by Rachel Caine
Claire filled the water reservoir, replaced the filter, and spooned in more ground coffee. “I see you’ve totally thought out your plan, which obviously involves getting the support of your best friends before tearing out to get yourself killed.”
Eve gave her a scorching look, made all the more effective by the war paint. “I’m not taking any more crap from the Daylighters. We tried talking it out. Talking got me five minutes of face time with my own husband, who doesn’t deserve any of this. I’m done with the subtle approach. This time I’m not taking no for an answer—and don’t try to talk me out of it, Claire, because you don’t know how this feels. We just got Michael out of a cage back in Cambridge, and now he’s—he’s just in a bigger cage, held by the same people who want to hurt him. I can’t stand it, and I won’t stand it.”
The passion in her voice, and the determination, was scary. Claire swallowed hard and tried to concentrate on what she was doing with her hands—swing the door shut with the coffee, put the pot back in place, press the brew control—and it did help slow her down and keep her voice rational as she replied, “I didn’t say you had to, did I? I just said you should involve us.”
“So you can talk me out of it?”
“So I can make sure you don’t die, Eve. Because Michael doesn’t deserve having to deal with that, does he? He doesn’t deserve to see you hurt, or killed, because of him. You know he’d tell you the same thing: be smart, and be careful. Pick the battle you can win.” She held Eve’s stare, hard as it was. “Tell me if I’m wrong.”
She knew she wasn’t, and so did Eve, who changed course. “Look, I’m not some fragile flower everybody has to shelter all the time. I may not be as much of a total-destruction mayhem machine as Shane, but I can wreak havoc when I want.” She paused for a second, distracted. “Why is it you can only wreak havoc, anyway? Why not, I don’t know, world peace?”
“Good question.”
Eve shook a finger at her. “Don’t you try to throw me off, CB. My point is, I’m strong even if I’m on my own.”
“I know. But you have to admit, we’re all much stronger if we stick together.” Claire risked a quick grin. “Besides, why should you have all the fun?”
“If by fun you mean total war, you might have a point. It is a little selfish not to share. Because I intend to unleash hell if anybody even thinks of telling me that Michael can’t walk out of there,” Eve said.
She drained the quarter cup of coffee, and Claire noticed she was drinking it black. That, for Eve, was kind of a danger sign; her coffee preferences varied by her mood, and black was her hard-core extreme. Claire added cream and sugar to her own, stirred, and blew on it to cool it before tasting. Anything to kill a little more time.
“What about the rest of them?” Claire asked. “Amelie. Myrnin. Even Oliver. Do they deserve to be trapped in there with shock collars on their necks? God, you saw the place. That’s not a prison, it’s—it’s a holding pen.”
Eve stopped, eyes widening. “Holding pen for what?”
“God. I don’t even want to guess. The Daylighters want vampires dead, right? Abominations against nature, and all that. They’ve never made any secret of it, never mind what Fallon says about it. He’s the face guy, the one who makes everybody feel better about herding people into enclaves.”
“They’ve got plenty of support, too,” Eve pointed out. “I think that now that the vamps have been shuffled offstage, nobody’s going to think much about what happens to them, as long as they don’t have to watch it happen. Even then, I’m not sure that most of them wouldn’t simply justify the hell out of it.”
Claire shivered. Eve was right about that. Human nature was all about shifting blame . . . and responsibility. How else could you explain concentration camps and genocide and all the awful things people did to each other every day? They just carried on with life and pretended that the evil didn’t exist, as long as it was happening out of their direct view.
Morganville’s human population wasn’t any different. Didn’t really matter if something was right, as long as it was of material benefit and it happened to someone they hated.
“You think they’ll kill them?” Claire asked.
“Don’t you?” Eve took a larger gulp of her coffee. “Screw that. I’m not going to be a bystander, wringing my hands. I’m doing something. Right now. You guys can jump in, or stay out. Either way.”
