Bitter Blood

THIRTEEN CLAIRE

The portal system had gone completely, utterly dead. The next morning, Claire started trying each of the entrances she had mapped out, and she found each of them just as inactive as the ones in the Glass House. Even Amelie’s emergency escape, the one upstairs in the secret attic room, was gone.

She had known that was coming, but it was still…weirdly sad. She shuddered, and tried not to think about Frank dying slowly in his silent tomb as she exited the abandoned warehouse—portal number twelve on the map—and headed back toward the center of town. This side of Morganville was mostly left to rot and rats—had been for years, slowly falling into ruin as the businesses closed or relocated. The porch had finally fallen down at the front of the old hospital building where she and Shane had once run from both his father and Oliver, blocking it to even the hardiest urban explorers. There were likely lots of other ways in, but nobody sane wanted to go in there. It was a great place to go permanently missing—not just because of the vampires, but because there were some serious drug trade people who had claimed it for their own property. They could have it, as far as Claire was concerned. The place wasn’t just haunted; it was evil.

I could have spent the morning working on the machine—what am I going to call it? The Vampire Power Cancellation Device? VPCD, for short? Fine, how about the Magic Thingy? She was fantasizing too much about what it could do, she thought, but she couldn’t shake the idea that if she could just get a perfect amplification signal to match what the vampires were sending out, she could somehow cancel it…and perfectly nullify the effect.

Not that it would have stopped Pennyfeather from trying to rip her throat out, of course. Drawbacks.

This area of town was really run-down. Claire cursed under her breath as she tripped over another fallen fence. The vampires really could have done some urban renewal around here, but they liked having some ruins around; maybe it suited their Gothic sensibilities, or maybe it was just practical, having places where they could stalk around after dark in private. She wondered why they hadn’t shut down the meth trade, though. Maybe—likely—they just didn’t care enough.

As Claire was walking away, she saw the black ghost-hunting After Death van turn the corner and pull to a stop right in front of the building. Oh, no. No. Don’t…But there they were: Jenna, Angel, and Tyler, getting out of the van, pulling out all kinds of equipment, cables, boxes. They were clearly going to stage some kind of spirit investigation in there. Such a bad idea.

Claire took out her phone and dialed the Morganville police department’s nonemergency number. They weren’t fast responders, generally, and it took at least ten rings before someone finally picked up. “Hi, it’s Claire Danvers,” she said. “You know who I am?”

“Yes. What do you want?” The voice on the other end was professional and cold. No clues as to who it was she might be talking to, or how the individual really felt.

“I’m standing in front of the old hospital building, the abandoned one? And those stupid ghost-hunting people are here. I just thought—maybe you could send a car over, tell them to move on?” She hesitated for a second, then plunged on. “Why are they still here, anyway?”

“We’re waiting for a decision as to how to handle them,” the voice said. “Until then, we’re letting them poke around. People know to avoid them. The hope is they’ll just lose interest and leave.”

People meaning, Claire assumed, vampire people. The cops seemed to have it handled. “Okay,” she said. “But that hospital’s not safe. You know that, right?”

“We’ll send a car,” he promised, and hung up on her.

So much for being civic-minded. Claire watched the activity over at the van for a while, until she saw them actually ducking through a cut in the chain-link fence around the building. They were going inside.

Not good. For them.

She crossed the street, hoping to hear an approaching siren, but there was nothing except the hissing, constant desert wind and the rattle of tumbleweeds against the fences. In places, there were so many of the balled, thorny plants tangled in that it looked like a barricade. One skipped across open ground and bumped against her pants leg, and she had to stop to pull the burred tips free; her fingertips tingled and itched afterward.

Tyler had already gone inside. Angel was sliding through the fence now, with Jenna holding it open.

“Hey,” Claire said, and they both turned to look at her in surprise. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you, but this isn’t a good place. It’s unstable in there. The floor’s all rotten.”

“Ah, it’s—Claire, right?” When she nodded, Angel smiled—with far less wattage than he would have used for Monica, she thought. “Well, we thank you for the warning, but we’re very used to working in dangerous spaces. Remember the asylum, Jenna? The one in Arkansas?”

“The floors were completely gone,” Jenna said. “We had to walk on the beams or we’d have dropped at least three stories straight into the basement. Got some great stuff, though. It was a huge ratings winner.” She pushed a box through to Angel, then a second one. “Don’t worry, we’re trained for this kind of thing.”

“There are snakes in there,” Claire said. “Rattlers. And black widow spiders. It’s really not safe.”

“And we’re really okay with it,” Jenna said. “You go on, Claire. We’ve got this.” Jenna studied her with curious pale eyes. “You seem pretty eager to keep us out of there. What’s your real reason?”

Claire shrugged and kicked a random rock. “Nothing,” she said. “Just I hate to see you get in trouble in there, for nothing. You’re wasting your time around here, anyway.”

“You’d be surprised what we’ve picked up already around here,” Jenna said. That sounded ominous. “My personal opinion is that this town is a hotbed of paranormal activity. I believe we’ll get dramatic footage out of what we find inside. It’s almost as if—as if we’re being guided.”

“Guided,” Claire repeated. “By what?”

“By whom,” Angel corrected. His smile held just a touch of indulgent doubt. “Jenna believes that she’s made contact with a lost spirit.”

“I have,” Jenna said, and it sounded like the embers of an old argument, flaring up again. “Maybe you might recognize her. It’s a young girl—”

Not Alyssa, Claire thought, stricken. Please don’t say it’s Shane’s sister. Because there was no doubt in her mind, now, that Alyssa’s spirit lingered, trapped in the lot where she’d died, even though the house had tumbled down.

“Miranda,” Jenna finished. “At least, that’s what I’ve been able to make out from the EVP recordings. We have quite a lot of them. She’s very talkative.”

“Miranda,” Claire repeated, and drew in a deep breath. She’d survived out here, somehow; she’d latched onto the ghost-hunting crew in the hopes of getting help. But that was so dangerous. “Um…no, I don’t think I recognize that name. Probably before my time.”

“Huh,” Jenna said, but Claire didn’t like the look in her eyes. It was far too shrewd. “Funny how she knows your name, then. And a whole lot more.”

She was saved by the distant wail of a siren. It was coming closer. Jenna and Angel looked at each other, eyebrows raised, as it became clear it was heading into their area, and both called, at the same time, “Tyler!”

Tyler backed out of the tumbled, brick-strewn doorway of the hospital. “Yeah, what? I’m going to have to climb over all this crap to get in this way. Maybe we should check the side—”

“Did you clear the location with the PD?” Angel asked.

“Didn’t you?”

Jenna sighed. “Dammit, Tyler—”

Claire made a quick, tactical retreat as the Morganville police cruiser pulled up behind the van, lights and siren still going, and left them to sort it out.

Miranda was still around, and she was working with the ghost hunters in some way. Well—that was good that she’d found a way to survive, but still, Claire had a terrible feeling that it was also a complication.

Maybe a big one.

Claire felt better after leaving the neighborhood and starting to see open businesses again, ragged as they were; most of them were scrap yards and places that repaired appliances, maybe a couple of “antique shops” that were where you took things a step above the scrap yard. A secondhand clothing store Claire sometimes visited, though it was mostly Morganville natives who shopped there; the store over by campus was the one with stuff in her size, and from out of town generally, because of the college students who shed their clothes by season. It was terrible to be thinking of clothing just now, though; she’d just eliminated any possibility of searching Myrnin’s lab for clues to where he’d gone. It deeply sucked. Not to mention that it would take a jackhammer and a backhoe to dig through the concrete sealing the entrance if she ever intended to rescue Myrnin’s books, which were mostly irreplaceable.

She saw the first mayoral campaign sign stapled to a light pole—one for Captain Obvious—and remembered, with a shock, that the election was today. She hadn’t cast a ballot yet. Well, the day was still young; she had time. And it was kind of her duty, since it had been her brainstorm in the first place, to vote for Monica, though she’d have to hold her nose to do it.

So she headed to City Hall, and ran straight into a mob scene.

The noise was a dull roar about a block away, and she thought it was some kind of construction work, maybe a giant bulldozer or grinding machine or something…but as she got closer, she heard that it wasn’t mechanical at all. It was voices—yelling voices, all blending into something that sounded like a collective insanity. People were running toward the noise, and she found she had the same impulse to go and see what was going on. Though there’d been some attempts, nothing that big had ever happened in Morganville, in her experience. People just didn’t have the heart to riot in those numbers.

Until now.

As Claire turned the corner, she saw there was a flatbed tractor trailer parked on the curb in front of City Hall, decked out with some sad-looking patriotic streamers and ribbons, and on it stood Flora Ramos, with someone in a black leather jacket, black pants, gloves, and a motorcycle helmet with a dark, opaque faceplate. His—at least, Claire assumed it was a man—arms were crossed. Flora was at the microphone next to a big pair of speakers.

The posters that people had on poles and held up over their heads were the CAPTAIN OBVIOUS FOR MAYOR signs.

And clearly, the guy standing on the dais next to Flora was…the new Captain Obvious? It could have been the same guy who’d fired at Oliver in Common Grounds; he’d been wearing a black hood then, instead of the helmet, but the jacket looked similar.

Flora Ramos held up her hands and stilled to a dull mutter the approving roar of the thousand or so people crammed in the street.

“We’ve had enough,” she was saying. “Enough of the oppression. Enough of the death. Enough of the inequality. Enough of losing our homes, our lives, our children, to things we don’t control. And we won’t be silent. If Mayor Moses couldn’t make our voices heard, we will make them heard on every street, in every building, and on every corner of Morganville until things change! Until we make them change! We built this town with our sweat and blood and strength, and it is our town as much as that of those who pretend to own it!”

She was, Claire had to admit, a great speaker. She was angry, full of passion, and it arced out of her like lightning to sting the crowd into more yells, chants, and shouts. Claire slowed down. She was a little afraid, suddenly, of the power of that mob, and of Flora’s eloquence. So were the Morganville cops, she realized. They were out in force, all twenty or so, forming a solid cordon between the crowd and City Hall.

