Bitter Blood tmv-13

by Rachel Caine

  “Michael…We are not moving into that pit,” Eve said. It sounded like an old argument. “It smells like cat urine and old-man clothes, and it’s so ancient, it makes this place look like the house of the future. I don’t think it has phone lines, never mind Internet. Might as well live in a cardboard box.”

  “Always an option,” Shane said cheerfully. “And you’d have a huge bathroom. Like, the entire world.”

  “Ugh, gross.”

  “It’s what you pay me for.”

  “Remind me to give you a negative raise.”

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Michael interrupted, and shut them both down, hard. “Besides, it’s not just the four of us anymore. It’s Miranda.”

  The conversation came to a sudden and vivid halt, and they all waited to see what would happen. It was night; that meant Miranda had physical form.

  But it didn’t necessarily mean she could hear everything.

  Claire lowered her voice to an instinctive, fierce whisper. “Hey! Don’t be that way!”

  “Look, I’m not saying I don’t have sympathy for her; I do, a lot. I used to be her,” Michael whispered back. “I know what it feels like being trapped in here. It drives you half crazy, and the only way you can survive it, the only way, is to be around people who think of you as…normal. But she doesn’t have that. We know what she is. We know she’s around all the time, and that means she tiptoes around us, and we tiptoe around her, and—it’s just not good, okay? It’s not.”

  “So, what do you want me to do?” Miranda asked. They all flinched and turned. She hadn’t been there before, but now she’d appeared in the doorway to the hall, just like the spooky ghost she sometimes was. Claire was almost sure it was deliberate. “Leave?”

  “You can’t,” Michael said. He did it gently, but there wasn’t any doubt in it, either. “Mir, you knew when you came here that last time”—when she’d been killed here, he meant—“that there’d never be a way to leave again. The house saved you, and protects you, but you have to stay inside.”

  “Just because you did?” Miranda said. There was something different about her now, Claire realized; she was wearing a definitely not-Miranda outfit. No dowdy oversized dresses this time, or cheap fraying sweaters; she was wearing a skintight black sheer shirt with a black skull printed on it, and beneath that, a red scoop-neck that somehow managed to give her cleavage—just the suggestion, but still. For Miranda, that was…quite a change. “I’m not you, Michael.”

  “Maybe not, but do you have to become Eve?” Shane asked. “Because I’m pretty sure you raided her closet.”

  “I bought those for her!” Eve protested. “And anyway, she looks cute in them.”

  She did. Miranda had also gathered her hair up in two thick ponytails on either side of her head, and used a little of Eve’s eyeliner. It was a little Goth, but not full-on, either. It suited her.

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” Miranda said, ignoring both Eve and Shane this time. She was totally fixed on Michael, her eyes steady and wide. “It’s about me, being here all the time. You feel like you can’t hide from me. Well, that’s true. You can’t. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is, and you know it better than anyone. You can’t just…turn off, like some kind of light. You’re here, and you’re bored.”

  “I know,” Michael said. “Mir—”

  “That’s why you don’t want to stay here. Because I’m here. It’s not about them at all.”

  “No, honey, it’s not really—” Eve bit her lip and glanced from Michael to Miranda and then back again. “It’s not that, I swear….”

  “Don’t swear,” Miranda said, “because I know I’m right.”

  “She is,” Michael said. When Eve turned toward him, he held up a hand to stop the outburst. “I’m sorry, but like I said, I’ve been there. I know how it feels. I can’t just…ignore her. And I can’t enjoy life in here knowing how miserable she is, or at least is going to be.”

  “You were miserable?” Eve said in a small voice. “Really? With us?”

  “No—I didn’t mean—” He made a frustrated sound and plumped down in one of the chairs, elbows on his knees. “It’s hard to explain. Being around you, the three of you, was all that made things bearable, most days. The world just keeps getting smaller and smaller until it smothers you like a plastic bag over your face. With her here, I—I remember how that feels. I dream about it.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?” Miranda demanded. “I saved Claire’s life, you know! I died for her!”

  “I know that!” Michael snapped back. “I just wish you’d done it somewhere else!”

