by Rachel Caine
She looked like she’d stepped right out of a photograph from the Victorian ages. Big full skirts, hair done up in a bun, body slender and graceful. She stared straight at Claire, hands clasped in front of her. There was something so creepy and aware about her that Claire skidded to a sudden halt, not sure what she should do, but absolutely sure she didn’t want to go anywhere near that image.
Claire could see the room behind right through her body. As she watched, the ghost broke up into a mist of static, then re-formed. She put a finger to her lips, gestured to Claire, and glided away.
“Ghosts,” Claire said. “Great. I’m going crazy. That’s all there is to it.”
Only, when she checked the other room, the ghost was still there, hovering a couple of inches above the floor. So at least she was consistently crazy.
The phantom beckoned for Claire to follow, and turned—getting thinner and thinner, disappearing, then widening again to show a back view. Not at all like a real person, more like a flat cardboard cutout making a one-eighty. It was startling and eerie, and Claire thought, I’m not hallucinating this, because I’d never imagine that on my own.
She followed the ghost back out into the science lab, then out into the hallway. Then into another classroom, this one empty except for desks and chalkboards. The same dusty sense of disuse lay over everything. It didn’t feel like anyone had been here in years.
The ghost turned to the chalkboard, and letters formed in thin white strokes.
AMELIE HAS WHAT YOU NEED, it wrote. FIND AMELIE. SAVE MYRNIN.
“Who are you?” Claire asked. The ghost gave her a very tiny smile. It seemed annoyed, and more than a little superior.
Three letters appeared on the chalkboard. ADA.
“You’re the computer?” Claire couldn’t help it; she laughed. Not only was she talking to a blood-drinking computer, but it liked to think of itself as some gothic-novel heroine. Plucky Miss Plum the governess. “How do you—Oh, never mind, I know it’s not the time. How can I find Amelie?”
USE BRACELET. Ada’s black-and-white image flickered again, like a signal getting too much interference. When she re-formed, she looked strained and unhappy. HURRY. NO TIME.
“I don’t know how!”
Ada looked even more annoyed, and wrote something on the board—but it was faint, and faded almost before Claire could read it. B-L-O . . . “Blood?” Claire asked. Ada herself was fading, but Claire saw her mouth the word yes. “Of course. What else? Why can’t any of you guys ever come up with something that uses chocolate ?”
No answer from the computer/spirit world; Ada disappeared in a puff of white mist and was gone. Claire looked around and found a thumbtack pressed into the surface of a bulletin board. She hesitated, positioned the thumbtack over her finger, and muttered, “If I get tetanus, I’m blaming you, Myrnin.”
Then she stabbed the sharp point in, and came up with a few fat drops of red that she dripped onto the surface of the symbol on Amelie’s bracelet.
It glowed white in the dim light. The blood disappeared into the grooves, and the whole bracelet turned warm, then uncomfortably hot against her skin. Claire gritted her teeth until she felt a scream coming on, and finally, the burning sensation faded, leaving the metal oddly cold.
And that was it. Amelie didn’t magically appear. Claire wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but this seemed really anticlimactic.
She stuck the thumbtack back on the board and went back to tell Hannah and Michael that she’d completely failed.
Dejected, she headed back to the basement. The hallways were deserted now, since classes were back in session. As she passed the administration office door, it opened, and the man she’d sent to his room like a little kid looked out. “Miss Danvers?” he asked. “Is there something I can do for you?”
This was every high school kid’s fantasy, Claire thought, and she was tempted to tell him to do something crazy, like strip naked and run around the auditorium. But instead she just shook her head and kept on walking.
He came out of the door and got in her way.
“Could you put in a good word for me?” he asked, and when she tried to go around him, he grabbed her by the arm. He lowered his voice to a fast, harsh whisper. “Tell Mr. Bishop I can help him. I can be of use. Just tell him that!”
The big double doors leading out into the sunlight at the end of the hall crashed open, and a whole troop of people came flooding in. They all wore long, dark hooded coats, and they moved fast, with a purpose.
