Kiss of Death

12

Night fell as tensions gradually eased; the people of Blacke never quite got comfortable, but they loosened up enough to put on some stew in the library’s small kitchen, which had a miniature stove that ran on gas. Apparently, the gas was still flowing, even though the electricity was out. As the light faded outside the windows, Mrs. Grant and three of her burly cowboy-hatted guards—Claire guessed the cowboy hats were a kind of uniform—made the rounds to barricade the doors and windows.

Morley joined them, and after a long, uncomfortable moment, Mrs. Grant decided to ignore his presence. The guards didn’t. Their knuckles were white on their weapons.

“May I assist?” he asked, and put his hands behind his back. “I promise not to eat anyone.”

“Very funny,” Mrs. Grant said. Morley gave her a grave look.

“I wasn’t joking, dear lady,” he said. “I do promise. And I never make a promise I don’t intend to keep. You should feel quite secure.”

“Well, I’m sorry, I don’t,” she said. “You’re just—”

“Too overwhelmingly dashing and attractive?” Morley grinned. “A common problem women face with me. It’ll pass. You seem like the no-nonsense sort. I like that.”

Claire smiled at the look on Mrs. Grant’s face, reflected in the white LED light of the lantern she was holding. “You are really—odd,” the older woman said, as if she couldn’t quite believe she was even having the conversation.

Morley put his hand over his heart and bowed from the waist, a gesture that somehow reminded Claire of Myrnin. It reminded her she missed him, too, which was just wrong. She should not be missing Morganville, or anyone in it. Especially not the crazy boss vampire who’d put fang marks in her neck that would never, ever go away. She was doomed to high-necked shirts because of him.

But she did miss him. She even missed Amelie’s dry, cool sense of power and stability. She wondered if this was a kind of vacation for Amelie, too, not worrying about Oliver, or Claire, or Eve, or any of them.

Probably. She couldn’t imagine Amelie was losing any sleep over them—presuming she slept, which Claire really wasn’t sure was the case, anyway.

“Hey.” Shane’s hip nudged her chair, and he bent over, putting his mouth very close to her ear. “What are you doing?”

“Thinking.”

“Stop.”

“Stop thinking?”

“You’re doing way too much of it. It’ll make you go blind.”

She laughed and turned her face toward his. “I think you’re thinking of something else.”

“I’m definitely thinking of something else,” he said, and bent over to kiss her. It was a long, sweet, slow kiss, full of gentle strokes of his tongue over her lips, which parted for him even though she was sure she hadn’t exactly told them to do that. Warmth swept over her, making her oddly shivery, and she grabbed the neck of his shirt when he tried to pull away and kissed him some more.

When she let go, neither of them moved far. Shane sat down in the chair next to her, but scooted it over and leaned in so they were as close together as possible. There weren’t many lights here in the corner, where Claire had retreated to eat her cup of stew and think, and it felt wildly romantic sitting together by candlelight. Shane’s skin looked golden in the glow, his eyes dark, with only a hint of shimmering amber when the light hit them just right. His chin was a little dark and rough, and she felt it with her palm, then smiled.

“You need a shave,” she said.

“I thought you liked me scruffy.”

“Scruffy is for good dogs and bad rockers.”

“Oh yeah? And which am I, again?” He was so close to her, and in this little bubble of candlelight it felt as if everything happening around them, all the craziness, all the bad things, was taking place a world away. There was something about Shane that just made it all okay, for as long as she was with him, for as long as he was looking at her with that wonderful, fascinated glow in his eyes.

He moved a little strand of hair back from her face. “Some road trip, eh?”

“I’ve had worse,” Claire said. His expression was priceless. “No, really. I have. I went on a trip with my parents all the way to Canada once. A week in the car, with my folks, having educational experiences. I thought I’d go nuts.”

“I thought you liked educational experiences.”

“Bet you could teach me a few things.”

