Ghost Town

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Authors: Rachel Caine

BOOK: Ghost Town
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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

TRACK LIST

THE MORGANVILLE VAMPIRES NOVELS

Glass Houses
The Dead Girls’ Dance
Midnight Alley
Feast of Fools
Lord of Misrule
Carpe Corpus
Fade Out
Kiss of Death
Ghost Town

NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published by New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, November 2010

Copyright © Roxanne Longstreet Conrad, 2010 All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Caine, Rachel.
Ghost town/Rachel Caine.

eISBN : 978-1-101-44454-2

[1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. 3. Memory—Fiction.
4. Colleges and universities—Fiction. 5. Texas—Fiction] I. Title.
PZ7.C1198Gho 2010
[Fic]—dc22 2010026742

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

http://us.penguingroup.com

To a great many wonderful people in my life who’ve been so helpful and supportive this time around . . . Heidi, J.T., Wendy, A.J., Pat, Jackie, Bill, Jo, Jean, and Sondra especially.

I hope one day to deserve all your faith and kindness.

And you, Cat. Bless you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Steven Smith
Joe Bonamassa
Charles Armitage
Lucienne Diver
Barbara Tibbles
Anne Sowards (for above and beyond . . .)
My friends and family at NAL, Allison and Busby, and all of my other wonderful publishers worldwide!

INTRODUCTION

W
ELCOME TO MORGANVILLE. YOU’LL NEVER WANT TO LEAVE.

So, you’re new to Morganville. Welcome, new resident! There are only a few important rules you need to know to feel comfortable in our quiet little town:

• Obey the speed limits.
• Don’t litter.
• Whatever you do, don’t get on the bad side of the vampires.

Yeah, we said vampires. Deal with it.

As a human newcomer, you’ll need to find yourself a vampire Protector—someone willing to sign a contract to keep you and yours from harm (especially from the other vampires). In return, you’ll pay taxes . . . just like in any other town. Of course, in most other towns, those taxes don’t get collected by the Bloodmobile.

Oh, and if you decide
not
to get a Protector, you can do that, too . . . but you’d better learn how to run fast, stay out of the shadows, and build a network of friends who can help you. Try contacting the residents of the Glass House—Michael, Eve, Shane, and Claire. They know their way around, even if they always end up in the middle of the trouble somehow.

Welcome to Morganville. You’ll never want to leave.

And even if you do . . . well, you can’t.

Sorry about that.

ONE


O
h,
this
doesn’t sound like a good idea,” Claire said, looking down at the paper that had been shoved into her hand by a passing student. She paused in the shade of the Science Building porch to read it. Only idiots stood around in full sun at Texas Prairie University in the middle of the afternoon—well, idiots and football players—so Claire angled herself into a corner where she wouldn’t get buffeted by the streams of people pouring out after the end of class. There were a few hardy salmon trying to swim upstream, but she didn’t think they’d make it.

People all around her were carrying the same goldenrod sheet of paper she had—stuffed into pockets, crammed into books, held in hands.

She was one of the last ones to get pamphleted, she guessed. She was just a little surprised anybody had bothered at all, given the fact that she, Claire Danvers, was small for her age, looked younger than her mid-seventeen-going-hard-on-eighteen years, and tended to blend into the crowd at the best of times. This even though her ultra-fashion-conscious housemate Eve—with all the best possible intentions—had made her sit down in the bathroom and get her brown hair all highlighted so it glowed red in the sun. Still, she just wasn’t . . . noticeable.

She’d learned it the hard way: early admission to college
sucked.

Someone stopped next to her in the relative quiet of the shade. It was a tall, good-looking boy, and he dropped his backpack on the tiled floor with a thump as he looked over the same flyer she held. “Huh,” he said, and glanced over at her. “You going?”

Once she got over the dazzle of his good looks (truthfully, it didn’t take that long; her boyfriend was just as cute), she checked his wrist. He was a Morganville native; he was wearing a bracelet around one wrist made out of copper and leather, with an ornate-looking symbol engraved on the central plate. It meant he was vampire property—property of Ming Cho, who was one of those vampires that Claire had never directly run into. She liked it that way. Really, her circle of vampire acquaintances was way, way too large as it was.

“Hey,” he said again, and rattled the paper in front of her face. “Anybody in there? You going?”

Claire looked down at the paper again. It had a bunch of pictures and symbols on it, no words. A musical note, which meant a rave was on the menu. Some pictures of party favors, which meant that mostly illegal stuff was going to be floating around. The address was coded in the form of a riddle, which she solved easily enough; it was an address on South Rackham, among all those decaying warehouses that used to be thriving businesses. The time was pretty obvious: midnight. That was what the graphic of the witch was for—the witching hour. The date was several days away.

“Not interested,” she said, and handed him her copy. “Not my thing.”

“Too bad. It’s going to be out there.”

“That’s why.”

He laughed. “You a training-wheels partyer?”

“I’m not much of a partyer at all,” Claire said, and couldn’t help but smile; he had a really nice laugh, one that made you want to laugh with it. He wasn’t laughing
at
her, at least. That was different. “Hi, by the way. I’m Claire.”

“Alex,” he said. “You coming from Chem?”

“No, Computational Physics.”

“Oh,” he said, and blinked. “And I have no idea what that is. Right, carry on, Einstein. Nice to meet you.”

He picked up his backpack and moved off before she could even explain about many-body and nonlinear physical systems.
Yeah, that would have really impressed him. Instead of walking away, he’d have been running.

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