by Rachel Caine
“Heretic.” Eve broke off to give Claire a fierce look. “Eat. I’m not kidding.”
Claire managed to choke down the rest of her chili dog, but one was all she could manage. Despite Shane and Eve’s bantering, there was a sadness that hung around Michael like a second skin. He didn’t say much, except, “My parents are here. They flew in to El Paso and drove from there.”
Wow. Claire had never heard much about Michael’s parents, except that they’d moved away, and he’d never expected to see them back in town again. She finally said tentatively, “I guess that’s good . . . ?”
“Sure,” he said, and got up from the table. “I’m going to get ready.” He walked out, and the rest of them watched him leave. Eve looked very sad, suddenly. And very adult.
“His mom had cancer, you know,” she said. “That’s why they got to leave Morganville. Because she needed serious treatments. Sam made sure she got them. This is the first time they’ve been back.”
“Oh,” Claire said. “Is Michael okay?”
“He just won’t let it out,” she said. “Guys. What is it with you and emotions, anyway?”
“They’re like Kryptonite,” Shane said. “He’ll deal. Just give him time.”
Claire wasn’t too sure about that.
Michael drove, and nobody had much to say, really. It felt sad and uncomfortable.
As soon as the car stopped at the church, vampire escorts were at the doors to open them. The undead valet service. Under normal circumstances that might have been creepy, but there was something almost comforting about it tonight. Claire looked up and realized that the vampire offering a hand to her was, of all people, Oliver. She froze, and his eyebrows tilted sharply upward.
“Today, if you please,” he said. “I’m here as a courtesy. Don’t take it personally.”
“Oh, I don’t,” she promised, and accepted his strong, ice-cold touch to help her out of the car. Shane quickly took her arm, giving Oliver a go-away glare, which was a little funny, and then they fell in behind Michael and Eve.
It was bizarre, Claire thought. The church was full, standing room only to the back, but the crowd parted as they walked in, led by Oliver. And every head turned to follow them.
“Okay, this is weird,” Claire whispered. She felt like she had a target painted on her back at first, but then she realized that most of the people looking at them weren’t angry—they were interested. Or sympathetic. Or even proud.
“Very weird,” Shane whispered back.
The front row held Amelie, sitting alone, dressed in a white suit so cold and perfect that it made her look like an ice sculpture, head to toe. Behind her sat a man and woman in their late forties, and as soon as she saw them, Claire saw the family resemblance. The woman must have been really beautiful when she was younger; she was now very handsome, the way older women got, and her hair was a faded shade of gold with red highlights. They both stood up as Michael let go of Eve and came toward them.
“Honey,” Michael’s mother said, and Michael fell into a three-way embrace with both of his parents. “Oh, honey—”
“Mom, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t—I couldn’t do anything . . .” Michael’s voice failed, and Claire saw his shoulders shake. His mother smoothed his hair gently, and the smile she offered him was kind and full of understanding.
“Just like him,” she said. “Just like your grandfather. Don’t you apologize, Michael. Don’t you dare. I know you did everything you could. He’d never blame you, not for a second.”
Claire hadn’t realized that Michael felt guilty, but looking back on it now, she couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t. His mom was right—he was just like Sam, really.
He’d feel responsible.
Mrs. Glass looked past Michael, and her eyes focused on the rest of them. Claire first, then Shane, then Eve. She took a deep breath, moved toward them, and held out her hands to Eve for a hug. “I haven’t seen you in years, Eve. You look wonderful. And Shane . . .” She moved on to him. Shane wasn’t a hugger, not like Eve, but he tried his best. “I’m so glad you’re here for Michael.”
He looked down. Claire knew he was thinking about how angry he’d been with Michael over the past few months—too angry, sometimes. “He’s my best friend,” Shane said, and finally met Michael’s eyes. “Vampire or not. He always will be.”
Michael nodded.
Mrs. Glass hugged Claire, too. “And you’re Claire. I’ve heard so much about you. Thank you for all you’ve done for my son.”
