by Rachel Caine
“Thanks,” he said to Eve. She raised a cocky eyebrow.
“You’ll make it up to me later,” she said, and winked. That got a really different kind of smile from Michael, and I found something else to look at, fast. Now I was the one feeling like an intruder on something personal, like I guessed Mikey had earlier, what with all the passionate groping and tongues.
Funny how just the way they smiled at each other could be intimate. Or maybe I was just turning into a girl, living with two of them in the house. That was frightening. Not that I don’t like girls. I just preferred to be plain old insensitive me.
“One down,” I said. “But Frank gave me a warning. This town’s really going to go crazy. We need to be ready.”
“Always,” Eve said, and high-fived me.
But I wondered if we really, truly were.
THIRTEEN
CLAIRE
The portal system had gone completely, utterly dead. The next morning, Claire started trying each of the entrances she had mapped out, and she found each of them just as inactive as the ones in the Glass House. Even Amelie’s emergency escape, the one upstairs in the secret attic room, was gone.
She had known that was coming, but it was still…weirdly sad. She shuddered, and tried not to think about Frank dying slowly in his silent tomb as she exited the abandoned warehouse—portal number twelve on the map—and headed back toward the center of town. This side of Morganville was mostly left to rot and rats—had been for years, slowly falling into ruin as the businesses closed or relocated. The porch had finally fallen down at the front of the old hospital building where she and Shane had once run from both his father and Oliver, blocking it to even the hardiest urban explorers. There were likely lots of other ways in, but nobody sane wanted to go in there. It was a great place to go permanently missing—not just because of the vampires, but because there were some serious drug trade people who had claimed it for their own property. They could have it, as far as Claire was concerned. The place wasn’t just haunted; it was evil.
I could have spent the morning working on the machine—what am I going to call it? The Vampire Power Cancellation Device? VPCD, for short? Fine, how about the Magic Thingy? She was fantasizing too much about what it could do, she thought, but she couldn’t shake the idea that if she could just get a perfect amplification signal to match what the vampires were sending out, she could somehow cancel it…and perfectly nullify the effect.
Not that it would have stopped Pennyfeather from trying to rip her throat out, of course. Drawbacks.
This area of town was really run-down. Claire cursed under her breath as she tripped over another fallen fence. The vampires really could have done some urban renewal around here, but they liked having some ruins around; maybe it suited their Gothic sensibilities, or maybe it was just practical, having places where they could stalk around after dark in private. She wondered why they hadn’t shut down the meth trade, though. Maybe—likely—they just didn’t care enough.
As Claire was walking away, she saw the black ghost-hunting After Death van turn the corner and pull to a stop right in front of the building. Oh, no. No. Don’t…But there they were: Jenna, Angel, and Tyler, getting out of the van, pulling out all kinds of equipment, cables, boxes. They were clearly going to stage some kind of spirit investigation in there. Such a bad idea.
Claire took out her phone and dialed the Morganville police department’s nonemergency number. They weren’t fast responders, generally, and it took at least ten rings before someone finally picked up. “Hi, it’s Claire Danvers,” she said. “You know who I am?”
“Yes. What do you want?” The voice on the other end was professional and cold. No clues as to who it was she might be talking to, or how the individual really felt.
“I’m standing in front of the old hospital building, the abandoned one? And those stupid ghost-hunting people are here. I just thought—maybe you could send a car over, tell them to move on?” She hesitated for a second, then plunged on. “Why are they still here, anyway?”
“We’re waiting for a decision as to how to handle them,” the voice said. “Until then, we’re letting them poke around. People know to avoid them. The hope is they’ll just lose interest and leave.”
People meaning, Claire assumed, vampire people. The cops seemed to have it handled. “Okay,” she said. “But that hospital’s not safe. You know that, right?”
“We’ll send a car,” he promised, and hung up on her.
So much for being civic-minded. Claire watched the activity over at the van for a while, until she saw them actually ducking through a cut in the chain-link fence around the building. They were going inside.
Not good. For them.
