by Rachel Caine
“Whoa, whoa, you can barely stand up,” Eve said, and managed to get her settled again. “Claire, would you check on Michael? See if he’s okay?”
In other words, there were questions Shane and Eve were about to ask, personal questions. Claire nodded and went upstairs. The bathroom door was closed. She knocked softly.
“Michael?”
No answer. She tried the handle. Locked.
Claire turned at what sounded like footsteps down the hall, but she saw no one. She didn’t hear the door unlock, but when she looked back, the bathroom door was open, and Michael was standing about two inches away from her.
She stumbled backward. Instead of just washing up, he’d showered; his hair was damp and curling and darker than usual, and he was wearing a towel around his waist. There was a lot more of Michael on display than she was used to, and it was . . . impressive.
Claire backed away, all the way to the wall.
“Sorry,” he said. Not as if he really was. He sounded annoyed, stressed, and jittery. “She’s still here.” It wasn’t a question, but Claire nodded anyway. “She can’t stay. We need to get her out of here.”
“I don’t think she’s in any shape to go,” Claire offered. “She seemed pretty hysterical. Shane and Eve are—”
“I can still smell her blood,” Michael interrupted her. “I washed it off of me. I took off my clothes. I showered. None of that matters, I can still—she has to go. Now.”
“What’s wrong with you? I thought you’d—” She hesitated, then made a drinking motion.
“I did.” Michael rubbed his face with both hands. “Guess I burned it off tonight at the show. I’m hungry, Claire.”
It cost him a lot to say it. Claire gulped, and nodded. “Wait here.”
She went downstairs, past where Shane and Eve were still earnestly talking with Miranda, and into the kitchen. At the very back of the bottom shelf of the refrigerator sat some bottles that might have been full of beer, and weren’t. There were three of them. She grabbed one without looking too closely at it and made sure it was concealed against her side as she passed the little downstairs group. Nobody really looked her way; they were too intent on keeping their own secrets.
Michael was still waiting, leaning against the bathroom doorframe, arms folded. He straightened when he saw what she had in her hand. She gave it to him silently. Michael never took his eyes off her as he popped the cap with his thumbnail and lifted the cold bottle to his lips. The contents moved more like syrup than blood, and Claire almost gagged.
Michael did gag. But he swallowed it. And kept on drinking until the bottle was empty.
His blue eyes flushed hot red, and then cleared back to their normal color.
She saw something like horror go through him. “I didn’t just do that in front of you.”
“Uh—yeah. You did.” And there had definitely been some kind of challenge in it, too. Some kind of come-on, even. Which was beyond yuck and creepy, and yet . . .
And yet.
Michael wiped his lips with the back of his hand, looked down at the faint smear, and went back to the washbasin to rinse it off.
He stared into the mirror at himself for so long, Claire thought he’d forgotten she was there, and then he said, “Thanks.”
Claire tried to think of something not totally idiotic to say. “Pretty disgusting, isn’t it? When it’s cold?” That wasn’t it.
Luckily, Michael was relieved to have any kind of conversational lifeline, after that weird moment. “Yeah,” he said. “But it keeps the edge off. That’s what’s important.” He rinsed out the bottle carefully, then threw it away and took in a deep breath. “I’ll get dressed. Be there in a second.”
It was a dismissal, but a nice one, and Claire took it at face value this time, and went back to the living room.
Where Shane and Eve were standing together, heads cocked at identical angles, staring.
“What’s going on?” Claire whispered.
“Shhh,” both Shane and Eve hissed, eerily in unison.
Because Miranda was talking in a strange monotone voice, and she looked . . . dead. Unconscious. Only talking.
“I see the feast,” she was saying. “So much anger . . . so much lying. All dead, walking dead, falling down. It’s spreading. It’ll kill us all.”
Claire felt a hot snap of alarm. Walking dead, falling down. It’s spreading. Miranda had psychic episodes— Claire knew that. It was part of the reason Eve let her hang around from time to time. Sometimes her visions were fake, but a lot of the time, they were as serious as a heart attack, and Claire somehow knew this one was real.