He kissed her again, hungrily, and there was such focus in him that it took her breath away. She wanted—yeah, she knew what she wanted. She knew what he wanted, too. And she knew it wasn’t going to happen, not here, not tonight—too bad, because if she got killed before getting some privacy with Shane again, she was going to be really upset with Oliver.

Somebody coughed out in the shadows, at the edges of their candle, and Shane sat back. Claire licked her damp lips, tasting him all over again, and struggled to try to focus on something else, such as whoever was interrupting them. “What?” That came out a little harsh.

“Sorry.” That was Jason, and he didn’t sound sorry at all. He sounded kind of amused. “If you want to go on with the porn show, please. I’ll wait.”

“Shut up,” Shane growled.

“You know, we could get into this make-me-no-you-make-me kind of thing, but I think we have better things to do,” Jason said. “I’m not talking to you, anyway. I need Claire.”

She needed a lot of things, all from Shane, and she couldn’t think of a blessed thing right now that she needed from Jason Rosser. It made her voice go even colder. “Why?”

He rolled his eyes, just like his sister, which was creepy. She didn’t even like to think they came from the same gene pool, much less shared things she thought were cute and funny in Eve. “Because Oliver wants you, and what Oliver wants, Oliver gets, right? So get your sweet little butt up already.”

“Hey,” Shane said, and stood up. “I’m not telling you again, Jase. Stop.”

“What, because I said she had a sweet little butt? You don’t think she does? Hard to believe, since you spend so much time staring at it.”

Shane’s hands closed into fists, and Claire remembered Jason on the street in the dark outside Common Grounds, coming after them—after her and Eve, specifically, at least that was what he’d said to Shane.

Shane didn’t forget.

“You and me, man, one of these days, we’re going to finish this,” he said softly. “Until that day, you stay the hell away from my girl. You understand?”

“Big tough guy,” Jason said, and laughed. “Yeah, I understand. Personally, she’s too skinny for me, anyway.”

He walked off, and Claire saw a tremor go through Shane, something she figured was an impulse to slam into Jason and knock him flat, and then pound him.

But Shane didn’t move. He let out a slow breath and turned back to face her. “That guy,” he said, “is not normal; I don’t care what Eve says. And I don’t like him around you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, I know.” He forced a smile. “It’s just that—” This time, he shrugged and let it go. “Oliver, huh?”

“I guess.” Claire picked up the candle and headed through the stacks for the unofficial—or official?—command desk, where Oliver was now sitting, talking to a couple of vampires whose faces glowed blue-white in the light of the fluorescent lamp.

“About time,” Oliver said. “I need you to see if you can get a message out on this thing.” He nodded to the computer, which sat there dead and unresponsive.

“There’s no electricity.”

“They’ve been trying to use this,” he said, and pointed toward the pedal generator. “They tell me it should work, but there’s some problem with the computer. Fix it.”

“Just like that.”

“Yes,” Oliver said. “Just like that. Whine about it quietly, to yourself.”

She seethed, but Shane just shrugged and looked at the pedal generator, which was sort of like an exercise bike. “This thing could be a real workout,” he said. “Tell you what: I’ll pedal; you do the magic. Sound fair?”

She liked that he was willing to help. Their fingers intertwined, and he kissed her again, lightly.

“Sounds fair,” she agreed.

She turned the laptop over and took a look at it. Nothing obviously wrong jumped out—nothing cracked or broken, anyway. Shane climbed on the seat and started turning the pedals—which must have been harder than it seemed, because even he seemed to be working at it. The resistance built up energy, which translated into electricity, which went into a power strip with some kind of backup battery built into it. Immediately, the battery began beeping and flickering a red light. “Right, that’s working,” Claire said. “It’ll probably take a while to recharge the backup, though.”

“How much time are we talking?” Shane asked.

She grinned. “Slacker.”

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

In a few moments, the computer’s power light finally came on, and she booted up and started looking into the computer problem. It took her thirty minutes of diagnostics before she located the problem and got the operating system booted up.