No telling how the vampires felt about it, but Claire had no doubt, none at all, that they were well aware of this. And if they’d been unhappy about Monica seeking the office, how pissed off were they now? Plenty, she imagined. From the crowd that had gathered, Captain Obvious was going to win in a landslide, and if the vamps thought they could ignore the ballots and pick their own candidate, it was going to get very ugly, very quickly. Nobody would be fooled, and clearly, the humans were in no mood to take it lying down.

Flora was still talking, but it was hard to hear her over the constant, fevered applause and cheering. Claire stared hard at Captain Obvious. Hard to tell anything about him, underneath the disguise, but he had a hell of a lot of guts coming out here in public and standing as a free target after putting a crossbow bolt in Oliver.

So she could have predicted what came next.

It started calmly enough. Claire was used to looking for vampires, so she picked up the smooth, subtle movements from the shadows well before most other people. It started with one or two coming out, well swathed in long coats and scarves, hats and gloves, but it didn’t stop there. Soon it was ten. Then twenty. Then too many for Claire to count.

And like the police, they fanned out, but not to cordon off the crowd.

They were making for the stage, and Captain Obvious.

He saw them coming about the time that most others did. Vampires didn’t need protection, even in a crowd like this; Morganville natives had it bred into them to back up, get away, and that was exactly what they did. Cries of alarm went up, and little islands of space formed around the vamps as they pushed forward.

Captain Obvious’s helmet turned toward Flora, and she nodded. He backed up to the edge of the trailer, dropped off and out of sight, and one second later Claire heard the roar of a motorcycle. He came roaring out from concealment on the other side of the truck, spraying smoke as he fishtailed around. The crowd cleared for him, too, or at least for the snarling bike, and he leaned into the handlebars and hit the thrust hard.

A lunging vampire tried to take him off the machine, but he ducked low and weaved expertly, and she went rolling. When another tried it ten feet later, someone in the crowd—more daring than the rest—ran forward and knocked the vampire’s hat off. The vampire turned with a roar of fury and slapped the broad-brimmed coverage back over his smoking head, but his second was lost, and Captain Obvious accelerated away, leaning into a sharp turn with his knee almost on the ground. It was someone with training, Claire thought, someone with a lot of skill.

The vampires largely gave up on him, though a few tried chasing him; the rest bolted forward, swarmed onto the stage, and two grabbed Flora Ramos. A third cleanly severed the microphone cord with a single pull, robbing her of her soapbox.

But when they tried to take her down from the platform, people surged forward, shouting. They’d lost their fear, all of a sudden. It made sense. Flora was a popular lady, a widow, who’d lost kids to the vampires. She was everybody’s mom, all of a sudden, being dragged off into the dark—not in the middle of the night, but in public, in broad daylight, in a blatant show of vampire force.

Amelie and Oliver must have approved this. They must be watching, Claire thought with a sudden twinge. She turned and looked behind her, and saw a long blacked-out sedan idling at the corner. She walked that way. Walked right up to the car and rapped on the backseat window.

It glided down to reveal the pale, sharp face of Oliver. He didn’t speak. He just gazed at her with cool disinterest. Next to him, Amelie was looking straight ahead, a slight frown grooved between her brows. She looked flawless, as always, but Claire knew her well enough to think she was bothered by what she saw before her.

“Let Mrs. Ramos go,” Claire told Oliver.

“She’s preaching sedition and breaching the public peace,” he said. “She’s ours by law.”

“Maybe. But if you take her off that stage, you lose. Not just now, but for a long time. People won’t forget.”

“I care not what they remember,” he said. “The only way to stop a rebellion is to crush it with blood and fire, and to wound them so they’ll never dare to raise a hand again.”

He sounded as if he almost liked it. Claire shuddered, and looked past him, to Amelie. “Please,” she said. “This isn’t right. Stop it. Let Flora go.”

It took forever for the Founder to speak, but when she did, her voice was soft, even, and decisive. “Let the old woman go,” she said. “It gains us nothing to make her a martyr. Our goal is to find this new Captain Obvious. He can’t hide for long. Once we have him, we make an example of him and make it clear that this kind of disruption won’t be tolerated. Yes?”

Oliver scowled and sent Claire a murderous glance. “My queen, I think you are listening too much to your pets. The girl’s softhearted. She’ll lead us all to ruin.” He lifted Amelie’s pearl white hand to his lips and kissed it, lips lingering on her skin, and she finally looked at him. “Let me guide you in this. You know I have the best interests of Morganville at heart. And you are Morganville.”

The frown between Amelie’s perfectly arched brows relaxed, smoothed, and she kept her gaze fully focused on him. “I fear your way will bring us more trouble, Oliver.”

“And this chit’s way will bring us death,” he said. “Mark me, compromise is no answer. We would compromise ourselves into a pyre of ashes. Humans have no pity for us, and never have; they’d kill every one of us. Have you forgotten that one of them just yesterday tried to put a silver arrow in my heart?”

“And I pulled it out,” Claire said. “Or you’d be dead now, you jerk. What exactly is a chit?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Amelie’s gaze tugged away from Oliver’s for a moment, and Claire got the full force of the Founder’s attention. “A disrespectful young woman,” she said. “Something I was called more than once. Something every woman of quality is called, sooner or later, by a man who feels they do not know their place. As we do not, because our place is as lofty as we may aspire to climb. It is the language of men who fear women.” There was something weird about Amelie’s eyes; they seemed darker than normal, and Claire couldn’t figure it out until she realized that the pupils were inordinately large, as if she’d had some kind of dilating drops in them. Was she being drugged? “Which brings up a good point, Oliver. I believe you’ve called me a chit, upon occasion. Yet suddenly you call me your queen.”

“You’ve ever been queen in my heart,” he said, which made Claire want to gag. His voice was smoky, soothing, and way too seductive. “Can we not agree on this one thing, my liege? That the survival of what few vampires remain must take precedence over the legions of humans who roam this earth in their billions? If we trust to their good graces, we will die.”

“He is not wrong in that, Claire,” Amelie said. “Mankind is not known for its charity toward those it fears. If we’re not torn apart as demons, we’ll be dissected in your laboratories, for science. Or worse, put on exhibition, no better than those ragged lions and exhausted bears in your zoos. Who will protect us, if we don’t protect ourselves?”

Claire wanted to say that she was wrong, that it wouldn’t be like that, but she’d read enough history and knew enough about the grudges and fears that people held close to their hearts to realize that Amelie was probably right, in principle.

“Let her go,” Claire said. “And people will see you’re not afraid to be part of this town and listen to them. Trust me. Please. I don’t want this to explode, and neither do you, but it will. You make Mrs. Ramos disappear, and it’ll never stop exploding. Vampires will take out humans, humans will take out vampires, and sooner or later, we’re all dead or you’re discovered.”

“I cannot let her go. Not an option.” But Amelie seemed to consider things, and suddenly she pulled her hand free of Oliver’s hold, opened the other side of the limousine, and stepped out into the sun.

Unlike the other vampires, she didn’t bother to try to cover herself; she was old enough that the sun wouldn’t do more than give her a painful but mild burn. The sight of her in full daylight was startling. She wore a white silk suit, expertly tailored, and her short stature was concealed with tall white pumps. Her pale gold hair, wrapped in a coronet around her head, was almost the same shade. The only color on her was a bloodred ruby necklace and a matching ring, and as she walked off toward the mob, she looked every inch a queen.

Oliver slammed his door open, grabbed Claire by the arm, and shoved her back against a brick wall. “Stupid girl,” he said, and ran after Amelie. She didn’t seem to be moving fast—drifting, almost—but he had trouble catching her.

She reached the crowd before him, and it parted in front of her like smoke before a strong wind. The vampires paused on stage, suddenly aware of her presence, and silence swept over the chaos to the point that Claire imagined she could almost hear the click of Amelie’s heels as she moved up the portable stairs to the stage.

Oliver scrambled behind her, impassive in expression, but she could see the anger and frustration in his body language. He was too late to stop whatever she intended to do.

“Release the woman,” Amelie said to the two vamps holding Flora. They let go, immediately, and stepped away with their heads bowed. Amelie advanced to stand in front of her. “Are you injured?”

Flora shook her head no.

“Then you may leave this place, if you wish. Or you may stay here, on this stage, and accept the very difficult and thankless job of mayor, a position to which I believe you are uniquely suited.”

Whatever Flora was expecting, it wasn’t that. Neither were her supporters. A confused babble started up, and Claire jogged back over so she could hear more clearly over the confusion. The microphones were dead, so only the first few rows were likely to hear what was going on.

“I’m not running,” Flora said. “It’s Captain Obvious the people want.”

“And Captain Obvious they will not get,” Amelie replied with perfect calm. “One cannot elect a man too cowardly to show his face. You, Mrs. Ramos, have courage enough for both, quite clearly. And so you are my nominee. What say you? We have enough residents here to win you the day, simply by voice. Yes or no?”

“I can’t—” It wasn’t a refusal, though; it was a confused and reluctant argument. “I’m not a politician.”

“Neither is Captain Obvious, else he would not have run away at the first sign of trouble,” Amelie said coolly, and got a ripple of chuckles from a few in the crowd. “I come to stand before the people of Morganville as the Founder. Unafraid. Can he say as much? You stand before them as well. And I say you will uphold their trust. I ask you for nothing but honorable service. Will you accept?”

Claire didn’t hear the answer, because the roar that went up from the crowd was deafening.

There really wasn’t any question of refusing.

Amelie had outmaneuvered Captain Obvious and Oliver, and she had regained the equilibrium of Morganville, at least temporarily—all in a mere thirty seconds.

Claire shook her head in wonder, and went home to tell Shane that, despite their hard work—and glitter—Monica was off the ballot.

He’d be so disappointed.

Claire wasn’t the first one to get the news to the Glass House, even though she called as she jogged away from City Hall. Eve answered on the first ring and said, “Are you at the riot?”