She crossed the street, hoping to hear an approaching siren, but there was nothing except the hissing, constant desert wind and the rattle of tumbleweeds against the fences. In places, there were so many of the balled, thorny plants tangled in that it looked like a barricade. One skipped across open ground and bumped against her pants leg, and she had to stop to pull the burred tips free; her fingertips tingled and itched afterward.
Tyler had already gone inside. Angel was sliding through the fence now, with Jenna holding it open.
“Hey,” Claire said, and they both turned to look at her in surprise. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you, but this isn’t a good place. It’s unstable in there. The floor’s all rotten.”
“Ah, it’s—Claire, right?” When she nodded, Angel smiled—with far less wattage than he would have used for Monica, she thought. “Well, we thank you for the warning, but we’re very used to working in dangerous spaces. Remember the asylum, Jenna? The one in Arkansas?”
“The floors were completely gone,” Jenna said. “We had to walk on the beams or we’d have dropped at least three stories straight into the basement. Got some great stuff, though. It was a huge ratings winner.” She pushed a box through to Angel, then a second one. “Don’t worry, we’re trained for this kind of thing.”
“There are snakes in there,” Claire said. “Rattlers. And black widow spiders. It’s really not safe.”
“And we’re really okay with it,” Jenna said. “You go on, Claire. We’ve got this.” Jenna studied her with curious pale eyes. “You seem pretty eager to keep us out of there. What’s your real reason?”
Claire shrugged and kicked a random rock. “Nothing,” she said. “Just I hate to see you get in trouble in there, for nothing. You’re wasting your time around here, anyway.”
“You’d be surprised what we’ve picked up already around here,” Jenna said. That sounded ominous. “My personal opinion is that this town is a hotbed of paranormal activity. I believe we’ll get dramatic footage out of what we find inside. It’s almost as if—as if we’re being guided.”
“Guided,” Claire repeated. “By what?”
“By whom,” Angel corrected. His smile held just a touch of indulgent doubt. “Jenna believes that she’s made contact with a lost spirit.”
“I have,” Jenna said, and it sounded like the embers of an old argument, flaring up again. “Maybe you might recognize her. It’s a young girl—”
Not Alyssa, Claire thought, stricken. Please don’t say it’s Shane’s sister. Because there was no doubt in her mind, now, that Alyssa’s spirit lingered, trapped in the lot where she’d died, even though the house had tumbled down.
“Miranda,” Jenna finished. “At least, that’s what I’ve been able to make out from the EVP recordings. We have quite a lot of them. She’s very talkative.”
“Miranda,” Claire repeated, and drew in a deep breath. She’d survived out here, somehow; she’d latched onto the ghost-hunting crew in the hopes of getting help. But that was so dangerous. “Um…no, I don’t think I recognize that name. Probably before my time.”
“Huh,” Jenna said, but Claire didn’t like the look in her eyes. It was far too shrewd. “Funny how she knows your name, then. And a whole lot more.”
She was saved by the distant w
ail of a siren. It was coming closer. Jenna and Angel looked at each other, eyebrows raised, as it became clear it was heading into their area, and both called, at the same time, “Tyler!”
Tyler backed out of the tumbled, brick-strewn doorway of the hospital. “Yeah, what? I’m going to have to climb over all this crap to get in this way. Maybe we should check the side—”
“Did you clear the location with the PD?” Angel asked.
“Didn’t you?”
Jenna sighed. “Dammit, Tyler—”
Claire made a quick, tactical retreat as the Morganville police cruiser pulled up behind the van, lights and siren still going, and left them to sort it out.
Miranda was still around, and she was working with the ghost hunters in some way. Well—that was good that she’d found a way to survive, but still, Claire had a terrible feeling that it was also a complication.
Maybe a big one.
