by Rachel Caine
In death.
She didn’t know what Shane might have done, because just as she came to that breath-stopping conclusion, she caught sight of a shiny black van pulling around the corner. For a second she didn’t connect it to anything in particular, and then she recognized the logo on the van’s door.
Great. “Shane—we’ve got company,” she said. “Ghost-hunting company.”
“What?” Shane turned and looked at her blankly, then at where she pointed. Not only had the ghost hunters arrived, but the two hosts—Angel and Jenna—were already out and walking toward them. Jenna had something in her hands that looked like an electronic metering device; it was making strange, weird noises like a frequency tuner. Angel had what looked like a tape recorder. And behind them, following with a bulky handheld camera on his shoulder, was Tyler.
“—Activity,” Jenna was saying in an intense voice. “Definitely some significant signs here. I got a huge spike from the van, and it’s even bigger now. Whatever’s out here, it’s definitely worth checking into.”
“Where?” Angel sounded tired and more than a little irritated. “We’ve had a lot of false alarms already. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the local residents were trying to screw us up—oh, hello. Look, it’s the kids from the courthouse. Where’s your pretty friend?”
Claire didn’t know which to take offense at more—the implication that she wasn’t pretty, or that Monica might be considered a friend. She was saved from answering by Shane, who walked up to her and kept walking until he was blocking the path to the vacant lot completely. “Get lost,” he said flatly. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Excuse me?” Jenna said, and tried to move around him. He got in her way. “Hey! This isn’t private property. It’s a public sidewalk! We are fully within our rights to be here.”
While she and Shane were facing off, Claire heard Angel mutter to Tyler, “Make sure you’re getting all this. It’s great stuff. We can use it in the teasers. The town that didn’t want to know.”
“You,” Shane said, and pointed past Angel, at Tyler and the camera. “Turn it off. Now.”
“Can’t do that, bro. We’re working here,” Tyler said. “Relax. Just let us do our job.”
“Do it somewhere else. You don’t do it here.”
“Why?” Jenna was staring at him intently, and past him, at the empty lot. She held out her meter gadget, and Claire could hear the tones it gave off. She didn’t need to be an expert in ghostology to know it was pinging like mad. “Something you don’t want us to see, perhaps?”
“Just back the hell off, lady. I mean it—”
“We’ll see about this,” Angel said, and pulled out a cell phone. Theatrically, of course. “We do have a permit to film direct from the mayor’s office!”
“Let’s see it,” Shane said. “Go ahead; call somebody. I’ll wait.” He stared Angel down until the other man put the phone away. “Yeah. Thought so. Look, just do us all a favor, okay? Call it a day, get in your van, and head to some other town where they don’t mind your making fun of dead people, all right?”
“That’s not what we’re doing!” Jenna said sharply. “I’m very committed to trying to locate those who are lost and stuck, and finding a way to bring them some peace. How dare you say—”
“I don’t know—because you arrange all this crap for ratings, advertisers, and money? Maybe that?” Shane stepped forward, and he was using all his size and attitude this time. “Just go. Get off this street.”
The device that Jenna was holding gave a sudden shrill alarm; she jerked in surprise and stared at it, then turned it to Angel. Tyler angled in to get a close-up of the meter.
“What?” Shane snapped.
“We got a huge electromagnetic spike,” Jenna said. “It’s coming from that vacant lot behind you. I’ve never seen anything like it—”
Shane. It was a very clear, cold, longing whisper, and it came from right behind them. And it just froze everyone right in place. Claire had a vivid, clear snapshot of them: Tyler, mouth open behind his camera; Angel, stunned silent; Jenna, eyes wide.
And Shane.
Shane’s lips parted, but he didn’t speak. His face had gone blank and pale, and he actually took a long step backward, pulling Claire with him. She didn’t mind. That voice had a scary, otherworldly quality that didn’t sound human.
Angel almost dropped his recorder, but he gained his composure and moved in to the camera to get a close-up. “Did you hear that?” he asked Tyler, then turned to Jenna. “That was no EVP. That was a voice.”
