by Rachel Caine
He considered that. “Fair point. I guess I could give up the foam. What do you want it for?”
“I’d . . . rather not tell you. I promise, we’re not looking for a fight,” Claire said. “But people may be coming for us, and we have to fight back, don’t we?”
“Sure,” Rad agreed. “No crime in that. Some of my best fights were self-defense.” He flexed his muscles a little bit, but it wasn’t as if he was trying to show off, more like he was just remembering the good times. Claire supposed Rad would have a top ten list of his best fights. She’d actually be surprised if Shane didn’t, too, and if some of them didn’t match up with Rad’s list, only on opposite sides. “Okay, I’ll hold my grudges against Shane, not you. You’re too pretty, anyway. Let’s get you the car.”
He led her out to the back, which was a dry, cracked dirt lot with occasional struggling weeds poking up through the hard ground; the weeds looked as dry as the dirt they were breaking through. Most had burrs, so Claire was careful to avoid them as she helped Rad untie the canvas and fold it back in sharp, dust-raising snaps until it was a neat square that he tucked under his arm.
He stepped back to admire the car. “Love this damn beast,” he said. “Your boyfriend has damn good taste in wheels.”
It was a muscle car of some kind, all matte black, with murdered-out wheels and some shiny chrome here and there, just for emphasis. It did look powerful, and intimidating. Claire slid behind the wheel into the shiny leather seat and had to immediately rack it forward four notches so her feet could meet the pedals.
Pedals, not just plural, but triple. Gas, brake, and clutch. She’d had lessons in driving a stick shift, but that had been . . . a while ago. And she’d had her dad coaching her patiently through the process. Plus, that had been a nice, tame small car, not Shane’s Detroit-built monster.
She took a deep breath and went through the steps, just as she remembered them. She fumbled the shift from reverse to first, and winced at the grinding of gears; she saw Rad shake his head sadly from where he stood leaning against the wall. That stiffened her resolve, and she accelerated out fast, hitting second gear before she’d reached the end of the lot. She shifted hard enough to scratch rubber.
It felt good. So did seeing the surprised look on Rad’s face. She gave him a quick, jaunty little wave out the window, which was risky but worth it, and she was in third before she hit the end of the block, roaring through a green light and heading for Macom Hardware.
The parking lot was full, which was a very odd sight; she couldn’t remember ever seeing a business with that many customers in town, and yet there they were, whole families out in the daytime, pushing carts into the store, chatting on their cells, living a . . . normal life. She found a spot and shut off the low, growling engine, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to get out of the car just yet. She felt displaced, and sad. If she, Shane, and Eve succeeded in freeing the vampires, these same smiling, happy people would go back to being exactly what they were before—scared and anxious, afraid to leave their homes for anything but necessity, afraid to let their kids run and play. Afraid for a good reason.
How could she really want to bring that back?
But what other choice did she have?
It took her a good minute to get herself together, grab her wallet, and walk into the store. She got a shopping cart from the small remaining selection—of course it was the one with the wobbly left wheel—and headed for the back corner of the store, where she remembered seeing fire extinguishers. It wasn’t easy; Macom’s wasn’t built for heavy customer flow, and it was a little like playing one of those traffic games, where one block had to move for another to pass. Fifteen minutes and several apologies later, Claire finally spotted the red cylinders in the corner, and parked her cart as much out of the way as possible while she loaded them into it. There were six on display, and she took all of them. Next to them was a box of strange-looking oval things, but it had the words FIRE SUPPRESSION GRENADES on it, and that was something she thought Shane would love.
It wasn’t much of a line of defense, but it was pretty much all she could see, given the limited selection available, though on an impulse she grabbed boxes of preloaded rock salt rounds for their shotgun. Not that she wouldn’t shoot someone trying to burn their house down, but she’d rather not shoot them into the hospital, or the graveyard. These might be people she knew, people she cared about, and she couldn’t be their enemy.
Even if she was, at least for now, their villain.