Claire felt better after leaving the neighborhood and starting to see open businesses again, ragged as they were; most of them were scrap yards and places that repaired appliances, maybe a couple of “antique shops” that were where you took things a step above the scrap yard. A secondhand clothing store Claire sometimes visited, though it was mostly Morganville natives who shopped there; the store over by campus was the one with stuff in her size, and from out of town generally, because of the college students who shed their clothes by season. It was terrible to be thinking of clothing just now, though; she’d just eliminated any possibility of searching Myrnin’s lab for clues to where he’d gone. It deeply sucked. Not to mention that it would take a jackhammer and a backhoe to dig through the concrete sealing the entrance if she ever intended to rescue Myrnin’s books, which were mostly irreplaceable.
She saw the first mayoral campaign sign stapled to a light pole—one for Captain Obvious—and remembered, with a shock, that the election was today. She hadn’t cast a ballot yet. Well, the day was still young; she had time. And it was kind of her duty, since it had been her brainstorm in the first place, to vote for Monica, though she’d have to hold her nose to do it.
So she headed to City Hall, and ran straight into a mob scene.
The noise was a dull roar about a block away, and she thought it was some kind of construction work, maybe a giant bulldozer or grinding machine or something…but as she got closer, she heard that it wasn’t mechanical at all. It was voices—yelling voices, all blending into something that sounded like a collective insanity. People were running toward the noise, and she found she had the same impulse to go and see what was going on. Though there’d been some attempts, nothing that big had ever happened in Morganville, in her experience. People just didn’t have the heart to riot in those numbers.
Until now.
As Claire turned the corner, she saw there was a flatbed tractor trailer parked on the curb in front of City Hall, decked out with some sad-looking patriotic streamers and ribbons, and on it stood Flora Ramos, with someone in a black leather jacket, black pants, gloves, and a motorcycle helmet with a dark, opaque faceplate. His—at least, Claire assumed it was a man—arms were crossed. Flora was at the microphone next to a big pair of speakers.
The posters that people had on poles and held up over their heads were the CAPTAIN OBVIOUS FOR MAYOR signs.
And clearly, the guy standing on the dais next to Flora was…the new Captain Obvious? It could have been the same guy who’d fired at Oliver in Common Grounds; he’d been wearing a black hood then, instead of the helmet, but the jacket looked similar.
Flora Ramos held up her hands and stilled to a dull mutter the approving roar of the thousand or so people crammed in the street.
“We’ve had enough,” she was saying. “Enough of the oppression. Enough of the death. Enough of the inequality. Enough of losing our homes, our lives, our children, to things we don’t control. And we won’t be silent. If Mayor Moses couldn’t make our voices heard, we will make them heard on every street, in every building, and on every corner of Morganville until things change! Until we make them change! We built this town with our sweat and blood and strength, and it is our town as much as that of those who pretend to own it!”
She was, Claire had to admit, a great speaker. She was angry, full of passion, and it arced out of her like lightning to sting the crowd into more yells, chants, and shouts. Claire slowed down. She was a little afraid, suddenly, of the power of that mob, and of Flora’s eloquence. So were the Morganville cops, she realized. They were out in force, all twenty or so, forming a solid cordon between the crowd and City Hall.
No telling how the vampires felt about it, but Claire had no doubt, none at all, that they were well aware of this. And if they’d been unhappy about Monica seeking the office, how pissed off were they now? Plenty, she imagined. From the crowd that had gathered, Captain Obvious was going to win in a landslide, and if the vamps thought they could ignore the ballots and pick their own candidate, it was going to get very ugly, very quickly. Nobody would be fooled, and clearly, the humans were in no mood to take it lying down.
Flora was still talking, but it was hard to hear her over the constant, fevered applause and cheering. Claire stared hard at Captain Obvious. Hard to tell anything about him, underneath the disguise, but he had a hell of a lot of guts coming out here in public and standing as a free target after putting a crossbow bolt in Oliver.
So she could have predicted what came next.
It started calmly enough. Claire was used to looking for vampires, so she picked up the smooth, subtle movements from the shadows well before most other people. It started with one or two coming out, well swathed in long coats and scarves, hats and gloves, but it didn’t stop there. Soon it was ten. Then twenty. Then too many for Claire to count.
