by Rachel Caine
“And I pulled it out,” Claire said. “Or you’d be dead now, you jerk. What exactly is a chit?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Amelie’s gaze tugged away from Oliver’s for a moment, and Claire got the full force of the Founder’s attention. “A disrespectful young woman,” she said. “Something I was called more than once. Something every woman of quality is called, sooner or later, by a man who feels they do not know their place. As we do not, because our place is as lofty as we may aspire to climb. It is the language of men who fear women.” There was something weird about Amelie’s eyes; they seemed darker than normal, and Claire couldn’t figure it out until she realized that the pupils were inordinately large, as if she’d had some kind of dilating drops in them. Was she being drugged? “Which brings up a good point, Oliver. I believe you’ve called me a chit, upon occasion. Yet suddenly you call me your queen.”
“You’ve ever been queen in my heart,” he said, which made Claire want to gag. His voice was smoky, soothing, and way too seductive. “Can we not agree on this one thing, my liege? That the survival of what few vampires remain must take precedence over the legions of humans who roam this earth in their billions? If we trust to their good graces, we will die.”
“He is not wrong in that, Claire,” Amelie said. “Mankind is not known for its charity toward those it fears. If we’re not torn apart as demons, we’ll be dissected in your laboratories, for science. Or worse, put on exhibition, no better than those ragged lions and exhausted bears in your zoos. Who will protect us, if we don’t protect ourselves?”
Claire wanted to say that she was wrong, that it wouldn’t be like that, but she’d read enough history and knew enough about the grudges and fears that people held close to their hearts to realize that Amelie was probably right, in principle.
“Let her go,” Claire said. “And people will see you’re not afraid to be part of this town and listen to them. Trust me. Please. I don’t want this to explode, and neither do you, but it will. You make Mrs. Ramos disappear, and it’ll never stop exploding. Vampires will take out humans, humans will take out vampires, and sooner or later, we’re all dead or you’re discovered.”
“I cannot let her go. Not an option.” But Amelie seemed to consider things, and suddenly she pulled her hand free of Oliver’s hold, opened the other side of the limousine, and stepped out into the sun.
Unlike the other vampires, she didn’t bother to try to cover herself; she was old enough that the sun wouldn’t do more than give her a painful but mild burn. The sight of her in full daylight was startling. She wore a white silk suit, expertly tailored, and her short stature was concealed with tall white pumps. Her pale gold hair, wrapped in a coronet around her head, was almost the same shade. The only color on her was a bloodred ruby necklace and a matching ring, and as she walked off toward the mob, she looked every inch a queen.
Oliver slammed his door open, grabbed Claire by the arm, and shoved her back against a brick wall. “Stupid girl,” he said, and ran after Amelie. She didn’t seem to be moving fast—drifting, almost—but he had trouble catching her.
She reached the crowd before him, and it parted in front of her like smoke before a strong wind. The vampires paused on stage, suddenly aware of her presence, and silence swept over the chaos to the point that Claire imagined she could almost hear the click of Amelie’s heels as she moved up the portable stairs to the stage.
Oliver scrambled behind her, impassive in expression, but she could see the anger and frustration in his body language. He was too late to stop whatever she intended to do.
“Release the woman,” Amelie said to the two vamps holding Flora. They let go, immediately, and stepped away with their heads bowed. Amelie advanced to stand in front of her. “Are you injured?”
Flora shook her head no.
“Then you may leave this place, if you wish. Or you may stay here, on this stage, and accept the very difficult and thankless job of mayor, a position to which I believe you are uniquely suited.”
Whatever Flora was expecting, it wasn’t that. Neither were her supporters. A confused babble started up, and Claire jogged back over so she could hear more clearly over the confusion. The microphones were dead, so only the first few rows were likely to hear what was going on.
“I’m not running,” Flora said. “It’s Captain Obvious the people want.”
“And Captain Obvious they will not get,” Amelie replied with perfect calm. “One cannot elect a man too cowardly to show his face. You, Mrs. Ramos, have courage enough for both, quite clearly. And so you are my nominee. What say you? We have enough residents here to win you the day, simply by voice. Yes or no?”