  Even Shane sucked in a breath at that one and said, softly, “Bro—”

  “No,” Miranda said. Her chin was trembling, and she blinked back tears, but she didn’t fall apart. Claire felt an aching urge to hug her, but Miranda looked as if she might break if anyone touched her. “It’s not his fault. He’s right. I made this happen, and it isn’t fair. Not to him, not to me, not to anybody. It’s a mess, and I did it. I thought—I just thought that it was perfect. That I’d finally have a real home, real family, people who—” Her voice broke and faded, and she shook her head. “I should have known. I don’t get those things.”

  “I didn’t mean that—,” Michael said, but she turned and walked off.

  None of them reacted at first. Claire thought nobody quite knew what to think, or to do, and then she saw Michael flinch and rise to his feet. She didn’t know why until she heard the front door opening.

  “No!” he shouted, and flashed at vampire-speed out of the room.

  “The hell?” Shane blurted, and rushed after him, followed by Eve and Claire. “What—”

  Claire pushed past him as he stopped, and she sucked in a deep, startled breath.

  Because Miranda was outside. On the porch. And Michael was standing there, holding on to her arm as she fought to pull free. He was holding on to the doorframe, stretched fully out, and Miranda must have had a tiger’s strength in that small body, because he was clearly having trouble keeping his grip. “Stop!” he yelled at her. “Miranda, I’m not letting you do this!”

  “You can’t stop me!” she screamed back, and there were tears streaking her face now in uneven trains of running eyeliner. She looked horrified and tragic and very, very upset. “Let go!”

  “Come back inside. We can talk about it!”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. You don’t want me here, so I just need to go!”

  “You can’t go—you’ll die!” Claire blurted. She pushed past Michael and out onto the porch and grabbed Miranda in a bear hug. She could feel the girl’s not-quite-real heart pounding against her forearm, out of terror, anger, or sheer adrenaline. “Miranda, think. Come back inside and we’ll talk it over, all right? None of us wants you to die out here!”

  “I’m dying in there, if you all leave! This way you can stay; you can be happy again—”

  “It’s not you; I never meant that!” Michael was afraid, Claire thought, really and starkly afraid that this was all his fault. “You can’t do this. We’ll work it out.”

  Miranda went very still for a second, though her heart continued to race uncontrollably fast, and she let out a deep, surrendering sigh. “All right,” she said. “You can let go.”

  Michael said, “If you come inside, sure.”

  “I will.”

  Claire loosened her grip, just a little.

  And it was just enough for Miranda to twist like a wild thing, ponytails whipping in Claire’s face, and when Michael yelled and tried to pull her in, Miranda grabbed hold of his arm and bit him, hard enough to make him let go.

  And then she stumbled backward, free, down the steps, and sprawled on the ground in the yard.

  They all froze—Miranda, Claire, Michael, Eve, and Shane who had lunged out as well. The only thing moving was a single fluttering moth circling the yellow glow of the porch light.

  Miranda slowly got up.

  “Um…,” Sh
ane said, when no one spoke. “Shouldn’t she be, I don’t know, dissolving?”

  Michael took a step down toward her, and Miranda skipped backward. He held out his hand, palm out, as if she were a lost child who might bolt out into traffic. “Mir, wait. Wait. Look at yourself. Shane’s right. You’re not—going away.”

  “I’m still on the property.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “I couldn’t leave the doorway, let alone get down into the yard. Claire?” He looked at her as she stepped down next to him, because she’d had a brief period trapped in a ghostly state, too. She nodded.

  “I couldn’t leave, either,” she said. “Miranda, how are you doing this?”

  “I’m not!” She took another step backward down the sidewalk, toward the fence. “I’m just trying to—to get out of your hair, okay? If you’ll just let me go!”

  It seemed so quiet out tonight. The houses of Lot Street were sketched out in broad strokes of grays; the sky overhead had turned the color of lapis, and the stars were bright and cold. There were no clouds. The temperature had already fallen at least ten degrees, as was typical for the desert; it’d dip down almost to freezing before dawn.

  “How did it feel? Going outside?” Michael asked.

