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was looked abandoned and dusty, at least the stuff that wasn’t in pieces.
    Weirdly, there was the sound of a television coming from upstairs. Local news. The vampires’ official mouthpieces were reporting safe little stories, world events, nothing too controversial. Talk about morphine for the masses.
    The sound clicked off, and Jerome let go of me. I flopped over onto my side, then my face, and inchwormed my way up to my knees while trying not to get a mouthful of dusty carpet. I heard a dry rattle from behind me.
    Jerome was laughing.
    â€œLaugh while you can, monkey boy,” I muttered, and spat dust. Not likely he’d ever seen Buckaroo Banzai , but it was worth a shot.
    Footsteps creaked on the stairs from the second floor. I reoriented myself, because I wanted to be looking at whatever evil bastard was coming to the afternoon matinee of my probably gruesome death. . . .
    Oh. Oh, dammit .
    â€œHello, son,” my dad Frank Collins said. “Sorry about this, but I knew you wouldn’t just come on your own.”

    The ropes came off, once I promised to be a good boy and not rabbit for the car the second I had the chance. My father looked about the same as I’d expected, which meant not good but strong. He’d started out a random pathetic alcoholic; after my sister had died—accident or murder, you take your pick—he’d gone off the deep end. So had my mom. So had I, for that matter.
    Sometime in there, my dad had changed from random pathetic drunk to mean, badass vampire-hunting drunk. The vampire-hating component of that had been building up for years, and it had exploded like an ancient batch of TNT when my mother died—by suicide, maybe. I didn’t believe it, and neither did my dad. The vampires had been behind it, like they were behind every terrible thing that had ever happened in our lives.
    That’s what I used to believe, anyway. And what Dad still did.
    I could smell the whiskey rising up off of him like the bad-meat smell off of Jerome, who was kicked back in a chair in the corner, reading a book. Funny. Jerome hadn’t been much of a reader when he’d been alive.
    I sat obligingly on the ancient, dusty couch, mainly because my feet were too numb to stand, and I was trying to work circulation back into my fingers. Dad and I didn’t hug. Instead, he paced, raising dust motes that glimmered in the few shafts of light that fought their way through smudged windows.

    â€œYou look like crap,” Dad said, pausing to stare at me. I resisted the urge, like Marjo, to give him a one-fingered salute, because he’d only beat the crap out of me for it. Seeing him gave me a black, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to love him. I wanted to hit him. I didn’t know what I wanted, except that I wanted this whole thing to just go away.
    â€œGee, thanks, Dad,” I said, and deliberately slumped back on the couch, giving him all the teen attitude I could. “I missed you too. I see you brought all your friends with you. Oh, wait.”
    The last time my dad had rolled into Morganville, he’d done it in a literal kind of way—on a motorcycle, with a bunch of badass motorcycle biker buddies. No sign of them this time. I wondered when they’d finally told him to shove it, and how hard.
    Dad didn’t answer. He kept staring at me. He was wearing a leather jacket with lots of zippers, faded blue jeans, sturdy boots. Not too different from what I was wearing, minus the jacket, because only a stupid jerk would be in leather in this heat. Looking at you , Dad.
    â€œShane,” he said. “You knew I’d come back for you.”
    â€œYeah, that’s really sweet. The last time I saw you, you were trying to blow my ass up along with a whole building full of vampires, remember? What’s my middle name, Collateral Damage?” He’d have done it too. I knew my dad too well to think anything else. “You