“It’s not really a riot. More of a rally.”

“Because the underground talk is that it’s a riot. Are they beating people with signs? Is there pepper spray involved? Details!”

“Not that I saw,” she said. “I really thought I had breaking news, but you beat me to it.”

“Not so much, sugar pie. Is it true that they almost got Flora Ramos? Man, I wish they had. It would have just destroyed whatever high ground Amelie had left. I mean, Flora Ramos—everybody knows about her kids….”

“They didn’t take her in,” Claire said, and talked fast, in case Eve was refreshing the Web page. “Amelie declared her mayor.”

“Wait—declared? How is that fair? Wow, Monica is going to be pissed that she didn’t even get to properly lose…. Okay, that’s an upside, actually.”

“She wouldn’t have gotten much of a vote. There was about half the town rallying out there—you know, the half that breathes? And they weren’t carrying any ‘Monica Morrell’ signs. Everybody was Team Obvious out there.”

There was a rustle on the other end, and then a confused blur of voices arguing. “Hey!” Eve came into focus again. “Hell no, Shane, call her yourself. I got her first…. Oh, all right. Shane says to tell you he worked hard on those signs, and they were way better than Captain Obvious’s signs.” Eve covered up the speaker, but Claire still heard her muffled exchange with him. “Really? You had to try to steal my phone to say that? Loser!” Shane’s comeback was indistinct, but probably insulting. Eve frostily ignored it and said, “You were saying, Claire?”

“No matter how great they were, all our posters got torn down or…”

“Or? Claire? Helllloooooooo?”

“Gotta go,” Claire said hastily, and hung up, because Monica’s red convertible was pulled in at the curb up ahead, and she was standing there, staring at one of her posters that hadn’t been pulled down. Claire could see the blank expression on her face, which made her curious, and she hurried over to stand at an angle where she could see the poster.

She covered her mouth to hide an appalled gasp, because someone had gotten downright artistic on Monica’s poster—more than one person, obviously, from the ink-color variations and styles. One had written, in bold Sharpie, Burn in Hell, which was really the nicest thing anyone had said. The additions to her half-drunk duckface picture were interesting, too, and mostly pornographic.

Not that Monica didn’t deserve it. She did. This was nothing but retribution, but from the look on the girl’s face, she hadn’t seen it coming, not at all.

“They hate me,” Monica said. Her voice was quiet and a little hushed, and her eyes were wide. There were spots of high color on her cheekbones under the spray tan. “Jesus, they really do hate me.”

“Um…sorry. But what did you expect?”

“Respect,” Monica said. “Fear. But they’re not afraid of me. Not anymore.” She reached out, took hold of the poster, and yanked it down. It ripped in the middle, and she tore the second half down with even more vicious fury. The cardboard was tough, but she managed to reduce it to vivid neon scraps and toss it defiantly to the sidewalk in a shattered heap. “Their mistake! And yours, bitch! I know you and Shane set this up. You always wanted to see me humiliated!” She advanced on Claire, fists clenched. Claire stood her ground calmly, and Monica stopped coming when she realized she wasn’t going to make her back down, but rage still boiled through her whole body. At the slightest opportunity, the least little sign of weakness, she’d pounce.

“We thought you might pull it off,” Claire said. “It’s not our fault you have more baggage than an airport at Christmas. Maybe instead of getting even, you ought to be thinking how to improve what people think about you.”

“I think you have about ten seconds to get out of my face!”

Claire shrugged. “Enjoy your outcast life, then. You’ll get used to it. The rest of us do just fine.”

“Bitch!” Monica yelled at her back, but it was just words, and it was a sign of just how much things had changed between the two of them that Monica didn’t dare attack her with anything else, not even when her back was turned. “I’ll get you for this—I swear!”

Claire just waved and kept walking, though the area right between her shoulder blades kept itching until she heard Monica’s car door slam and heard the roar of the engine. Even then, she stayed ready to jump out of the way should the Mustang mysteriously jump the curb, but once it had flashed past her, burning rubber in a thin, bitter mist on the still air, she relaxed. A little.

But only for a moment.

It was a sunny morning, quiet; the sun hung warm in a cloudless sky the color of faded denim, and a couple of big hawks kited overhead, circling for prey. It wasn’t the time or place that she would have expected to sense a threat, and yet…

Yet something was wrong. She could just…feel it.

It took her a few seconds of quick analysis to figure out that what had tripped her alarm switch was the dusty college bookstore she had just passed. Instead of opening up, someone had been sliding the curtains closed in the window…and now a hand reached through the curtain and turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED. That wasn’t right. It was a regular workday, and the store wouldn’t have been open for very long. Well, he could have just wanted to grab breakfast. Or an early lunch.

She couldn’t be sure, because it happened very quickly, but she could have sworn that the hand flipping the sign had taken on a vivid red sunburn even in that brief exposure to the sun.

Vampire.

Claire slowly backed up, staring at the store. She thought back to what was happening while she’d been talking to—well, been taking abuse from—Monica. Had someone gone inside the place? Yes, one person; she’d seen him out of the corner of her eye. And, now that she thought of it, that person had been Professor Carlyle, he of the utterly unearned B on her physics paper, so obviously not a creature of the night, even if he was evil.

Someone had been in the store already, like a spider waiting in a web.

Not my problem, Claire told herself, but something deep down argued with her. Maybe she’d spent too much time around Shane, who was always throwing himself gleefully into one fight after another. Maybe she was just still angry at Amelie and Oliver’s arrogant attitude toward the mostly defenseless human population of Morganville. Whatever.

She slipped her backpack off her shoulder, tugged free a silver stake, and tried the door, and despite the sign, it was still unlocked. She was committed then—the vampire would have heard her anyway, however distracted he might have been. So she charged inside, let the door bang shut behind her, and landed solidly on her feet, ready for the fight.

Good thing she was, because the vampire came at her fast out of the shadows, a white distorted face and a red snarl, and she struck out and got flesh, but not his heart. He screamed and darted off, clearly not prepared for a fight with someone who could hurt him, and in the brief respite Claire glanced around the shop. The lights were on, which was helpful. Typical college bookstore, with loads of shelves crammed with dog-eared, highlighted-over textbooks; the whole place had a run-down, cheap look to it that probably was exactly what the average TPU student liked about it—that, and the low, low prices. (Claire had tried it out once, but the book she’d bought at pennies on the dollar also had significant issues, such as missing about a dozen crucial pages in the middle.)

The shopkeeper, whose name she vaguely remembered as Sarah something—Sarah Brooke, that was it—was sitting on the floor. Her wrists and ankles had been tied together, and her eyes were so wide that she was likely screaming under the duct tape that covered her mouth.

Professor Carlyle was kneeling beside her. He’d been blitz-attacked, apparently; he had a cut on the side of his head that was bleeding freely in shocking red streams, and he was holding a trembling hand to his neck. More blood trickled out of that wound, but it wasn’t gushing. “Danvers?” he said, in blank astonishment.

“You okay, sir?”

“He—he bit me—but I’m Protected!” He held up the hand that wasn’t clamped over his throat, and Claire saw the silvery glint of a bracelet. “This can’t happen!”

Sarah was Protected, too—she was wearing a similar bracelet that guaranteed her safety from vampire attack, at least theoretically. Obviously, it wasn’t a magic shield.

The vampire, who’d backed away from Claire temporarily, took another run at her, and this time, she skipped backward and ripped down the curtains over the big front window, framing herself in bright daylight. “Come on, if you’re coming,” she said, but the vamp skidded to a halt right at the edge where shadow met sun.

And she got her first good look at him. “Jason?” she blurted in horror.

The vampire who was trying to kill her—and Sarah, and Professor Carlyle—was Jason Rosser, Eve’s brother.

He’d wanted to be a vampire—had actively campaigned for it—and she’d been afraid he’d be even worse as a person if he grew fangs; here it was, proof positive, that if you had creepy violent tendencies as a human, you felt free to indulge them as a new vampire. The only good thing about the situation was that he was really new, and super allergic to the sun. In fact, today’s attack might have been his first try at hunting.

If so, it wasn’t going extremely well.

“Get out of here,” Jason said. His voice was low, rough, and ugly with fury. “I don’t want you. Get out.”

“Too bad, you’ve got me, jackass. What the hell are you doing?”

“What does it look like, bite bait?” He flashed his teeth at her, which might have scared her, oh, years ago.

“Failure? And don’t drop fang at me, Jason. It’s not polite. Ah! Watch it!” He’d made a move, and although she didn’t think he’d charge into the sunlight to grab her, she wasn’t assuming anything. She brought the stake to an easy-stabbing position. He already had a blackened, sizzling hole in his side that wasn’t healing fast. He wasn’t eager to take another hit. “These people are Protected, idiot. They’re off the menu. Go to the blood bank if you need your fix of B positive or whatever it is you’re jonesing for.” Besides causing pain and terror, she thought, but didn’t say. Clearly, that was a big part of it for Jason. Most of the other vampires were more clinical about their feeding, but he’d brought all his weird, twisted baggage over with him.

In some ways, he and Eve were mirror images of each other—both fascinated by the darkness. Only Eve had chosen to manifest hers outwardly, and Jason…Jason had taken it all deep inside. For a while, Claire had been convinced there was something in him more than that. Something better. But over time, he’d proven her wrong.

And now, here he was, bloody-mouthed, grinning at her like Batman’s Joker, if the Joker had fangs.

“Protection’s a joke,” Jason told her. He prowled the line of shadow, staring at her with dark, angry eyes that looked unsettlingly like his sister’s. “Always has been; it’s a racket, and the vampires laugh about it over their drinks. You know what the penalty is for me draining these two? I have to pay a fine. It’s like a note in your file at school. I can do what I want. Nobody’s going to care. Nobody’s going to stop me.”

“Oliver might. Or Amelie. They kind of like vampires to stay in line around here. Makes things easier for everyone.”

