by Rachel Caine
“I didn’t agree with Amelie on something.” Michael shrugged. “It’s not the first time, right? Eve, seriously, don’t fuss.”
Eve gazed at him a moment longer, then shifted her attention to Shane. “You buying this no-big-deal crap?”
“Nope.”
“Then what are we going to do about it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Kill ’em all; feed their carcasses to chickens? Hell, Eve, what can we do? We got by this long because we’re lucky and we’ve had the right vampires on our side. Now the same vamps are on the other side of the line. What’ve we got going for us?”
“Well, we’re all smart, strong, and fashion forward,” Eve said. “Except for you.”
He saluted her with a fork full of dripping taco and shoveled it into his mouth. “You forgot handsome,” he said. “Plus thoughtful, kind, brave…”
“Shane, the closest you ever got to the Boy Scouts was when that whole troop of them beat you up in fourth grade,” Eve shot back.
“Be fair—they were Brownies, and those girls were soccer-trained. Mean kickers.” Shane took a sip of his drink and changed the subject. “We don’t have a lot of things counting up in our favor right now, do we? No offense, Mike. You know I love you and Eve, but you two getting married hasn’t made life around here any easier; most people avoid us, the pro-human side hates us, the pro-vampire side hates us, too. Now we don’t have the Ice Queen on our side, either. Strategically, I guess our whole position boils down to this sucks.”
“We’ve got Myrnin,” Claire said. “He doesn’t like how things are heading, either. He’ll help.”
“Oh yeah, because Myrnin’s always reliable,” Eve said. “Yes, Shane, I said it for you.”
“Thanks for reading my mind.”
“Thanks for making it so simple.”
Shane threw a napkin at her, she deflected it into Miranda’s lap, and Miranda threw it to Michael, who didn’t even look up as he snatched the wadded-up paper out of the air and lobbed it to Claire.
Who missed, of course.
“Loser does the dishes,” Michael said. “New rule.”
“Awesome,” Shane agreed, and then got less cheerful about it. “Wait—it’s all paper plates and stuff.”
“Hey, you could have lost if you’d thought about it.”
Miranda was the one who spoiled the moment by asking, in a very worried voice, “What are you going to do about stopping Amelie? I mean, if she’s really dangerous now?”
Eve put her arm around the girl and hugged her. “Claire will have an awesome plan, and we’ll all make it work. You’ll see.”
Yeah, Claire thought gloomily, as she gathered up the trash. No pressure.
She was mostly done when she found Miranda standing next to her, handing her stuff. Eve, Michael, and Shane had all moved off, and the younger girl gave her a quick, crooked smile. “I don’t mind,” she said. “I like to help. Is it okay?”
“Sure,” Claire said. “Thanks.”
“I wanted to ask you something, actually. I heard Shane say something about those people who came to town. Those people with the TV show.”
“Oh, right. Angel and Jenna.” And Tyler, who did all the work. “What about them?”
“You don’t think they’ll, ah, find anything, do you? What if they do? What if they get the word out on Morganville?”
“It won’t happen,” Claire said. “Even if they do find anything—which I really doubt—I don’t think they’d be able to get it out of town. Why? Are you worried about their finding out about you?”
“Not—not really.” Miranda looked oddly embarrassed. “I just—they must have met other ghosts before. I just wondered if maybe I could talk to them about it. About what’s normal.”
“I’m not sure there’s any such thing as normal, when it comes to ghosts, especially around here,” Claire said doubtfully. “Mir, you’re not thinking of trying to get them over here, are you?”
“Well, at night, they wouldn’t see anything weird….”
“No. No, definitely no. What if Myrnin comes popping in through a portal in the wall, or some random vamp decides to drop in for a visit? How do we explain that? And Michael? They’d notice something strange about him, wouldn’t they?”
“Oh,” Miranda said. “Right. I hadn’t thought about that. Okay, then. I just—I just wish I could make more friends.”
Claire hip-bumped her and grinned. “We’re not enough for you?”