“I can’t—” It wasn’t a refusal, though; it was a confused and reluctant argument. “I’m not a politician.”
“Neither is Captain Obvious, else he would not have run away at the first sign of trouble,” Amelie said coolly, and got a ripple of chuckles from a few in the crowd. “I come to stand before the people of Morganville as the Founder. Unafraid. Can he say as much? You stand before them as well. And I say you will uphold their trust. I ask you for nothing but honorable service. Will you accept?”
Claire didn’t hear the answer, because the roar that went up from the crowd was deafening.
There really wasn’t any question of refusing.
Amelie had outmaneuvered Captain Obvious and Oliver, and she had regained the equilibrium of Morganville, at least temporarily—all in a mere thirty seconds.
Claire shook her head in wonder, and went home to tell Shane that, despite their hard work—and glitter—Monica was off the ballot.
He’d be so disappointed.
Claire wasn’t the first one to get the news to the Glass House, even though she called as she jogged away from City Hall. Eve answered on the first ring and said, “Are you at the riot?”
“It’s not really a riot. More of a rally.”
“Because the underground talk is that it’s a riot. Are they beating people with signs? Is there pepper spray involved? Details!”
“Not that I saw,” she said. “I really thought I had breaking news, but you beat me to it.”
“Not so much, sugar pie. Is it true that they almost got Flora Ramos? Man, I wish they had. It would have just destroyed whatever high ground Amelie had left. I mean, Flora Ramos—everybody knows about her kids….”
“They didn’t take her in,” Claire said, and talked fast, in case Eve was refreshing the Web page. “Amelie declared her mayor.”
“Wait—declared? How is that fair? Wow, Monica is going to be pissed that she didn’t even get to properly lose…. Okay, that’s an upside, actually.”
“She wouldn’t have gotten much of a vote. There was about half the town rallying out there—you know, the half that breathes? And they weren’t carrying any ‘Monica Morrell’ signs. Everybody was Team Obvious out there.”
There was a rustle on the other end, and then a confused blur of voices arguing. “Hey!” Eve came into focus again. “Hell no, Shane, call her yourself. I got her first…. Oh, all right. Shane says to tell you he worked hard on those signs, and they were way better than Captain Obvious’s signs.” Eve covered up the speaker, but Claire still heard her muffled exchange with him. “Really? You had to try to steal my phone to say that? Loser!” Shane’s comeback was indistinct, but probably insulting. Eve frostily ignored it and said, “You were saying, Claire?”
“No matter how great they were, all our posters got torn down or…”
“Or? Claire? Helllloooooooo?”
“Gotta go,” Claire said hastily, and hung up, because Monica’s red convertible was pulled in at the curb up ahead, and she was standing there, staring at one of her posters that hadn’t been pulled down. Claire could see the blank expression on her face, which made her curious, and she hurried over to stand at an angle where she could see the poster.
She covered her mouth to hide an appalled gasp, because someone had gotten downright artistic on Monica’s poste
r—more than one person, obviously, from the ink-color variations and styles. One had written, in bold Sharpie, Burn in Hell, which was really the nicest thing anyone had said. The additions to her half-drunk duckface picture were interesting, too, and mostly pornographic.
Not that Monica didn’t deserve it. She did. This was nothing but retribution, but from the look on the girl’s face, she hadn’t seen it coming, not at all.
“They hate me,” Monica said. Her voice was quiet and a little hushed, and her eyes were wide. There were spots of high color on her cheekbones under the spray tan. “Jesus, they really do hate me.”
“Um…sorry. But what did you expect?”
“Respect,” Monica said. “Fear. But they’re not afraid of me. Not anymore.” She reached out, took hold of the poster, and yanked it down. It ripped in the middle, and she tore the second half down with even more vicious fury. The cardboard was tough, but she managed to reduce it to vivid neon scraps and toss it defiantly to the sidewalk in a shattered heap. “Their mistake! And yours, bitch! I know you and Shane set this up. You always wanted to see me humiliated!” She advanced on Claire, fists clenched. Claire stood her ground calmly, and Monica stopped coming when she realized she wasn’t going to make her back down, but rage still boiled through her whole body. At the slightest opportunity, the least little sign of weakness, she’d pounce.