He made a harsh buzzer sound. “Sorry, wrong answer,” he said. “Old pioneer days, Claire. You’re not keeping up. We’ve got privileges now. You can’t keep us walking around on leashes anymore like tame dogs.”

His pacing reminded her of a caged animal, too. Creepy. “Don’t make me stake you, Jason. I’d have to tell your sister, and I don’t want to do that.”

“As usual, it’s all about Eve. Why is it her business what I do?”

“She still cares about you, you know.”

“She never really cared. Don’t try that on me. If she’d been any kind of a stand-up sister, she’d have watched out for me. She just ran off and left me behind to take my punishment and shacked up with her precious Michael.” Jason singsonged the name like a grade-schooler. He’s just trying to scare you, Claire told herself, somewhat unconvincingly. You’ve dealt with Myrnin all this time; you can handle this stupid kid.

But she wasn’t so sure. She’d counted on a vampire who’d back down, not one who was the poster child for unbalanced. Time for a shift of strategy.

Claire put down the stake. She needed both hands as she unzipped her backpack and reached inside to the inner pocket.

Jason decided it was the perfect time to make his move. He was fast, she had to give him that, but so was she, and she’d known he’d take the bait; he wasn’t the cautious sort. So when her hand came up out of the bag holding the canister, he laughed, and his hands closed on her shoulders with crushing force.

“What’re you going to do? Perfume me?”

She sprayed liquid silver in his open mouth.

Jason’s shriek almost burst her eardrums, and, coughing and gagging, he staggered backward, smoke pouring from between his lips. His skin was burning from the sunlight. Claire shoved him backward into the shadows, and he stumbled a few steps, kept gagging, and sank down to his hands and knees to cough convulsively.

“It’s just a little,” she told him. “Consider it breath freshener. The next time, I spray it in your eyes, Jason, so keep the hell off me if you like your face.”

He was too busy retching to try to speak, even if he could have managed it. Claire bypassed him and went to Sarah, tugged the ropes free, and let her pull the tape off her mouth. It must have hurt. The skin beneath it looked red and abraded, and Sarah whooped in a deep breath of relief. She fixed a poisonous glare on Jason. “You just wait, you little piece of crap,” she said. “My Protector’s not going to stand for this.”

“Neither will mine,” Professor Carlyle said. He looked pale and shaky, but righteously angry. Claire found paper towels behind the bookstore’s counter and folded some into a thick pad, which she gave him to apply to his head wound. “Thank you, Danvers.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “So…can we talk over that B on the last paper? Because it was really an A effort. I’d take a B if I deserved it, but—”

“Yes, yes, fine, A it is. As far as I’m concerned, you have an A for the rest of the class,” he said. “Sarah, would you like me to call someone, or—”

“Nope,” the woman said, and climbed to her feet. She was small but had a wiry strength that probably came from bench-pressing boxes of textbooks all day. “I’m calling the pound to see if they can come get this damn rabid dog—”

Before she could finish the thought, Jason had scrambled to his feet and was running for the back door. Alleys, Claire thought. Shaded alleys, with sewer access. He’d be gone before anyone could catch him.

“Might want to keep that back door locked from now on,” she said to Sarah as she returned the silver canister to her backpack and picked up the stake to slide it into the holster next to it. “Professor.”

They both nodded, clearly still off-balance from the encounter with their own mortality; Claire felt it, too, a hissing tension running through her body that made her realize how much she’d just taken on herself. Shane would have been livid that she’d tried it without backup.

She went outside and walked fast, all the way home.

Where she was going to have to tell Eve her brother had gone full-on Hannibal Lecter. Fun.

She spotted the shiny black van of the ghost hunters—clearly driven off from their targeted hospital visit, thankfully—cruising slowly down the street. Jenna and Angel were arguing (there was a shocker) and Jenna was consulting a street map. There weren’t many maps of Morganville that the vampires hadn’t, ah, edited, so if the team members were trying to find some “haunted” location, they wouldn’t be finding anything more exotic along the way. Except maybe Jason, who could be on the rampage after not getting his afternoon snack.

Claire swallowed her pride, dialed Amelie’s number, and got the brisk, Irish-accented voice of her assistant, Bizzie. “Please tell Amelie that Jason Rosser’s out here biting people, in public. Protected people. And if she wants those ghost hunters to get a good story, he’s a great way to do it.” She didn’t wait for an acknowledgment. Amelie would shut Jason up; she might shut him up permanently, but that wasn’t Claire’s concern. She was more worried about the ghost hunters.

Nobody had said so, but it had seemed obvious from her conversation with the police that the decision the vampires were considering about the strangers had two outcomes: wiping their memories and dumping them out of town somewhere, or planting them somewhere deep, where no one would ever find the bodies. If they were still here, it was almost as if Amelie (or Oliver) had decided to toy with them, with no intention of letting them ever leave town alive.

Despite herself, Claire admired the ghost hunters’ determination, a little. She recognized the curiosity, and the blind stubbornness; she had loads of that in her own character. She hated to see them punished for it.

But that, like so much in Morganville, was probably out of her hands.

Claire’s adrenaline had finally stopped buzzing in her ears by the time she walked up the steps to the front door of the Glass House, and luckily, it seemed there was no emergency in progress. There was lunch being contemplated, and as she walked into the kitchen, Eve, Michael, and Shane were arguing the relative merits of hot dogs versus grilling hamburgers outside.

“Hot dogs are faster,” Michael pointed out. “Microwave.”

“Ugh, that’s disgusting. Also, we don’t make mac and cheese in there, either. That’s just wrong,” Eve said, and poured herself a tall glass of Coke. “Hey, college girl. Drinky?”

“Yes.” Claire collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table. Eve gave her a quick look that let her know she’d picked up on her tension, then got down another glass from the cabinet. “The Apocalypse must be near, because a guy is arguing against grilling. That’s just un-Texan, Michael.”

“Vampire,” he pointed out. “If I went out there, the only thing barbecuing would be me. And hot dogs are all-American. All-American trumps Texan.”

“You’re brainwashed by commercials about cars and baseball,” Eve shot back, and handed Claire a fizzing glass. “Hot dogs are made of pig butts and the parts nobody in his right mind would eat. Yes, I used to like them. Don’t judge me, okay?”

Shane was clearly Team Grill; he’d already gotten out the burger-flipping utensils and put them on the counter, and now he was digging sauces out of the fridge. “We’re not even having this discussion,” he said. “Eve’s unemployed. The least she can do is help me grill burgers. And you two can chop veg—” He paused, looking straight at Claire. “What the hell happened?”

“Monica got creamed in the election?”

“We’ll throw the party later. And?”

She really didn’t want to say it. “I saw Jason. He was kind of…attacking people. So I stopped him. By the way, the silver pepper spray? Works great.”

Eve had gone completely still. She stared at Claire for a moment, then said quietly, “Is he okay?”

“I didn’t get him too badly. He’s okay. Just less bitey for a while. Eve—he’s not, ah—”

“Not wound too tight,” Eve supplied, and lowered her gaze to fix on the bubbles in her Coke. “Yeah, copy that. He’s always been off. You know that.”

Off didn’t really describe the feeling she’d had with Jason today. “I think it’s worse than that,” she said, as gently as she could. “He’s really—vicious.”

Michael stepped in, then. “It’s not unexpected that would happen,” he said. “Look, becoming a vampire—it’s complicated, what it does to you, but it does kind of amplify whatever bad impulses you already had. It’s tough to hang on to the good stuff, but easy as hell to bring the bad with you. I knew he’d be…” Michael shook his head. “Anyway. I’ll let Oliver know. He’s in charge of Jason.”

“From what Oliver’s doing now, he won’t really care,” Claire said. “He’s gone a little power crazy. You might have noticed.”

“Okay, so Jason Rosser is evil, and Oliver’s power hungry. This is not breaking news that should keep us from grilling burgers,” Shane said. “Can I get an amen?”

Eve and Michael chimed in, but Claire kept her head down. She was feeling pretty low. She’d spent a lot of energy this morning running down the portals and coming up empty, and then there had been the excitement of the rally, and Jason…. She was drained—not even hungry, actually, which was surprising.

She was also worried, really worried, about Myrnin. She’d thought that by now she’d have gotten some word from him. Bob was sitting upstairs in her room, contentedly spinning webs around flies that she’d caught for him, and she couldn’t believe that even at his craziest, Myrnin would have left his pet to starve. He was careless of assistants, but never of his spider.

So…where was he? And if he couldn’t communicate, how was she supposed to even begin to find him? It made her head hurt, and her stomach churn, and suddenly all she wanted was to finish her cold, sweet soda and crawl upstairs to sleep.

“Hey,” Michael said as he took out tomatoes, lettuce, onions and pickles from the refrigerator. “Hand me a knife, would you?”

She pulled one off the magnetic strip Shane had installed on the wall—easier access, he’d said, in case it came down to that kind of a fight. Shane always thought ahead that way. She gave the blade to Michael without comment and watched as he chopped stuff up. He was neat, fast, and accurate. Vampire senses apparently made for great prep cooks. “Michael,” she said as he finished slicing pickles into quarters, “do you know what bloodline Myrnin comes from?”

“I’m guessing you don’t mean Welsh,” he said. “Vampire bloodline?”

She nodded.

“No. Why?”

“Because I need to track him, and I remember Naomi could, you know, drink a sample of another vampire’s bloodline to find him. She did it with Theo. Maybe—maybe you could do it to find Myrnin?”

“Maybe,” Michael said, but he sounded doubtful. “I heard there’s a blood record somewhere, but I have no idea where it is. Or if Myrnin’s in it. From what I heard, he’s the only one still living out of his line. It’s pretty ancient, and he didn’t make any others who survived long, so there may not be a record.”

“But could you ask? Maybe look around? I need to find him, Michael. I think—I think he’s in trouble.”

“Why?” He put down the knife and looked at her directly. “Did he say something?”

“Only that he didn’t like the way things were going in town,” she admitted. “And that he was planning to leave. But you know how he is. I don’t think he really would have run away. Not like that. You saw the lab!”