Twenty minutes more to maneuver to the register and check out, and then another five to load everything in the car. Five more minutes of powering the Beast (that was what she decided to call Shane’s car) down the surprisingly busy streets toward the Glass House.
When she got there, Shane was sitting on the front porch in the sun-faded rocking chair that Eve had put out there, half as a joke because none of them were porch-sitting people—and he had a shotgun.
Two uniformed police officers were standing on the steps. The tall blond woman had her hand on her gun, but she hadn’t drawn it; her male partner, also tall, but skeletally thin, hadn’t bothered with his sidearm. He was leaning on the railing and trying to look casual.
In that, Claire supposed he was trying to match Shane, who had broken open the barrel of the shotgun, taken out the rounds, and was cleaning it. She smelled the gun oil as she parked the Beast in the driveway, and instead of unloading the car, she grabbed the box of rock salt shells and walked up the path. The female officer immediately pivoted to watch her with cool, analytical eyes and a blank expression, but she moved aside to let Claire come up the steps.
“Thanks for letting me borrow the car,” she said, and leaned over to kiss Shane on the cheek as if the cops weren’t there. “I brought you a present.”
“Varmint rounds. Cool. Plenty of varmints around these days.” He opened the box, took some out, and began slotting them into the breech of the shotgun. Then he flipped it shut and racked a round, while staring at the cops. Well. That escalated fast.
“I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t get the memo—are we having problems here?” Claire smiled as winningly as she could at the male policeman. His name was Charlie, she remembered—Charlie Kentworth. “Officer Kentworth, how are you? Is there something wrong?”
“We just wanted to come in for a minute, but Mr. Collins here didn’t seem too keen on the idea,” Charlie said. “I thought we could have a nice civilized chat, but seems like I interrupted his weekly shotgun cleaning.”
“Well, you know, a man’s got to have routines,” Shane said. “Cheer up, Charlie, at least it’s only rock salt. It’ll only damage your dignity. Might not even break the skin.” The smiles they exchanged were pure challenge, and Claire resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It definitely wasn’t the time.
“Sorry, why did you want to come in? Not that we don’t love visitors, Officer Kentworth. Just that I only got back in town yesterday, and I’m still getting settled in.” She switched gears and looked at the woman with him. “I don’t think we’ve met before.” She offered her hand, but the police officer didn’t move to take it.
“Officer Halling,” the woman said.
“That’s your first name?” Shane asked. “Officer?”
“It is as far as you’re concerned.” The woman hadn’t taken her hand off the butt of her gun, and as she shifted position, Claire’s eyes were drawn to the flash of gold on her collar: the Daylight Foundation pin. “We’ve had a report that you keep illegal weapons in your home. We’d like your permission to conduct a search of the premises.”
“I thought that they issued warrants for things like that,” Shane said, and ran the oiled cloth he held over the shotgun as if he didn’t have a care in the world—and as if he didn’t, in fact, have things inside the house that would get him arrested. “I mean, they did when the bloodsuckers ran things around here. I’d think we’d have a little more due process with humans in charge, right?”
“Are you s
aying you won’t let us inside?” Officer Halling said. Her eyes were a peculiarly cold shade of storm blue, and although there was nothing to show it in her body language Claire had a premonition that she was really, really angry. There was no way to guess why. Maybe she was just an angry person, generally.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Shane said. “Michael Glass owns this house, and since he’s been put in your fancy new enclave, I guess I have to do what I think he’d want, which is say no. Claire?”
She nodded. “Come back with a warrant,” she said. “That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
“No,” Halling said. “It’s not. We’ll be back soon.”
“Well, you know where to find us,” Shane said, with a wildly sweet smile, as he put the shotgun casually on his shoulder. “Laters.”
“Sorry about the trouble,” Kentworth said, and Claire got the sense he was embarrassed by his partner’s antagonistic edge. “You two . . . I know it sounds like a cliché, but please don’t leave town.”
“Why would we? We’re Morganville residents. We live here,” Claire said.
