When Darkness Hungers: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 5) by J.K. Beck Page B

as hell when he sees you. A pissed vampire is a very bad thing.”
    “I know.” For the briefest moment she considered staying, but there weren’t that many opportunities for her to track a vampire. And how many people would die if she didn’t go? Tonight, tomorrow, the next night? She had a chance to dust one right now, and she was damn well going to take it.

    CeeCee Jane Gantz dropped her backpack in the sand and rummaged through it as her stomach growled.When she’d left home a week ago, she’d taken a loaf of bread and a jar of Jif peanut butter with her. Smooth, not chunky, because who wants little pieces of peanuts all jammed up into your teeth?
    She’d also taken $175 and one of her stepfather’s credit cards. The cash had gone fast. A bus ticket from Barstow. A jacket from Goodwill once she’d realized how cold sleeping on the beach could be. She’d always thought beaches were supposed to be balmy and sunny, but the water around Los Angeles turned her toes blue, and once the sun set, the air was so cold it made goose pimples rise on her skin.
    Not that she was complaining. Goose pimples were a hell of a lot better than bruises.
    She’d bought socks and tennis shoes, too, along with another pair of jeans. And all of that had cut into her savings. Then there’d been food. Early on, she’d been stupid. She’d bought food from vendors on the Santa Monica Pier, because how could she not? She was
there
. Finally there at the end of the world, without her bastard of a stepfather or her crackhead of a mother. It was paradise, and she couldn’t pass up the corn dogs any more than she could walk past the carousel and not ride on it once. Even if she was the only rider over the age of six.
    The cash had run out yesterday, and she’d sucked it up and used the credit card at an ATM, hoping Burt hadn’t changed the PIN. He hadn’t—but the account was maxed out, so she’d walked away with nothing but disappointment and a gnawing in her stomach that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with food.
    The nerves part started later. Because when you haveno money and nothing to do and the only way to entertain yourself is to sit on the beach and watch the world go by, you have a lot of time to think. And what CeeCee thought about was movies. How in the movies the cops could always find you when you used a credit card.
    Burt didn’t like the cops, and Burt didn’t like her.
    But Burt did like Burt. And he really didn’t like being screwed.
    Which meant she’d probably made a big mistake trying to use that credit card.
    She’d been in Santa Monica on the Third Street Promenade at the time, and as soon as she’d realized what a complete idiot she’d been she’d headed to the beach and started walking south. She’d stopped in Venice, tired and hungry, and not able to see much once the sun had gone down.
    Now she was parked on a towel someone had left on the beach—a little karmic gift—pawing through her few belongings and wishing that the towel person had left a cooler of food and drinks as well.
    She dumped the backpack out, and her in-depth search was rewarded. A restaurant packet of Saltine crackers. Two of them all snug inside a little plastic balloon.
    It was practically a gourmet meal.
    She savored it, nibbling at the corner of the cracker, eating slowly, trying not to think about the fact that tomorrow she’d have to either steal food or figure out a way to earn money. She wasn’t naïve—she knew a sixteen-year-old girl had options. But Burt had taken that for free, and there was no way she was ever giving it up again.
    Just thinking of him made her nervous, and she swiveled around, fearing he’d tracked the credit card. Thathe’d gotten in the truck and driven from Barstow. That he’d found her and was coming at her, unbuckling his belt as he walked. Pulling it from the loops. Twisting it in his hand.
    No.
    She was safe now. Sure, she was hungry, but the trash cans on the pier were