Shane, poor thing, kept pedaling. He stopped wasting his breath with quips after a while. When the power strip’s battery finally clicked over to green, he stopped, gasping for breath, slumped over the handlebars. “Okay,” he panted, “let’s not screw it up, shall we? Because I do not want to do that again. Next time, get a vamp. They don’t need to breathe.”

Claire looked over at Oliver, who was ignoring them and jotting down notes on a map of Blacke.

But he was smiling a little.

“It’s booting up,” she said, watching the lines scroll by. “Here goes....”

The Windows tones sounded, and it felt like everybody in the library jumped. Mrs. Grant and Morley abandoned their security sweep and came back to stand by Claire’s elbow as the operating system load finished, and the desktop finally appeared. She let it finish, then double-clicked the Internet icon.

“Four oh four.” She sighed.

“What?” Morley peered over her shoulder. “What does that mean?”

“Page not found,” she said. “It’s a four oh four error. Let me try something else.” She tried for Google. Then Wikipedia. Then Twitter. Nothing. “The ISP must be down. There’s no Internet service.”

“What about e-mail? It is e-mail, yes?” Morley asked, leaning even closer. “E-mail is a kind of electronic letter. It travels through the air.” He seemed very smug that he knew that.

“Well, not exactly, and would you please either back off or go find a shower? Thanks. And to send e-mail you have to have Internet service. So that doesn’t work.”

“I pedaled for nothing,” Shane said mournfully. “That deeply bites.”

“Does anyone else think it’s too quiet?” Oliver asked, and looked up from the map.

There was a moment of silence, and then Mrs. Grant said, “Sometimes they don’t come at us for a few hours. But they always come. Every night. We’re all there is for them.”

Oliver nodded, stood up, and gestured to Morley. The two vampires stalked off into the dark, talking in tones too quiet for human ears to catch at all.

Mrs. Grant stared after them, eyes narrowed. “They’ll turn on us,” she said. “Sooner or later, your vampires will turn on us. Count on it.”

“We’re still alive,” Claire said, and pointed to herself, Shane, Jason, and Eve. Eve was sitting a few feet away, curled in Michael’s arms. “And we’ve been at this a whole lot longer than you.”

“Then you’re deluded,” Mrs. Grant said. “How can you possibly trust these—people?” She acted as if that wasn’t the word she wanted to use.

“Because they gave you back your guns,” Claire said. “And because they could have killed you in the first couple of minutes if they’d really wanted to. I know it’s hard. It’s hard for all of us, sometimes. But right now, you need to believe what they’re telling you.”

Mrs. Grant frowned at her. “And when exactly do I stop believing them?”

Claire smiled. “We’ll let you know.”

There weren’t a lot of kids in the library, but there were a few—seven total, according to Claire’s count, ranging from babies who were still being bottle-fed to a couple of trying-to-be-adult kids of maybe twelve. Nobody was too close to Claire’s own age, though. She was kind of glad; it would have been just too creepy to see the kind of blank fear in their faces that she saw in the younger kids. Too much like seeing herself, in the beginning of her Morganville experience.

She wound up thinking about the kids because Eve had brought over a lantern, gotten them in a circle, and started reading to them. It was something familiar, from the few words Claire could hear; it finally clicked in. Eve was reading Where the Wild Things Are. All the kids, even the ones who would probably have said they were too old for it, were sitting quietly, listening, with the fear easing away from their expressions.

“She’s got the touch, doesn’t she?” That was Michael, standing behind Claire. He was watching Eve read, too. “With kids.” There was something quietly sad in his voice.

“Yeah, I guess.” Claire glanced over at him, then away. “Everything okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? Just another day for us Morganville brats.” Now the smile was quietly sad, too. “I wish I could take her away from all this. Make it all—different.”

“But you can’t.”

“No. I can’t. Because I am who I am, and she is who she is. And that’s it.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug so small it almost didn’t even qualify. “She keeps asking me where we’re going.”