Claire blinked. All she’d done? “I think it’s the other way around,” she said softly. “Michael’s a hero. He’s always been there for me.”
“Then you’ve been there for each other,” Mrs. Glass said. “True friends.”
The crowd was parting again, letting more people pass, and as Claire looked around, she saw her own mother and father. “Oh no,” she whispered. “I didn’t know they were back yet.”
“Your parents?” Michael’s mom asked, and Claire nodded. Mrs. Glass quickly moved to greet them, gracious and sad, and then they closed in on Claire.
And Shane.
She winced at the icy stares her parents gave Shane, but they knew better than to start that here, now. They took seats to Claire’s right, with Shane, Eve, Michael and his parents stretching out to her left.
And directly ahead, Amelie.
At the front of the church, surrounded by a blizzard of flowers of all colors, was a shiny black coffin with silver trim. The lid was closed. The discreet sound of organ music got louder, and the whispering buzz of the crowd in the church quieted as the door opened off to the side, and Father Joe came out, dressed in a blinding white cassock and a purple stole. He mounted the steps and looked out at the crowd with quiet authority. For a young priest, he had a lot of presence, but then Claire expected he’d have to, to serve a Morganville congregation that was composed equally of vampires and humans.
“We come to celebrate a life,” he said. “The life of Samuel Glass, a son of Morganville.”
Claire’s eyes blurred under a wash of tears. She couldn’t imagine Sam would have wanted to be remembered any other way, really. She barely heard the rest of what Father Joe said about Sam—she found that she was watching Amelie, or at least the very still back of Amelie’s head. Not a hair out of place, not a whisper of motion.
So quiet.
And then, suddenly, Amelie was getting up, in absolute silence, and walking up the steps. She stopped not at the podium, but at the coffin, and opened the hinged cover. It clicked into place, and Amelie stayed there for a moment, staring down at Sam’s face.
Then she turned and faced the hundreds of people gathered in the church.
“I met Samuel Glass here in this church,” Amelie said. Her tone was soft, but it carried. No one moved. No one coughed. As far as Claire could tell, no one breathed. “He came here to demand—demand—that I right some wrong he imagined I had done. He was like an angel with a flaming sword, full of fury and righteousness, with absolutely no fear of the consequences. No fear of me.” She smiled, but there was something broken in it. “I think I fell in love with him in that moment, when he was so angry with me. I fell in love with his fearlessness first, and then I realized that it was more than mere courage. It was a conviction that life must be made fair. That we must be better. And for a time . . . for a time I think we were.”
She paused, and looked again at Sam’s pale, still face.
“But I was weak,” she said. “Weak and afraid. And I let him slip away from me, because I didn’t have his courage, or his conviction. This moment, this loss, is my fault. Sam gave himself, again, to save lives. To save me. And I have never deserved it.”
There were tears running down her cheeks now, and her voice was trembling. Claire couldn’t breathe because of the weight of emotion in her chest.
“Someone else recently demanded that I change the rules of Morganville,” Amelie continued. “Just as Sam demanded it fifty years ago, and continued to demand it of
me at every opportunity.”
Claire realized, with a shock, that Amelie was talking about her. As if what she’d said was somehow brave.
Amelie reached up and pulled pins from her hair, one after another. Her icy crown of pale hair began to unravel and fall loose around her shoulders.
“I have decided,” she said, “that changes must be made. Changes will be made. Sam earned the right for humans to stand as equals in this town, and it will be done. It will be painful, it will be dangerous for us all, but it will be done. In Sam’s memory, I make it so.”
She leaned over, and very gently, placed a kiss on Sam’s lips, then closed the coffin. No one spoke as she walked away, down the steps and out through the side door. Oliver and a few of the other vampires exchanged silent looks, then moved to follow her.
Father Joe spoke over the rising tide of whispers. “Let us pray.”
Claire clasped her hands and looked down. Next to her, Shane was doing the same, but he whispered, “Am I crazy, or did we just win?”