“Someone’s messing with us,” Jenna said in annoyance. “Cut, Tyler.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Rolling. Keep going.”
“Tyler!”
“Rolling, Jenna, keep rolling!”
“I’m telling you, the locals are having us on. We’ll probably find some kind of EM transmitter out here, and some giggling high schooler with a megaphone….”
“Rolling!”
“Okay, okay, it’s digital. At least you’re not wasting film….” She took in a deep breath and said, in her tense ghost-hunting voice, “We may have gotten an actual spirit contact! I can’t even begin to describe how incredibly rare this is!”
“Can you speak to us again?” Angel said, and if possible, he got even more pompous. “You said a name. Can you say it again?”
Nothing.
“I think it said shame,” Jenna said. “Is it a shame you’re gone? Are you ashamed of something?”
“Oh, for the love of—” Claire couldn’t bite back her exasperation. “Come on. We have to go, now.” She very deliberately didn’t use his name. They didn’t seem bright enough to make the connection, but even so…
“That’s Alyssa,” Shane said. “I’m telling you, it’s her. My sister is right there.”
Dammit. Well, there went her entire nothing to see here, move along plan.
“No such thing as ghosts,” she said, and pointedly looked at the camera. Shane, recovering from the shock, finally got back on script enough to nod. “I think someone’s messing with you. Really. You need to just—chalk it up to locals being stupid.”
“Or,” Shane said, “you could poke around in the dark. That’s fun. There might be fewer annoying visitors if you tried it.”
“Excuse me?” Jenna said. “Are you threatening us?”
“No, just making an observation. I mean, wandering around in the dark isn’t a good idea, lady. Ask anybody.” He shrugged. “Meth. It’s a cancer around here. So I’ve heard, anyway.”
“Oh,” she said, and seemed to take it seriously for the first time. “It is a problem in a lot of places. I should have thought of that. Guys, maybe we should pack it in until later.”
“But we heard that,” Angel protested. “We should at least do EVP in the vacant lot, just in case!”
Shane started to object, but Claire tugged at his arm, urgently. Let them, she mouthed, and he finally shrugged and stepped out of the way. “Knock yourself out,” he said. “Try not to get bitten by any rattlesnakes or anything.”
“Snakes?” Tyler suddenly sounded very, very nervous.
“Or, you know, scorpions,” Claire said cheerfully. “And tarantulas. We have those. Oh, and black widows and brown recluse spiders—they love it out here. You’ll find them all over the place. If you get bitten, just be sure to, you know, call 911. They can most always save you.”
“Most always,” Shane echoed.
They walked on, leaving the three visitors—no longer quite so eager to delve in—debating the risks. As they did, Shane pulled out his phone.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Texting Michael,” he said. “He needs to get to somebody in the vamp hierarchy and get these idiots off the street before this becomes really, really public and a big PR problem….” He paused and looked up. “Oh hell. Twice in one day? Who did I piss off upstairs to make that happen?”
He meant that Monica Morrell had just crossed
their path, again. She was standing against the side of a big, trashy-looking van, tongue wrestling her current boy admirer, just around the corner from where Shane’s home had once been. Like most of Monica’s boyfriends, her current beau was a big side of beef, sporty, with an IQ of about room temperature, and she was climbing him like ivy up a tree.
“Excuse me, Dan,” Shane said as they got closer. “I think you got something on you—oh, hey, Monica. Didn’t see you there.”
She broke off the kiss to glare at him. “Freak.”
“Any particular reason you’re hanging out here, exactly? Not your usual territory. I don’t see any stores within credit-card distance.”
Her boyfriend—Dan, apparently—looked like a varsity football jock; he had the muscles, the bulk, and the jarhead hairstyle. Monica tended to attract the big-but-dumb ones, and this one, from the questioning look he sent toward them, seemed to run to type. “She said this was the right place,” he said, “to set up the—”
“Shut up,” Monica said.
“Set up the what?” Shane asked. “Would you maybe be planning to mess with our ghost-hunting friends?”
