by Rachel Caine
“Not at all,” Myrnin said cheerfully. “You’re definitely not as red as a cherry. Or an apple. Yet. That will take some time.”
Claire tried to focus back on what was—hopefully—more important. “A light bomb?”
Myrnin looked suddenly a great deal more serious. “It’s an inconvenience for a human,” he said. “It would have been extremely damaging to me, or to any vampire, had I been the one to open the box.”
“So who sent you a bomb?”
He shrugged. “Eh, it was so long ago. Might have been Klaus. But I might have actually sent it to myself. I’m not always that rational, you know. Mind you, I wouldn’t open the last box if I were you.”
Claire sent him a long, wordless look, then accepted the hand Michael extended to help her to her feet. She felt dizzy and—yes—sunburned, and a whole lot filthy. “Great. You might have booby-trapped your own boxes. Why would you do a thing like that?”
“Excellent question.” Myrnin left her and went to the table, where he lifted from the open box a complicated-looking tangle of metal and wires—the kind of bomb an insane Victorian inventor might have made—and set it very carefully to one side. “I can only think that I meant it to protect what else was in the container.”
He stood there staring into the box, not moving, and Claire finally rolled her eyes and said, “Well?”
“What?”
“What’s in the box, Myrnin?”
In answer, he tipped it over in her direction. A cloud of dust fogged the air, and when it cleared, Claire saw that there was nothing in the box.
Nothing at all.
“I’m going home,” she sighed. “This job sucks.”
Michael gave her a ride back to the Glass House, which was what she meant when she said home, although technically she didn’t live there. Technically, her parents had a room for her in their house, and her stuff was there. Mostly. Well, partly. And, according to the agreement she’d reached with them, she slept there most every night—for a few hours, anyway.
It was all part of her parents’ grand scheme to keep her and Shane—well, maybe apart was too harsh. Casual. They didn’t want their little girl shacking up with the town bad boy, even though Shane was not the town bad boy, and he and Claire were in love.
In love. That still gave her a delicious little tingle every time she thought about it.
“Parents,” Claire said aloud. Michael sent her a look.
“And?”
“They bring the crazy,” she said. “Is Shane home?”
“Not yet. I dropped Eve off at her first rehearsal.” He smiled slowly. “Was she that excited when she got the letter?”
“Define excited. You mean, did she look like a cartoon character on crack? Yes. I never knew she was all into acting and stuff.”
“She loves it. She’s always acting out scenes from movies and TV shows in her room. When we were in high school, she used to organize these little plays in study hall, give us all parts she’d written out on little pieces of paper, and the teacher never knew what the hell was going on. Insane, but fun.” Michael braked his car; Claire couldn’t see beyond the tinted windows, but she assumed there was some kind of red light. Good thing Michael had special vampire vision, or they’d be exchanging insurance with some other driver right about now. “So this is a big deal for her.”
“Yeah, I got that. Speaking of big deals, I heard that you’re playing at the TPU theater tomorrow.”
The tips of his ears got a little pink, which (even in a vampire) was adorable. “Yeah, apparently they heard about the last three sets at Common Grounds.” Those had been pretty spectacular events, Claire had to admit—people jammed in shoulder to shoulder, including an impressive number of vampires all playing nice, at least for the evening. “Not a big deal.”
“I heard the tickets were sold out,” Claire said smugly. “So there. It is a big deal, dude. Deal with it.”
There was a complicated expression on Michael’s face—pride, nerves, outright fear. He shook his head and sighed. “You ever feel like your life is kind of out of control?”
“I just went to work for a vampire, was scared by a spider, and got knocked down by a tanning bomb. And that’s just my day, not my week.”
“Okay, yeah. Point.” Michael turned the wheel and hit the brakes again. “You’re home, Pinky.”
“Don’t even think about calling me that.”
