Last Breath tmv-11

by Rachel Caine

  Simple, but fun.

  Eve hugged her, hard. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “What happened to the old frosting?”

  Shane, sitting at the table, raised his hand. “Took one for the team.”

  “Jesus, you ate it? All of it?”

  “Nah.” He held up the bowl that was sitting in front of him. There was still about half a cup left. “Couldn’t finish it all.”

  Eve blinked and looked at Claire, who shrugged and said, “I always thought he was sweet.”

  The next day, they were all up early—hideously early, according to Eve, who looked hollow-eyed and desperate as she glugged down three cups of coffee before heading up to hog the bathroom for an hour and a half. Claire had wisely done all her showering and getting ready before Eve was even up.

  She hadn’t seen Michael at all yet, but Shane was up, yawning and looking almost as out of it as Eve. “Why are we doing this again?” he asked. “And where are all those doughnut things I bought?”

  “Eaten,” Claire said. “Besides, you ate about a pound of frosting last night. No sugar for you.”

  This time she got the finger, which was amusing; he never, ever shot it at her. She gave it right back, which made him smile. “So wrong. So what’s Slave Driver Eve got us doing today?”

  “We have to take the cake and flowers over to the ballroom,” Claire said, ticking it off on her fingers. “Decorate the tables. Put out the plates and forks. Get the punch ready and set up the plasma table . . .”

  “You cannot be serious.”

  “Relax—we’re not managing the plasma table. The blood bank is doing that.”

  “Great. My two pints are going to be party food.”

  “Stay on target, Shane. What are you wearing?”

  “Relax, Fashion Police. I’m dressing up. I’ve got a tuxedo T-shirt and everything.” When her mouth opened in horror, he grinned. “Kidding. I’ll look okay. Oh, and I’m wearing a turtleneck, so don’t get on to me about the bruises not going with my shoes or anything.” The bruises were, Claire had to admit, spectacular today, though his voice sounded more normal. “I promise, no lime green suits.” He yawned. “I guess I’d better go bang on Michael’s door. Dude’s going to be late to his own party, and Eve would stake him right through the heart. Messy.”

  He took his coffee and ambled away, and Claire found herself standing there smiling like an idiot. She didn’t know when it had happened, but something had changed in Shane—something important. It wasn’t a big shift, from most perspectives, but he seemed . . . more responsible now. Less the rebel slacker and more someone who liked being thought of that way.

  Progress.

  She sucked down the rest of her coffee, fast, and washed up the mugs in the sink. She was wrist-deep in warm, soapy water when Shane’s voice came from behind her, calling her name. She looked around, and saw him standing in the doorway, holding it open. He looked . . .

  Odd was her first thought, but in the next second, she amended it to scared. She hadn’t seen him scared very often.

  “Shane?” She left everything where it was and reached for a towel to wipe her hands.

  “You’d better come out here,” he said. “We’ve got visitors.”

  “Who . . . ?” It wasn’t even eight a.m. and someone had come calling? So not right.

  “Sheriff Moses and Dick Morrell,” Shane said. “They’ve got Michael with him. He never came home last night.”

  “Oh God,” Claire breathed. “Is he okay?”

  “Depends,” he said. “Come on.”

  She threw the towel at the counter and didn’t care where it landed as she followed him out, down the hall, and into the parlor room at the front, where Hannah Moses and Morganville’s mayor, Richard Morrell, were waiting. Hannah was dressed in her crisp blue police uniform, holding the peaked cap under her arm; she was a tall African-American woman with a scar on her face that she’d earned in Afghanistan combat, and she was one of the most capable and practical people Claire knew. Richard Morrell was wearing a suit and tie, but the tie was pulled loose and it seemed like yesterday’s clothing, from the wrinkles and the dark circles beneath his eyes. He and Hannah were both kind of young—under thirty, at least—and even though Shane had never gotten over Richard being Monica’s brother, Claire thought he was sort of all right.

  They both nodded at Claire as she came into the room.