“Hang on, didn’t I say we were coming?” Claire said. “You know Shane would never avoid a good fight, and I’m not going to turn my back on this, either. But let’s be smart about it, okay? That means thinking through it. Calmly.”
“I’m so done with calm,” Eve said. She dumped the rest of her coffee in the sink, put the cup down with a clatter, and hauled the backpack up to rest on her shoulder. “Diplomacy is your crack, Claire. It isn’t mine. I’m more of a straight-ahead kind of girl, and right now, I’m going right into their faces. With my fist.”
Claire sighed. She chugged the rest of her coffee, even though it was too hot and too bitter, and rinsed the cups. The spaghetti dinner remains were still crusted up on plates, and she dumped those all in and ran hot water with a spray of soap. Just in case they didn’t die and might need something to eat off of later.
“Let me get my stuff,” she said. “Don’t go without me.”
“Five minutes,” Eve said. “Then I’m out.”
“Promise.”
Claire took the stairs two at a time, and ran into Shane sitting at the top; he’d clearly been listening. They exchanged a look, and he grabbed her hand. “I want to help,” he said. “I do, you know that. But if I go back there . . . Shit, Claire, I don’t know what would happen. No, actually, the problem is that I do know exactly what would happen, and it wouldn’t help either one of you.”
She bent and kissed him, very lightly. “Then stay here,” she said. “But I have to go with her and try to stop her from doing something crazy. You know I do.”
“Can’t we just knock her over the head and dump her in a closet until she cools off?” His jaw was tight, his dark eyes fierce, but he wasn’t angry with her. It was all directed inward, at his own problems. “I feel crap useless right now, you know? And sick of being somebody else’s butt-puppet.”
“Seriously? Butt-puppet?”
“Seems appropriate.”
“Then fix it,” she said. “Shane, I know you. You’re smart. Think how you can use this, not let it use you.”
He laughed a little, and it sounded raw, but real. “You’re way too good for me, you know that?”
She put his hand against her cheek and smiled. “I know. Got to go gear up—” She realized, too late, that all her gear was gone. Even her backpack was missing now, because it had been towed away by the cops with the vans. “Um . . . right. I assume you’ve got some good stuff tucked away?”
“Me?” Shane stood up in one smooth, fluid movement, and for a moment she felt that gravitational shift again, pulling her in. “You know me. I’m a Boy Scout. Always prepared.”
“Show me your goodies, then,” Claire said, and caught herself in a laugh. “By which I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” he said, and leaned in very close to whisper in her ear. “Though if you’ve got a few minutes—”
She shivered, tempted in some utterly instinct-driven part of her, but she shook her head. “Later,” she said, just as softly. “Why are we whispering?”
“Because it turns you on?”
“Oh, and it doesn’t you? Because that’s a little obvious.”
He cleared his throat and stepped back, held his hands palm out in surrender, and said, in a normal tone of voice, “Okay, then, armory it is. Buzz killer.”
She smacked him on the arm, which of course did absolutely nothing except hurt her own palm, and followed him down the hallway to his room.
“Wow,” she said as he swung the door open. “I thought you moved out when you followed me.”
“I did,” he said. “This is
what I didn’t take with me.”
What he hadn’t taken was pretty much a complete room, right down to the twisted sheets still on the bed. Clothes in the closet. Much-abused cross-trainers and heavy work boots piled in the corner. Shane went to a chest in the corner and pulled open the first drawer.
“Have at it,” he said. “See, want, take.”
Shane was a slob in his room—seriously—but in the way he kept and stored his weapons, he was meticulous. The top drawer held silver things—chains, jewelry, weapons. Claire took a silver-coated dagger, chains for her throat and wrists, and skipped the rest. He closed that drawer and went down one, revealing a selection of guns that, even given that they lived in Texas, was probably excessive. She shook her head. He raised his eyebrows, but went down another drawer.
Crossbow. She liked that. It was one of the small, light ones, easy to aim and with surprising power, and she grabbed the bolts that went with it.