She was talking about the disease infecting the vampires, and she was talking about it spreading to humans. No, that can’t happen. Can it? They hadn’t even really been able to pinpoint what the disease was, only what it did, and what it did was erode the vampires’ sanity, carving steadily until what was left was unable to function at all.
The first thing to go—for all the vampires of Morganville—had been the ability to reproduce. To create new vampires. Only Amelie still had the strength, and creating Michael had almost destroyed her.
It’s spreading. Claire thought of all the humans in Morganville, all the families, all the young people who’d been in the coffee shop tonight, and felt cold and unsteady.
It couldn’t be true.
“Feast,” Miranda said again. “You’re all fools, all fools—don’t let him trick you. It’s not just three—it’s more—”
“Who?” Eve sank down next to Miranda’s chair and put a hand on her shoulder. “Mir, who are you talking about?”
“Elder,” she said, and now there were tears leaking down Miranda’s pale cheeks. “Oh no. Oh no . . . they’re turning. They’re all so hungry, can’t stop them—”
Michael, who was coming down the steps, paused. He looked calm again, but worried. “What’s she talking about?”
“Shhh!” This time, all three of them shushed at the same time. Eve bent closer to Miranda. “Honey, are you talking about the vampires? What’s going to happen with the vampires?”
“Dying,” Miranda whispered. “So many dying. We think we’re safe but we’re not. They won’t listen— they won’t see us—” She restlessly turned the silver bracelet on her wrist and twisted in her chair. “He’s doing it. He’s making it happen.”
“Oliver?” Eve asked. Because Oliver was the only male vampire Elder on the town council.
But Miranda shook her head. She didn’t say another word, but she cried, cried so hard she shook herself out of her trance and clung to Eve like a thin little reed in the wind.
“Bishop,” Michael said. They all looked at him. “It’s not Oliver. She’s talking about Bishop. He’s going to try to destroy Morganville.”
Miranda ended up sleeping on the couch, and when Claire came downstairs the next morning, she found the girl huddled in a ball under mountains of blankets, still shivering but fast asleep. She looked even more frail. Her pale skin was translucent, and there were dark, exhausted circles around her eyes.
Claire felt sorry for her, but it was a distant kind of sorry—Miranda didn’t really invite a lot of devotion. She didn’t have any friends to speak of, or so Eve said; people tolerated her, but they didn’t exactly enjoy her company. That was hard on the kid, but Claire could understand it. Miranda was a mixture of denial and outright creepiness, and even in Morganville, she was going to have a hard time fitting in.
No wonder she defended the vampire who was feeding on her. He was probably the only one who really showed her any kind of affection.
Claire paused to tuck the blankets more firmly around the girl’s trembling frame before she went into the kitchen to make coffee and toast. As breakfasts went, it was lonely and basic, but the sun was barely up and none of the others were what you might call morning people.
There were times when signing up for early classes seemed like a really bad idea.
When the phone rang, Claire nearly ju
mped out of her skin. She leaped for the extension hanging on the wall by the kitchen door and got it before the second earsplitting jangle. “Hello?”
There was a pause on the other end, and then her mother said, “Claire?”
“Mom! Hi—what’s wrong?”
“Why should anything be wrong? Why can’t I just call because I wanted to talk to my daughter?” Oh, great. Now her mother sounded agitated and defensive. “I know it’s early, but I wanted to catch up with you before you went off to class for the day.”
Claire sighed and leaned against the wall, idly kicking at the linoleum floor. “Okay. How are you and Dad settling in? Getting all unpacked?”
“Just fine,” her mother said, in so false a tone that Claire went very, very still. “It’s just—an adjustment, that’s all. Such a small town and all.”
“Yeah,” Claire agreed quietly. “It’s an adjustment.” She had no idea what her mother and father knew about Morganville by now, but they had to be getting some kind of—what would they call it? Orientation? Morganville was nothing if not efficient about that, she suspected. “Have you—met some people?”