He shrugged. “The lab’s always a mess; you know that. It’s impossible to tell whether there was a struggle, or he just didn’t like the latest newspaper he read and decided to trash the place.”

“He left Bob! And how did Pennyfeather get in? He didn’t have authorization.”

“You don’t know that. And maybe he just forgot about Bob. It’s not like he’s an exciting pet.”

“Bob’s cool, and Myrnin loves him like any other pet. He’d never just abandon him to starve,” Claire said. “But…I just have the feeling, okay? So would you? For me?”

Michael ruffled her hair. “Yeah, sure. For you. Here. Chop some onions.”

“Hey!”

“Consider it prepayment.”

Lunch cheered her up—as did Michael’s promise—and Claire actually enjoyed the burgers, which Shane had cooked pretty much to perfection. Eve and Shane got into it over the age-old mustard versus mayonnaise debate, but they had a nice time, even with that controversy devolving to tossing packets of condiment at each other. Even better, since it was Shane’s turn to clean up.

After lunch, Claire went upstairs to her room while Michael and Shane settled in to try out a new first-person shooter game, and Eve shopped online; she stretched out on the bed and fell immediately, deeply asleep.

For a while she was too tired to dream, but finally she dreamed, and it was…odd.

At first, she didn’t really understand. She was someplace dark and very, very quiet, except for the steady hiss of water dripping. She was cold and felt a gnawing, desperate hunger.

Then she heard a voice out of that dark whisper, “Claire?” It was as if she were torn out of her body and thrown violently up through the dark in a blur, and everything in her wanted to scream but she didn’t actually have lungs or a body to use to do that, only a pure, condensed feeling of real terror….

And from a great height, she looked down into a very deep, narrow pit, and far below, a starkly pale face upturned to her in the moonlight.

The voice.

It had sounded like Myrnin’s voice, but it couldn’t have been; it couldn’t. There was no sense to this dream, because what would Myrnin be doing at the bottom of a hole, and why wouldn’t he just jump out?

“Help,” he said, from very far below, very far away. “Help me.”

“I don’t know how!” she called down, at least in the dream, and because it was just a dream, it made sense that he could hear her, somehow, and that even though she was very far away, she could see the desperation in his expression.

“Come for me,” Myrnin said, and it sounded like a ghost, like Shane’s sister whispering out there in that eerie vacant lot, like Miranda being torn to shreds of fog.

It sounded like someone who was already gone.

She woke up with a pounding heart and a nauseating headache bad enough to drive her to the medicine cabinet for ibuprofen, which she washed down with handfuls of bottled water in frenzied gulps. Somewhere in there, she noticed she’d managed to sleep away the rest of the day; it was already approaching sunset. What the hell was that? she wondered. She’d had anxiety dreams before, lots of them, but they usually involved being naked in a crowd, or running in slow motion, or taking a test unprepared. Nothing like this.

This was awfully—suspiciously—specific. If she was going to dream about Myrnin, why have him stuck deep in a hole in the ground?

Trap-door spider, something whispered in the back of her mind. Gramma Day always called him that. So did you, once.

Yes, but she hadn’t meant it literally.

Maybe you just want him to need you, that awful, calm voice said. Maybe you just like it that he depends on you so much.

The thought unsettled her. She decided to put it out of her mind, all of it, especially the dream, because it was just her imagination working out her anxieties, just as it ought to do.

Maybe.

She went downstairs and found the video game amazingly still in progress, but on pause, as Michael and Shane argued the finer points of how the weapons array worked, and which would be a smarter choice with which to attack some kind of fortified position. It was confusing, and she still felt weird and sick. Downing a glass of milk helped settle her stomach, though, and she was just rinsing out the glass when the doorbell rang. The ring was followed up by knocking.

Michael had gotten up from the sofa, but Shane, still locked in his game world, was not paying much attention to anything else. Claire came out of the kitchen and met Eve coming down the stairs.

“Mail call?” Eve guessed.

“Not unless the postal service is starting night runs,” Michael said. “I’ll get it.” The unspoken implication of that was that if it was something bad, he’d at least have a decent shot at fighting it. He went down the hall and opened the door. Beyond it, the sunset was burning the horizon a bright orange, but it wasn’t quite evening yet.

“Who is it?” Claire asked, and craned to look.

“Can’t tell,” Eve said. “Oh, wait—it’s—” She didn’t finish the sentence. She broke free and raced down the hall.

Claire, instantly scared and imagining all kinds of mayhem, pelted after her. She almost immediately skidded to a halt in the suddenly crowded hallway; Shane had somehow managed to cut in front of both her and Eve. Being shortest sucked; she couldn’t see over Eve’s shoulder, never mind Shane’s broad back.

But she heard a frantic, female voice say, “Close it—please close it, fast!”

Miranda’s voice. But Mir was gone—disappeared out in the darkness. Dissolved into mist.

And now, apparently, she was back.

And, from the sound of it, very, very scared.

Eve turned, ran into Claire, and shooed her backward; Claire took several steps down the hall, and the party spilled out after her and into the living area. Between Shane and Michael came—yes!—Miranda, but a different one than before. This Miranda was translucently pale as a glass copy of herself, and she seemed terrified.

Everybody was trying to talk at once, except her. Ghost-Girl leaned up against a handy wall (why didn’t she fall through?) and closed her eyes as if she were exhausted (could ghosts even get tired?). Eve finally got the upper hand, conversationally speaking. “What happened to you? Where did you go?”

“Away,” Miranda said faintly. “So tired. Need energy.” But the fact she was visible at all, before sunset, was odd and impressive. “I feel better here.” She was looking better, too—already taking on a bit more form and substance. It wasn’t a real body, but it had faint traces of color in it now. “They were after me. I had to keep running, find a safe place.”

“Who was?” Shane asked. She’d just said the magic words to make him really pay attention. “Vamps? Why would vamps want a ghost?”

“She’s not a ghost all the time,” Michael said. “Remember, when she has a body, it comes complete with blood. Just like mine did. And since she can’t be killed…”

“Oh, right,” Eve said faintly, and her eyes widened. “They could keep her and keep, ah, draining her dry….”

“Not the vampires,” Miranda said. “I can handle the vampires. It’s the rest of them. They won’t leave me alone. They keep—” She was interrupted by another doorbell chime, followed by knocking. “Don’t!” she said, and grabbed at Michael’s sleeve, but her hand swiped through him. “Don’t answer it yet—not yet!”

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’m just going to look. Relax. You’re safe now.” He pointed to Shane. “Stay with them.”

“You suck!” Shane called after him as Michael went back to the door. Underneath, though, he was taking it seriously. Miranda wasn’t the most reliable source of information, but Shane never underestimated a warning. “If it’s Jason out there, no problem. If it’s somebody worse, I don’t know if Michael can hold his own.”

“Then we’ll handle it if it gets by him,” Claire said, and surprisingly, she meant it. Between the four of them, nothing was going to overwhelm them. Not like it used to.

She thought that right up until the freaking ghost-army arrived.

The first indication she had that something was very, very wrong was Michael’s outcry; he wasn’t that kind of boy, generally, much less that kind of vampire. It was surprise, and definite worry—the kind of cry you made when you found a spider on a doorknob, or a snake in the toilet. A that-shouldn’t-happen kind of sound.

Claire exchanged a look with Shane, and Miranda said, wearily, “I’m sorry I brought them here, but it was the only place I could think of that might keep them out. Maybe…maybe the house won’t let them in.”

But it turned out that the house did.

The first ghost to drift past—no, through—Michael was an old man, no one Claire recognized. He was just barely a visible shape, more a trick of the eyes than an actual presence; she saw him better in her peripheral vision than straight on. He walked down their hallway in a zombielike state, staring straight ahead. Shane backed up, but then stood his ground and tried to wave the phantom off. It ignored him and flowed around him like smoke over glass, and Shane shuddered and moved away, fast. “Okay, that was—unpleasant.”

And there were more. Lots more. Some were just shadows, ominous and strange; some were almost-visible people. Claire only caught a glimpse of them because Michael let only a couple of them inside before he stepped back and slammed and locked the door…and that, surprisingly, worked. No more came inside.

But the ones already in were bad enough. One was an almost-visible man, but Claire couldn’t make out his face as he moved toward them, until suddenly a trick of the light and shadows came together and showed her it was Richard Morrell, Monica’s dead brother. She gasped and grabbed Eve’s arm, and Eve nodded as she bit her lip. Richard slowed and looked at them, and Claire saw his mouth open and close, but he couldn’t seem to speak. After a few seconds, he flowed on, heading for…

For Miranda, who was retreating from the oncoming old man, and Richard following behind. She looked miserably terrified. “Make them stop,” she said, and looked at Michael. “Michael, make them stop!”

“I don’t know how!” he said. It was ominous and eerie how the old man had zeroed in on Miranda, as if the little girl were the last cupcake left in the world and he had a sweet tooth. “What do they want?”

“Me!” She looked more real now, and she’d taken on a faint blush of color in her face and clothes. Miranda, in fact, looked way more real than any of the other ghosts. “They want me!”

“Shane…?” Claire looked for him, but he wasn’t beside her. That was surprising, but then she saw him, and she knew, with a sickening sense of horror, why.

He was standing motionless a few feet away, facing a ghost—a small ghost in the shape of a girl barely into her teens, with her hair in two long braids.

Claire knew immediately who it was he was staring at, even before she heard the small, pallid voice whisper, “Shane.”

“Lyss,” he said. There was a world of emotion in that name—pain, guilt, longing, love, horror. “Oh, my God, Lyss.”

She reached out for him, and Shane raised his hand.

“No!” Miranda yelled. “No, don’t touch her! You can’t touch her. Don’t you know anything?” She scrambled around the barrier of the sofa, playing keep-away with the shambling old man who was still chasing her. Richard was stalking her, too, now, but at a distance, as if he were irresistibly drawn toward her but didn’t want to be. It was more of a slow circling. Like a shark, Claire thought, and shuddered.

