by Rachel Caine
It was hard not to feel protective, though. The kid just had that look of vulnerability.
“That’s it? Yes? People usually have more to say than that.”
“It was good?” Miranda tried tentatively, and then shrugged. “I guess I’m not really in the mood for movies after all. You know, I used to think that if I couldn’t see the future, it would be terrible, but really, it feels pretty good, not knowing what’s coming. It makes it more fun to watch movies and things when you can’t guess the ending.” She fell silent for a second, then pushed her hair behind her ear. “But it’d be more fun if I did it with you guys.”
She’d been coming out of her shell slowly, but steadily; she hadn’t quite joined the Glass House gang in full, but she was, at least, an adopted kid who was trying to fit into the family. Claire knew how that felt; she’d come into the house when Shane, Michael, and Eve had already been an established unit of old friends. She knew what it felt like to be an outsider.
Claire hugged her impulsively. “We’ll do that,” she said. “Movie night. Tomorrow. I’ve got a bunch of things I think you’d like.”
“Michael and Eve are going to move out,” Miranda said.
Claire almost fell off the bed as she twisted to get a look at Mir’s face. The other girl was staring down, and she didn’t look like she was making a bad joke; she seemed serious, and a little sad. “What?”
“I know I’m not supposed to eavesdrop, and I try not to, really, but it’s hard when you’re invisible during the daytime,” Miranda said. “I mean, you’re drifting around bored and there’s nobody to talk to. You can’t even watch TV unless someone else turns it on, and then you have to watch whatever they want—”
“Mir, focus. Why would you say they’re moving out?”
“Because they’re talking about it,” she said. “Eve thinks that it’s hard to feel married when they’re just living the same life, you know? When it’s here, with you and Shane. I know she moved into Michael’s bedroom, but she doesn’t feel like anything really changed. Like, they’re married for reals.”
Claire had honestly never thought about it. It had just seemed, in her mind, like marriage wouldn’t change anything—wouldn’t mean any difference at all in the way Michael and Eve felt around her and Shane. They’d already been, ah, together, after all. Why should it matter? “Maybe they just need some time.”
“They need space,” Miranda said. “That’s what Michael said, anyway. Space and privacy and nobody listening to them all the time.”
Well, Claire could understand the privacy part. She always felt odd about that, too. Even as big as the Glass House was, sometimes it felt very crowded with five people in it. “They shouldn’t move out,” Claire said. “It’s Michael’s house!”
“Well, I can’t move, can I?” Miranda said, and kicked her feet. She was wearing cute sneakers, pink with an adorably weird brown bunny face on them. “I don’t want them to go, though. Claire—what happens to me if you guys all leave? Do I just…stay here? Forever? Alone?”
“That’s not going to happen,” Claire said, and sighed. She grabbed a pillow and flopped backward, holding it tight against her chest. “God, this can’t happen now. Like everything wasn’t complicated enough!”
Miranda lay flat, too, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t feel right tonight. The house feels…It feels weird. Anxious, maybe.” The Glass House had its own kind of rudimentary life force to it—something Claire didn’t exactly understand but could feel all around her. And Miranda was right. The house was on edge. “I think it’s worried about us. About what’s going to happen to us all.”
Claire remembered Myrnin’s anxious, determined expression, his insistence that she leave town, and felt a chill.
“We’ll be fine,” Claire said, and hugged the pillow tighter. “We’ll all be fine.”
It was as if the universe had heard her, and responded, because all of a sudden she heard the crash of glass downstairs. Miranda stood bolt upright and closed her eyes, then opened them to say, “The front window. Something broke it.”
Claire raced her downstairs, with Shane stumbling out of his room in a daze to follow. They found Michael and Eve already there.
The window in the parlor was broken out, and a brick was lying on the carpet in a spray of broken glass. Wrapped around it was another note. Nobody spoke as Michael unfastened the string that held it on and read it, then passed it to Eve, who passed it to Shane, who passed it to Claire.