“Yeah,” another voice said. It was Shane, pulling up a chair beside Claire. “Girls do that. They’ve always got to be taking the relationship somewhere.”

“That’s not true!”

“It is,” he said. “I get it; somebody’s got to be looking ahead. But it makes guys think they’re—”

“Closed in,” Michael said.

“Trapped,” Shane added.

“Idiots,” Claire finished. “Okay, I didn’t really mean that. But jeez, guys. It’s just a question.”

“Yeah?” Michael’s blue eyes were steady on Eve, watching her read, watching her smile, watching how she was with the kids clustered around her. “Is it?”

Claire didn’t answer. Suddenly, she was the one who felt closed in. Trapped. And she understood why Michael was feeling so ... strange.

He was watching Eve with kids, and he was never going to have kids with Eve. At least, she didn’t think vampires could.... She’d never really asked. But she was pretty sure she was right about that one. He looked like someone seeing the future, and not liking his place in it one bit.

“Hey,” Shane said, and nudged Claire’s shoulder. “You noticed what’s going on?”

She blinked as she realized that Shane wasn’t figuring out Michael—that he hadn’t even really noticed all the personal stuff at all. He was, instead, looking out into the shadows, where there had been vampires patrolling at the edges.

“What?” she asked. She couldn’t see anyone.

“They’re gone.”

“What?”

“The vampires. As in, no longer in the building. Unless there’s a big line for the bathroom, all of a sudden. Even Jason’s gone.”

“No way.” Claire slid off her chair and went to the desk. There was no sign of Oliver, or Morley. The map of Blacke was still spread out on the table, anchored with weights on the corners, marked in colored pencils with things she didn’t understand. She grabbed the lantern and went to the library doors, where Jacob Goldman had been standing.

He wasn’t there.

“See?” Shane said. “They’ve bailed. All of them.”

“That’s impossible. Why would they just leave us?”

“You have to ask?” Shane shook his head. “Claire, sometimes I think your head’s not really in the survival game. Think: why would they leave us? Because they can. Because as much as you want to believe the best about everybody, they’re not the good guys.”

“No,” she blurted. “No, they wouldn’t. Oliver wouldn’t.”

“The hell he wouldn’t. Oliver is a rock-solid bastard, and you know it. If he added up the numbers and it looked like it might benefit him by adding even a second or two to his life, he’d be out of here, making up some sad story. It’s how he survives, Claire.” Shane hesitated for a second, then plunged on. “And maybe this is a good thing. Maybe if he’s taken off, we should, too. Just—run. Get as far away, as fast as we can.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying ... ,” he began with a sigh. “I’m saying we’re out of Morganville. And Oliver is all that’s stopping us from heading anywhere in the world, other than there.”

She really didn’t want to believe that Oliver was gone. She wanted to believe that Oliver was, like Amelie, someone who took his word seriously, who, once having granted his protection, wouldn’t just walk away because the going got tough.

But she really, really couldn’t be sure. She never was, with Oliver. She had absolutely no doubts about Morley; he was all vampire, all the time. He’d smile at you one minute and rip out your throat the next, and wouldn’t see any contradiction in that at all.

He was right, though. Oliver was all that stood between them and a life out in the world; a life free of Morganville.

Except for the people they’d leave behind.

She glanced back at Eve, surrounded by the kids in a circle of light, and at Michael, watching her from the shadows with so much longing and pain in his face.

And it hit her.

“Michael,” she blurted. “Whatever Oliver might do to us, he can’t leave Michael behind to die. He can’t. Amelie would kill him.”

No doubt about that. Amelie had deeply loved Sam, Michael’s grandfather, and when she’d turned Michael into a vampire, she’d considered him family—her family. If Oliver planned to throw them to the infected wolves, he was going to have to figure out how to do it and somehow save Michael, without letting Michael know what had happened to the rest of them.