“Aren’t you?” she shot back. “Yeah. We’ve got this thing in the van, totally guaranteed to screw up their—what is it?”
“Screw up their shit,” Dan said, earnestly. “You know, their monitoring shit. It’s going to play Black Sabbath backward and really freak ’em out. I read it on the Internet.”
“Jesus, Dan,” Shane said. He almost sounded impressed. “You are just…landmark stupid, aren’t you? Has Guinness called yet about that world record?”
Dan growled and came at him, and that was of course a mistake; Shane balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, avoided his rush, dodged back toward the van, and as Dan lined up to rush him again, sidestepped like a matador and sent Dan crashing like a bullet headfirst into the metal.
Dan didn’t go down, but he definitely thought about it. He leaned heavily on the metal and stared blankly into the distance for a minute. His forehead had a vivid red mark on it, and Shane said, “You probably ought to get some ice on that, man.”
“Yeah,” Dan said. “Yeah, thanks, bro.” He didn’t dare come after Shane again, so he turned on Monica with a glare. “Well? Brilliant plan, Mayor. What else you got?”
“Oh, Dan, don’t be like that—”
“Play your own stupid pranks for a change.”
Monica gave him a searing glare of disappointment, and he shrugged and got in the van. In seconds, it fired up and drove away in a belch of smoke.
Leaving Monica behind. She shot Claire a look of fury mixed with outrage. “I was trying to help get those jackasses out of town. Being proactive and all mayorlike! What the hell were you two doing? Auditioning for starring roles in their stupid show?”
They’d attracted attention, of course. It wasn’t from surrounding houses, since no one bothered to look outside at mysterious fighting in the streets for entirely sensible reasons, but from the team from After Death that had come charging over with cameras, microphones, and gadgets. Angel immediately fixed his model’s smile straight on Monica. “Are these two bothering you, lovely lady?”
“Please,” Claire muttered, but it was too late; Monica was batting her eyes and putting on her best wounded-butterfly act as she crowded up next to her newly arrived knight in shining leather shoes.
“Oh yes,” she breathed. “Did you see? He beat up my boyfriend!”
“Call the police,” Angel ordered Tyler, who was still recording, but Tyler was distracted by Jenna, who was whacking her electronic meter device in obvious irritation.
“Hey, hey, hey, it’s technology, not a drum!” he said, and took it from her. “What? What’s wrong with it?”
“I had a strong signal!” she said. “It was there, I swear it was, but it just vanished about thirty seconds ago. I think they scared it off.”
“You were reading something wrong.”
“I saw it! It was maxed out in that vacant lot—I’m telling you….”
“Oh—um, that was my boyfriend,” Monica said, and brought the overlapping chaos to a dead halt. “He had the van that just took off? He was broadcasting a signal to make you think it was some kind of ghost. He thought it was kind of funny.”
Angel was looking at Monica with a heartbroken expression. “Why would you do that?”
“It was Dan, not—”
“Why do teenagers do anything?” Jenna snapped. She stepped into Monica’s space, looking for the world as if she was feeling just as strong an impulse to slap the girl as Claire was. “Get lost, before I call the cops.”
“It’s not against the law!”
“You’re right. Get lost before I do something that is against the law, like putting my fist in your face.”
“Hey!” Monica stepped into Jenna’s space now, cheeks flushing a bright, hectic pink. “Do you know who I am?”
“Last year’s high school queen bee who’s no longer relevant but still thinks she is?” Jenna shot back, and Claire’s eyes widened at the accuracy of the thrust. So did Monica’s. “Look, sweetie, I’ve seen a dozen one-stoplight towns just like this, and there’s always somebody just like you who thinks you’re…well, somebody.”
Monica opened her mouth to reply, but didn’t. She was remembering that she was, in fact, nobody, at least by her own standards; she was just another bully now, with nothing to back it up. She didn’t even have her best friends to enable her. Even her Cro-Magnon boyfriend had bailed on her at the first sign of trouble.