And like the police, they fanned out, but not to cordon off the crowd.
They were making for the stage, and Captain Obvious.
He saw them coming about the time that most others did. Vampires didn’t need protection, even in a crowd like this; Morganville natives had it bred into them to back up, get away, and that was exactly what they did. Cries of alarm went up, and little islands of space formed around the vamps as they pushed forward.
Captain Obvious’s helmet turned toward Flora, and she nodded. He backed up to the edge of the trailer, dropped off and out of sight, and one second later Claire heard the roar of a motorcycle. He came roaring out from concealment on the other side of the truck, spraying smoke as he fishtailed around. The crowd cleared for him, too, or at least for the snarling bike, and he leaned into the handlebars and hit the thrust hard.
A lunging vampire tried to take him off the machine, but he ducked low and weaved expertly, and she went rolling. When another tried it ten feet later, someone in the crowd—more daring than the rest—ran forward and knocked the vampire’s hat off. The vampire turned with a roar of fury and slapped the broad-brimmed coverage back over his smoking head, but his second was lost, and Captain Obvious accelerated away, leaning into a sharp turn with his knee almost on the ground. It was someone with training, Claire thought, someone with a lot of skill.
The vampires largely gave up on him, though a few tried chasing him; the rest bolted forward, swarmed onto the stage, and two grabbed Flora Ramos. A third cleanly severed the microphone cord with a single pull, robbing her of her soapbox.
But when they tried to take her down from the platform, people surged forward, shouting. They’d lost their fear, all of a sudden. It made sense. Flora was a popular lady, a widow, who’d lost kids to the vampires. She was everybody’s mom, all of a sudden, being dragged off into the dark—not in the middle of the night, but in public, in broad daylight, in a blatant show of vampire force.
Amelie and Oliver must have approved this. They must be watching, Claire thought with a sudden twinge. She turned and looked behind her, and saw a long blacked-out sedan idling at the corner. She walked that way. Walked right up to the car and rapped on the backseat window.
It glided down to reveal t
he pale, sharp face of Oliver. He didn’t speak. He just gazed at her with cool disinterest. Next to him, Amelie was looking straight ahead, a slight frown grooved between her brows. She looked flawless, as always, but Claire knew her well enough to think she was bothered by what she saw before her.
“Let Mrs. Ramos go,” Claire told Oliver.
“She’s preaching sedition and breaching the public peace,” he said. “She’s ours by law.”
“Maybe. But if you take her off that stage, you lose. Not just now, but for a long time. People won’t forget.”
“I care not what they remember,” he said. “The only way to stop a rebellion is to crush it with blood and fire, and to wound them so they’ll never dare to raise a hand again.”
He sounded as if he almost liked it. Claire shuddered, and looked past him, to Amelie. “Please,” she said. “This isn’t right. Stop it. Let Flora go.”
It took forever for the Founder to speak, but when she did, her voice was soft, even, and decisive. “Let the old woman go,” she said. “It gains us nothing to make her a martyr. Our goal is to find this new Captain Obvious. He can’t hide for long. Once we have him, we make an example of him and make it clear that this kind of disruption won’t be tolerated. Yes?”
Oliver scowled and sent Claire a murderous glance. “My queen, I think you are listening too much to your pets. The girl’s softhearted. She’ll lead us all to ruin.” He lifted Amelie’s pearl white hand to his lips and kissed it, lips lingering on her skin, and she finally looked at him. “Let me guide you in this. You know I have the best interests of Morganville at heart. And you are Morganville.”
The frown between Amelie’s perfectly arched brows relaxed, smoothed, and she kept her gaze fully focused on him. “I fear your way will bring us more trouble, Oliver.”
“And this chit’s way will bring us death,” he said. “Mark me, compromise is no answer. We would compromise ourselves into a pyre of ashes. Humans have no pity for us, and never have; they’d kill every one of us. Have you forgotten that one of them just yesterday tried to put a silver arrow in my heart?”