Faster than humans.
The two in the lead threw back their hoods, and Claire was relieved to see that one of them was Amelie, perfectly composed and looking as in charge as ever, even if she wasn’t queen of Morganville anymore.
The other leader of the pack was Oliver, of course. Not so comforting.
“Milton Dyer,” Amelie said. “Please take your hand off of my friend Claire. Now.”
The man went about as pale as his white shirt, and looked down at Claire, and his hand wrapped around her arm. He let go as if she’d suddenly become electrified.
“Now go away,” Amelie said to him in that same calm, emotionless voice. “I don’t wish to see you again.”
“I . . . ” He wet his lips. “I’m still loyal to my Protector... ”
“Your Protector was Charles,” Amelie said. “Charles is dead. Oliver, do you have any interest in picking up Mr. Dyer’s contract?”
“I really don’t,” Oliver said. He sounded bored.
“Then that settles things. Leave my sight, Mr. Dyer. The next time you cross my path, I’ll finish you.” She said it without any particular sense of menace, but Claire didn’t doubt for an instant that she meant it. Neither did Mr. Dyer, who quickly retreated to his office. He didn’t even dare to slam the door. It closed with a soft, careful click.
Leaving Claire in the hallway with a bunch of vampires. Old ones, she thought—Amelie and Oliver were obviously old, but the others seemed to have come through their sunlight stroll without a mark, too. Ten of them in total. Most of them didn’t bother to put their hoods back and reveal their faces.
“You used the bracelet in a way that I did not teach you,” Amelie said. “Who showed you how to use it to summon me?”
“Why?”
“Don’t play games with me, Claire. Was it Myrnin?”
“No. It was Ada.”
Amelie’s gray eyes flickered, just a little, but it was enough to tell Claire that she had knowledge that Amelie wished she didn’t. “I see. We’ll talk of that later,” she said. “Why did you use the blood call? It’s intended to alert me only if you are seriously injured.”
“Well, someone is. Myrnin’s very sick. He’s downstairs. I need to get him some help. I came to find Dr. Mills, but—”
“Dr. Mills has been relocated,”Amelie said.“I thought it best, after Myrnin’s ill-advised visit here. I can’t tell you where he is. You understand why.”
Claire knew. And she felt sick and a little angry, too. “You think I might give him away. To Bishop. Well, I wouldn’t. Myrnin knew that.”
“Whatever Myrnin believes, I can’t take the risk. We are close to the endgame, Claire. I risk only what I must.”
“You’re not happy that Myrnin introduced me to Ada, are you?” Claire asked.
“Myrnin’s judgment has been . . . questionable of late. As you say, he is ill. Where can we find him?”
“Downstairs, by the portal,” Claire said. Amelie nodded a brisk dismissal and turned to go, along with all of her followers. “Wait! What do you want me to do?”
Amelie said nothing. Oliver, lingering behind for just a moment, said, “Stay out of our way. If you value your friends, keep them out of our way, too.”
Then they were gone, moving fast and silently through the basement doorway.
Claire stood in the empty hallway for a few deep breaths, hearing the sounds of lectures continuing on inside of classrooms, student voices raised in questions or answers.
Life went on.
So weird.
She started to go down to the basement, but a vampire she didn’t know blocked the entrance. “No,” he said flatly. “You don’t go with us.”
“But—”
“No.”
“Hannah and Michael—”
“They will be taken care of. Leave.”
There wasn’t any room for negotiation. Claire finally got the hint, and turned away to walk out of the high school the old-fashioned way . . . into the sunlight, the way Amelie and her gang had come. She had no idea where they’d come from, or where they were going.
Amelie wanted it that way.
Claire sat down on the steps of the high school for a few long minutes, shivering in the cold wind, not much warmed by the bright sun in a cloudless sky. The street outside the school looked empty—a few cars making their way around Morganville, but not much else going on.
She heard the door behind her open, and Hannah Moses clumped down in her heavy boots and offered Claire a big, elegant hand. Claire took it and stood. “Amelie’s taking care of him?” she asked. Hannah nodded. “Michael went with?”