And it hurt. In that moment, though she shouldn’t have, Claire felt a little twinge of sympathy.
“I’m running for mayor!” Monica rallied enough to snap back. “So careful what you say, because my first official act would be running you three out of town on a rail!”
Jenna shrugged and glared at Angel, who was still looking gravely disappointed, and said, “Come on, let’s retake that last bit over in the vacant lot. We can still save some of the footage.” She set out at a rapid pace around the corner, heading for the vacant lot. After a hesitation, Tyler followed her.
Angel shrugged and said, “I’m sorry, but you see how it is. We have work to do.” This time, there was no hand kissing, and not much flirting, either.
“Wait,” Monica said as he started to walk off. “You’re just going to leave me here? Alone? With them?”
Angel flashed her a perfect smile but kept walking. “I’m sure they’ll see you get home safe.”
“Oh yeah,” Shane said. “On my to-do list, right after discovering Atlantis. Enjoy your walk, Princess Mayor.” He put his arm around Claire and tipped her chin up to look into her eyes. “You okay? Not hurt?”
“No,” she said. “You?”
“The only way Dan can actually hurt me is to try to have a conversation. He may be on the college football team, but trust me, he’s just barely junior varsity on street fighting.”
Monica looked from the departing television people back to the two of them, then at the empty street. Looking for some kind of third option, Claire thought. “You could just go it alone,” Claire said, with a little too much sweetness. “I’m sure you’ll be safe. After all, everybody knows who you are.”
“Thanks to our posters,” Shane put in.
“You know, it’s your fault my life is such a hell, anyway, so spare me your little gestures!”
“So now you’re blaming us for your life falling apart, after a lifetime of earning it? Interesting.”
“My life was fine before you came here!” Monica spat.
Shane gave her a long, level look. “You know whose life wasn’t so fine? Pretty much everybody else’s. Including the vampires’, not that I’m counting that for a plus, but you get the idea.”
She ignored Shane. Oddly, because those two were almost always gasoline and a match. “I need an escort home,” she announced to the air somewhere between the two of them. “Tell me you’re going that way.”
Shane shrugged
when Claire glanced at him. “Well, I guess we’d better. How can she be mayor if she’s dead in a ditch?”
“She just taunted you with the voice of your dead sister!”
“No,” Monica said.
“What?” Claire snapped; she was getting really angry now, angry enough to do or say something she couldn’t take back. And Shane, oddly, wasn’t.
“I didn’t do that,” Monica said, and met Shane’s eyes. “I wouldn’t do that. Dan and I were messing with their electronics, and we were planning to sneak over and make some rattling noises. But I swear, I didn’t pretend to be your sister.”
“She wouldn’t,” Shane said softly. “Not after Richard, anyway.” There was, Claire realized, some kind of understanding between the two of them now, something she didn’t quite get but could see; it wasn’t affection, and it sure wasn’t a crush, but a kind of mutual…caution. As if they understood each of them had a place that could be hurt, and neither was willing to go there anymore.
“Then what was that? Was it really—really—” She couldn’t finish the thought. She was feeling a little unstuck now, as if the world were bending around her…. She thought she’d seen enough of Morganville that something like that would never happen again.
“I don’t know,” Shane said, “but I intend to find out.”
Walking Monica home was just exactly as fun as Claire expected, which was not fun at all. She complained about having to walk in her heels (to which Shane, proving he was not totally off the Let’s Hate Monica bandwagon, suggested she mount her broom and fly home); she complained about the hot weather, and sweat ruining her outfit; she complained about the lack of cab service (Claire had to agree she had a point there—Morganville desperately needed cabs).
Claire had begun to tune her out by that point, since they were within sight of Monica’s luxury apartment complex (the only one in Morganville, in fact, with ten apartments that cost more than most of the town could even think about paying). Monica had sold the Morrell family home, which had mostly survived all the troubles of the past few years intact except for party damage, and made a tidy bank account to allow her to not work for at least a couple of years, though it probably wouldn’t last at the rate Monica blew through designer shoes.