by Rachel Caine
“You’re being foolish,” Amelie said. “And disloyal to your friend.”
“Hey, lady, I’ve been bending over backward for years around here not to judge you bloodsuckers, no matter what kind of horrible things you did. Give me a break. And you know what? For a change, give me a little respect, too. Because I deserve that. We all do. All us poor, stupid humans.” Shane wasn’t entirely wrong, Claire had to admit, though he also wasn’t usually this blunt about it. But then, the vampires usually wouldn’t have let him say these things without reprisal. “Maybe we should all show a little good judgment and agree that vamps aren’t the safest thing in the world to have lurking around in your neighborhood—”
“Thanks for being on my side, bro,” Michael said.
“I’m not saying this is the right way to do it. But maybe it’s the right idea, keeping vamps and humans apart.” Shane shivered a little, as if he were cold, but Claire realized that his face was flushed and he was sweating. It wasn’t too hot in here—probably air-conditioned for the comfort of the guards. He really didn’t look good, Claire thought, and she took his hand. It felt hot—feverish. Was he sick? She could feel the tremors going through him, over and over.
“Shane? What’s wrong? You’re burning up!” Claire put the back of her hand against his forehead—or tried to. He knocked her arm away. It shocked her, and it surprised him, too. She saw the instant regret in his eyes, but when he tried to talk, he gagged. “Shane?”
“I need to get out,” he said. “Can’t stay here—” He couldn’t get the rest out, just kept gagging. His face looked gray and damp.
“Take him outside and let him have some fresh air,” Hannah said. “I’ll stay here with Eve. Nothing will harm her.”
Claire didn’t want to go; she didn’t want Eve to feel alone and abandoned. But something was clearly very wrong with Shane, and getting worse with every breath he took. She didn’t debate it any further. She just grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the light streaming in through the thick glass doors. When she tried the metal handle, it didn’t move. Locked. She knocked urgently on the glass, and the policeman outside finally opened it—but blocked her way. “Just a minute,” he said. “Where’s Chief Moses?”
“It’s okay, Bud,” Hannah called from behind him. “Let them out.”
He didn’t seem inclined, but he did step back, and Claire pulled Shane over the threshold and down the sidewalk, out into the bright, harsh sunlight and the dry desert air. He practically folded up once they reached the curb, and sat down hard there, his head in his hands. The tremors, though, were lessening, and as she stroked his hair she thought he was getting better. “Shane?” she asked. “Shane, what the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and gulped air. “God. I don’t know. It felt like I was burning up from the inside out. Maybe—maybe you’d better go back in, for Eve. I can’t, Claire. I just can’t.”
“Why not?”
He was definitely, inexplicably better out here, away from the mall and the vamps. And as he looked up, she saw the strange light in his eyes. It looked almost like fear.
“Because I want to kill them,” he said. “The vampires. I want to kill them all. It’s like what I’ve felt my whole life, but turned up to eleven. And if I go back in there, I don’t think I can control it.”
She stared at him, shocked, and he lifted his shoulders in a very small shrug. He still looked unnaturally flushed, and sweat pasted thin strings of hair to his forehead.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why. Please, don’t ask me to explain it, okay? Because I just can’t.”
But somehow she thought he could. She’d seen how he’d acted from time to time around Michael and the other vampires on the trip back. There was something wrong with him. Really wrong, in ways that scared them both, but Shane was trying to conceal and ignore it all.
It wasn’t the time to dig into it, though, and she shoved down her desire to interrogate him until this made some kind of sense, however twisted; he was right—she needed to go back. For Eve. For Michael.
For Myrnin, because if anyone knew where he was, Michael would.
She kissed Shane, and then she scrambled up and went back to the doors. The deputy—Bud?—didn’t harass her about it this time; he just silently unlocked them and let her back in, and she walked over to stand beside the spot where Eve and Michael were still kneeling near the fountain. They didn’t seem inclined to let go of each other, but Eve looked up and raised her eyebrows, silently asking the question.