  Michael didn’t. He was sitting down in one of the chairs, elbows on his knees, hunched over. Like Richard, he didn’t look like he’d changed out of the jeans and dark blue shirt he’d been wearing yesterday. He raised his head to glance at Claire, then returned to studying the carpet.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked breathlessly. She’d expected it was something to do with Michael, but he didn’t seem to be in custody, exactly. Besides, handcuffs were more Shane’s style.

  Eve came in right behind her, still in a black silk kimono robe embroidered with cranes; her hair was up under a towel turban. She went to Michael and touched him on the shoulder. He looked up and smiled wanly, put his paler hand over hers, and straightened up in the chair.

  Hannah cleared her throat. “I need to ask you all some questions,” she said. “About a missing vampire.”

  Claire saw Shane’s reaction, and imagined she’d made the same half-guilty start. Someone must have seen him snooping, or heard them talking . . . but they hadn’t gotten involved. They hadn’t! Great, now we’re guilty even when we didn’t do anything.

  “We don’t know anything about it,” Claire said, before Hannah could continue. “We overheard it at the grocery store, that’s all. The only thing we know is that whoever the vampire is, he’s been missing for two weeks and the checks aren’t getting signed.”

  Richard Morrell frowned at her. So did Hannah, just a little. “What grocery store?”

  “The . . . Food King?” Too late, Claire realized that she’d gone entirely the wrong direction. “Oh. So . . . not him?”

  “Separate case,” Hannah said, “but similar circumstances, as it happens. We’re looking into Mr. Barrett’s disappearance, but we have a more pressing issue now. He was the fourth vampire to go missing in the last three weeks, and now there’s a fifth.”

  “It’s Naomi,” Michael said. “Nobody’s seen her since she visited us here. We’re the last people who saw her.” He didn’t say alive, but Claire understood what he meant. It was possible that Naomi, like the other four vampires, had been killed.

  No wonder Hannah was tense, and Richard was losing sleep. Dead vampires in Morganville were a very, very serious problem—for humans.

  “I need you each to tell me exactly where you’ve been since then,” Hannah said, and took out a pad and pen. “Eve. Go first.”

  Eve clutched her robe closed, even though it was tightly tied, and her dark eyes widened. “You think I—”

  “I don’t think anything, except that you need to establish your movements so I can eliminate you, fast. You know that if something is going on, Amelie will come down hard on whoever is responsible. Let’s make sure you’re not on that list.”

  “But I didn’t—we wouldn’t—”

  “Just tell her where you’ve been,” Michael said. “Eve. It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

  But looking at him, at the tense set of his body and the worried look in his blue eyes . . . Claire wasn’t so sure.

  SEVEN

  CLAIRE

  The interrogation—because that was what it was, no matter what anyone said—took about an hour. One by one, Eve, Claire, and Shane told Hannah where they’d been and what they’d done, hour by hour, since they’d last seen Naomi sitting here in the parlor.

  Hannah had made notes, but her face had remained impassive; she didn’t give any hints about what she thought about the whole thing, none at all. She asked more questions of Eve than she did of Shane or Claire, and after she’d left, Eve collapsed on the sofa, buried her face in her hands, and said, “They think I did it.”

  “N
o, they don’t,” Michael said. He sat beside her and put his arm around her. “It’s just that you—you were pretty angry about her.”

  “They suspect all of us,” Shane said. His voice was flat, his expression so tense that his jaw looked sharp. “Us in particular, I mean. But after us, everybody else with a pulse. Maybe that’s why—” He shut his mouth with a snap, eyes widening, and Claire bit her lip. He’d almost blurted it out.

  As it was, Michael said, “Why what?”

  “Why they’re nervous,” Claire put in quickly. Probably too quickly. “About the wedding, I mean.”

  Michael stared at her, and she suddenly knew he knew she was lying. Her pulse was too fast, for one thing. He’d once told her that he could tell when she was lying, and even if he’d been kidding her, he had an instinct for these things. A killer instinct. “Something’s going on with you two, and don’t tell me I’m imagining it,” he said. “First Shane shows up choked half to death—”

  “Dude, it’s not that bad!”

