Claire swallowed and let the vampire pull her to a secluded table near the window. He sat far from the hard white line of sunshine that had crept in across the wooden floor. The canopy outside screened most of it, but there was a tiny little area of risk left, she supposed.

Sam kept hold of her hand. She sat down, tried to make her voice strong and steady, and said, “Would you mind letting go now? Since I’m sitting?’”

“What? Oh. Sure.’” He released her, and gave her a smile that even her biased, suspicious (verging on paranoid) mind interpreted as…sweet. “Sorry. You’re just so warm. It feels good.’”

He sounded wistful. She couldn’t afford to feel sorry for him, no way in hell. Couldn’t. “How do you know my name?’” she asked.

His blue eyes narrowed when he smiled. “You’re kidding. Everybody knows your name. You, Shane, Eve, Michael. The Founder put out a Directive. First time in, oh, I guess about thirty years, maybe forty. Pretty dramatic stuff. We’re all on our best behavior around you, don’t worry.’” His gaze flicked around, touched on Oliver, and came back to her. “Well, except for people who don’t really have a best behavior.’”

“People,’” Claire said, and crossed her arms. She hoped it made her look tough and strong, but she really did it because she was feeling cold. “You’re not people.’”

Sam looked a bit hurt. “Harsh, Claire. Of course we’re people. We’re just…different.’”

“No, you kill people. You’re—parasites!’” And she had no idea why she was getting into a debate about it with a total stranger. A vampire, at that. At least he hadn’t done that thing to her like Brandon had done, that mesmerizing thing. Oh, and she wasn’t supposed to be looking him in the eye. Crap. She’d forgotten. Sam seemed kind of, well, normal. And he did have lovely eyes.

Sam was thinking over what she’d said, as if it was a serious argument. “Food chain,’” he offered.

“What?’”

“Well, humans are parasites and mass murderers, from the point of view of vegetables.’”

That…almost made some kind of weird sense. Almost. “I’m not a carrot. What do you want from me? Besides the obvious, I mean.’” She mimed fangs in the neck.

He looked a little ashamed. “I need to ask you a favor. Can you give something to Eve for me?’”

She couldn’t imagine anything Eve would want less than a gift from a vampire. “No,’” she said. “Is that it? Can I go?’”

“Wait! It’s nothing bad, I swear. It’s just that I always thought she was a lot of fun. I’m going to miss her coming in here. She always brightened up the place.’” He reached in his pocket and took out a small black box, which he handed over. Claire frowned and fidgeted with it for a second, then snapped the cover open. Not that it was any of her business, but…

It was a necklace. A pretty one, silver, with a shiny coffin-shaped locket. Claire raised her eyes to Sam’s, reminded herself again not to do that, and focused somewhere in the middle of his chest. (He had a nice chest. Kind of built, actually.) “What’s in it?’”

“Open it,’” he said, and shrugged. “I’m not trying to hide anything. I told you, it’s nothing dangerous.’”

She snapped the lid of the coffin open. Inside, there was a tiny silver statue of a girl with her arms crossed over her chest. Creepy, but kind of cool, too. Claire had to admit, Eve would probably be delighted.

“Look, I’m not stalking her,’” Sam said. “We’re just…friends. She’s not the biggest fan of the not quite breathing, thanks to that asshole Brandon—I get that. I’m not trying to be her boyfriend. I just thought she might like it.’”

Sam was not fitting into Claire’s recently built pigeonholes, so new they still smelled of mental sawdust. VAMPIRES—BAD, one said. The one next to it said VAMPIRES—DOWNRIGHT EVIL. Those were pretty much the only two vampire slots available.

She didn’t know where to put him. Sam just looked like a guy with sad eyes and a sweet smile, who could use some sun. A normal guy, one she’d probably get her heart rate up over talking to in class.

But that was probably how he got his victims, she reminded herself. She snapped the cover shut on the locket, closed the case, and slid it back across the table to him. “Sorry,’” she said. “I’m not taking anything. If you want her to have it, give it to her yourself. Not that I think she’ll ever come in here again.’”

Sam looked taken aback, but he took the case and put it in the pocket of his leather jacket. “Okay,’” he said. “Thanks for listening. Can I ask you something else? Not a favor, just information.’”

She wasn’t sure, but she nodded.

“It’s about Amelie.’” Sam had lowered his voice, and his eyes were suddenly fierce and intense. Not so normal-guy. This was what he’d really wanted, not just the gift to Eve. This was personal. “You talked to her, I heard. How is she? How did she seem?’”

“Why?’”

He didn’t break the stare. “She doesn’t talk to me anymore. None of them do. I don’t care about the others, but…I worry about her.’”

Claire couldn’t believe what she was hearing. A vampire wanted her to talk about his vampire queen? Weirdy McWeird. “Um…she seems…fine…. She doesn’t talk to you anymore? Why not?’”

“I don’t know,’” he said, and sat back. “She hasn’t spoken to me for fifty years, give or take a few months. And no matter how many times I ask, I can’t see her. They won’t accept messages.’” Something dark and wounded flickered in those innocent-looking eyes. “She made me, and she abandoned me. Nobody’s seen her in public in a long time. Now suddenly she’s talking to you. Why?’”

Fifty years. She was talking to an at-least-seventy-year-old man, with skin finer than hers. With a gorgeous, unlined face, and eyes that had seen…well…more than she ever would, most likely. Fifty years? “How old are you?’” she blurted, because it was seriously freaking her out.

“Seventy-two. I’m the youngest,’” he said.

“In town?’”

“In the world.’” He fiddled with the sugar container on the table. “Vampires are dying out, you know. That’s why we’re here, in Morganville. We were being slaughtered out there, in the world. But even here, Amelie’s only made two new vampires in the last hundred and fifty years.’” He looked up slowly and met her eyes, and this time, she felt an echo of that thing Brandon did, that compulsion that held her in place. “I know how it looks to you, because I’ve been there. I was born in Morganville; I grew up Protected. I know it sucks to be you around here. You’re slaves. Just because you don’t wear chains and get branded doesn’t make you any less slaves.’”

She flashed on an image of Shane’s mother, dead in the bathtub. “And if we run, you kill us,’” she whispered. She would have expected him to flinch, or have some kind of reaction to that, but Sam’s expression didn’t change at all.

“Sometimes,’” he said. “But Claire, it isn’t like we want to. We’re trying to survive, that’s all. You understand?’”

Claire could almost see him standing there, looking down at Shane’s mom as she bled to death. He’d have that same gentle, sad look in his eyes. Molly Collins would have been just a pet he had to put down, that was all, and it wouldn’t matter to him enough to make him lose a night’s sleep. If vampires slept. Which she was starting to doubt.

She stood up so fast, her chair hit the wall with a clatter. Sam leaned back, surprised, as she grabbed up her backpack. “Oh, I understand,’” Claire said through gritted teeth. “I can’t trust any of you. You want to know how Amelie is? Go ask. There’s probably a good reason why she won’t talk to you!’”

“Claire!’”

She stiff-armed open the door and escaped into the day. She looked back to see Sam standing there at the edge of the strip of sunlight inside Common Grounds, staring after her with an expression on his face like he’d lost his best—his only—friend.

Dammit, she was not any vampire’s friend. She couldn’t be. And she wasn’t going to be, ever.