“I don’t know,” Claire said. “But he feels better out there. It was almost like claustrophobia or something.”
“Weird,” Eve said. “Because that boy never hesitated to crawl into small spaces, and this isn’t exactly restrictive. It’s a mall.”
“Maybe it’s the high ratio of vampires,” Michael said, and managed a smile, though it was thin. “I mean, if I wasn’t already on Team Fang, I might be a little intimidated.”
“Shane? Intimidated? Better be glad he’s out there and not in here making you eat those words,” Eve said. She shook her head. “No, something’s not right with him. It’s just wrong, the way he reacted. Wrong and weird and wrong, also. Claire, keep an eye on him, okay?”
“I will,” she said, and hesitated for a long few seconds before she glanced at Michael. “Um—I have to ask, because I don’t see them, but about Myrnin, and Jesse—?”
“They’re fine,” Michael said. “Well, you know. It’s Myrnin, so fine probably isn’t so accurate, but she’s keeping him calm in one of the rooms that way.” He nodded toward the darkness, the northeast corner where some dark, shuttered spaces lurked. “He’s having a hard time accepting . . . the situation.” He tapped the collar with one fingertip and gave Hannah a quick glance. “You know how he gets when he feels trapped.”
Oh, she knew, and she felt heartsick at the idea of how Myrnin, of all people, would have reacted to wearing a shock collar. Hannah would probably have had to replace the batteries in her control unit several times over, because one thing about Myrnin, he was stubborn, and he just did not give up. Jesse was probably holding him back with all of her strength to keep him from charging out here—and no doubt not for the first, or the last, time.
She refrained from asking anything more, mainly because she was acutely aware of Hannah standing there, and she really didn’t trust Hannah at all now. She was loyal to Fallon, obviously, or she wouldn’t be holding the button for the shock collars. It wouldn’t be wise to say too much in Hannah’s hearing, since everything would end up reported back to the Daylight Foundation.
But she did turn to Hannah and ask her a question that seemed perfectly obvious. “You can’t keep a bunch of vampires in here like this forever,” she said. “No matter what kind of little training devices you put on them. What are you planning to do with them?”
Hannah never once looked at her directly. She was watching Amelie, Claire realized—watching for any sign of trouble from the vampire queen. But Amelie didn’t seem to be inclined, yet, to give any orders to her people. “We plan to help them,” she said. “That’s all. We plan to help them get better.”
“Yeah,” Eve said. “You’re helping, all right. What is this, Vampire Reeducation Camp? Are you planning on helping them learn to live without blood? Vegan vampires?”
The silence that greeted this was so deep that it made Claire’s already tense muscles ache and tighten. There was something in Hannah’s carefully controlled expression that made her feel sick and scared. “It’s probably time to go now before this gets any messier,” Hannah said. “Wrap it up, kids.”
Eve raised her head from Michael’s shoulder. There were tears in her eyes, but she wasn’t crying. She was too angry to cry. “I’m not leaving him.”
“Eve, she’s right. You can’t stay,” he said in a gentle voice. He brushed his hand across her sleek black hair, let it drift through his fingers, and touched her lips just as softly. “You have to go, E
ve. You wouldn’t be safe here.”
“Why not? Aren’t they feeding you?”
“They’re feeding us. I’ll be fine,” he said, and kissed her. “Eve, I’ll be fine. Just go, okay? Claire, take her. Please.”
Claire didn’t want to, but she could see that he was serious; when she hesitated, he fixed her with a calm, steady stare until she moved forward and put her hand under Eve’s arm to get her to her feet.
“No,” Eve said. “No, I’m not going, Claire. I can’t—we can’t just leave him here . . .”
“Maybe not, but we also can’t get him out,” Claire said. The words tasted horrible in her mouth, like ashes and iron, and she had to swallow hard to continue. “Not yet. But we will, Eve. I swear to you, this isn’t over.”
Hannah said, “It is for now. Michael, you move back to the line. Go on.”