Except, when she got upstairs and in front of a mirror, she realized that Michael wouldn’t be the only one calling her that, or worse. Her face was shiny pink. As if she’d been dipped in blush and then wrapped in plastic. Ugh. When she pressed her fingers against her skin, she left dramatic white spots that slowly filled in again. “I’m going to kill him,” she muttered, and slammed the bathroom door, locked it, and flipped on the shower as she glared at her hot pink reflection. “Lock him in a tanning bed. Drive him out in the desert with the top down. Myrnin, you are toast. Burned toast.”
It was worse when she had her clothes off; her naturally pale skin was a violent, gut-wrenching contrast to the sunburn on her face. She hadn’t realized it before, but she had burns on the tops of her hands and arms, too—anywhere that had been exposed to the blast of light.
Radiation. UV radiation. It didn’t really hurt yet, but Claire knew it would, and soon. She showered fast, already uncomfortable with the sting of water on shocked flesh, and then searched her closet in vain for something that wouldn’t clash with her new, hot pink color scheme.
Oh, Monica was going to love this like a new puppy. Finally, she put on her bra and panties and flopped back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. She knew she should dry her hair, but she was in too bad of a mood to care. Shiny, pretty hair wasn’t going to help at all. And tangled, ratty hair would at least fit her current mood.
After spending a solid fifteen minutes of glum brooding—which was pretty much her limit—Claire grabbed her headphones and loaded up the latest lecture from Myrnin on string theory. Well, she assumed it was string theory, although Myrnin had a tendency to confuse science with mythology and alchemy and magic and who knew what. Pieces of it still made more sense than anything she’d heard from a tenured professor—and pieces of it were complete gibberish.
The trick was figuring out which were which.
She didn’t even know that anyone was in the room until the bed tilted to one side. Claire opened her eyes on near-complete darkness—when had that happened?—and instinctively grabbed for the covers, then remembered she was on top of them, and nearly naked, and panic went nuclear. She yanked off her headphones and slithered off her side of the bed, away from whatever weight had settled on the other side. . . .
The bedside light snapped on, revealing Eve sitting there in all her Gothy glory. Purple was still the color of the day, but she’d gone informal—purple tights, some baggy black shorts, a purple tee with Gothic lettering all over it.
Eve tilted her head to one side, staring at Claire. “Wow,” she said. “Respect, girl. That is one hell of a sunburn. I haven’t seen one that bad since my cousin fell asleep in a deck chair on the Fourth of July at nine a.m. and nobody woke her up until four.”
Claire, still trying to control her racing heartbeat, gulped down breaths and grabbed her bathrobe from the chair in the corner of the room.As she yanked it on, it dragged over the backs of her hands and arms, and she almost yelped, again, from the pain. Her face felt as if it were on fire. Literally, with flames. “It’s not a sunburn,” she said. “It was some kind of UV bomb. It was meant for Myrnin.”
“Ouch. Right, so we should get you some of that sunburn cream crap in the gallon size. Note taken.”
Claire belted her robe. “Did you just come to see the freak show?”
“Well . . . entertaining as it is, no. I came to tell you that dinner was ready, but you were all grooved out on tunes.”
Claire considered telling her that she’d been listening to lectures, but decided that in Eve’s world, that was too much infor
mation. “Sorry,” she said.
“Hey, I wouldn’t have dared come in except that Shane’s downstairs setting the table.” Eve winked. “And if I’d sent him, well. Dinner would get cold, right?”
Oh God. Shane. Shane was going to see her like this, looking like some exile from Planet Magenta. “I—I don’t think I feel well enough to eat,” she lied, even as her stomach rumbled at the thought of food. “Maybe you could bring me—”
“It’s only going to get worse,” Eve broke in with ruthless cheerfulness. “Oh yeah. Big-time worse. First, the red face, then the blisters, then the peeling skin. Trust me, unless you’re going to hide for the next week, minimum, you might as well just get on downstairs. We’re having tacos.”
“Tacos?” Claire repeated wistfully.
“I even made that funky rice stuff you like. Well. I boiled the water and put the funky rice stuff in it, anyway. That’s cooking, right?”