She took Miranda at her very urgent word, and launched herself at Shane, slapping his hand away as he tried to touch his dead sister. He let out a harsh sound of surprise, and she saw his hand clench into a fist, but it relaxed almost immediately, and he pulled in a deep breath.

“Don’t,” Claire said. “Please don’t.”

Alyssa was still holding out her ghostly hand, but she wasn’t trying to come at Shane. She was just waiting. Maybe—whatever Miranda was afraid of, maybe it had to be his decision to touch her, and it wouldn’t count if Alyssa touched him first.

Though what would happen if he did do it was an entirely different question, and Claire really didn’t want to know the answer. Not even as a scientist.

“Lyss?” Shane asked. “Can you hear me?”

She didn’t move or speak again. She just kept holding out that ghostly, smoking hand toward him. Shane stared at it, and Claire knew he wanted to try, wanted it with everything inside him.

“Don’t,” she whispered, and took his hand in hers. “Please stay away from her.”

Shane sucked in a deep breath. There were tears shimmering in his eyes, but he blinked them back and nodded. “Sorry, Alyssa,” he said. “I can’t.” His voice shook. His whole body shook. But he meant what he said, and Alyssa clearly understood, because she dropped her hand back to her side and drifted back a few feet, then turned and joined the old man in stalking Miranda.

“Help me!” Miranda screamed. With ghosts on three sides, she was rapidly being cornered. It was only a matter of a minute or so until one of them had hold of her. “Do something!”

“What?” Michael asked, and then his eyes widened, as if something had finally occurred to him. “Can I make them leave? As head of the house?”

Normally Shane would have chimed in with something like Who says he’s head of this house? but Shane’s attention was riveted completely on his little sister’s ghost, and it was Eve who said, “Maybe. Try!”

Michael closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, as if drawing strength from the house itself, or at least trying to communicate with it. Claire felt a flicker of energy around her, as if the connection were almost there, and then it died.

“All of us!” she shouted, and waved Eve to the wall, too. She put her hands flat on the old wallpaper and concentrated. Come on, house. I know you’re there. I know you’re still alive; I can feel you…. Come out, come out, wherever you are….

Shane didn’t join them. Claire didn’t think he could. He was almost as fixed on his sister as the ghosts who stalked Miranda were on her…but luckily, that didn’t seem to matter. Three of them together seemed to complete some kind of circuit, and Claire felt a surge of raw power whip through the room. “Hold on, Miranda!” she said, and the ghost-girl took hold of the arm of the sofa as a wave of force swept through the room in an almost-liquid ripple. It passed over Claire, leaving her skin tingling and raw, and when it hit the nearest ghost—Richard—he blew apart into mist. Alyssa was next, and then the old man, just seconds away from touching Miranda with his outstretched hand.

Miranda wavered and went pale and smoky, but then she stabilized as the wave passed her by, into an almost-real transparent form. She slowly let go of the sofa and straightened to look around.

“What did you do?” Shane said. He turned in a circle, frantically looking. “Where’s Lyss?”

“Outside,” Miranda said. “She’s okay, Shane. She just isn’t welcome here anymore. The house put her out.”

“This is insane,” he said, and sank down on the couch with his head in his hands. “Insane.”

Eve sat beside him and put her hand lightly on his back. “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Before Claire could go to him, too, there was a thundering volley of knocks on the door, loud as gunshots, and all of them jumped. “What the hell now?” Michael said.

“Whatever it is,” Eve said, “just leave it outside. Please.”

“No,” Miranda said. She took a deep breath and pulled herself up to her full height—which wasn’t very much, but she looked suddenly very adult. “The house is looking out for us now, looking out for me. And it isn’t just ghosts out there, anyway. They can’t make noise like that.”

The knocks came again at the door, and Michael took a few steps in that direction before turning to look at her again. She nodded.

“Please,” she said. “It’s okay. Now that the house is paying attention, it’s not as bad. I think I might be able to…able to help them. It was just so overwhelming, out there alone. In here, I don’t feel as bad.”

Michael didn’t seem convinced, but he didn’t seem to know what else to do, either. He flipped the locks on the door and swung it open during the third round of knocking, and outside there were dozens of ghosts, maybe hundreds, a mass of misty waving forms crowded together like zombies on the attack, and standing in the middle of them on the doorstep were Angel, Jenna, and Tyler.

The ghost hunters.

Who apparently couldn’t see any of the ghosts. Ironic.

Angel Salvador stiff-armed a very surprised Michael Glass out of the doorway and rushed up the hallway, followed by Jenna Clark and Tyler, with his camcorder light glowing red. “Hey!” Michael said. “Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t say—”

“Keep rolling, Tyler. We can cut that,” Jenna said. “I know she’s here; I can feel her. Angel, are you getting anything there?” She seemed almost frantic, and there were spots of color high on her cheeks. “Hello, little girl. Are you here? Anywhere?”

“Hey!” Michael shut the door, though for the moment the house itself seemed to be barring the ghosts from drifting inside the opening, and darted around them—not quite vampire fast—and got in their way again. “Hold up. What the hell, man? This is our house!”

“Congratulations,” Angel said. He continued staring at the handheld device he was clutching. “The readings are remarkably strong. I think we’ve found her. It looks like this is her home location.” He looked up at Shane, who was right in front of him, blocking the hallway, and said, “How long has your house been haunted?”

Shane looked past him, to the camera, and then at Michael. Claire would have given odds that he’d punch him out, but instead, Shane turned beet red and burst into uncontrollable laughter.

“Hey!” Eve said, and pushed him out of the way with an irritated glare. “You people, out! Out of our house, right now!” She tried to push Tyler, but he danced backward, clearly used to people going for that move.

Angel cut her off. “Wait, wait, not yet. Let us at least document these readings—do you know the history of this house? Was there anything violent that happened here, perhaps a famous murder? Who were the previous owners? How long have you lived here?”

The blizzard of questions was confusing, and all the time Angel was firing them off, he was moving relentlessly forward. It wasn’t so much that Eve backed off as she was swept out of his way by the force of his momentum, and the rest of them just followed along.

Tyler focused on Eve, evidently liking her Goth look in connection with a haunted house, which Eve didn’t approve. “Hey, get your camera out of my face before I put it in yours!”

“Easy, babe,” Michael said, and grabbed her by the shoulders to pull her back. “We’re fine. It’s okay.” He leaned over to Claire and whispered, “Find out what the hell Miranda wants us to do.” Then he turned the full glare of his smile on the camera. “So, do you want me to show you around, or…?”

“We just need you to get out of the way,” Jenna said. “You kids are what, under twenty, all of you? You’ve got no idea how this kind of thing can turn bad. One careless session with a Ouija board, messing around with tarot cards, you’re inviting spirits to contact you. Once they’re here, you might not be able to get rid of them…even when they start hurting you. I know. It happened to me.”

There was, Claire sensed, a backstory that the show’s viewers would probably all know. Jenna’s face was tight and sober, and there was a feverish believer’s light in her eyes. Claire had an eerie memory of the vindictive ghost of the house’s original owner, Hiram Glass, tearing at her with hatred, and wondered exactly what a younger Jenna might have gone through. She was right. Ghosts could be vicious.

Miranda knew that better than anyone, apparently.

Despite Michael’s winning personality and movie-star smile, it wasn’t working. Michael had a definite effect on girls, when he was really trying…and boy, was he trying. Claire could feel the tingle from five feet away, and it wasn’t even directed at her. He’d always had charm, but lately she’d realized that as a vampire, he was fully capable of wielding it like a weapon—a kinder one, but powerful in its own right.

But Jenna seemed immune.

Claire couldn’t see Miranda, and she had the sinking feeling that maybe she’d lost her nerve and run, but then she saw a ghostly face peeking out from behind the bookcases. Claire headed that way, trying not to look obvious about it. She leaned in next to her and muttered, “Michael needs to know what you’re doing.”

“Waiting,” Miranda said.

“For what?”

Miranda was looking past her, Claire realized—looking at the window that faced west, toward twilight.

Toward the sun slipping steadily below the horizon.

“For sunset,” she said, and stepped out from behind the bookcase. Clearly a ghost. Clearly a walking dead girl.

There was a sudden, vivid silence as Michael, Jenna, and Angel all stopped talking, and everyone focused right on Miranda. Claire could even hear the tiny mechanical whir of Tyler adjusting the focus on his camera.

“Hello,” Miranda said. “My name is Miranda. I’m a ghost.”

And then she vanished.

“No!” Jenna screamed. “No, please, come back! I want to help you. We want to help. Don’t run!”

And that was the exact moment the sun completely set outside, and Miranda fell out of the ceiling, going from mist to solid in midair, and thumping flat on her face on the floor in the middle of the rug.

She said, in a muffled voice, “Ow.”

No one said anything else for a moment. And then Jenna said, in a flat, odd voice, “Tyler? Please tell me you got that.”

For what felt like minutes, nobody seemed able to move. The three ghost hunters looked like wax statues, frozen in their poses, unable to process what they’d just seen. Tyler finally moved the camera away from his eyes and blinked, as if not sure exactly what had gone wrong with his eyes.

“Well, that was awkward,” Shane finally said, and crouched down next to Miranda. “You okay, kid?”

She wasn’t. She stayed facedown for a long moment, shuddering, and Claire remembered with a shock that when Michael had been trapped as a ghost, he’d reexperienced how he’d died, every day. That was particularly awful for Miranda, who’d been killed by the draug—not a pleasant way to go.

Shane helped her sit up, and Miranda gave him a grateful, brave little smile. “Sorry,” she said, “but I needed to get their attention.”

“Well, you’ve got it,” Jenna said, barking out a laugh. “We can’t leave. We have the biggest thing that’s ever been recorded in ghost hunting. Hell, not just ghost hunting. Science. This isn’t just huge, it’s—it’s world-breaking! It changes everything!”