She got a smile in response, but it wasn’t a very certain one. “Sure,” Miranda said softly, and walked away.
Oh dear.
That, Claire thought, might be a problem.
The blood bank in Morganville had odd hours—for instance, they’d instituted twenty-four-hour donations, which meant that Claire was able to shove Shane out of bed and into pants, shoes, and shirt at four a.m., and drag him, half asleep, into the place to drain a pint of blood before he was too awake to protest. She gave a second pint, just to make things even, and took him home to pile back into bed. He refused to go to his own, which was just pure stubbornness, and curled his warm, strong body next to her under the covers for another two hours until she had to rise to go to school. It might have been more sexy, except that he fell asleep within about five minutes, and she held out for only a few ticks more.
Seven a.m. came way too early, but Claire dragged herself yawning through the morning routine: shower, dress, sleepwalk to Common Grounds for a mocha. That was where she picked up the news that Mayor Hannah Moses was “stepping down for personal reasons” and that a write-in election would be held over the weekend.
The college students were, of course, oblivious to what that meant, but there was a stack of the flyers about it near the register, and Claire grabbed one. The press release was boring and dry, and there was a write-in form right on the bottom of the flyer, with instructions to drop it off at City Hall in the appropriate ballot box.
Claire stuffed the flyer in her backpack, grabbed her coffee, and headed out for class. Luckily, she had a different schedule of professors today, ones she actually liked, and sailed through the morning high on caffeine and challenging discussions on condensed-matter physics, which was the study of exactly how atoms combined and recombined to make liquids, solids, and states that, theoretically, hadn’t been seen. Except she had seen them. Myrnin had invented them, and he used them as transportation hubs around the town. He called them doors, whereas Claire called them portals, but it boiled down to one thing: traveling from here to there and skipping the in-between.
So she kind of had a head start on that concept, and calculations.
She had a break at noon, and went to the coffee shop on campus. It was Eve’s day to work there, instead of at Common Grounds; she was a good-enough barista that she could work anywhere she wanted, and she liked to see different people on the other side of the counter. Plus, Eve always insisted, she liked these little weekly vacations away from Oliver’s scowling.
She didn’t look especially happy now, though, Claire thought, as she waited in line. As the guy ahead of her walked away with his coffee, Claire leaned her elbows on the counter and said, “Are you okay?” She put the back of her hand to Eve’s forehead. “I think you must have a fever.”
“What?” Eve looked tired under the makeup, as if she hadn’t slept much. “What are you talking about?”
“Mr. Hottie McGorgeous just walking away. He was way into you, and you didn’t even smile at him.”
Eve held up her hand and tapped the ring on her finger. “Anti-flirting device,” she said. “It works.”
“Oh, come on—it wouldn’t keep you from smiling!”
“I just wasn’t feeling it.” But that wasn’t it, and Claire knew it. There was a piece of paper on the counter, turned facedown, but the water had soaked through in places, and she saw tombstones drawn on it. Before Eve could stop her, Claire reached over and took it.
They were the same four tombstones as on the flyers that kept appearing at the Glass House, o
nly this one was more personal. It had an arrow pointing at Eve’s grave, with the words, Soon, bitch written above it.
Eve shrugged. “It was on the counter when I got here for work.”
“Sorry,” Claire said. “People are asses.”
“Mostly,” Eve agreed. “Mocha, then?”
“Just hot cocoa.” Claire took the flyer she’d grabbed at Common Grounds out of her bag and put it on the counter, avoiding the drips of spilled drinks. “Did you see this?”
Eve mixed the cocoa and read the paper at the same time, which was pretty impressive. “Write-in candidates. Well, that’s an easy one. They’ll just pick whoever they want and write the ballots the way they want them to come out. And we bother voting why?”
“We can’t let that be the way things go,” Claire said earnestly. “We have to get people together to demand a free and fair election, counted by humans.”
“You have an impressive amount of crazy in that head. How exactly would you do that? Because I guarantee you, if you set up a Facebook page, they’ll kill it before you can refresh the screen. And don’t even think about Twitter.”