“We thought you might pull it off,” Claire said. “It’s not our fault you have more baggage than an airport at Christmas. Maybe instead of getting even, you ought to be thinking how to improve what people think about you.”
“I think you have about ten seconds to get out of my face!”
Claire shrugged. “Enjoy your outcast life, then. You’ll get used to it. The rest of us do just fine.”
“Bitch!” Monica yelled at her back, but it was just words, and it was a sign of just how much things had changed between the two of them that Monica didn’t dare attack her with anything else, not even when her back was turned. “I’ll get you for this—I swear!”
Claire just waved and kept walking, though the area right between her shoulder blades kept itching until she heard Monica’s car door slam and heard the roar of the engine. Even then, she stayed ready to jump out of the way should the Mustang mysteriously jump the curb, but once it had flashed past her, burning rubber in a thin, bitter mist on the still air, she relaxed. A little.
But only for a moment.
It was a sunny morning, quiet; the sun hung warm in a cloudless sky the color of faded denim, and a couple of big hawks kited overhead, circling for prey. It wasn’t the time or place that she would have expected to sense a threat, and yet…
Yet something was wrong. She could just…feel it.
It took her a few seconds of quick analysis to figure out that what had tripped her alarm switch was the dusty college bookstore she had just passed. Instead of opening up, someone had been sliding the curtains closed in the window…and now a hand reached through the curtain and turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED. That wasn’t right. It was a regular workday, and the store wouldn’t have been open for very long. Well, he could have just wanted to grab breakfast. Or an early lunch.
She couldn’t be sure, because it happened very quickly, but she could have sworn that the hand flipping the sign had taken on a vivid red sunburn even in that brief exposure to the sun.
Vampire.
Claire slowly backed up, staring at the store. She thought back to what was happening while she’d been talking to—well, been taking abuse from—Monica. Had someone gone inside the place? Yes, one person; she’d seen him out of the corner of her eye. And, now that she thought of it, that person had been Professor Carlyle, he of the utterly unearned B on her physics paper, so obviously not a creature of the night, even if he was evil.
Someone had been in the store already, like a spider waiting in a web.
Not my problem, Claire told herself, but something deep down argued with her. Maybe she’d spent too much time around Shane, who was always throwing himself gleefully into one fight after another. Maybe she was just still angry at Amelie and Oliver’s arrogant attitude toward the mostly defenseless human population of Morganville. Whatever.
She slipped her backpack off her shoulder, tugged free a silver stake, and tried the door, and despite the sign, it was still unlocked. She was committed then—the vampire would have heard her anyway, however distracted he might have been. So she charged inside, let the door bang shut behind her, and landed solidly on her feet, ready for the fight.
Good thing she was, because the vampire came at her fast out of the shadows, a white distorted face and a red snarl, and she struck out and got flesh, but not his heart. He screamed and darted off, clearly not prepared for a fight with someone who could hurt him, and in the brief respite Claire glanced around the shop. The lights were on, which was helpful. Typical college bookstore, with loads of shelves crammed with dog-eared, highlighted-over textbooks; the whole place had a run-down, cheap look to it that probably was exactly what the average TPU student liked about it—that, and the low, low prices. (Claire had tried it out once, but the book she’d bought at pennies on the dollar also had significant issues, such as missing about a dozen crucial pages in the middle.)
The shopkeeper, whose name she vaguely remembered as Sarah something—Sarah Brooke, that was it—was sitting on the floor. Her wrists and ankles had been tied together, and her eyes were so wide that she was likely screaming under the duct tape that covered her mouth.
Professor Carlyle was kneeling beside her. He’d been blitz-attacked, apparently; he had a cut on the side of his head that was bleeding freely in shocking red streams, and he was holding a trembling hand to his neck. More blood trickled out of that wound, but it wasn’t gushing. “Danvers?” he said, in blank astonishment.