“Wow,” she said. “I didn’t think they could spell perverts.”
“It’s getting worse,” Eve said. “They’re not going to let this go, are they?”
Michael put his arms around her and hugged her tight. “I’m not going to let anything happen,” he said. “Trust me.”
She let out a sigh of relief and nodded.
Shane, ever practical, said, “I’ll get the plywood and hammer.”
FIVE
OLIVER
When Amelie slept, she seemed little more than a child, small and defenseless, bathed in moonlight like a coating of ice. Her skin glowed with an eerie radiance, and lying next to her, I thought she might well be the most magnificent and beautiful thing I had ever seen.
It destroyed me to betray her, but I really had no choice.
I slipped quietly away through the darkness of this, her most secret of hideaways; it was where Amelie kept those treasures she had preserved through years, through wars, through every hardship that had fallen over her. Fine artworks, beautiful clothes, jewels, books of all descriptions. And letters. So many handwritten letters that seven massive ironbound chests couldn’t contain them all. One or two, I thought, might have come from my own pen. They would not have been love poems. Likely they had been threats.
I moved silently through the rooms to the door, and out into the jasmine-scented garden. It was a small enclosure, but bursting with colorful flowers that glowed even in the darkness. A fountain played in the center, and beside it stood another woman. I’d have mistaken her for Amelie, at a glance; they were alike enough in coloring and height and form.
But Naomi was a very different kind of woman altogether. Vampire, yes; old, yes. And a blood sister to the Founder, through their common vampire maker, Bishop…but where Amelie had the power to command vampires, to force them to her will, Naomi had always wielded her power less like a queen and more like a seductress, though she had little interest in the flesh—or at least, in mine.
Amelie appeared to be made of ice, but inside was fire, hot and fierce and furious; inside Naomi, I knew, was nothing but cold ambition.
And yet…here I was.
“Oliver,” she said, and placed a small, gentle hand on my chest, over my heart. “Kind of you to meet me here.”
“I had no choice,” I said. Which was true—she had taken all choices from me. I raged at it, inside; I was in a tearing frenzy of rage within, but none of it showed on my face or in my bearing. None could, unless she allowed it; she had control of me from the bones out.
“True,” she said. “And how fares my much-beloved sister?”
“Well,” I said. “She could wake at any time. It wouldn’t do for her to see you here.”
“Or at all, since my dear blood sister believes I’m safely dead and gone. Or do I have you to thank for the attempt on my life, Oliver? One of you must have wished me dead among the draug.”
“I organized your assassination,” I confessed immediately. Again, no choice; I could feel her influence inside me, as irresistible as the hand of God. “Amelie had no part in it.”
“Nor would she have; we’ve held our truce for a thousand years. I’ll have to think of a suitable way to reward you for betraying that. What does she suspect?”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve gained her trust?”
“Yes.”
“You’re certain of that?”
“I’m here,” I said, and looked around at this, Amelie’s most sheltered secret. “And now, you’re he
re. So yes. She trusts me.”
“I knew that bewitching you was an investment that would soon pay off,” Naomi said, and gave me a sweet, charming smile that made the storm inside me thunder and fury. I hated her. If I’d had the ability to fight, I’d have ripped her to pieces for what she’d done to me, and was doing through me, to Amelie. “She hasn’t detected your influence on her decisions?”
“Not as yet.”
“Well, she will likely start to question it soon, if she hasn’t already; my sister has a nasty streak of altruism that surfaces from time to time. Once the humans begin to complain of their treatment, she may think about placating them once again.” She ran her fingers over my cheek, then parted my lips with cool fingers. “Let’s see your fangs, my monster.”
I had no choice. None. But I tried, dear God, I tried; I struggled against the darkness inside me, I fought, and I won a hesitation, just for a moment, in obeying Naomi’s iron will.
And still, my fangs descended, sharp and white as a snake’s. There was a single tiny tug of pain, always, as if some part of me even now refused to believe my damned state of being, but I had centuries ago grown well used to that.