Halling made a noise in the back of her throat that wasn’t quite a growl, and led the way back to the police cruiser. Shane sat in the rocker, looking for all the world as if he might fall asleep, he was so relaxed—at least until the cruiser turned the far corner.
Then he came up out of the rocker like someone had set it on fire. “You got the extinguishers?” he asked, setting the shotgun aside.
“In the car. What was all that about?”
“I have no idea, but I’m getting the strong idea that we’re just not wanted around here anymore, Claire. And I don’t know why, because we’re just so charming.”
“Well, you are,” she said, and kissed him lightly. “Come on, help me get it all inside.”
He carried an armload of the extinguishers, while she snagged the last couple and the box. They dumped the lot in the front parlor, raising a faint cloud of dust from the old cushions of the couch, and Claire waved it away, coughing.
“What—” Shane’s attention was riveted on the box she’d put down, and before she could even begin to answer, he was ripping into it, looking as thrilled as if it were magically Christmas. “Do you know what these are? Do you?”
“Some kind of weird grenades,” she said. “Don’t get too excited. I don’t think they explode or anything.”
“These are excellent. You arm them and throw them into the fire. If it isn’t too big, it’ll explode into a powder that puts the fire right out.” He grabbed her and kissed her. “You brought me grenades. You are officially the best girlfriend ever.”
“I’m the most worried girlfriend ever,” she said. “Because this is getting a little too crazy. The cops? Really? And you decided to clean the shotgun to, what, intimidate them?”
“C’mon, this is rural Texas. Shotguns are as normal as garden gnomes. Besides, that gun oil really stinks up the house.”
“So do your shoes, but I don’t see you leaving them outside.”
“Did Eve text you that joke? Because it sounded like her.”
“She’s been tutoring me,” Claire said, and stood back from him a little, because being so close to him made it harder to be logical. He had that effect on her. “Do we need to put anything in the pantry room?” The pantry room was a hidden room just off the kitchen, behind shelves of ancient canned goods. It was basically just a dirt room, windowless, that had almost certainly been used for visiting vampires from time to time, or for even less savory things, but it was safe enough for storage.
“Now that you mention it, I have a bag full of stuff that might do well in there,” he agreed. “You know, my sparkly unicorn collection. They’d probably jail me on general principles for that.”
“I’m serious!”
“Me, too. I would never joke about sparkly unicorns.” He held up a hand to stop her from getting irritated. “Okay, yes, I will hide all the stuff that needs hiding. Give me fifteen minutes, and then I’ll head out to grab the stuff from Rad. Though, damn, grenades. Not sure we need much more than that. They might even make good offensive weapons.”
“But they only blow out powder, right?”
“If I throw it at somebody and yell ‘Grenade!’ I’m willing to bet they’d duck anyway. At the very least, it would be hilarious.”
“Until they shot you.”
“Well. Yeah. That might not be as funny.”
One more kiss, and Shane was off. It took him less than fifteen minutes to gather things into a giant duffel bag, which he dragged downstairs and into the kitchen. She heard him stashing it in the dirt pantry room, and went to double-check that he hadn’t left any telltale traces on the floor, but he’d swept up neatly, and if she hadn’t known about the secret room she’d never have guessed it was there.
Another minute and Shane was gone to get the fire retardant stuff from Rad. He sternly told her to lock up behind him—as if she ever forgot, in Morganville. The Beast roared off down the street, and a profound silence settled over the Glass House. It was rare that she was alone in the place; there was almost always someone else to talk to, or at least to be aware of in another room. But it seemed calm, quiet and peaceful.
“We’ll take care of you,” Claire said to the house, her face tilted up to the ceiling. She patted the wall. “Don’t worry. We won’t let anything happen to you.”
The air around her immediately warmed, as if she’d stepped into a patch of bright sunlight. It was the Glass House’s equivalent of a hug, and she smiled and picked up the first two fire extinguishers to carry them upstairs. She stationed one in Michael and Eve’s room and one in her own—opposite ends of the hall, and they could cover most anything from there. The rest were distributed downstairs, where she thought any kind of arson would probably start. Their enemies had once tried to burn the place down with well-placed Molotov cocktails, and now she made sure that no window was more than a few steps from a fire extinguisher.
