Daylighters

THREE

Hannah took them home to the Glass House.

It looked different. And it wasn’t just the time Claire had spent away from it that had made it that way. Someone had painted it. Done a good job, too—the exterior was a neat, sparkling white, instead of the faded, peeling mess that had been there before. The trim was a crisp dark blue. It looked almost respectable. The lawn was even neatly mowed.

“What the hell?” She blurted it out before she meant to, and sent Shane a disbelieving look. He sent it right back, amplified. So, he hadn’t been on the work crew, then.

Neither had Eve, apparently, because she gulped, sat up straighter, and said, “Um, what is that?”

“The town funded a renewal program for all the remaining Founder Houses,” Hannah said. “To preserve our history. Don’t tell me you’re not pleased. It looks a hell of a lot better than the tumbledown mess it was before.”

It did. The railings were straight, the warped boards had been replaced on the porch, and the windows actually sparkled. At the top of the peaked roof, a new weather vane in the shape of a sunrise (ugh) creaked and turned in the direction of the breeze, and as Hannah opened her car door, Claire heard the thin, whispering sound of wind chimes. Someone had mounted a set of them at the edge of the porch, along with a large potted plant that looked new and healthy.

The place was spiffy and pretty and not theirs.

“Tell me you didn’t touch anything inside the house,” Eve said. “Because I swear I’ll cut somebody. We liked the house the way we left it! That is our home!” What she didn’t say, but Claire thought she almost heard, was It’s Michael’s home. And her heart ached for him, and for Eve.

“Nobody went inside the house,” Hannah assured them. “This was an exterior renovation project. I thought you’d be pleased.”

“You could have asked first,” Eve said, but after the initial shock, some of her dislike was fading. And yeah, the house did look fantastic—restored to all its old Victorian glory, neat and sound. Claire realized it only underscored how little they’d taken care of the place . . . but then, they’d had other priorities, like staying alive. And none of them was much on chores.

“Let’s just get inside,” Shane said. “Hey, Hannah? Tell the Daylighters not to do us any more favors. I don’t want to owe them.”

Hannah didn’t comment on that. She just opened the back door of the cruiser, and Shane piled out, followed by Eve, and last of all, Claire.

Walking up the steps was a whole different experience. The paint was still new enough to make her dizzy, and its smell mingled with the aroma of fresh-cut grass and new plants in the warm desert air. “Guess we’ll have to start watering the damn lawn now,” Shane said, and fumbled for his keys. “So much easier to take care of when it was a wreck. Watch the paint on the door. I’m pretty sure it’s still wet.”

As Claire followed them over the threshold, she felt a shiver of power crawl over her . . . the house, waking up from a sleep, coming alive, welcoming them home. It felt like a fresh blast of cool air, and also, weirdly, like hands stroking her hair. She shut and double-locked the door—ingrained habit, in Morganville—and leaned against the wood to breathe in deeply.

Inside, it still smelled familiar. Old wood, dust, paper—not a clean smell, but a good one. The interior walls needed painting just as much as those outside had; they were smudged, scratched, and dented from hard use. None of the four of them was much on surface cleaning, and as Claire glanced into the side parlor, she saw that the oval coffee table—replaced relatively recently, after half their furniture had gotten smashed in a fight—had a blurring of dust over its surface. The old Victorian sofa looked as saggy and tired as ever.

Shane and Eve had already wandered off down the hall, Shane heading for the more modern, overstuffed couch in the living room and Eve’s clunky boots echoing on the stairs that led up to their rooms. Claire went a few steps in, and just . . . stopped. She closed her eyes and felt a peculiar, warm kind of peace sink in.

Home.

She felt almost as if the house itself were saying it to her: This is where you belong. She remembered leaving here for her brief journey to MIT in the predawn darkness, carrying her bags down and trying not to wake up any of the others to let them know she was leaving. She remembered the feelings of excitement, of worry, of longing, of fear, of anguish . . . and of devastation.

It felt healing to be back.

It felt right.

“Claire?”

She opened her eyes. Shane was standing at the end of the hall, and his dark eyes were full of concern. She smiled at him and saw the tension ease. “I’m home,” she said, and came into his arms. They closed around her, strong and warm. “I’m home, Shane. We’re home.”

“Yeah,” he said, and let out a long, slow breath. “Home. But it’s not exactly what we left behind, is it?”

“The house, or Morganville?”

“Either one.”

“Seems the same in here.”

“Not quite,” he said. “Not without Michael.”

He was right about that.

Eve didn’t want to eat, but Shane found enough stuff in the kitchen to pull together a meal of spaghetti and meat sauce, although the meat sauce tasted suspiciously like it had a chili-type origin. Canned chili, at that. Eve forked it mechanically into her mouth, chewed and swallowed, which was about as much as Claire thought they could reasonably expect from her just now. She looked hollow-eyed and exhausted and just . . . empty.