“Close enough.” Claire sighed. Across the room, a mirror reflected someone standing in her clothes that she refused to believe was really her. “Okay. I’ll be right down.”
“Better be.” Eve kissed her fingers at Claire and scooted out the door, slamming it behind her.
Claire was still trying to decide whether her pink shirt made her look marginally better or marginally worse, when she felt an ice-cold sensation travel through her like a wave. No drafts, nothing like that—this was internal. It was a warning, straight from the semi-self-aware house.
Something was wrong in the house.
Claire grabbed her emergency home defense kit on the way out of her room—a bag of everything from pepper spray to silver-plated stakes—and raced down the hall, then down the stairs, and arrived with a jolt to find everybody else, including Michael, calmly sitting down to dinner.
“What?” Eve asked. Michael rose to his feet, evidently reading the look on Claire’s face, if nothing else.
Shane blurted out, “What the hell happened to you?” Under normal circumstances this might have made her feel really bad, but she was off that right now.
“Something’s wrong,” she said. “Didn’t anybody else feel that?”
They exchanged looks. “Feel what?” Michael asked.
“The—cold. It was like a wave . . . of cold?” Her words slowed down, because she wasn’t getting any reaction from them. “You didn’t feel it. How is that possible? Michael?” Because it was Michael’s house, and technically, she didn’t even live here anymore. Exactly. The house shouldn’t have communicated anything to her before it talked to him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Does it feel the same now?”
“Yes.” Claire still felt cold, cold enough that she had chills running through her body. She was surprised her breath didn’t smoke in the air. “Worse,” she managed to say, and Shane got over his shock about her burn and came to take her hands. She winced as the tender skin complained, but she was grateful for the warmth, too.
“You’re freezing,” he said, and grabbed a fleece blanket from the back of the couch, which he wrapped around her. “Damn, Claire. Maybe it’s the sunburn—”
“Not a—sunburn,” she said through chattering teeth as he led her to the table and sat her down. “It’s the house. It’s got to be the house!”
“I—don’t think it is,” Michael said, and slowly sank back into his chair. “I’d know, Claire; there’s no way I wouldn’t. This is something else.”
She shook her head and hugged the blanket closer, miserable both ways—her face burning hot, her body shaking with cold.
“Try to eat something,” Eve said, and loaded tacos on her plate. “How about something hot to drink?”
Claire nodded. The chill seemed to be sinking in deeper, drilling toward her bones. She had no idea what would happen when it got there, but it didn’t seem good. Not good at all.
She kept the blanket tight with her right hand and reached out for a taco with the left, hoping her shaking hand wouldn’t scatter the contents all over the table . . . and Shane grabbed her arm. “Look,” he said, before she could protest. “Look at the bracelet.”
It was Amelie’s bracelet, the one she wore clasped around her left wrist, the one she couldn’t remove, that reminded people who it was Claire worked for (and reminded Claire, every second).
It was supposed to be gold, but its center was now pale white, as if it had turned to crystal.
Or ice.
It was smoking in the air, so cold it was giving off its own mist.
“We need to get it off,” Shane said, and turned her wrist over, looking for a clasp. Claire tried to tell him there wasn’t one, but he wasn’t listening. “Michael, it’s cold, man. It’s really cold. Something’s really wrong.”
They were all out of their chairs now, gathered around her. Michael touched the bracelet, drew back, and locked gazes with Shane. “It doesn’t come off,” Michael said.
“I don’t give a crap if it’s not supposed to come off!” Shane snapped. “Help me!”
“It won’t do any good. It’s a Founder’s bracelet.” Michael grabbed Shane’s arm when Shane tried to yank on the bracelet. “Dude, listen! You can’t get it off! All we can do is get to Amelie. She can take it off.”
“Amelie,” Claire repeated, and tried to control her violent shaking so she could get the words out. The whole world seemed to be turning to ice, cold and toxic. “Something—wrong—with—Amelie—”
Shane glared at Michael. “Let go.” When Michael did, he kept on glaring. “Shouldn’t you know if something was wrong with Amelie, you being her demonic spawn and everything?”