“We went to a nice getting-to-know-you party downtown,” Mom said. “Mr. Bishop and his daughter took us.”
Claire had to bite her lip to hold back a moan. Bishop? And Amelie? Oh God. “What happened?”
“Oh, nothing, really. It was a cocktail party. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks, a little conversation. There was a presentation on the history of—of—” With shocking suddenness, Claire’s mother burst into tears. “I swear, we didn’t know—we didn’t know or we wouldn’t have sent you to this awful place, oh, honey—”
Claire could barely swallow around the lump in her throat. “Don’t cry, Mom. It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay now.” She was lying, but she had to. The sound of her mother breaking apart was just too hard. “Look, you’ve met Amelie, right?”
Sniffles on the other end. “Yes, she seemed nice.”
Nice wasn’t how Claire would have put it. “Well, Amelie’s the most powerful person in Morganville, and she’s definitely on our side.” An exaggeration, but it was the best she could do to describe the situation in simple terms. “So there’s really nothing to be worried about, Mom. I work for Amelie. She has some responsibility for me, and for you, to make sure we’re safe. Okay?”
“Okay.” It was wan and muffled, but at least it was agreement. “I was just so worried about your father. He didn’t look well, not well at all. I wanted him to go to the hospital, but he said he was fine—”
Claire had a cold second of flashback to Miranda saying, Please don’t send me there. You don’t know what they’ll do. . . . She’d been talking about the hospital. “But he’s okay?”
“He seems all right today.” Claire’s mom blew her nose, and when she came back to the phone, she sounded clearer and stronger. “I’m sorry to lay this on you, honey. I just had no idea—it was so strange to think that you’d been here all this time and never said a word to us about—the situation.” Meaning, the vampires.
“Well, to be honest, I didn’t think you’d believe me,” Claire said. “And out-of-town calls are monitored. They told you that, right?”
“Yes, they did. So you were protecting us.” Her mom laughed shakily. “Parents are supposed to protect their children, Claire. We’ve done a bang-up job of that, haven’t we? We really thought that it would be so much safer for you here than off in Massachusetts or California on your own. . . .”
“It’s okay. I’ll get there someday.”
They moved the conversation to easier things—to unpacking, to the vase that had gotten broken during the move (“Honestly, I hated that thing anyway—your aunt gave it to us for Christmas that year, remember? ”), to how Claire intended to spend her day. By the end of it, Mom seemed more or less stable, and Claire’s coffee was hopelessly cold. So was her toast.
“Claire,” Mom said. “About moving out of that house—”
“I’m not moving,” Claire said. “I’m sorry, Mom. I know it’s going to upset Dad, but these are my friends, and this is where I belong. I’m staying.”
There was a short silence on the other end, and then her mother said, very softly, “I’m so proud of you.”
She hung up with a soft click. Claire stood for a moment, tears prickling in her eyes, and then said to the silent line, “I love you.”
And then she picked up her stuff and went to class.
Chapter 8
Days passed, and for a change, there were no further emergencies. Normal life—or what passed for it, anyway—set in. Claire went to class, Eve went to work, Michael taught guitar lessons—he was a lot more in demand since the concert at Common Grounds—and Shane . . . Shane slacked, although Claire thought he seemed preoccupied.
It finally dawned on her that he was thinking about Saturday, and the invitation. And that he didn’t want to talk to her about it at all.
“So what should I do?” she asked Eve. “I mean, can’t he just call in sick for the party or something?”
“You’re kidding,” Eve said. “You think they’d buy an excuse? If you get an invitation to something like this, you go. End of story.”
“But—” Claire, who was getting glasses out of the cabinet while Eve put out plates, nearly dropped everything. “But that means that creepy little bi—”
“Language, missy.”
“—witch is going to make him go with her!” That made her blindly furious, and not entirely because of how upset Shane had been before. It was the whole idea of Shane going along with it. Of Ysandre putting those pale, thin fingers on his chest, feeling his heartbeat.