“Can I interest you in an honest-to-God army flak jacket?” he asked, and kicked the bottom drawer. “Guaranteed effective, but it’d probably be way too big for you. Plus, it’s not exactly easy to get up if you go down. Sort of the overturned-turtle problem. Matching helmet, though, so at least you look cool while you’re flopping around helplessly getting murderated.”
She shook her head. He stepped forward, took her head between his big, warm hands, and tilted her chin up so that their eyes met. “You need to figure out how to stop her from doing this, you know?”
“I know,” she said. “I’d just rather be fully armed while I do it. In case.”
He kissed her, very gently. “I’ve got your back. Way back, obviously. Just—don’t ask me to go too close to the vamps right now, okay? Including Michael. I don’t want to hurt him.” He meant that, she knew it—for all that had happened between them, all the strangeness, he and Michael were at heart brothers and best friends, and always would be.
Without Shane, Claire knew that stopping Eve—not to mention protecting her—would be severely challenging; Eve was a madwoman when she was determined about something, and she was never more determined about anything than about Michael.
They were going to need help. Without Hannah on their side, and with the vampires out of reach, Claire tried to imagine who might be willing and able to jump . . . and failed, at least until she felt a small shiver of air press by her and was reminded of something.
“Shane,” she said, “have you seen Miranda since we got back?”
The Glass House was complicated. It wasn’t just a house, and hadn’t been for a long time. It had a certain power to it, a certain sentience that Claire couldn’t explain, except that it must have come from what Myrnin did to the town to make it safe for the vampires. The thirteen original Founder Houses had all been linked—a kind of active transportation and defensive network that Claire couldn’t define, still, as anything but magical. Few of those remained now, but the Glass House was the first, and still the strongest. It had the capability of doing crazy stuff, but the most striking was that it could choose to save people who died within its walls. Michael, at first. Then Claire, briefly. And most recently, teen psychic Miranda, who had sacrificed herself so that Claire could live.
But Miranda, already psychic before her death, had powers that the rest of them didn’t have; her abilities allowed her to go outside of the walls of the house, and sustain herself in real human form out there, too. But she still lived here—was trapped here, in a very real sense, because she couldn’t stay away indefinitely.
Shane was shaking his head. “No. Haven’t seen the kid, which is weird. Should have thought about her earlier, but she just kind of keeps to herself.”
“I think she might be useful,” Claire said. “And besides, she’s probably lonely, don’t you think?”
“Lonely isn’t the worst problem someone in Morganville can have. But check the third floor. She made that her space up there after you left.”
The third floor didn’t exist. Shane was referring to a secret room in the attic—one with a hidden door off the main second-floor hall. A room Claire hadn’t been in for some time . . . but it made sense that Miranda would find it cozy. After all, she could, when she wanted, ghost in and out without making any sound at all—and it was a cool, if creepy, place. Just the thing for a teen who was more than a little creepy herself at the best of times.
“Be right back,” she said, and went to the area of the wall outside his room where the secret door was concealed. She knew how to open it, and after a couple of false starts, she got the paneling to move. It creaked, of course. That was almost certainly required. “Miranda? Mir, are you there?”
A light shone at the top of the steep, narrow steps leading up. As the door swung shut behind her, Claire ascended, and as she got to the top she came out into a room she hardly recognized. The Victorian furniture was still in place, and all the stained-glass heavy lamps, but the walls had been covered over with posters—movies, bands, games (and most of it Claire wouldn’t be ashamed to have on her own walls). The old rugs had been rolled up and put away, and the floor was a shining, polished brown now. There was a brand-new table on the far side of the room, with a flat-screen TV hooked up to a game console. And an antique chest that Claire thought must have been dragged out of storage in the attic; it was open, and clothes spilled out of it, mostly dark in color and old in style.
Miranda was on the couch, hands folded on her stomach as she stared up at the ceiling. She was a small, thin girl, dressed in black that echoed Eve’s clothing choices. And to be honest, she looked more dead than alive.