Shane tried to ask her things that normally would have gotten a snappy Eve-style comeback, but she either ignored them or responded with shrugs, until he finally put down his fork and said, “So, Eve, what’s your plan, then? Sit there and look sad and depressed until someone just feels so bad about your bruised little fee-fees that they give Michael back?”

“Screw you,” she said. It sounded mechanical, but then a fire came on behind her eyes and started blazing hotter and hotter. “Seriously, man, screw you. How dare you?”

“How dare you?” he replied. “Because the Eve I know wouldn’t just sit there and become the poster child for therapy. ‘Ask your doctor today for Depressia, the drug that makes you not freaking care about anything.’”

“You think I don’t care?” She stood up suddenly, fists clenched, and honestly, Claire thought Eve might lunge right across the table at him. Color was high and hot in Eve’s cheeks, and she shook with fury. “How can you even think that, you jackhole? You’re the one who walked out in the first place! And maybe if you’d helped me back there—”

“If I’d stayed in that mall, I would’ve started shit that would’ve got us all killed, and you know it,” Shane said flatly, and Eve pulled in a sharp breath to retort, then let it out, slowly, without a reply. She stared at him for a long moment.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

But he was lying, and Claire could see it; she could see that Eve did, too, and the two of them shared quick, confirming glances. His attention was fixed on Eve, and Claire quickly reached over, grabbed his arm, and pulled up the sleeve of his jeans jacket. It was the arm he’d kept rubbing earlier.

On it, she saw a vivid red scar in the shape of a bite. Healed, but inflamed, as if it was infected. “What is that?”

He yanked free of her, frowned, and pulled his sleeve back down to hide it. “Nothing.”

“It’s where the weird dog bit him,” Eve said. “I remember. It was when you left that night. It wasn’t normal, was it? Some kind of weirdo vamp dog.”

“It wasn’t a vampire dog.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I just know. Because if it was some dog the vamps sent out to bite people, then I wouldn’t want to kill vamps, would I?” Shane blurted out. He looked pale, suddenly, and a little shaky, and when he picked up his fork it rattled against the plate, so he dropped it again. “Look, it was all I could do to not go after them on the way back here from Cambridge. I couldn’t even stand to be around Mikey in the van for long without wanting—wanting to go at him. Hurt him. But that was nothing to how it feels back here. And in the mall . . . it was too much. It was like I had to attack. Needed to rip them apart. And no, I don’t know what it is, and yeah, I’m fucking afraid, okay? I’m terrified.”

That left a ringing silence in the room. Eve opened her mouth again, closed it, and slowly sat down in her chair. Claire felt frozen in place, unable to think what to say. Her throat felt thick and tight, and she swallowed to clear it, then stretched out a hand toward him.

He flinched, but it was just a small move, not a real withdrawal. She rested her fingers gently on his shoulder, then stroked his hair. He felt hot, the way he had back at the mall. Feverish. “Shane, you’re sick,” she said. “Something happened to you. And we need to find out what it is and how to help you.”

“Sick or not, at least I’m not the one locked in a cage with a shock collar around my neck,” he said. “Eve’s right. We can’t leave him like that. I’ll be okay.”

“You’re not,” Eve said, and gave a bitter, brittle laugh. “Okay, none of us are okay. We need to do a lot of things, but first of all, Shane, we need to find out what’s happening with you. I may be depressed, but at least I’m not Mr. McMurdery Wolfenstein.” She paused for a second, and then shook her head. “Okay, I was about to say we should see if Myrnin knows what it could be, but . . . no. Can’t go to any vampires, I suppose. Emergency room?”

“They won’t know anything,” Shane said. “But I know someone who does. Hannah. She was there when I was bitten. She said there were more dogs, more bites. She’d know something, anyway.”

“I don’t trust Hannah.”

“No kidding. I don’t, either, but it’s not like we have a ton of options, Eve. I don’t want to go save Michael and end up—doing something I’d regret. Which right now seems really likely. I nearly lost it back there. And I might do it again, and I swear to God I don’t want to.” His face tightened, and his eyes darkened until they looked almost black. “So if Hannah knows something about what’s happening to me, then she’s going to tell me.”

That was ominous, and Claire’s sense of disquiet grew stronger. “Shane, don’t—”

He was already up from the table, with his plate and fork in his hand. It wasn’t like him not to finish a meal, but there was still a small twisty mountain of spaghetti left when he carried it into the kitchen.

Eve pushed her food around some more and said, “Claire, we’re in trouble. You know that, right?”