  “—and now this. You know something. You’re hiding something.”

  Even Eve was looking at Claire now, not quite ready to believe but obviously wondering. “She wouldn’t do that,” she told Michael. “Would you, CB?”

  “She’s not hiding anything,” Shane said. That was a relief, because Shane was a much better liar. “She’s just worried. The vamps are acting weird. Trust me, being worried is a survival instinct right about now. Go on, tell me I’m wrong, Mikey.”

  Michael was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. “I can’t,” he admitted. “Something’s going on there, too. What, I don’t know; they don’t exactly keep me in the loop. But whatever it is, they’re closing ranks.” He fidgeted with the end of Eve’s satin belt. “I’m worried, guys. I’m worried about you. I’m worried about us.”

  Shane sat down in the armchair Michael had vacated, but he mirrored his best friend’s posture almost exactly—elbows on knees, leaning forward. Intense. “Okay, I need to know something. Seriously.”

  Michael raised his eyebrows and nodded.

  “I need to know you’re going to stand with us if it comes to a fight. Me and Claire and Eve. I need you to say it, right now, because my feeling is that this is going to go real bad, real fast. I can’t be worrying about whether or not you’ve got our backs.”

  Michael stood up. It was a vampire move, sudden and shocking, and in the blink of an eye, he was looming over Shane, and he had Shane’s T-shirt bunched in his fist, lifting him half out of the chair. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Shane! Have I ever not had your back? I had your back when you tried to kill me. I had your back when you were locked in a cage. I’ve had your back every single time. What do I have to do to make you believe I’m on your side, be an asshole like your dad? Well, I can do that. Maybe if I punch you a few times, you’ll be convinced.”

  He let Shane drop back down in his chair, and walked out, back stiff. Furious.

  Shane sat, stunned, hands clutching at the armrests. He exchanged a look with Eve, and they both stood up at once. “No,” Shane said. “I did it. Let me fix it.”

  He went off after Michael. Eve chewed her lip and said, “Well, we’re either going to see half the house destroyed, or their bromance is going to go all the way.” She gave a shaky laugh, one that was dangerously close to hysteria. “God. What is happening? Claire—”

  Claire hugged her. It was instinctive, and it was the right thing to do; Eve’s tension slowly relaxed, and she hugged her back, fiercely. “It’s going to be okay,” Claire said, very quietly. “I don’t know how, but it will. Just—trust me. Please. Because Michael’s right—there are things I can’t tell you, but it wouldn’t help if you knew them. You have to trust me.”

  Eve pulled back, looked at her, and said, simply, “I always have.”

  It was odd, Claire thought, how it was the boys who were full of drama about this, while Eve, the acknowledged Drama Empress of Morganville, was the calmest.

  The house didn’t come apart, although they heard raised voices from upstairs, and a few thumps. Finally, Shane appeared at the parlor doorway and said, “We’re okay.”

  Eve lifted her chin and said frostily, “Well, of course we are. You’re the only one who doubted it. As always.”

  Ouch. Yet, Claire thought, Shane really had that one coming.

  And he acknowledged it with a nod. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?” he asked. Eve looked at the clock in the corner, made a panicked squeaking sound, and dashed past him, robe fluttering.

  “Shouldn’t you?” Claire asked.

  “I’m showered,” he said. “Taking my stuff to change. I’m not decorating crap in fancy clothes. And I’m not admitting to decorating at all, by the way.”

  She had to laugh. “Yeah,” she said. “I kind of knew that.”

  Shane had been granted the keys to Eve’s hearse for the day, to transport all the stuff, so the rest of the morning was occupied with loading, unloading, checking in with the guards at Founder’s Square, setting up the tables in the big, empty ballroom (which still, to Claire’s eyes, had a funeral parlor elegance, but that was mostly because of all her bad experiences), putting on tablecloths, streamers, flowers. . . .

  It was a lot of work, and Shane had been right: wearing regular jeans and shirts helped, because it would have been twice as bad in formal wear.