Shane hadn’t said a word to her about it. Not a single word. And she didn’t know how to help.
Eve stared at her thoughtfully for a few seconds before she said, “Well, she’s not the only one who’s going, of course. Shane won’t be all by himself.”
“What?”
“Michael’s going, too. I recognized the invitation when it came in. Didn’t open it, though.”
Still, Eve had every reason to expect that Michael would at least ask her to go with him. Claire, on the other hand, was completely shut out.
Which made her irrationally angry again, and this time for herself. You’re jealous, she realized. Because you don’t want him going anywhere without you.
She so did not want to be that person, but there it was. And she had no idea what to do about it.
When she set Shane’s glass of Coke down in front of him, she did it with probably a little too much emphasis; he glanced up at her with a question-mark expression. Eve had already settled into her chair across the table. Michael wasn’t home, but Eve didn’t seem bothered about it this time. Maybe he’d talked to her about where he was going.
Nice to know somebody’s talking, Claire thought.
“What?” Shane asked her, and took a drink. “Did I forget to say thanks? Because, thanks. Best Coke ever. Did you make it yourself? Special recipe?”
“Got any plans for Saturday night?” she asked. “I was thinking maybe we could go to the movies, or—”
Too transparent. Shane knew instantly, and Eve choked on her forkful of microwave lasagna. The silence stretched. Claire poked at her own meal, just for something to do.
“I can’t,” Shane finally said. “I guess you know why.”
“You’re going to that ball thing,” Claire said. “With Bishop’s—friend.”
“I don’t exactly have a choice.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Of course I’m sure—why are we talking about this exactly?”
“Because—” She stuck the fork into her lasagna so deep it scraped the plate. “Because Michael’s going. I guess Eve is, too. And what am I supposed to do, exactly?”
“You’re kidding. Are you on crack? Because I thought you just implied that you wanted to go to the scary vampire thing. Which, by the way, I don’t.”
Claire tried not to glare
. “I thought you hated her. Ysandre. But you’re going with her.”
“I do. And I am.” Shane shoveled food into his mouth, a blatant excuse to end the conversation, or at least avoid it.
Eve cleared her throat. “Maybe I should, I don’t know, leave? Because this is starting to sound like one of those reality shows I don’t want to be in. Maybe you guys want to take turns in the confessional booth.”
Shane and Claire ignored her. “I didn’t tell you because there’s nothing you can do,” Shane said. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”
“Stop talking with your mouth full.”
“Dude, you asked!”
“I—” Claire felt a sudden burn of tears in her eyes. “I just wanted you to talk to me, that’s all. But I guess you can’t even do that.”
She picked up her uneaten lasagna and drink and took it upstairs to her room. It was her turn to throw a fit, slam a door, and sulk, and dammit, she was going to do it well.
She burst into tears the second the door was closed, put everything down on the dresser, and collapsed into a soggy heap in the corner. She hadn’t cried like this in a long time, not over something so stupid, but she just couldn’t—didn’t—
There was a knock at the door. “Claire?”
“Go away, Shane.” Her heart wasn’t in it, though, and he must have heard that. He opened the door. She kind of expected him to rush to her and sweep her up in a hug, but instead Shane just . . . stood there. Looking like some mixture of annoyed and confused.
“Why is this about you?” he asked her. It was a perfectly reasonable question, so absolutely logical it made her gasp and cry harder. “I have to get dressed up in a stupid outfit. I have to pretend I don’t want to shove a stake in this bitch’s heart. You don’t.”
“But you’re going! Why are you going? You—I thought you hated her—”
“Because she said she’d kill you if I didn’t show up. And because I know it’s not a threat. She’d do it. Happy now?”
He closed the door quietly. Claire couldn’t get her breath. The hurt in her chest seemed to be smothering her, as if every heartbeat might be her last. She heard herself make a sound, but she couldn’t tell if it was tears or anger or anguish.