It was true; the vampires had a headlock on the electronic communications in town, and that stumped Claire for a moment. “Old school,” she said finally. “Captain Obvious is still around, right?” Captain Obvious was a little like the Spartacus of Morganville…. He was the guy in charge of organizing and leading the human resistance, in whatever form it took. Captain Obvious as an individual usually didn’t last long, but a new one was always waiting in the wings.
“Well, in theory, I guess,” Eve said. “Last one ran for it before the barriers went back up around town. Last I heard, though, there was nobody in charge of the human underground anymore, so it’s pretty much done for…not that it ever made any difference in the first place. Bunch of disorganized losers, mostly. Well, except for that one time they saved our lives. But if he’s still around, maybe he’s the one sending us the die-already notices, so maybe not an asset.”
Claire blinked and sipped the hot cocoa Eve handed her. Nobody was in line behind her, so she lingered at the counter. “The old Captain Obvious was outed, anyway. Everybody knew who he was. What if there was a new one? A secret one?”
“Sweetie, I’m pretty sure I’d have heard. I hear everything.” But Claire wasn’t listening now; her brain was firing off a chain of brilliant, random flashes, putting things together, planning—until Eve snapped fingers in front of her eyes and she realized Eve was saying something along the lines of Earth to whatever planet you’re circling.
“Sorry,” Claire said. She smiled slowly. “I think I’ve got it.”
“Swine flu? The answer to cold fusion? An aneurysm?”
“How do we get vampires not to ignore the results of the election?”
“You can’t.”
“Unless the results are what they want to see,” Claire said. “Then they’d just announce them, right? They wouldn’t bother to fake anything.”
“True.” Eve was eyeing her doubtfully. Very doubtfully. “What the hell are you thinking, CB?”
“We write in someone who is exactly what they want: a human connected to an old Morganville family. But one who isn’t afraid to get in the faces of the vamps.”
“Okay, maybe we need to walk this backward, because you’re not making any sense at all,” Claire said, and held Eve’s stare for long enough that she saw the light begin to—kind of dreadfully—dawn. “Shane?” her best friend said, and covered her ink blue lips with one pale hand. “You can’t run Shane for mayor. Come on! Shane’s the exact opposite of political!”
“I’m not talking about him,” Claire interrupted. “But there’s somebody else in this town who’s perfectly qualified. And perfectly unqualified at the same time. And if anyone knows about causing chaos in this town, it’s her.”
Silence. Dead, utter silence. Eve blinked, blinked again, and finally said, “What?”
But Claire was already walking away, humming softly under her breath, feeling for the first time in months that she had something actually going the right way in Morganville.
Ironic, really.
FOUR
CLAIRE
True to her word, Monica came to the gym ready to work, which was a bit of a shocker; Claire hardly recognized her. No makeup. Dark hair tied back in a plain, thick ponytail. Okay, the tight workout gear was still name brand, and her athletic shoes had a basketball star’s name on them, but this was definitely Monica unplugged.
And she was shockingly good at punching things. Even Shane was impressed, after about two minutes of watching her hit the heavy bag with a flurry of well-placed jabs, elbows, and kicks.
“She’s not bad,” Shane admitted as Monica continued to pummel the target. “Good form. Hell of a right.”
“Yeah, she got it beating up other kids, didn’t she?”
Shane sent her a slightly embarrassed look. “I’m all for peace and love, babe, but I’m just talking technique, here.” He went back to studying Monica with calm assessment, arms folded. “She’s been working on it.”
She had, no doubt about it. When Monica finished on the heavy bag after the required five minutes, panting and sweating, she sent Shane a triumphant look as she swigged some water. “See?” she said. “Not bad, right?”
“Don’t get cocky,” he said. “Hey, Aliyah? Got a minute?” He gestured to a tall, rangy girl who was shadow punching in the corner. She turned, and her dark eyes fell on Monica, and widened. “Monica needs a sparring partner.”
“Wait,” Monica said, and turned to him. “I thought you were—”
“I’m the sensei here, and you fight who I say you’ll fight,” Shane said, with entirely too much relish.