“It’s not like that,” Michael said, although anger was starting to build in his blue eyes and in the set of his face. “I’m not her spawn.”
“Not arguing the demonic part? Whatever you call it. She made you a vampire. Can’t you tell if she’s in trouble?”
“You’re confusing vampires with Spider-Man,” Michael shot back, but he’d already left the fight and was pulling out his cell phone. A one-button press, and he was talking, but not to Shane. “Oliver. Are you with Amelie? No? Where is she?”
Whatever the answer, he snapped the phone shut without answering, locked eyes with Shane, and said, “Let’s go.”
“W-w-wait,” Claire managed to say, and grabbed for Shane’s arm. “Wh-wh-where—”
“My question, too. Where are you going? Because I’m going with,” Eve said, and jumped up to grab her patent leather skull purse.
“No, you’re not. Someone needs to stay with Claire.”
“Then she’s going with. Womenfolk don’t stay behind anymore, Mikey; it’s so last century,” Eve said, and Claire nodded. She thought she did, anyway; it was hard to tell, with all the shaking. “Right. Up you go, kiddo.”
3
The ride in Michael’s car felt like a nightmare. Eve had brought loads of blankets, and Claire was almost smothering under them, but she was still cold, and getting colder, as if her thermostat had gone drastically wrong. Her skin was turning white, her fingernails and lips blue.
She was starting to look . . . dead.
Even if she’d been trying to look where they were going, it wouldn’t have done any good; Michael’s car was vampire-standard, with ultratint on the windows. Human eyes couldn’t get anything but murky hints of lights through it, so she just kept her attention on taking another breath, and another.
“Hey, Michael?” she heard Eve say. “Like, soon, okay?”
“I’m already breaking the speed limit.”
“Go faster.”
A surge of acceleration pressed Claire back in her seat. Shane was holding her, but she couldn’t feel it. She’d stopped shivering now, which felt better, but she was also very, very tired, barely able to stay awake. At least the shaking had been something she could hold on to, but now there was nothing but cold, and silence. Everything seemed to be moving away from her, leaving her behind.
“Hey!” She felt something, a flash of heat against her skin,
and opened her eyes to see Shane’s face inches away. He looked scared. His hands were on her cheeks, trying to force heat into her. “Claire! Don’t close your eyes. Stay with me. Okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered. “Tired.”
“I see that. But don’t you go away from me, you hear me? Don’t you even think about it.” He stroked her skin, her hair, with hands that shook almost as much as she had before. “Claire?”
“Here.”
“I love you.” He said it quietly, almost a whisper, a secret between the two of them, and she felt a burst of what was almost warmth travel through her chest. “You hear me?”
She managed a nod, and thought she smiled.
Michael brought the car to a quick, sliding stop, and was out of the car before Claire could register that they’d arrived at their destination. “Hey!” Eve protested, and scrambled out after him. Shane opened the back and lifted Claire out in his arms—or rather, lifted the bundle of laundry that Claire felt like, wrapped in half a dozen blankets.
Moonlight fell blue-white over grass, trees, and headstones.
They were at Morganville’s official cemetery—Restland. “Crap,” Shane breathed. “Not my idea of a great night out, you know? Claire? Still with us?”
“Yes,” she said. She actually felt a little better, and didn’t know why. Not good, of course. But not going away anymore.
Ahead, she could see that Michael and Eve were making their way together through the maze of leaning tombstones, crosses, and marble statues. A big white mausoleum dominated the hill at the top, but they weren’t going that way—they veered off to the right.
Claire thought she knew where they were heading. “Sam,” she whispered. Shane pulled in a breath, let it out, and headed in that direction, too.
It had been months since Sam Glass, Michael’s grandfather, had died . . . given his life to save them all, really, but most especially Amelie. He was, as far as Claire knew, the only vampire buried here in the cemetery; he’d had a real service, real mourners, and he was maybe the only vampire Morganville had ever had who was universally liked and respected by both sides.