Michael must have heard her say his name, because he looked over at her. Shane crooked a finger at him. Michael nodded and walked over.

He was much more observant than Claire was, because before he ever reached them, Michael looked around and said, “Where are they?”

“Thought maybe you knew,” Shane said. “They being your fellow fanged ones. Isn’t there some kind of flock instinct?”

“Bite me, blood bank. No, they didn’t tell me anything.” Michael frowned. “Stay here. I’m going to check the rest of the building. Be right back.”

He was gone in a whisper of air, hardly making any sound at all, and Claire shivered and leaned against Shane’s solid, very human warmth. His arms went around her, and he touched his lips lightly to the back of her neck. “How can you smell this good after the kind of crappy day we’ve had?”

“I sweat perfume. Like all girls.”

He laughed and squeezed her. He smelled good, too—more male, somehow, a little grungy and edgy and sweaty, and although she loved soap and water and shampoo, sometimes this was better—wilder.

Michael was back in—true to his word—just a few minutes, and he didn’t look at all happy. “I found Patience,” he said. “She and Jacob are guarding the doors from the outside. Oliver went out to do a patrol.”

“And everybody else?” Claire asked.

“Morley took everybody else to go after the enemy. He said he wasn’t going to wait for them to come to us. At least, that’s what he said he was doing. For all Patience knows, Morley may be trying to find another truck or bus and get his people out of town.”

“Did Oliver know about this?”

Michael shook his head. “He’s got no idea, although he might now, if he spotted them outside. Don’t know how he’d stop them on his own, though.”

Claire didn’t, either, but it was Oliver. He’d figure out something, and it probably wouldn’t be pretty.

“How long until dawn?”

“A couple of hours,” Michael said. He looked over at Eve, who had finished up the story and was hugging kids who were on their way to their beds. “Mrs. Grant said they always come during the night. That means they’ll be coming soon, if Morley’s people didn’t screw up their whole day. And we’d better be ready.”

When there had been a bunch of vampires running around on their side, Claire hadn’t felt too worried, but now she was. And looking at Michael, at Shane, she knew they were, too.

“So let’s hat up, guys,” Shane said. “Nobody gets fanged tonight. New rule.”

He and Michael did a fast high-low five, and went for the weapons.

Claire got Eve and updated her; then they joined the boys to get their vampire-repelling act together. Mrs. Grant had been dozing in an armchair, shotgun across her lap, but she woke up as soon as the four of them started raiding the weapons pile on the table. Claire was impressed; for an old lady, she woke up fast, and the first thing she did was look for trouble. When she didn’t find any immediately, she looked at the four of them and said, “Are they coming?”

“Probably,” Michael said, and picked up a couple of wooden stakes, leaving the silver-coated ones for the humans to handle. He also grabbed up a crossbow and some extra bolts. “We’re going to help with patrols. Looks like we’re a little light on guards.”

“But Morley—” Mrs. Grant’s mouth slammed shut, into a grim line. She didn’t need to be clued in, obviously. “Of course. I never doubted he’d stab us in the back.”

“I’m not saying he has,” Michael said. “I’m just saying he’s not here. So we need to be sure that if things go wrong ...”

Mrs. Grant rose from her chair, winced, and rubbed at a sore spot on her back. She looked tired, but very focused. “I’ll get my men up,” she said. “Should have known we couldn’t do a whole night without some kind of alert. I just hoped for a miracle.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Claire asked. “Fighting them off?”

“It wasn’t all at once,” the older woman said. “At first we thought the people we couldn’t find were just sick—regular human sick. And they were clever at first, good at hiding out, picking off people who weren’t paying attention. Like wolves, going after strays. By the time we knew, they came in force and took out most everybody who could have gotten things organized against them. All told, I guess we’ve been living out of this library for almost three weeks now.” She almost smiled, but it was just a bitter twist of her lips, really. “It seems longer. I can hardly remember what it was like before. Blacke used to be a real quiet town; nothing ever happened. Now ...”