The pain she was wringing from within me was much, much worse.
She let me go and stepped back, eyes narrowing. “Your reluctance doesn’t please me,” she said. “And I can’t risk your tearing free even a bit from my side, now, can I? Hold still, Oliver.”
And I did, to my shame; I held very still, eyes fixed on the calm flowing water of the fountain as it spilled tears to the stone. She raised my arm to her lips, bit, and drank. She was a true snake, this one, and poison ran from her bite into me; it corrupted, and it destroyed the tiny pulse of will I’d managed to raise. She licked the remains of my blood from her lips and smiled at me.
Defeated.
And then she put her lips close to my ear and said, “I owe you something for that bit of will, don’t I? Very well. I want you to feel pain. I want you to burn.”
It started slowly, a sensation of heat sweeping up from my hands, but it quickly turned into the familiar bite of sunlight beating down on me…but where age had given me armor against such pain, I had no defenses from Naomi’s witchery. It was like being a newborn vampire again, tied down for the noontime glare, with my blood boiling and burning its way through my flesh, exploding in thin pale flames, flaking my skin to ash and roasting nerves….
I clenched my teeth against the pain, then whimpered softly at the extreme of the agony. Let me die, something in me begged. Just let me die!
But that, of course, was not her plan. She had done me no physical harm, none at all. It was only the memory of fire, the sense of it; my blood was cool and intact, and my skin unmarked.
I only felt as if I were a torch set afire.
When she finally released me, I fell to my hands and knees on the soft grass, sucking down cold night air in panicked breaths as if I were no more than a human. I didn’t need the air, but I craved the coolness; the dew of the grass felt like a balm on my still-sizzling nerves, and it was all I could do to stop myself from pitching facedown to its embrace.
But I would not give her that. Not until she demanded it.
She did not. I calmed myself and climbed to my feet, and wished to heaven I could rip her apart, but I knew better than to even attempt it. And I was rewarded with a slow, calm smile. Above it, Naomi’s eyes continued to watch closely for any hint of rebellion.
“Now,” she said. “I have a job for you. I wish you to find the vampire Myrnin, and kill him.”
Not that I hadn’t often wished to do just that, but I hated the thought now, knowing that it was her driving me to it, and not my own will. “Yes, my lady,” I said. The response was automatic, but it was also wise.
“That’s my lovely knight,” she said, and her eyes flashed red. “And inevitably, you will have to do the same to my sister, for my own safety. When we’re done, we’ll rule Morganville together. You can take your sport where you wish; I care not. That’s what you’ve always wanted.”
“Yes,” I whispered. No. Not at this cost. And not with her.
I had never expected, after all we had endured, to be undone at the lily-white hands of a maiden. Myrnin might possibly have been able to find a way to stop it, and her. That was why Naomi wished him gone, of course.
And why I’d have no choice, none, but to do her bidding, until she finally had no more use for me at all. All vampires had some measure of control of others; it was an instinct that made us effective hunters, but in some—like Amelie—that trait was very strong, a hammer blow that could be wielded against other vampires. Naomi’s ability was a whisper, not a shout, but it was just as powerful. I had never suspected she possessed such skills. She had always seemed so…innocent. And kind. I ought to have known better; vampires are never kind, not unless that kindness buys us something.
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me why you’re doing this. Why now?”
“I did not come after you,” Naomi pointed out, and raised an eyebrow. “I am not my father, Bishop; I had no need to rule until it became plain that Amelie was…incapable. I would have been happy to see her healed and whole again, even then. But you had to come after me, Oliver. So it’s entirely your fault that I am driven to this extreme.”
Naomi’s chin suddenly rose, and her eyes dimmed to a pale blue. “It seems I must leave you now, Oliver. She’s awake,” she said. “You know what to do. And remember, if you fight me, I’ll make the punishments I’ve given you already seem like a caress.”