Then she set the grenades out, scattering them around to be sure they were all within easy reach.
She was setting out the last few when she heard the crisp sound of a knock—loud, authoritative, nothing tentative about it. Definitely not Shane, and she wasn’t expecting any visitors.
Claire slipped one of the extinguisher grenades in her jacket pocket and went downstairs to check the peephole in the door.
Officer Kentworth was back. Officer Halling was with him, and so was a plainclothes man that Claire recognized as Detective Simonds. From everything she’d heard about him, he was a nice enough guy—and a good investigator. She wasn’t sure whether that last part was a good thing just now.
She opened the door and held on to it, blocking the entrance. “Officers?”
“Miss Danvers,” Detective Simonds said, and gave her a pleasant smile. “Mind if we come in?”
“No offense, sir, but I’d rather wait until my friends are back if you don’t mind.”
“No offense taken, but I’m sorry to say that was just a courtesy question.” He slipped a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “This is a warrant from a judge allowing us to search this house for illegal weapons.”
Well, it wasn’t unexpected, but it still felt bad. Claire swallowed hard, but she stepped back and opened the door wider for them. As the three cops walked in, she felt the temperature in the hallway start to chill down. So much for the warm hugs. The house was picking up on her uneasiness, and it had never liked uninvited guests.
“Kentworth, check upstairs,” Simonds said. “Halling, this floor and the basement. Miss Danvers, how about you make me a cup of coffee in the kitchen and we sit and talk a minute.”
“Sure,” she said. Her heart was pounding, and she hoped that she didn’t look as guilty as she felt. “Follow me.”
She led him through the living room and through the kitchen door, and wished she’d grabbed a hoodie to put on over what she was wearing because the house felt positively icy now.
She could almost see her breath. Simonds, wearing a light jacket suitable for the hot sun of Morganville, was shivering. “Damn,” he said. “You sure like to keep it chilly in here. Your electric bills must be insane.”
“Not really,” she said. “I think the house is just really well insulated.” She turned on the coffeemaker and did all the little things necessary to make it go. They waited in silence while it wheezed and steamed and filled the carafe, and then she filled two mugs, put milk and sugar on the table, and dosed her own mug in silence.
Simonds sipped his black coffee, made a polite lie about how good it was, and added a splash of milk. He stirred for an inordinately long time, and he kept watching her. Not actively intimidating, like Halling, but very, very observant. “Let’s cut to the chase, Claire—may I call you Claire?” She nodded silently. “Morganville got a makeover while you were gone, no doubt about that. I know there are a lot of things different about it, and you’re probably not feeling too good about them right now. But I promise you, it’s all for the best. You believe me?”
“Not really,” she said, and took a careful sip from her own mug. “I don’t trust Mr. Fallon, and I don’t trust the Daylight Foundation, either.”
“Why not?” he asked. Interesting that he wasn’t wearing a pin, she thought, but he might have taken it off just to lull her into a false sense of security. “I honestly want to know, Claire. I’m not just shining you on.”
“Because I’ve seen what they’re capable of doing,” she said. “The problem with fighting monsters is that you can become a monster by convincing yourself anything goes. Evil for evil. I’ve seen it, sir. I’ve seen them murder people for their own beliefs. And I won’t be a part of that.”
He looked thoughtful, and grave, and they sat in silence for a moment before he shook his head. “I can’t speak to that,” he said. “But I can tell you that from the moment the Daylight Foundation arrived in Morganville, they had a plan, and they did nothing but help those in need. You say they’re willing to kill, but they didn’t even kill the vampires—in fact, Mr. Fallon went out of his way to ensure that they were treated well. Maybe you’ve seen bad things they’ve done, but I’ve seen things too—good things. I can walk down these streets in peace. That has to count for something.”