Claire frowned and stopped where she was. “Miranda? Are you okay?”
“Go away,” Miranda said.
That wasn’t normal. “You’re not okay.”
Miranda cracked one eye to stare at her. “I’m bored. Do you know what’s going on?”
“Um . . . I’m not sure. There are a lot of things that could fit that definition.”
“Here! In Morganville!” Miranda sat up and swung her legs down to glare full force. “They rounded up the vampires and put them in a prison. Did you know? Where have you been? Everybody took off and left me and I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t even know if I was supposed to do anything at all!”
“I’m sorry,” Claire said. She sat down next to Miranda and put her arm around the girl; Mir felt solid, warm, alive, and well. She wasn’t, of course, but she could seem eerily real within the Glass House. “I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to abandon you. It’s just—things happened.”
“They happened here, too. It’s like people just—went crazy, you know? First the vampires just . . . I don’t know, it was like they just surrendered, and then Morganville changed. It wasn’t safe out there anymore for me. These people, these Daylight people, they—they scare me.” Miranda shivered harder, and Claire rubbed her arm in a futile attempt to make her feel better. “I’m scared to leave the house. It all feels so wrong out there. It’s so quiet.”
“Well, we’re back,” Claire said. “And trust me, it’s not going to be quiet much longer. Have you been up here the whole time?”
“Mostly,” Miranda said. “The Daylighters tried to come inside while you were gone. I kept them out, and then Father Joe from the church came to warn me. He told me to stay off the streets. They were hunting down anything that wasn’t strictly, completely human—that’s where the vampires went. I can vanish, but he was worried they might still be able to get to me.” She shook her head. “Claire, when they were in the house—I heard one of them say that if they wanted to really cleanse the town, they needed to destroy all the Founder Houses. There was an argument, but it sounded like he was winning when they left. Do you think they’d do that? Try to destroy us?”
If the Daylighters really wanted to get rid of all of the non-human, supernatural elements of Morganville, then they were going to have to go after the Founder Houses. Claire was a little surprised she hadn’t already thought about it. The house could defend against
most intruders, but it couldn’t defend itself against fire, or wrecking crews. And that made her feel frantic, deep down inside. No, you won’t, she thought fiercely. You won’t destroy our home.
“When did Father Joe come to see you?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell.” Miranda, it was true, didn’t pay much attention to days and nights, and certainly not if she’d been hiding out here in Amelie’s safe room with no windows or clocks. “A few days, maybe?”
“When did they come into the house to search it?” Claire asked. “Please, think!”
“Yesterday,” Miranda said. “Yesterday early. I felt the sun coming up.” As ghosts did. Their lives were tied to sunrises and sunsets.
“Why didn’t you come down and tell us?”
Miranda looked away, and her voice got very small. “Because you left me,” she said. “You all left me here. Alone.”
It was hard to remember sometimes how young she was, until she said something like that. “You were sulking.”
“No, I wasn’t!”
“Mir.”
Her shoulders rose and fell, just a little. “Maybe.”
“Miranda, if the Daylighters decide to tear the house down . . .”
“I go with it,” Miranda said, and met Claire’s eyes again. “You think I don’t know that? But the vampires aren’t here to help you do anything now. How are you going to stop them?”
“I don’t know yet, but we will,” Claire said. She heard the strength in her voice, and it surprised her. “We will, and that means you, too. No more sulking. We’re going to need your help.”
Miranda nodded. “Just tell me what I can do.”
“We’re having a house meeting downstairs, right now. And I guess we have to tell Eve her suicide mission’s off, if she wants to have a house to come back to later.”
“She’s not going to be happy,” Miranda observed.
Man, was she right about that.
FOUR
Eve was, to put it mildly, pissed off, to the point that Claire thought for a second she was going to slug someone—probably Claire herself—and charge out the door. But she was also a Glass House resident, and she knew what Miranda was saying. She knew the danger.