  Miranda gave a little shudder. “Like…pushing through some kind of plastic wrap, I guess. It felt cold, but it’s colder out here. Much colder. Like I’m moving away from a fire.”

  “But you feel okay? Not coming to pieces?” Eve said. She was watching with wide, scared eyes. “Miranda, please, don’t go any farther, okay? Just stay where you are. Let’s—think about this. If you don’t want us to go, we’ll stay, okay? We’ll all stay in the house. We’ll all be friends and be a family for you. I promise. We won’t let you down.”

  “It’s better if I go.” Miranda shuddered again. She looked pale now, but not exactly ghostly. Just cold. Claire wondered if she should get her a coat, but that was stupid; the idea was to get her back in, not help her stay out.

  That plan didn’t seem to be working so well, because as Claire tried to take a step closer, Miranda opened the front gate in the leaning picket fence, which was badly in need of paint.

  “No!” the four of them said, in chorus, and Michael took a chance, a big one. He rushed the girl, at vampire-speed, hoping to get hold and pull her back inside before she stepped out onto the public sidewalk, off Glass House property altogether.

  But he didn’t make it.

  Miranda ducked and ran all the way to the street.

  To the middle of the street, where she stopped, shuddering almost constantly now, and looked up at the wide Texas sky, the moon, the stars.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m going to be okay. See? I don’t have to be inside all the time. I can go out. I’m fine….”

  But she wasn’t fine; they could all see it. She was milky pale and her teeth were chattering. It wasn’t that cold outside; Claire’s breath wasn’t even steaming, but from the way Miranda was shaking, it might as well have been below freezing.

  “You’re not fine,” Eve said. “Mir, please, come back. You’ve proven your point. Yeah, you can leave—” She glanced at Michael and mouthed, Why?, but he only shrugged. “You can leave anytime you want. So let’s go inside and celebrate, okay? Besides, it’s dark. You’re vamp bait in the middle of the street like this.”

  “What are they gonna do—bite her?” Shane asked. “She’s dead, Eve. I don’t even think she has blood.”

  “Yes, she does,” Michael said. He was watching Miranda with a concerned expression now. “She’s got a living body, for the nighttime, just like I did. She can be hurt at night. And drained. It just wouldn’t kill her permanently; at least I don’t think it would…. I think she’d come back.”

  “Renewable blood resources,” Eve said softly. “There’s a nightmare for you. We can’t let them find out about her. We need to get her back inside and figure out how she’s able to do this.”

  “How? She won’t let any of us get close!”

  “Surround her,” Eve said. “Michael, Shane, get on the other side. Claire and I will come in from this side. Box her in. Don’t let her run. We’ll just herd her back inside.”

  “She’s strong,” Michael warned. “Crazy strong.”

  “She won’t hurt us,” Eve said. Michael glanced down at his arm, which was still healing and showed bite marks. “Well, not much, anyway.”

  “You and your strays,” he said, but Claire could tell there was love behind it. “All right, we’ll do it your way. Shane?”

  “On it.”

  Michael and Shane spread out, right and left, circling around Miranda and leaving her a wide berth in the middle of the road as Eve and Claire closed the distance from the front. Claire supposed it looked weird, but if anyone was watching from the other houses, no one made a sound. Not a curtain twitched. Not only did the town of Morganville not care; it didn’t even notice when a tweener was stalked by four older teens.

  Even if they had good intentions.

  Miranda wasn’t trying to get away, though. She had wrapped her thin arms around her body and was shuddering in continuous spasms now, and her skin looked less real, more like glass with mist behind it.

  “Miranda,” Claire said softly, “we need to get you inside. Please.”

  “I can do this,” Miranda said. She was staring down at herself with a blank expression, but there was a stubborn set to her chin, and she wiped her cheeks with the back of a hand and squared her shoulders. “I can live out here. I can. I don’t need to be in there.”

  “You do,” Eve said. “Maybe it’s a gradual thing. You need to work on it a little at a time. So we can try again tomorrow night. Tonight, hey, come inside; we’ll watch a movie. You get to pick.”

  “Can we watch the pirate movie? The first one?”