“But she—”
“Problem, Monica?” His smile was brutal, and Monica pressed her lips into a thin line and shook her head. She walked to the roped-off sparring area as Aliyah took her place inside.
“Let me guess,” Claire said. “Monica bullied Aliyah.”
“You couldn’t throw a rock in Morganville without hitting somebody who fits that description,” Shane said. “But nobody’s bullied Aliyah in, I don’t know, at least five years—okay, let’s have a clean fight, girls!”
It wasn’t.
Aliyah took about ten seconds to lay Monica out. It was a violent ballet of fake, strike, fade—almost surgical, really. Two fast, accurate punches—face and midsection—and a leg sweep, and Monica was on her back, staring dazed at the ceiling while Aliyah danced backward without a mark on her. Aliyah dropped her defense and looked at Shane, who shrugged.
“Thanks,” he said. “Tells me what I needed to know.”
He climbed in the ring as Aliyah got out, and he crouched down next to Monica, who was making no effort at all toward getting up. “Something broken?” he asked. She shook her head. “Then stand up.”
“Help?” She held out her hand, but he straightened up and backed off. Monica groaned. “You son of a—”
“C’mon, you whiner. Up.”
She climbed clumsily back to her feet and braced herself against the ropes a moment. “That bitch sucker-punched me.” She felt her lip. “If I swell up—”
“You’ll deserve it,” Shane said, “because your defense was crap. Are you complaining, or training?”
Claire leaned against the pole and watched, mostly; Shane was a good teacher, patient but not kind, and he showed Monica with brutal and cheerful efficiency that bullying didn’t really equal fighting. It was a relatively short lesson—about an hour—but at the end of it Monica was a disheveled, staggering mess. When Shane finally said, “Okay, enough for today,” she flopped backward onto the floor as if she might never get up under her own power again.
“You,” she said between heaves for breath, “are a total ass, Collins. You enjoyed that.”
“Absolutely,” he said, and grinned, but the grin faded fast. “No bull, Monica: you’re not bad, you’ve got strength, but you’ve never bee
n pushed. Fighting the vamps isn’t like taking Jimmy’s lunch money in fourth grade. You need to be fast, fearless, and accurate, and you need to understand that there’s no giving up, because if they even smell it on you, you’re done.”
“I can do it,” she said. But she said it flat on the floor. “I’m not quitting.”
“Good,” he said. “Because the opportunity to hit you is pretty much every Morganville kid’s dream job. Oh, and you’re paying me.”
“I’m what?” She lifted her head from the canvas and stared at him, and Claire had to choke back a laugh at the look on Monica’s face.
“Paying,” he said. “For training. What, you thought I’d do this for free? Are we friends?”
“Fine,” she said, and dropped her head again. “How much?”
“Twenty an hour.”
“You’re kidding me. You make about seven an hour on your best day!”
“That’s when I’m doing honest labor, like cleaning sewers. Working with you means charging a premium.”
She wearily lifted a hand and flipped him off, but said, “Okay, fine. Twenty an hour.”
“Twenty-five now that you were rude about it.”
Monica sent him a filthy glare, rolled over, and limped slowly off to the showers. Shane watched her go with a smile of pure satisfaction. “Gold,” he said. “Pure gold.”
Claire kissed him. “Don’t gloat too hard,” she said. “She’s going to get better.”
“I know. But I can enjoy it while she’s not.”
Claire took off after Monica for the locker room.
She found the other girl stripping off her workout clothes and examining in the full-length mirror the discolored places that were going to form bruises. Claire immediately felt a surge of awkwardness and didn’t know where to look; Monica had an almost perfect body, sculpted and waxed and tanned. Claire flashed back to her awkward early-admission high school years, where showering with the pretty girls had been an exercise in merciless mockery.
But she wasn’t even on Monica’s radar, except as a second pair of eyes. “Hey,” Monica said, without even focusing on her. “Do you think this is going to leave a mark?” She pointed to a red area on her ribs, just under her left breast.