  By the time the (human) blood bank attendants arrived with their punch bowls, coolers, and cups (crystal, because vampires didn’t drink out of plastic if they could help it), the tables were decorated in black cloth and silver streamers, and Shane had, at great personal risk, hung the Eve-required disco ball from the majestic crystal chandelier looming over the room. The dj—one of Eve’s friends, apparently, although Claire had never met her—arrived with her own table, her computer, and a massive sound system that she assembled near the open area designated as the dance floor.

  Claire put the centerpieces on the tables and checked the time.

  Just barely enough.

  She grabbed Shane and dragged him off from playing with the remote that turned the disco ball’s motor on and off. “Get dressed,” she said, and pressed the hanger with his clothes on it into his hands. “We have to be ready to greet people!”

  “Yeah, that’ll be super fun!” he said, with utterly fake enthusiasm.

  “Just go already!”

  He kissed her, quickly, and disappeared into the men’s bathroom. Claire took her own dress and shoes into the women’s room, which was really nice but—again—more or less funeral-homey, with all the subdued velvet and gilt. Dressed, she examined herself critically in the mirror. It was a nice, flattering dress of white trimmed in red, and the shoes (Eve had found them) were awesome. Claire finger-fluffed her shoulder-length hair—more red now than brown, thanks again to Eve—and headed out for the ballroom. Shane, of course, was already there, slouching on a straight-backed chair. He stood up when she walked in.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, very spontaneously, which warmed her all over.

  “You’re pretty fantastic, too,” she said, and meant it. He’d put on dark pants and a dark turtleneck that almost hid all the bruises, and a really nice jacket. He looked . . . adult.

  The dj started up with a song, testing the volume levels, and it broke the moment completely. In fact, it almost shattered the chandelier, considering the loudness. The dj dialed it back, but not before Claire’s ears were ringing as if she’d been in a club. “Wow,” she said. “This is going to rock. Probably in all the wrong ways.”

  And that prediction was way, way too correct.

  First to show were friends from high school—nobody Claire knew, but Shane greeted them with easy familiarity. There were about ten of them, and they arrived in a pack, probably for safety; the girls seemed too boring-normal to be friends of Eve’s, so Claire assumed these were Michael’s circle. Some had brought gifts, and Claire pointed them to the table set up to deposit those.

  Miranda, th
e skinny teen psychic, arrived dramatically alone, wearing a peculiar, mismatched skirt and top that were too big for her. She was (technically) Eve’s friend, although she was younger and still in high school; as always, she seemed to be walking in a dream state, not really noticing where she was or who was around her. Eve liked to be thought of as strange; Miranda was the real deal. Nothing like creepy future predictions to put a chill on fun.

  But she was an odd little thing, and Claire felt bad for her. She seemed to be always on her own.

  “Hey, Mir,” she greeted her, and handed her a white carnation.

  Miranda looked at it as if she couldn’t quite figure out what it was for. “Is it food?” she asked.

  Shane mouthed, over Miranda’s head, Please say yes, but Claire scowled at him and said, “No, it’s just pretty.” Miranda nodded wisely and tucked it behind her ear, with the long stem sticking back at a dangerous angle for anyone behind her. “Uh—there’s food over there, and punch. Don’t cut the cake, though. That’s for Eve and Michael.”

  “Okay,” Miranda said. She got a couple of steps into the room, then turned and looked back at Claire. “It’s too bad you wore white. But maybe it will wash out.”

  Oh crap. If only Miranda had a sense of humor, Claire would have been sure she was just messing with her, but knowing that the girl had never joked, she thought of several interpretations and none of them was good. The best Claire could think of was that she’d get punch spilled on her.

  Unfortunately, the best-case scenario never seemed to arrive.

  “Easy,” Shane said. “Sometimes she’s wrong.” He knew what Claire was thinking, because (she assumed) he was thinking it, too.

  “Not often.” And never on important things, although Claire truthfully couldn’t judge whether that had been, in Miranda’s mind, important. Difficult to say. She had a chaos-theory view of life, so what was important to normal people wasn’t necessarily the same thing to her. And sometimes the most minuscule things were the most urgent.