And the story continues

Looking back on it later, Claire thought she should have known trouble was coming, but really, in Morganville, anything could be trouble. Your college professor doesn’t show for class? Probably got fanged by vampires. Takeout forgets to put onions on your hamburger? The regular onion delivery guy disappeared – again, probably due to vampires. And so on.

For a college town, Morganville had a remarkable lot of vampires.But this problem wasn’t a disappearance at all. It was an appearance ... something new, something different, and something cool, at least in her boyfriend Shane’s opinion, because as Claire was sorting the mail for their weird little fraternity of four into the “junk” and “keep” piles, Shane grabbed the flyer she’d put in “junk” and read it with the most elated expression she’d ever seen on his face. Scary. Shane didn’t get excited about much; he was guarded about his feelings, mostly, except with her.Now he looked as delighted as a little kid at Christmas.

“Mike!” he bellowed, and Claire winced and put her hands over her ears. When Shane yelled, he really belted it out. “Yo, Dead Man, get down here!”

Michael, their third housemate here at the Glass House, must have assumed that there was an emergency underway ... not an unreasonable assumption, because hey, Morganville. So he arrived at a run, slamming the door back, looking paler than usual, and more dangerous than normal, too. When he was acting like a regular guy, he seemed quiet and sweet, maybe a little too practical sometimes, but Vampire Michael was a whole different, spicy deal.Yeah, she was living in a house with a vampire. And strangely, that was not the weirdest part of her life.

Michael blinked the tinges of red away from his blue eyes, ran both hands through his wavy blond hair, and frowned at Shane. “What the hell is your problem?” He didn’t wait to hear, though; he walked over to the counter and got down one of their mismatched, battered coffee mugs. This one was black with purple Gothic lettering that spelled out POISON. It was their fourth housemate Eve’s cup, but she still hadn’t made an appearance this morning. Claire took the paper from Shane’s hand and smoothed it out on the table. She’d only glanced at it when sorting mail, she’d thought it was some kind of gym. Which it was, in a way, but it wasn’t teaching spin and yoga and all that stuff. 

This one was a gym and martial arts studio, and it was teaching self defense. Or at least that was what Claire took from the graphic of some guy in a white jacket and pants kicking the crap out of the air, and the words DEFEND YOURSELF in big, bold letters at the bottom.

Michael leaned over her shoulder, slurping coffee. “Huh,” he said. “Weird.”