Angel clearly didn’t know what to say. He was staring down at Miranda with a curiously blank expression, as if he really didn’t know how to handle this at all. He was more of an actor than someone who really believed, Claire thought, and unlike Jenna, who saw it as vindication, he saw it as upheaval. When Miranda plunged out of the air, his world had definitely broken, and it looked as if he’d be a while trying to put it all back together again.

Tyler hadn’t said a word. He was still recording, as if too frozen to stop, but Claire heard him muttering under his breath, “Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap, what the hell!”

She’d felt the same way, the first time she’d seen Michael coalesce out of thin air. But by then, she’d already known about vampires. Her world had already been spun off its axis; the ghost team was having to make a whole lot of adjustments pretty damn quickly.

Jenna leaned in toward Miranda as she climbed to her feet. “You’ve been speaking to me, haven’t you? Trying to help us?”

“No, I—” Miranda looked tired, and very worried. “I wanted to warn you. You were getting them all upset. It was going to get you hurt.”

“Who?”

“All the ghosts.”

“But that’s why we’re here, to talk to—”

“Morganville isn’t like any other town,” Miranda said, cutting her off, and met her eyes with an intensity that made Jenna blink. “You came here looking for ghosts, and they heard you. And that’s dangerous. There’s—okay, I can’t explain so much of it, but there’s power here. Old power. And sometimes the dead can use it if you give them access. You opened up the tap, I guess. And now we need to shut it off before something worse happens.”

“This is insane,” Angel said, and stood next to Jenna. “Clearly, this is the most sophisticated hoax I’ve ever seen, but…”

“Shut up,” Jenna said. She was staring intently at Miranda, and suddenly she reached out and took the girl’s hand in hers. “You feel real. You look real.”

“I am,” Miranda said. “Half the time. But it’s because I’m like you. I had power, and the house could use that to save me—not all the way, but this way. During the day, though, I’m mostly invisible. It was hard to make you see me just now, even inside the house. I’m getting better, though.”

“You’re—you’re a real spirit.”

“Yes,” she said, and shook Jenna’s hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

Jenna burst out in a delighted laugh and kept shaking Miranda’s hand until the girl finally pulled free.

“It’s a hoax,” Angel said again. “Jenna, you can’t believe any of this. It’s obviously…”

“It’s okay,” Miranda said to him. “It’ll take time to sink in. I know.”

“Shut up!” he growled at her.

“Hey!” Eve said, and took a step forward. “She’s a kid. Watch your mouth. Miranda, you don’t have to talk to them. If that’s going to be their attitude, they can shove that camera up their—”

“Eve,” Michael said, and shook his head. “Not helpful.” He got behind Tyler and tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m going to need that thing.”

Tyler jerked forward, crowding protectively shoulder to shoulder with Angel. “Oh hell no, man. You’re not taking this away.”

“You don’t think so?” Michael’s eyes had little random flickers of red showing. Claire waved at him behind their backs and pointed toward her own eyes, then at him. He caught the message, and she saw him calm down with an effort. “Look, whatever you think you saw, you just didn’t understand. There’s nothing supernatural going on here. It’s a trapdoor. She came from the next floor up.”

Tyler and Angel both craned their necks to look up at the totally smooth ceiling…and Michael, vampire fast, snatched the camera away and backpedaled when Tyler came after him. “Don’t make me crush it,” he said. “It looks expensive.”

“It is, man. Give it back!”

“Sure. Hang on.” Michael looked it over, ignoring Tyler’s attempts to grab it away again, and found the memory chip, which he ejected. He held it up, and handed the camera back. “No problem.”

“You can’t keep that!”

“Not planning to,” Michael agreed. He snapped it in half, then tore the halves into smaller pieces. Then he put the pieces in his jeans pocket. “Done. Sorry, Mir, but you know they can’t walk out of here with that footage.”

She nodded in agreement, but Claire sensed something was wrong, especially when Tyler exchanged a fast glance with Angel and Jenna. “You asshole,” Tyler muttered, but it sounded like something he felt he ought to say, not that he deeply felt. He backed off. “Maybe we should go, guys. Next thing, they’ll be breaking our necks. Angel’s right. This is some hell of a hoax.”

Jenna looked at Miranda again. “You can talk to me,” she said gently. “You really can. I’m not afraid of you.”

“No,” Miranda said. “I know. But I’m afraid of you. And what you can do. You made them hungry, and now they’re dangerous. Don’t you understand that?”

“Maybe,” Jenna said. “My twin sister died, and she stayed with me for the longest time. Not real, like you are, but—there. But she changed. Turned evil. I had to…I had to get rid of her, send her away.”

“You don’t understand,” Miranda said. “It wasn’t something else. It was you. You changed her. You made her see a way back, and that makes them—us…ghosts—desperate. Desperate enough to do anything. It’s you that’s making it happen.”

“You’re not one of them, those lost people. You’re loved here. Loved. Protected. And that’s good; that’s really good. I just want to be sure you’re protected from the things your friends can’t see and fight.” Jenna took in a deep breath and blew it out. “I think that you and I together could—could fix whatever it was I did wrong. You could show me how.”

“You need to leave,” Miranda said. “You need to go before it’s too late and everything goes completely wrong. I’m sorry.”

“But—”

“I’m going to need the rest of the recordings,” Michael said to Tyler. “Sorry, man.”

“We don’t have anything else,” Tyler said. “You just broke the crap out of our whole show.”

Shane looked at Michael, eyebrows raised, and Michael shook his head. “Lying his ass off,” he said. Heartbeat, Claire thought. He could hear them. He might not be able to always tell when one individual was lying, but it was easier for him if there were three people all in on the same falsehood. More people meant more data, like a triangulation of the truth.

And most likely, all three of the ghost hunters knew Tyler had backups.

“I read people really well,” he said. It was an obvious lie, but he didn’t give Tyler time to argue. “All right, all three of you, out the door. If you want me to take your whole van apart next, I’ll be happy to do that, too.”

“Or, you know, punch you,” Shane said cheerfully. “This is Texas. We have the right to do that when you break into our house.”

He left it to Eve to say, “Or worse,” in a voice so low and dark, it qualified as Goth all by itself.

Jenna shot to her feet. “Fine. If you want to doom this little girl to an eternity of pain and torment, you’re doing exactly the right things. You’re not prepared for what’s going to happen to her. I am!”

Maybe that was kind of true; it was very hard to tell. But in any case, Claire was fed up with half-truths and aggression, especially when her head was pounding so very hard. “Just get out,” she said wearily. “She’s our responsibility. We’ll take care of her. If she’s right, you’ve done enough damage already around here.”

That was when Jenna turned and focused on her, really focused, and Claire saw something familiar in her cool, pale eyes. It was the same distant look she’d seen so often in Miranda…here and not here at the same time. “You dreamed it,” she said. “It’s true. I see…water. A hole. A silver cross in a circle. Someone’s trying to reach you.”

“Yeah, yeah, save the Vegas act, lady,” Shane said, and pushed her forward toward the door. Angel and Tyler were already making their way out ahead of her. “If we want professional help, we’ll call the Ghostbusters. At least they have matching uniforms. Ciao.”

Miranda followed them, looking anxious. “Claire,” she said, and caught her arm. “Claire! It’s dark out there.”

“It’s okay. They have a van,” she said. She wasn’t feeling particularly charitable toward the After Death team just now. If Michael was right—and she honestly figured he was—then Jenna’s interest in stirring up the dead had brought back Shane’s sister, and that, that was unforgivable. “They’ll be fine. Don’t worry about them.”

“The ghosts know what she is. They’ll follow her, eating little bits of her. She won’t feel it at first, but then she’ll get tired and sick, and they could kill her, Claire. Worse: they could get strong enough to do other things. Dangerous things. She’s really powerful.”

“I think she’s full of it,” Claire said, but now that her anger was fading a bit, she ran what Jenna had said to her through her head. Water. Hole. Silver cross in a circle. That fit with her dream about the hole in the ground, and the water around her legs. Someone is trying to reach you. “I think she was just making it up, Mir. Listen, you stay here. We’re going to make sure they leave, okay?”

Miranda shuddered. “I can’t go out there again.”

Even so soon after sunset it was dark outside, darker than Claire had expected; the orange bands on the horizon were already fading, being painted over by shades of purple and blue. The biggest, bravest stars had already made appearances overhead, but there was no moon, not yet.

The After Death van was parked on the street, two houses down; they’d probably had trouble finding the place. Claire remembered seeing them checking maps. They’d probably been looking for the Glass House already. Ugh. To think she’d thought Angel was kind of greasily charming in the beginning. Now, she never wanted to see him again.

There was no sign of the mass of ghosts she’d seen before when they’d been in the house, which seemed weird; she could feel something out here, an uneasy sensation on the back of her neck, a phantom whisper on the wind. On instinct, Claire stepped back over the threshold into the house, and as she did, she saw the mists come into focus again. All the ghosts crowded now around Jenna as she headed for the van.

Inside the house, the ghosts were visible. Out there, in the real world, there was nothing.

Shane was already down the steps, and Claire hurried down to join him. “They’re leaving too easily,” he said. “Didn’t it seem to you like they just let that thing with the memory card go too fast?”

“What choice did they have?” she asked. “Michael had it and broke it before they could do much.”

“Yeah, but…” Shane shook his head. “I expected more drama out of them. They’re on TV. It’s kind of what they do for a living.”

“The camera was off.”

“For people like them, the camera’s never off….” His eyes suddenly widened, and he dashed forward to take the camera out of Tyler’s hands. Tyler resisted, yelling for help, and suddenly it was a tangle of guys—Angel, Tyler, Shane, and Michael, all wrestling for control of the thing. Not too surprisingly, given the players, Michael won and tossed it to Shane.

“You wanted this?” he asked.

“Hey, you can’t do that!” Tyler shouted. “That’s expensive pro equipment, man! I’ll sue your ass!”

Shane jogged back up the steps and held it under the porch light. “Dammit,” he said. “Michael—you got the memory card, but this thing was broadcasting straight on broadband, too. The memory card was just backup. They’ve rigged it so it can record without the light coming on.”