“Yes,” Claire said. “Eat your spaghetti.”

Eve obediently lifted a forkful to her mouth, chewed, and swallowed, then said, “You know I love you, but trust me, one thing your fancy Boston trip didn’t teach that boy? How to make decent spaghetti sauce.”

Eve’s critiquing the food was, for some odd reason, funny, and Claire’s breath hiccuped into a laugh that just kept going. And Eve started laughing, too. Shane slammed back through the kitchen doors and glared at them, which only made them keep helplessly, hopelessly giggling at the look on his face. “Sorry,” Claire gasped.

“It’s not funny.”

“I know! But—the food—was—”

“Pretty bad.” Shane’s body language relaxed, just a little. “Yeah, I forgot the art of combining crappy ingredients into an awesome whole while I was off in Fancytown, didn’t I?”

“Fancytown? You saw where I lived!” Her giggles finally dribbled away, but at least she was left with a happier afterglow than before. Eve managed another bite, for solidarity, probably.

“Good point.” He sat down and leaned his elbows on the empty spot where his plate had been. “You guys need to keep a leash on me, okay? I don’t think I can trust myself right now.”

“An actual leash? Because I have one,” Eve said. “It has spikes on the collar and everything.”

“Been there,” he said. “Remember?” And with a shock Claire did remember; it seemed like a long time ago now, but a wicked awful female vampire had once led him around on a leash at a party, and the memory of it still turned her stomach. And his. And Eve’s, apparently, because she dropped her fork onto the plate, shoved the whole thing away, and rested her forehead on her palms.

“Sorry,” she sighed. “Mine’s more for recreational purposes anyway. I don’t think it would do much to hold you back.”

“Recreational—okay, freak, I don’t even want to know that,” Shane said. “Let’s pretend that never happened. What I meant was, I’m counting on the two of you to check me if I’m heading for the cliff.”

“Roger that,” Eve said. “I’ll T-bone your ass right off that course.”

“Try not to break anything while you’re at it.”

“Like a nail?” She inspected her black-painted nails, which were looking a little ragged—not a lot of manicure time recently. “I see your point.” Then she folded her hands and looked at him, with all the banter put aside. “What are we doing, then? Going to see Hannah, or not?”

“Going,” Claire said. “But, Shane, you’re not doing the talking. I am. Clear?”

“Clear,” he said and nodded. “One request.”

“What?”

“Can we stop for a burger? Because, seriously, I am starving.”

Everything in Morganville, even the burger places, either had been given a face-lift or was in the process of getting one, and as Eve piloted her big black vintage hearse around the town, they spent a lot of time slowing down, gawking, and shaking their heads. “Wish I’d invested in the hardware store now,” Shane said. “I’d be rolling in money just from paint sales.” He was right about that. Almost every building had a gleaming new coat already or had people on ladders applying one. The few buildings that didn’t had bright, fluttering orange stickers applied to them—either a sign that their paint jobs were on the way or that they were being fined for not having one.

“It’s worse than that,” Eve said, and pointed straight ahead. “Check out Dog King.”

The Dog King was a relic from the 1950s, complete with vintage sign—a little drive-through hot dog and burger joint that had, at its best, looked sketchy, except for its totally awesome sign of a dachshund wearing a crown, a hot dog bun, and a cocky grin. Its leaning shack had been torn down and rebuilt as a shiny new store that was painted a very questionable teal blue. At least the sign hadn’t been touched.

“Right, Dog King it is,” Eve said, and turned into the newly paved driveway. It was still an order-at-the-window kind of place, so that hadn’t changed, and she got a bag of mini-dogs and burgers and fries, sodas all around, and tossed the results at Shane and Claire to sort out as she piloted the beast of a car. Sharp turns were a thing the hearse wasn’t great at doing, but she managed not to scrape any of the oh-so-new paint on the building, or the fence.

Claire was past noticing after that, because the hot dog she grabbed was melting in her mouth with deliciousness that totally erased the not-so-great chili spaghetti experiment. Two mini-dogs for Claire later, and two burgers that Shane practically inhaled, Eve was parking the car in front of the (not surprisingly) newly refurbished Morganville City Hall, where Chief Moses had her office. They sat in the parking lot and munched through the rest of the food, watching the foot traffic come and go.

“You seeing what I’m seeing?” Eve asked finally, as she crumpled up the last of the wrappers and three-pointed it into the bag that Shane held up for a basket.

“Morganville has never looked this good,” he said. “It’s like that old movie about the robot wives or the pod people or something. Seriously, look at the grass. It’s actually green. And even.”

“No, moron, I mean the pins. Lots of pins on cops.” Eve pointed to an imaginary collar. “Daylight Foundation pins. If it gets any more popular, they’ll put it on the freaking flag.”