“He’ll see you later,” Hannah said. “Important thing is to get you out of here. I need you to help me get your parents on that bus.”
“Bishop’s going to find out,” she said. “You know that, right? He’s going to find out what you’re doing.”
Hannah nodded. “That’s why we’re doing it fast, girlfriend. So let’s move.”
Mom and Dad were having an argument; Claire could hear it from where she and Hannah stood on the front porch of their house, ringing the doorbell. Claire felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Her parents didn’t fight very often, but when they did, it was usually over something important.
The shouty blur of voices broke off, and about ten seconds later, the door whipped open. Claire’s mom stood there, color burning high in her cheeks. She looked stricken when she caught sight of Claire, very obviously a guilty-looking earwitness to the fighting, but she rallied and gave a bright smile and gestured them both inside.
“Sheriff Hannah Moses, ma’am,” Hannah said without waiting for introductions. “I don’t think we’ve met in person before. I’ve known your daughter for a while now. She’s good people.”
She offered her hand, and Claire’s mother took it for a quick shake as her eyes darted anxiously from Claire to Hannah, then back. “Is there some kind of problem, Sheriff Moses?”
“Hannah, please.” Hannah really was turning on the charm, and she had an awful lot of it. “May I talk with you and your husband at the same time? This concerns both of you.”
With only a single, worried look over her shoulder, her mother led the way down the long hallway and into the living room area. Same floor plan as the Glass House, but so wrenchingly different, especially now. Claire got mental whiplash from expecting to see the familiar battered couch and Michael’s guitar and the cheerful stacks of books against the wall; instead, her mother’s ruthlessly efficient housekeeping had made this room magazine-feature-ready, everything carefully aligned and straightened.
The only thing that wasn’t ready for the photo shoot was Claire’s father, who sat in one of the leather armchairs, face flushed. He had a stubborn set to his jaw, and an angry fire in his eyes that Claire hadn’t seen in, well, forever. Still, he got to his feet and shook hands with Hannah, politely gesturing her to the couch while Claire’s mom sank down on the other end, with Claire left to take the middle seat. Normally, her mom would have been fluttering around offering coffee and cookies and sandwiches, but not this time. She just took the other armchair and looked worried.
Hannah said, “Let’s put all our cards on the table. There’s a town emergency. Mr. and Mrs. Danvers, you are going to need to come with us. Pack a bag for a few nights, take whatever you need that you can’t live without. I can give you about fifteen minutes.”
That was . . . blunt. Claire blinked. She expected a flood of questions from her parents, but she was surprised by the silence.
Claire’s parents looked at each other, and then her father nodded. “Good,” he said. “I’ve wanted to do this for a while. Claire, go with your mother and pack. I’ll be up in a second.”
“Um . . .” Claire cleared her throat and tried not to look as awkward as she felt. “I’m not going, Dad.”
They both looked at her as if she’d spoken in Chinese. “Of course you are,” her mom said. “You’re not staying here alone. Not with what we know about how dangerous it is.”
“I’m sorry, but you know just enough about Morganville to get yourselves in trouble,” Hannah said. “This really isn’t up for discussion. You have to pack, and you have to go. And Claire can’t come with you, at least not yet.”
One thing about Hannah: when she said something like that, she clearly meant it. In the silence that fell, Claire felt the weight of both her parents’ stares directly on her, so she looked down at her clasped hands instead. “I can’t,” she said. “It’s complicated.”
“No, it’s not,” her dad said, with a steely undertone in his voice she couldn’t remember hearing before. “It’s absolutely simple. I’m your father, you’re under eighteen, and you’re coming with us. I’m sorry, Chief Moses, but she’s too young to be here on her own.”
“Dad, you sent me here on my own!” Claire said.
