Grudge(2012)

Rachel Caine

CONTENT WARNING: This story details events discussed in The Dead Girls’ Dance about the death of Shane’s sister Alyssa. Please be warned that there is intense emotional content in this story, and adult themes.

I wrote this story, again, as a kind of backstory exercise...this one was done to get on paper the story behind the death of Shane’s sister, Alyssa, and his family’s flight from Morganville, which was such a pivotal event in his life. I also wanted to see who Michael, Shane, Eve, and Monica were before, and after, those events, and before they met Claire...because even though Claire is the main character of the Morganville series, relationships between the other characters formed long before she arrived.

So here, in its entirety, is the story of that night told mainly from Shane’s point of view.