He got up and walked back to where Oliver was waiting at the edge of the tiles—exactly opposite from where Amelie was standing in her glowing white suit. Oliver put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. Maybe he meant to just hold him back, but it looked to Claire like . . . comfort? Odd, if so. Oliver wasn’t much on empathy. Then again, the look on Michael’s face—that lost, hollow, helpless look—would have moved anybody.
Except Hannah, apparently, who marched them straight to the door. As she opened it, though, Amelie said, without moving from where she stood, “Thank you for allowing Eve to see him, Chief Moses. I will not forget your kindness.” It sounded unmistakably chilling, and Hannah’s shoulders stiffened for a second, then deliberately relaxed.
“I’m sure you won’t,” Hannah said. “Anybody moves, everybody gets shocked down to the ground. Clear?”
“Yes,” Amelie said. “You have made yourself very clear indeed.”
None of the vamps moved. It was like looking at a room full of pale, silent statues, but the hate in their eyes was like nothing Claire had ever seen before. No wonder Michael hadn’t wanted Eve to stay. That kind of trapped fury didn’t bother with fine distinctions, and there would be some in that mall who didn’t care whom they killed . . . as long as they got to vent that rage on a human.
Just as the door closed, Claire heard Amelie say, soft as a whisper, “Don’t worry. We will see you very soon.”
The sunlight felt as cold as winter.
Shane was pacing near the cruiser, looking pale and agitated, and he was rubbing his arm as if it hurt him. He stopped and looked at them as Claire walked toward him. “What the hell happened?” He didn’t wait for an answer, though; he grabbed Eve’s other arm and helped to hold her up. “Dammit, Eve—”
“I want to go back,” Eve said. She sounded odd and shaky. “They’re going to kill all of them, I know they are, they’re going to do something terrible to Michael. I have to go back.” She tried to pull away, but Shane and Claire held on to her. Hannah opened the back door of the cruiser. She still wasn’t looking at them—looking anywhere but at them, in fact. Her face could have been carved from stone. “Please, don’t do this, Shane, please let me go—”
“You can’t even come close to getting in there again and you know it,” Shane said. “Eve. You can’t, and Michael doesn’t want you pulling something crazy like that. Come on.”
He put her into the car and walked around to block her from sliding out the other door; Claire took the space on one side of Eve as he crowded in on the other. She wasn’t fighting them, but she wasn’t helping, either. At least she’s not angry, Claire thought, but she wasn’t sure that was an improvement. No tears, no yelling. Just this . . . silence. And then there was Shane, still acting twitchy on Eve’s left, frowning and rubbing his forearm and snapping, as Hannah took the driver’s seat, “Can we just get the hell out of here already?”
That made Hannah give him a long glance in the mirror, but she started the engine. Shane’s tense body language seemed to ease up a little as the car pulled away from the blank, brooding exterior of the mall. Bitter Creek was a good name for it, Claire thought. Definitely not a happy kind of place.
It worried her that she hadn’t seen Myrnin at all.
THREE
Hannah took them home to the Glass House.
It looked different. And it wasn’t just the time Claire had spent away from it that had made it that way. Someone had painted it. Done a good job, too—the exterior was a neat, sparkling white, instead of the faded, peeling mess that had been there before. The trim was a crisp dark blue. It looked almost respectable. The lawn was even neatly mowed.
“What the hell?” She blurted it out before she meant to, and sent Shane a disbelieving look. He sent it right back, amplified. So, he hadn’t been on the work crew, then.
Neither had Eve, apparently, because she gulped, sat up straighter, and said, “Um, what is that?”
“The town funded a renewal program for all the remaining Founder Houses,” Hannah said. “To preserve our history. Don’t tell me you’re not pleased. It looks a hell of a lot better than the tumbledown mess it was before.”
It did. The railings were straight, the warped boards had been replaced on the porch, and the windows actually sparkled. At the top of the peaked roof, a new weather vane in the shape of a sunrise (ugh) creaked and turned in the direction of the breeze, and as Hannah opened her car door, Claire heard the thin, whispering sound of wind chimes. Someone had mounted a set of them at the edge of the porch, along with a large potted plant that looked new and healthy.