“Maybe we can get it back to that quiet town it used to be,” Claire said.

Mrs. Grant gave her a long look. “Just you and your friends?”

“Hey,” Shane said, snapping a shotgun closed with a flick of his wrist. “We’re just trying to help.”

“And stay alive,” Eve added. “But trust me, this is not the worst situation we’ve ever been in.” She sounded confident about that. Claire raised her eyebrows, and Eve considered it for a few more seconds. “Okay, maybe tied for worst. But definitely not the Guinness Record for awfulness.”

Mrs. Grant looked at each of them in turn, and then just walked away to rouse her own men.

“Seriously,” Shane said, “this kind of is the worst situation we’ve ever been in, right?”

“Speak for yourself,” Michael said. “I got myself killed last year. Twice.”

“Oh yeah. You’re right—last year really sucked for you.”

“Boys,” Eve interrupted, when Michael started to make some smart-ass comeback. “Focus. Dangerous vampire attack imminent. What’s the plan?”

Michael kissed her lightly on the lips, and his eyes turned vampire-bright. “Don’t lose.”

“It’s simple, yet effective. I like it.” Shane extended his fist, and Michael bumped it.

“I am never taking a trip with either of you ever again.” Eve said. “Ever.”

“Excellent,” Shane said. “Then next trip, we hit the strip bar.”

“I have a gun, Shane.” Eve sighed.

“What, you think I actually loaded yours?”

Eve flipped him off, and Claire laughed.

Even now, things just stayed normal, somehow.

An hour passed, and nothing happened. Eve got anxious about Jason’s absence, but Claire was starting to feel a little confident that nothing would happen tonight at the library, as the minutes clicked by and the night around the library continued quiet, with nothing but the wind stirring outside in the streets.

And then the walkie-talkie Mrs. Grant had given her squawked for attention, making her jump. Claire figured it would be Shane; he’d stationed himself on the other side of the building, apparently because she was so distracting (which really didn’t disappoint her, when she thought about it).

But it wasn’t Shane.

It was Eve. “I’m coming out,” she said. She sounded breathless and worried. “You need to see this.”

“I’m here,” Claire said. “Be careful.”

In under a minute, Eve was beside her, holding out an open cell phone. Not hers—this one, for instance, didn’t have all the usual glow-in-the-dark skulls on it. Eve wouldn’t have a boring cell like this one.

Oh yeah. It was the one Oliver had slipped into her pocket on the bus. The only one they had now, since the rest were probably still dumped in a drawer back in the Durram police station.

There was a text message on the phone. Wounded, it said. Bring help. Garage.

It was from Oliver.

And that was it. Just the four words. Claire had gotten the occasional phone call from Oliver, but never a text.

“Oliver texted me,” Eve said. “I mean really. Oliver texted. That’s weird, right? Who knew he could?”

“Mrs. Grant said the cell phones didn’t work here.”

“No, she said they went out. This one’s working. Kinda, anyway.”

“Michael!” Claire called, and he jumped down from the top of a bookshelf next to the window to land next to her, barely seeming to notice the impact. She didn’t see him coming, either, which made her fumble the phone and almost drop it. “Hey! Scary-monster move! Don’t like it!”

“I’ll try to whistle next time,” he said. “What?”

She showed him. He did whistle, softly, and thought for a few seconds.

“What if it’s not him?” Claire said. “What if it’s, I don’t know, them? They got him, and they’re using his phone to lure us in?”

“They didn’t strike me as particularly clever with the planning, but you’ve got a good point. It could be a trap.” He frowned. “But if Oliver is calling for help, it’s about as bad as it gets.”

“I know.” Claire felt short of breath. “What do we do? He probably thinks Morley’s here!”

“Well, Morley’s not.” Michael looked around at the library, at the cluster of kids sleeping on cots in the middle of the room. “I don’t like leaving them, but we can’t just ignore it. Not if there’s a chance he’s really in trouble. It’s close to dawn, at least. That’s good for them, bad for Oliver.”

