ she said, and involuntarily looked around for help. Nobody there, nobody she could turn to. Not even a passing police car—and the police definitely wanted to talk to Jason, after his run-in with Shane.
    It hit her again: He’d stabbed her boyfriend. Tried to kill him. The cops said it was self-defense, but she knew better.
    Jason took his hands out of his coat pockets and held them up. ‘‘Don’t scream,’’ he said. ‘‘Unless you really feel like it. I’m not going to hurt you. Not in broad daylight on a busy street, anyway.’’
    He sounded . . . different. Odder than usual, and that was a pretty high standard of odd.
    â€˜â€˜What do you want?’’ She clutched the strap of her backpack in a white-knuckled fist. In an emergency, it would make a respectable blunt object. She might knock him down with it, or at least trip him. It was only about a block to Common Grounds—Oliver owed her Protection once she was inside the building, even from human enemies.
    â€˜â€˜Stop freaking, genius. I’m not here to hurt you.’’ He put his hands back in his jacket pockets. ‘‘How’s Shane?’’
    â€˜â€˜Why do you