  “Sure, honey. Just come inside.”

  Shane and Michael were making steady progress coming up from behind Miranda, and Michael nodded to Claire as she got into position. “Let’s all go in,” he said. Miranda shuffled awkwardly in place, as if her legs didn’t want to move, and turned to look at him over her shoulder. “We don’t want anything bad to happen to you, Mir.”

  “Well,” she said, “it’s a little late for that, but I appreciate the thought. Did you know? I can’t tell the future anymore? It’s as if all the power I had went somewhere else.” She gestured down at herself. “Into this.”

  That…might make some weird kind of sense, Claire thought, that Miranda’s powerful psychic gifts—the same ones that had led her to die inside the Glass House to save Claire’s life—had become a kind of life-support system for her, after death.

  “But it means I don’t know anymore,” Miranda said. Her voice was fainter now, almost like a whisper. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m scared.”

  “You don’t have to be,” Claire said, and stretched out her hand.

  Miranda hesitated, then reached out.

  But the second their skin touched, Miranda’s cracked like the thinnest ice, and an icy fog spilled out, searing Claire’s fingers with chill. She drew back with a cry, and there were cracks all over Miranda’s body now, racing through in lace black lines, and then she just…

  She just broke.

  For a few seconds the fog held together in a vague girl shape, and Claire heard a cry, a real and surprised and scared cry…

  And then she was gone. Just completely gone, except for empty clothes lying in the street.

  “Mir!” Claire felt the pressure in her hand vanish, and lunged forward, scissoring the air, hoping for something, anything…but there was nothing—just empty space.

  Miranda had vanished completely, and her last word seemed to echo over and over in Claire’s mind.

  Scared.

  “Oh God,” she said in a whisper, and felt tears sting her eyes. Miranda had been dealt raw deals her whole life, up to and including dying in the Glass House at the hands of the draug, but it had felt like, fin
ally, she was getting something going her way. A place of safety. A life, however limited, that she could call her own.

  It was just…very sad—so sad that Claire felt tears choking her, and she fell into Shane’s arms, clinging to his solid warmth for a long few moments before he whispered in her ear, “We have to go back. It’s not safe out here.”

  She didn’t want to go, but there wasn’t any point in risking their lives for someone who was already gone. So she let him guide her back toward the Glass House. Michael and Eve were already there. Eve, uncharacteristically, hadn’t shed a tear, from the flawless state of her mascara; she was usually the one prone to bursting into tears, but not this time. She just looked blank and shocked.

  “Maybe she’s okay,” Eve said. Michael put his arm around her. “Maybe—oh God, Michael, did we make this happen? We started this, with all the talk about moving. If we hadn’t said that she was bothering us, maybe she wouldn’t have…have…”

  “It’s not your fault,” Shane said quietly. “She was bound to try it, sooner or later; once she figured out she could make it out the door, she was going to keep pressing her luck. And anyway, you could be right. She might still be okay. Maybe she’s just not anchored anymore. It could be harder for her to get back or let us know she’s still around. Maybe she’ll be back tomorrow.”

  He was trying to put the best face on it, but no matter what, it was grim. They’d lost someone, out here in the dark—a scared little girl, left on her own. Maybe for good.

  And from the look in his eyes, even Shane knew they were all to blame.

  Claire had been looking forward to spending the night in Shane’s company, in all the shades of meaning that might hold, but Miranda’s disappearance had taken all the joy out of it for them both. Michael and Eve seemed to be just the same. They all ended up sitting on the couch together and watching a DVD that none of them particularly cared about—something about time travel and dinosaurs—just because Eve had mentioned that it had been Miranda’s favorite out of their little store of home videos. Claire closed her eyes for most of it, leaning her head on Shane’s chest, listening to his slow, strong heartbeat, and allowing his steady strokes of her hair to soothe the grief a little. When the movie ended and silence fell, Michael finally asked if anybody wanted to play a game, but nobody seemed willing to take up the controllers—not even Shane, who had, as far as Claire could remember, never turned it down. That split Michael and Eve upstairs to their room, and left Claire and Shane sitting by themselves.