Michael rounded on Tyler, whose face had gone pale. “Where did it broadcast to?”

“Dude, you’re wrong. Yeah, sure it’s got the capability, but I didn’t even switch it on—”

“That’s a lie,” Michael said, and grabbed him by the collar. “Tell me another one; go ahead.”

“Let him go.” Jenna’s voice was cool, calm, and focused, and they all looked at her. Michael let go of Tyler, because Jenna was holding a gun. It was something semiautomatic; Claire couldn’t tell the caliber, but it didn’t really matter. Michael wouldn’t be scared of it, but getting holes put in him and healing up would be just as damning, if not more so, than what they already had recorded on Miranda. So he held his hands up and stepped back.

“That’s not going to look so good on camera,” Michael said. “Better rethink it.”

“I’m just defending my friends from some scary people,” Jenna said, “and besides, by the magic of editing, they’ll never see I was armed, anyway. Now let’s all just calm down, okay? This doesn’t have to get any crazier.” She jerked her head at Tyler. “Get the camera and get your ass to the van. We have editing to do.”

“We could stream it live,” Angel suggested.

“Don’t be stupid, Angel; you don’t waste a revelation like this on a couple of thousand people who stumble over it on the Web. This is a major TV event, maybe even pay-per-view. We’re going to tease the hell out of it for weeks before we put a single frame of it out. Tyler!” She raised her voice to a whip crack, and the camera monkey scrambled up the steps and took the recorder out of Shane’s unresisting hands. “You don’t know what you’ve got here. Or what’s coming. You’re going to need us, trust me. Miranda needs us. This whole town is going to be famous.”

She was probably going to say more, but she never got the chance, because a dark-clothed figure came out of the shadows behind the trees, and before Claire could draw a breath, the figure knocked Jenna out of the way, spinning her to the ground. The gun tumbled away, lost in the sparse, weedy grass.

The intruder showed a flash of a pale face, red eyes, a young woman’s crimson smile, and in a heartbeat more, she had hold of her target.

Not Jenna, after all.

Angel. The vampire clapped a hand over his mouth when he tried to speak and said, “Hush, now, pretty. What will all the neighbors think if you make a fuss?”

Tyler mumbled out a curse, and ran for the van. He made it as far as the fence before another vampire ghosted out in front of him.

Jason.

Eve’s brother looked just as demented as he had earlier, and Claire shuddered at the smile he turned first on Tyler, and then on his sister. “Hey, Eve. You don’t write, you don’t call…but at least you brought us dinner. That’s nice.”

“No!” Eve dashed forward and put herself between Tyler and Jason. “No, Jase. What the hell are you doing? They’re not from here! You can’t just—”

“I hate that word. Can’t. Fact is, I can, big sister. I can do anything I want. So can Marguerite, here. And Jerold, he’s back there somewhere…. Wave to my nice sister, Jerold.” Claire turned. There was a vampire crouched on the edge of the steep roof, staring down at them with a knowing smile. He waved. “See, we have privileges now. We get to hunt if we want. And we really do want. So if you don’t choose to be on the menu, turn your ass around and walk back in the house and shut the door. Hell, you were just arguing with these fools. Why do you care?”

“I—” Eve didn’t really have a comeback for that. “It’s not about them. I don’t want to see you…be this. God, Jason. Is this how it’s going to be? You weren’t bad enough already?”

“No,” he said, very rationally. “I’ve never been bad enough to keep the bad stuff from happening to me. Until now.” He waited. Eve didn’t move. “Okay then. I’m going to be kind this time. We can share just this one. You can keep the other ones.” He snapped his fingers, and Marguerite, the one who had Angel, nodded. She picked Angel up in her arms—quite a feat, because the man was bigger, taller, and panicked—and before any of them could draw breath, she just…disappeared.

Michael started to run after her, but he came up short when Jerold dropped off the roof into his path. In one gloved hand, he held a glass bottle that swirled with silver. “We learned this from you,” Jerold said. “You started fighting your own kind, and we’re going to fight back. You like this stranger enough to burn for him, Michael?”

“No!” Eve looked pleadingly at her brother—who, whether she liked it or not, clearly was in charge. “No, come on, please—Jason, don’t. Don’t hurt him.”

“If he stays out of our way, he’ll be fine,” Jason said. “Ditto for you, and Claire, and Shane; I’ll leave you alone. But it’s a new day around here. Our day. And the sun’s never coming up to spoil it for us.”

Somewhere out in the darkness, there was a pained cry. Angel. Claire tried desperately to think what to do, but there was nothing. They had weapons but Michael had just been outflanked; Shane just had stakes, and although Eve had a crossbow, she didn’t seem inclined to use it on her own brother.

I need to do something, Claire thought. Anything. I need to save him.

“Jason, if you let him go, I think we can make some kind of deal,” she said, talking as fast as she could. She didn’t even know what she was saying. “Look, I’ll even let you bite me—two pints for the guy you just took. Come on, it’s a good deal. I’ll get it witnessed at Common Grounds, we can put it in writing, and—”

“Shut up,” Jason said, still smiling. “I don’t want a measly two pints, like I’m out for a beer with the guys. I want to hunt. Button it if you don’t want to play the rabbit, little girl.”

She shut her eyes and tried to think what to do. There were three vampires, and even though she and her friends outnumbered them, it would be a tough fight, and probably one of them would be badly hurt, maybe killed. She’d never hated math so much in her life.

Shane put his arm around her. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “You can’t, Claire. You can’t save everybody.”

And God, he was right; he was right and she hated that, too.

“All right,” she said. “Eve—call the cops. Hurry.”

Eve nodded and ran into the house. Jason laughed out loud.

“Good call,” he said. “And nice counter, but the cops ain’t gonna catch us, and you know it. They know better than to try. Nice doing business with you folks.” He touched a finger to his forehead in ironic salute. “Catch you later.”

“Wait!” Jenna blurted. “Wait, what about Angel, what—”

“Pretty lady really doesn’t get it, does she?” Jason said. “Explain it to her. I’m starving.”

And then he and Jerold were just…gone. Like smoke on the wind. And Angel had stopped crying out, though whether that was due to being gagged or being dead, Claire couldn’t tell and didn’t want to imagine. Her whole body ached with strain, and she wanted to throw up. What did I just do? Nothing. She’d saved the life of one of her friends, probably. At the cost of Angel’s.

When she tried to take a step, she staggered and almost went down. Shane caught her and held her up. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re okay. The cops will be on the case.”

Claire knew he didn’t believe that any more than she did. The cops wouldn’t be on the case; they wouldn’t dare, unless Amelie or Oliver directed them to stop the hunting. After all, Jason—like Michael—had privileges.

And Angel had technically been fair game…unProtected, a stranger.

It meant, though, that there’d be some necessary cover-up with Jenna and Tyler. Either their memories would be altered to explain away Angel’s disappearance or death, or they’d face the same fate. Ten minutes ago you were throwing them out of the house, she reminded herself. They were going to go public about Miranda. About Morganville.

“Check the van,” she said to Shane. “See if Tyler was telling the truth. If they streamed that video to a server in their van…”

“Got it,” he said, and jogged away to the vehicle. It was unlocked—trusting bunch—and he slid back the cargo door to climb inside.

“Hey!” Tyler snapped out of his stunned trance, and color flooded his face. “Hey, get the hell out of there—there’s delicate equipment in there!” He charged for the van, but Michael caught up and stopped him with nothing but a look. That didn’t, however, stop Tyler from talking. “We have rights, you know. You touch anything in that van and I’ll sue your asses off!” It was obviously something he could seize on, something real and reassuring in a world that had drunkenly upended on him. He had to know Miranda was the real thing, but that was at least partly in his comfort zone, or he wouldn’t be doing the After Death show. But being stalked and preyed on by vampires—even if nobody had said they were vampires—was different. And there was a feverishly bright light in his eyes that reflected as much fear as it did anger.

“Easy,” Michael said. “Wait.” He kept a hand outstretched, palm out, to ward Tyler off if he continued his rush forward, but Tyler just paced, staring past Michael at the van.

And then at Shane, who stepped out of it about half a minute later. “Video’s on their server, Mike. What do you want me to do?”

This time, when Michael focused on Tyler, he wasn’t playing around. Red swirled in his irises, and Claire felt a force coming out of him—what it was, she couldn’t say, but it was powerful. “Is that the only copy left?” he asked Tyler. Even his voice sounded different, somehow. Less human.

“Yes,” Tyler said, and blinked. “I mean, no! It streamed to the Internet already….”

“Yeah, that’s a lie.” Michael glanced back at Shane and nodded. “It’s the only copy. Wipe it.”

“No!” Tyler’s cry was furious and agonized, but he didn’t try to go up against Michael, either. He must have sensed how dangerous it was to try.

Jenna didn’t even protest. She slumped down on the ground, sitting cross-legged, and put her head in her hands. “He didn’t believe,” she said. “Angel never really believed. God. I shouldn’t have gotten him into this. I should have made him go home….” She sounded tired, and Claire remembered with a chill what Miranda had said. All around her, invisible here in the real world beyond the Glass House, ghosts were crowded around Jenna, breaking off pieces of her in some strange psychic way and consuming the tasty strength she’d brought to town.

Making themselves stronger.

Silence. Profound silence, broken by the distant, frantic barking of a dog.

“Come on,” Michael said, and took Tyler by the arm. “Let’s get inside.”

Claire went to Jenna and offered her a hand. She looked at it, then her, and finally nodded and rose. “This is crazy,” Jenna told her.

“I know,” she said. “Come inside.”

She paused on the doorstep to watch as Shane jogged back to join them. Nothing loomed out of the darkness to menace him…this time. Once he was in, she closed and locked the door, and took a moment to lean her head against the wood.

I’m sorry, she told the vanished Angel. In his way, he’d been charming. I wish…

But she didn’t even know how to finish the thought.