She vanished like smoke. Surviving my attempt to destroy her, in the chaos of the final battle with the draug, had made this one stronger, faster, more coldhearted than ever.
I waited until I sensed Amelie’s approach, and then I turned with a false but convincing smile; it ripped at me like razors to betray her so, because even after all our years of rivalry, I had finally come to realize her worth, and now…now the smile was no longer mine. It was a lure, a lie, and it sickened me to see her return it.
She walked on bare feet down the path, hands stroking the petals of flowers as she came; her thin white gown blew like mist in the moonlight. She was beautiful, and desirable, and I despaired inside as her hands touched the bare skin of my chest, because I was going to be the death of her.
And there was nothing I could do to stop it. Nothing at all. I wanted to warn her, to tell her how dangerous I was to her now. How destructive.
“You strayed,” she said, and kissed me very lightly.
“Yes,” I said, and felt myself smile that warm, challenging smile that had charmed her into trust. “But I’ll never go far.”
Until I kill you. God forgive me.
SIX
CLAIRE
Claire really wanted to confront Eve about what Miranda had overheard—she and Michael couldn’t really be considering moving out, could they?—but in the morning, Eve was gone early, and Michael was sleeping late; she wasn’t quite gutsy enough to go knock on his door and demand to know the truth. Michael was grouchy in the mornings.
Miranda, of course, had kept Claire up talking into the wee hours; she’d been getting more and more chatty since taking up residence, which was great in a way, because the kid had been so repressed and isolated before, but bad for Claire’s sleep cycle. It also cut into the time she could spend with Shane; he tended to steer clear when Miranda was around, and although he wasn’t above just moving the girl firmly out of the room when he felt it was necessary, he hadn’t done it last night.
So Claire woke up short of sleep, yawning, and a little cranky. Not her best morning ever, but in a matter of minutes it got drastically better; she was still stretching and trying to wearily decide what to wear, when there was a thumping knock on her door, one very different from Miranda’s tentative taps.
She grabbed her robe and threw it on as she answered. She didn’t open up all the way, just peeked through. There was Shane, balancing one coffee cup precariously on top of another.
He’d given her the giant Snoopy cup this morning, which was nice. “What’s the password?” she asked him.
“Um, you look hot with your hair standing up?”
“Good enough.” She stepped back and relieved Shane of the Snoopy cup as he came inside; then she set it hastily down when he stepped in to slide his free hand around her waist and kiss her. She had morning breath, but it didn’t seem to matter to him; he tasted of mint toothpaste and coffee, but she forgot all that in seconds and then it was just all incredibly delicious. Her whole body tingled with warmth.
“Morning,” he murmured, his lips close to hers. They were so tasty, she licked them, which made him smile and kiss her again. “Too bad you’re dressed.”
“I’m not dressed. I just have on a robe.”
“Oh?”
“Hey,” she said, and put a hand flat on his chest. “None of that, mister. A girl’s got to have boundaries.”
“You’ll let me know when I get there,” he said, and untied her robe. “You lied. You’ve got on jammies.”
“Well, yeah, those, too.” She was short of breath, and when his hands found their way under the flannel of her pajama top, the air in her lungs rushed away. “You really shouldn’t…”
“Do this? Yeah, I know.” He undid the first button on her pajama top and put a kiss in its place. “But I’ve been thinking about doing it all night.”
So had she, actually, and all the logical objections to why this wasn’t a good idea kind of vanished under the heat of his touch…until Claire realized he’d left her bedroom door wide-open, and someone was standing in the doorway.
“Your coffee’s getting cold,” Eve said. She was clearly on her way to the bathroom, arms full of black clothes, hair untied and in a multicolored mess around her pale face. She blew the two of them a kiss.
Claire yelped and jumped away, rebuttoning her top and retying her robe at light speed. Shane hardly seemed bothered at all, but she could feel the hot blush staining her cheeks. “Um, hi, Eve,” she said. “Sorry.”