“You okay, sir?”
“He—he bit me—but I’m Protected!” He held up the hand that wasn’t clamped over his throat, and Claire saw the silvery glint of a bracelet. “This can’t happen!”
Sarah was Protected, too—she was wearing a similar bracelet that guaranteed her safety from vampire attack, at least theoretically. Obviously, it wasn’t a magic shield.
The vampire, who’d backed away from Claire temporarily, took another run at her, and this time, she skipped backward and ripped down the curtains over the big front window, framing herself in bright daylight. “Come on, if you’re coming,” she said, but the vamp skidded to a halt right at the edge where shadow met sun.
And she got her first good look at him. “Jason?” she blurted in horror.
The vampire who was trying to kill her—and Sarah, and Professor Carlyle—was Jason Rosser, Eve’s brother.
He’d wanted to be a vampire—had actively campaigned for it—and she’d been afraid he’d be even worse as a person if he grew fangs; here it was, proof positive, that if you had creepy violent tendencies as a human, you felt free to indulge them as a new vampire. The only good thing about the situation was that he was really new, and super allergic to the sun. In fact, today’s attack might have been his first try at hunting.
If so, it wasn’t going extremely well.
“Get out of here,” Jason said. His voice was low, rough, and ugly with fury. “I don’t want you. Get out.”
“Too bad, you’ve got me, jackass. What the hell are you doing?”
“What does it look like, bite bait?” He flashed his teeth at her, which might have scared her, oh, years ago.
“Failure? And don’t drop fang at me, Jason. It’s not polite. Ah! Watch it!” He’d made a move, and although she didn’t think he’d charge into the sunlight to grab her, she wasn’t assuming anything. She brought the stake to an easy-stabbing position. He already had a blackened, sizzling hole in his side that wasn’t healing fast. He wasn’t eager to take another hit. “These people are Protected, idiot. They’re off the menu. Go to the blood bank if you need your fix of B positive or whatever it is you’re jonesing for.” Besides causing pain and terr
or, she thought, but didn’t say. Clearly, that was a big part of it for Jason. Most of the other vampires were more clinical about their feeding, but he’d brought all his weird, twisted baggage over with him.
In some ways, he and Eve were mirror images of each other—both fascinated by the darkness. Only Eve had chosen to manifest hers outwardly, and Jason…Jason had taken it all deep inside. For a while, Claire had been convinced there was something in him more than that. Something better. But over time, he’d proven her wrong.
And now, here he was, bloody-mouthed, grinning at her like Batman’s Joker, if the Joker had fangs.
“Protection’s a joke,” Jason told her. He prowled the line of shadow, staring at her with dark, angry eyes that looked unsettlingly like his sister’s. “Always has been; it’s a racket, and the vampires laugh about it over their drinks. You know what the penalty is for me draining these two? I have to pay a fine. It’s like a note in your file at school. I can do what I want. Nobody’s going to care. Nobody’s going to stop me.”
“Oliver might. Or Amelie. They kind of like vampires to stay in line around here. Makes things easier for everyone.”
He made a harsh buzzer sound. “Sorry, wrong answer,” he said. “Old pioneer days, Claire. You’re not keeping up. We’ve got privileges now. You can’t keep us walking around on leashes anymore like tame dogs.”
His pacing reminded her of a caged animal, too. Creepy. “Don’t make me stake you, Jason. I’d have to tell your sister, and I don’t want to do that.”
“As usual, it’s all about Eve. Why is it her business what I do?”
“She still cares about you, you know.”
“She never really cared. Don’t try that on me. If she’d been any kind of a stand-up sister, she’d have watched out for me. She just ran off and left me behind to take my punishment and shacked up with her precious Michael.” Jason singsonged the name like a grade-schooler. He’s just trying to scare you, Claire told herself, somewhat unconvincingly. You’ve dealt with Myrnin all this time; you can handle this stupid kid.