“No,” Claire whispered back. “But I think we just got a chance to.”
Four weeks later.
“Chaos, disorder, mayhem,” Shane said. “Situation normal in Morganville.” He took a drink of his coffee and pushed the other one across to Claire.
Common Grounds was holding a grand reopening, with half-priced coffee, and the place was packed. Everybody loved a bargain. It wasn’t exactly normal for the two of them to be sitting in Oliver’s territory like this; Claire never thought Shane would do it voluntarily, but the lure of cheap caffeine proved powerful.
He’d further surprised her by exchanging some semi-civil words with Oliver himself as he’d claimed the coffee. Speaking of which . . . “What did Oliver say to you?” Claire asked.
Shane shrugged.
“I asked Oliver if they’d found my father, but he was his usual douchey self. Told me to forget about my dad. I don’t know if that means they found him, they killed him, or they just don’t care. Dammit, I just want someone to tell me.”
Claire looked up at him, struck into silence. I need to tell him, she thought. I really do.
She just couldn’t quite think of the words.
Life was getting back to normal in Morganville. Amelie had declared an absolute ban on hunting. The blood banks had reopened, and the people of Morganville had been given a choice—start over, or start running. Plenty had taken the second option. Claire figured that half the town had decided to seize the chance to leave . . . but she also knew that some of them would come back. After all, some of their families had never been out of town at all. It was a whole new world out there. For some, it would be too much.
Common Grounds had renovated in record time, and was open to students once more. Oliver was behind the bar, wearing his nice-guy face and pulling espresso shots like nothing had ever changed.
The bronze statue of Bishop was gone from the university. In fact, all traces of Bishop were gone. Claire didn’t know where François and Ysandre had ended up, but Myrnin assured her, with a perfectly straight face, that she didn’t want to know. Sometimes, she was content to be ignorant. Not often, true. But sometimes.
Shane, however, needed to know about his father. Frank Collins, as far as Claire knew, had just vanished into thin air. If Amelie knew, she wasn’t saying.
This was a moment that Claire actually had wanted to avoid, in a way. She’d put it off as long as she could, but Shane was getting more aggressive about asking people if there was any sign of Frank Collins in Morganville, and she really couldn’t put it off any longer.
“I have something to tell you about that,” she said, and cleared her throat. “Your dad—I . . . I saw him.”
He froze, coffee cup halfway to his lips. “When?”
“A while ago.” She didn’t want to be too specific. She hated that she’d hidden it from him for so long. “He . . . ah . . . he could have killed me, but he didn’t. He said to tell you that . . . that he loved you. And he was sorry.”
Shane blinked at her, as if he couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. “Where did you see him?”
“In the cells where the sick vampires were being kept. He’s not there anymore. I looked. He’s just . . . gone.” She swallowed hard. “I didn’t want to tell you, but I think . . . I think he was going to kill himself, Shane.”
Something changed inside of Shane for a long second—she didn’t recognize the look in his eyes or on his face. And then she did. It was his dad’s look, the one that came before he lashed out at someone.
Shane closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and bowed his head. She didn’t dare move for a few seconds, then carefully reached out and put her hand on the table, just a few inches from his.
His fingers twined with hers.
“Dammit,” he whispered. “No, I’m not mad. I just feel . . . I guess I feel relieved. I wanted to know. Nobody would talk to me.”
“I should have said something,” she said. “I know. I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know how. But I didn’t want you to hear it from Oliver or something, because that would just . . . bite.”
“No kidding.” He took another deep breath, then raised his head. His dark eyes were glittering with un-shed tears, but he blinked them back. “He wouldn’t have wanted to go on like that. He made a choice. I guess that’s something.”
She nodded. “That’s something.”
She’d ripped off the bandage, and now at least he could start healing.
It was the same everywhere. Healing. All over Morganville, burned buildings were being demolished and rebuilt. City Hall, destroyed by a tornado, was getting a municipal makeover, with plenty of marble and fancy new furniture. All of the surviving Founder Houses—even the Glass House—were getting repaired and repainted. The ones that hadn’t survived were being rebuilt from the ground up.