“Why do you think we were fighting, Claire?” her mom replied. “Your father was just reminding me that I was the one who thought sending you to a school close by, just to get some experience with it, would be a good idea. He wanted you to go straight to MIT, although how we were going to pay for that, I really don’t have any—”
Dad interrupted her. “We’re not going to start this up again. Claire, we were wrong to let you go off on your own here in the first place, no matter how safe we thought it would be. And we’re fixing that now. You’re coming with us, and things will be better once we’re out of this town.”
Claire’s hands formed into fists as frustration boiled up inside her. “Are you listening to me? It’s too late for all that stuff! I can’t go with you!”
She should have guessed that they’d make the wrong assumptions . . . and, in a way, the right one. “It’s the boy, isn’t it?” Claire’s mother said. “Shane?”
“What? No!” Claire blurted out a denial that, even to her own ears, sounded lame and guilty. “No, not really. It’s something else. Like I said, it’s complicated.”
“Oh my God . . . Claire, are you pregnant?”
“Mom!” She knew she looked as mortified as she felt, especially with Hannah looking on.
“Honey, has that boy taken advantage of you?” Her father was charging full speed down the wrong path; he even stood up to make it more dramatic. “Well?”
Claire stared at him, openmouthed, unable to even try to speak. She knew she should lie, but she just couldn’t find the words.
In the ringing silence, her father said, “I want him arrested.”
Hannah asked, “On what charge, sir?”
“Are you kidding? He had sex with my underage daughter!” He gave Claire a look that was partly angry, partly wounded, and all over dangerous. “Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong, Claire.”
“It . . . wasn’t like that!”
Her dad transferred his glare over to Hannah. “You see? I’ll swear out a complaint if I need to.”
Hannah looked perfectly comfortable. “Sir, there’s no complaint to be sworn out here. Fact is, Claire is seventeen years old, which by Texas law makes her able to give consent on her own. Shane’s only a year older than she is. There’s no laws being broken here, beyond maybe the law of good sense, which I think you’ll admit is often a casualty of our teen years. This is a family matter, not a matter for the police.”
Her father looked shocked, then even angrier. “That’s insane! It has to be illegal!”
“Well, it’s not, sir, and it has nothing to do with why I’m telling you Claire needs to sta
y in Morganville. That has to do with the vampires.” Hannah had deftly moved the whole thing off the subject of Shane and sex, for which Claire was spine-meltingly grateful. “I’m telling you this for your own good, and for Claire’s own good: she stays here. She won’t be unprotected; I promise you that. We’re committed to keeping her safe.”
“Who’s we?” Claire’s dad wasn’t giving up without a fight.
“Everybody who counts,” Hannah said, and raised her eyebrows. “Time’s a-wastin’, Mr. Danvers. We really can’t debate this. You need to go right now. Please go pack.”
In the end, they did. Claire went to help her mother, reluctantly; she didn’t want the subject to come back to her and Shane, but it did as soon as the door was closed. At least her father wasn’t in the room. God, that had been awkward.
“Honey.” Claire paused in the act of dragging a suitcase out from under her parents’ bed, took one look at the serious expression on her mother’s face, and kept on with what she was doing. “Honey, I really don’t like your getting involved with that boy—that man. And it’s not appropriate for you to be living in that house with him. I just can’t allow that.”
“Mom, could we please focus on not getting killed today? I promise, you can give me the I’m-so-disappointed-in-you speech tomorrow, and every day after, if you will just pack!”
Her mother opened a drawer of the dresser by the window, grabbed a few handfuls of things at random, and threw them into the open suitcase. Not normal. Mom made those people who worked retail clothing stores look sloppy about how they folded things. She moved on to the next drawer, then the next. Claire struggled to neaten up the mess.
“Just tell me this,” her mother said as she dumped an armload of clothes from the closet onto the bed. “Are you being safe?”
Oh lord, Claire did not want to have the birds-and-bees part two conversation with her mother. Not now. Not ever, to be honest; they’d suffered through it once, awkwardly, and once was enough. “Yes,” she said, with as calm and decisive a tone as she could manage. “He insisted.” She meant that to reflect well on Shane. Of course, Mom took it the wrong way.