They found Mrs. Grant, who listened to them, read the text message, and shrugged.

Shrugged.

“You want to go, go,” she said. “We held out before any of you got here. We’ll hang on long after you’re gone, too. This is our town, and we’re going to be the last ones standing around here. Count on it.”

“Yes ma’am,” Claire said softly. “But—the kids—”

Mrs. Grant smiled bleakly. “What do you think we fight so hard for? The architecture? We’ll fight to our last for our kids, every one of us. Don’t you worry about that. You think your friend needs you, go on. Take the weapons—we’ve got plenty. This used to be a big hunting town.” Mrs. Grant paused, eyeing Claire. “In fact, hold on. Got something for you.”

She rummaged in a closet and came up with something that was huge, bulky, and looked very complicated—but once Claire had it thrust into her hands, she realized it wasn’t complicated at all.

It was a bow. One of those with the wheels and pulleys—a compound bow?

Mrs. Grant found a bag stuffed full of arrows, too.

“I don’t know how to shoot it,” Claire protested.

“Learn.”

“But—”

“If you don’t want it, give it back.”

“No,” Claire said, and felt ashamed of herself. “I’m sorry. I’ll figure it out.”

Mrs. Grant suddenly grinned and ruffled Claire’s hair as one would a little kid’s. “I know you will,” she said. “You got spark, you know that? Spark and grit. I like that.”

Claire nodded, not quite sure what to say to that. She clutched the bow in one hand, the bag of arrows in the other, and looked at Michael. “So I guess we’re—”

“Saving Oliver,” Michael said, straight-faced. “Maybe you’d better try shooting that thing first.”

While Michael, Shane, and Eve straightened out whatever it was they were going to do to get to Oliver—who was, according to the map and Mrs. Grant, at an old adobe building near the Civic Hall called Halley’s Garage—Claire set up a couple of hand-drawn paper targets on pillow-padded chairs, pulled one of the arrows out, and tried to figure out how to put it on the bowstring quickly. That didn’t work so well, so she tried again, taking her time, then pulling back the arrow and sighting down the long, straight line.

It was surprisingly tough to pull the string back, and hold the arrow in place, and not waver all over the place. She didn’t even hit the chair, much less the target, and she winced as the arrow hit the wall at least four feet away. But at least she’d fired it. That was something, right?

She picked out another arrow and tried again.

Twenty arrows later, she’d managed to hit the pillow—not the target, but the pillow—and she was starting to understand how this whole thing worked. It was easier when she thought of it in terms of physics, of potential and kinetic energy, energy and momentum.

As she was working out the calculations in her head, she forgot to really worry about all the physical things that were getting in the way—the balancing of the bow, the aiming, the fear she wasn’t going to get it right—and suddenly it all just clicked. She felt it come into sudden, sharp focus, like a spotlight had suddenly focused on her, and she let go of the arrow.

That instant, she knew it would hit the target. She let the bow rock gracefully forward on the balance point, watching the arrow, and it smacked into the exact center of her crudely drawn paper circle.

Physics.

She loved physics.

Shane arrived just as she put the arrow into the center, and slowed down, staring from the target to Claire, standing straight and tall, bow still held loosely in one hand and ready to shoot again. “You look so hot right now,” he said. “I’m just saying.”

She grinned at him and went to pick up all the arrows. One or two had suffered a little too much from contact with the wall, but the rest were good to reuse, and she carefully put them back into the bag, fletching end up. “You just like me because I might actually be able to be useful for a change.”

“You are always useful,” Shane said. “And hot. I mentioned that, right?”

“You’re mental. I need a shower, clean clothes, and about a year of sleep.”

“Okay, how about a hot mess?”

“Let me be Eve for a minute,” she said, and flipped him off. He laughed and kissed her.

“Not even close,” he said. “Come on, we’ve got some cranky old vampire to rescue.”