In an amazingly short time, Morganville life had gone back to normal. As normal as it ever was, anyway. And if the vampires weren’t happy about things changing, well, they were—so far—keeping their objections on their side of the fence.
Shane sipped his coffee—plain coffee, not the fancy milky stuff she liked—and watched people go by outside the front windows. She let him sit in silence and come to terms with what she’d said; he was still holding her hand, and she figured that had to be a good sign.
“Oh, great,” Shane said, and nodded to the door. “Trouble, twelve o’clock. Just what we needed.”
Monica Morrell posed in the doorway, making sure the light caught her best side. She’d returned to town, along with her BFFs, and slipped right back into her role as Morganville’s queen bitch without a pause. It helped that Richard Morrell was still mayor, of course, and that Monica’s family had always been rich.
Monica surveyed the busy room disdainfully, snapped her fingers, and sent Gina to stand in the coffee line. Then she and Jennifer made a beeline for the table where Claire and Shane sat.
Nobody spoke. It was a war of stares.
“Bitch, please,” Shane said finally. “You can’t be serious. Out of all the people in here, you pick us to evict? Really not in the mood today.”
“I’m not evicting you,” Monica said, and slid into the chair next to him. Jennifer looked deeply shocked, then put out, but she bullied some poor freshman out of his chair at the next table, and yanked it over to plop down as well. “I thought since you had extra chairs, you wouldn’t be a complete dick about it. Should have known you’d be a bad winner or something.”
He blinked.
“Not that you won,” she said quickly. “Just that you’re, you know, still here. Which is a form of winning. Not the best one.”
Shane and Claire exchanged looks. Claire shrugged. “Oliver take you back?” she asked. Monica traced some old carving on the tabletop with a perfectly manicured fingernail, and then flipped her still-dark hair over her shoulders.
“Of course,” she said. “What would Morganville be without the Morrell family?”
�
�Wouldn’t I like to know?” Shane muttered. Monica sent him a freezing glare. “Kidding.” Not.
“I heard you’re working,” she said. “Wow. Good for you. Shane Collins, actually earning a paycheck. Somebody should alert the press.”
He flipped her off, then checked his watch. “Speaking of the job, damn,” he said. “Claire—”
“I know. Time to go.”
He leaned over and kissed her. He made it extraspecial good, with Monica watching, which made Claire warm all the way down to her toes; he took his time, to the extent that people at other tables started clapping and hooting.
“Watch your back,” he murmured, his lips still against hers. “Love you.”
“Watch yours,” she said. “Love you, too.”
She watched him walk away with an expression she was sure made her look like a total fool, and she didn’t care. Other girls watched him go, too—they always did, and he rarely noticed these days.
Monica made a retching noise into the coffee that Gina thumped down in front of her. “God, you two are disgusting. You know it’s not going to last, right?”
“Why, because you’re going to take him away?” Claire asked, and smiled slowly. “Too much car for you, rich girl.”
“Is that a challenge?”
“Sure. Knock yourself out. No, really. Hammer to the head, works every time.” Claire drained the rest of her mocha as Gina settled into Shane’s vacated chair. “Hey, kid. Here.” Claire scooted her chair back over to the bewildered freshman Jennifer had bullied out of a seat; he settled gratefully into it, nodded, and put his headphones back on. Studying.
Claire had a stack of that to do, too. She’d aced the semester, but that was just the beginning of her challenges. Ada had a lot to teach her, although the computer still hated her and probably always would. Myrnin . . . Myrnin had absorbed so much of Bishop’s blood that he was a walking serum factory, to Dr. Mills’s delight; the vampires of Morganville were being cured, one by one.
All except Sam. Sam’s absence was a hole in everyone’s life. Amelie hadn’t left her home except for official appearances; she’d become a hermit again, dressed in formal white, back to being the ice queen Claire had first met. If she grieved, she didn’t show it to the unwashed public.