The place was spiffy and pretty and not theirs.
“Tell me you didn’t touch anything inside the house,” Eve said. “Because I swear I’ll cut somebody. We liked the house the way we left it! That is our home!” What she didn’t say, but Claire thought she almost heard, was It’s Michael’s home. And her heart ached for him, and for Eve.
“Nobody went inside the house,” Hannah assured them. “This was an exterior renovation project. I thought you’d be pleased.”
“You could have asked first,” Eve said, but after the initial shock, some of her dislike was fading. And yeah, the house did look fantastic—restored to all its old Victorian glory, neat and sound. Claire realized it only underscored how little they’d taken care of the place . . . but then, they’d had other priorities, like staying alive. And none of them was much on chores.
“Let’s just get inside,” Shane said. “Hey, Hannah? Tell the Daylighters not to do us any more favors. I don’t want to owe them.”
Hannah didn’t comment on that. She just opened the back door of the cruiser, and Shane piled out, followed by Eve, and last of all, Claire.
Walking up the steps was a whole different experience. The paint was still new enough to make her dizzy, and its smell mingled with the aroma of fresh-cut grass and new plants in the warm desert air. “Guess we’ll have to start watering the damn lawn now,” Shane said, and fumbled for his keys. “So much easier to take care of when it was a wreck. Watch the paint on the door. I’m pretty sure it’s still wet.”
As Claire followed them over the threshold, she felt a shiver of power crawl over her . . . the house, waking up from a sleep, coming alive, welcoming them home. It felt like a fresh blast of cool air, and also, weirdly, like hands stroking her hair. She shut and double-locked the door—ingrained habit, in Morganville—and leaned against the wood to breathe in deeply.
Inside, it still smelled familiar. Old wood, dust, paper—not a clean smell, but a good one. The interior walls needed painting just as much as those outside had; they were smudged, scratched, and dented from hard use. None of the four of them was much on surface cleaning, and as Claire glanced into the side parlor, she saw that the oval coffee table—replaced relatively recently, after half their furniture had gotten smashed in a fight—had a blurring of dust over its surface. The old Victorian sofa looked as saggy and tired as ever.
Shane and Eve had already wandered off down the hall, Shane heading for the more modern, overstuffed couch in the living room and Eve’s clunky boots echoing on the stairs that led up to their rooms. Clair
e went a few steps in, and just . . . stopped. She closed her eyes and felt a peculiar, warm kind of peace sink in.
Home.
She felt almost as if the house itself were saying it to her: This is where you belong. She remembered leaving here for her brief journey to MIT in the predawn darkness, carrying her bags down and trying not to wake up any of the others to let them know she was leaving. She remembered the feelings of excitement, of worry, of longing, of fear, of anguish . . . and of devastation.
It felt healing to be back.
It felt right.
“Claire?”
She opened her eyes. Shane was standing at the end of the hall, and his dark eyes were full of concern. She smiled at him and saw the tension ease. “I’m home,” she said, and came into his arms. They closed around her, strong and warm. “I’m home, Shane. We’re home.”
“Yeah,” he said, and let out a long, slow breath. “Home. But it’s not exactly what we left behind, is it?”
“The house, or Morganville?”
“Either one.”
“Seems the same in here.”
“Not quite,” he said. “Not without Michael.”
He was right about that.
* * *
Eve didn’t want to eat, but Shane found enough stuff in the kitchen to pull together a meal of spaghetti and meat sauce, although the meat sauce tasted suspiciously like it had a chili-type origin. Canned chili, at that. Eve forked it mechanically into her mouth, chewed and swallowed, which was about as much as Claire thought they could reasonably expect from her just now. She looked hollow-eyed and exhausted and just . . . empty.
Shane tried to ask her things that normally would have gotten a snappy Eve-style comeback, but she either ignored them or responded with shrugs, until he finally put down his fork and said, “So, Eve, what’s your plan, then? Sit there and look sad and depressed until someone just feels so bad about your bruised little fee-fees that they give Michael back?”