“Great,” Shane said. “Everybody got pinned. We live in a giant evil frat house now.”

The massive Gothic front of the building looked old, but it had been rebuilt fairly recently; the aging of the stone was done with sandblasting. Still, it looked broody and impressive, looming over them as they walked up to the big, heavy doors. Two cops lingering by the entrance gave the three of them cool, blank looks that were, well, pretty normal, actually. The police in town had never been friendly, especially toward Shane and Eve. One shrugged, though, and opened the door for them as they approached.

Both, Claire noticed, wore pins.

Inside, it was business as usual in Morganville—clerks bustling around, phones ringing, people standing in line for permits or tickets or whatever. But there was a difference, somehow; it was intangible, but there. Claire couldn’t quite put her finger on how it felt wrong, or at least strange, but it had something to do with the overly friendly smiles, the happy tones of their voices.

“Someone’s been spiking the Cheery Kool-Aid,” Eve said.

“Think you mean cherry, slick.”

“I meant cheery, dumbass. Try to keep up,” Eve said, and gave Shane a shove on his shoulder. “Enough sightseeing. This is your show. Get it on the road.”

He trudged up the steps leading to the second floor, went down the hall, and opened the door that led to Hannah Moses’s office. Not the office she had once, briefly, occupied as mayor; this one had a harassed-looking female cop sitting behind a desk working a multi-button phone. She shot them an irritated glance as the three of them stepped in. She hit the HOLD button and said, “Chief Moses isn’t seeing anyone today. She’s in meetings.”

“Can you tell her it’s Shane Collins?”

“I don’t care who you are. She’s busy.”

Shane leaned both hands on the officer’s desk. “Tell her it’s about my dog bite. I think I might be rabid.”

There was something in his face that convinced the woman. She frowned, stared him down for a few seconds, then hit another button on her phone and said, “Yes, I need you in the office, please. Thank you.”

“Excellent,” Shane said. “We’ll be right over here.” He walked to a small line of guest chairs. Claire took one, with Eve beside her, while Shane flipped through an assortment of ragged magazines . . . and then the door opened.

It wasn’t Chief Moses. It was, instead, the biggest, most muscle-bound policeman Claire had ever seen. Broader and taller than Shane.

His gaze fixed immediately on the officer behind the desk. “You got some kind of trouble here?” he asked. She merely pointed over her shoulder at Shane and kept talking to whatever constituent was on the phone at the moment.

“Crap,” Eve said. “Um . . . guys?”

It was too late. The officer was lumbering over, and Shane was standing up, fast, dropping his magazine to the floor. “I think there’s some misunderstanding,” he said. “Because I didn’t ask for Officer Friendly. I asked for—”

That was as far as he got before the cop grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, and pressed him flat against the wall, rattling the bland artwork hanging there. “Shut up,” he said, and reached for handcuffs.

“You mean, I have a right to be silent? How about my right to an attorney, do I have that? Ouch. Look, you haven’t done this before, have you? Let me help you out—”

“Shut up, smart-ass. You’re creating a disturbance.”

“I just want to see Chief Moses!”

“Chief Moses is busy. You get to see me instead.”

“Should we be doing something?” Eve asked Claire, who was still sitting frozen in her chair. “Because I’m kinda used to Shane being arrested, but this seems wrong. And weren’t you going to ask the questions?”

Claire snapped herself out of the feeling of unreality that had settled over her, and stood up. Officer Friendly’s (the name really did fit him) eyes flicked over to scan her, then dismissed her.

She tried anyway. “Sir, we know Hannah Moses. She wouldn’t want you to do this. We only need to ask her some questions. Important questions.”

The lady on the phone, who had just finished her call and finally replaced the receiver, rolled her eyes. “Yeah. About a dog bite.”

Oddly enough, that stopped Officer Friendly for a couple of seconds, and then he grabbed Shane by the shoulder, turned him around to face him, and said, “You got bit by a dog?” It was said with both concern and eagerness, such a weird combination that Claire couldn’t quite wrap her head around it. Neither could Shane, by his expression. “When?”

Shane managed to shrug, despite the handcuffs and the grip on his shoulder. “A while back.”

The cop turned Claire’s boyfriend back around, skinned up one of Shane’s sleeves, got nothing, and tried the other. He stared at the ruddy scar for a second, then took out his keys and unlocked the handcuffs. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “I’ll get the chief. Have a seat.”

Just like that, he left. All of them—even the officer/receptionist—looked silently confused, and it lasted for a full minute until the frosted-glass door opened again to admit Hannah Moses.

“Sorry,” the lady behind the desk said, “but this young man was very insistent—”

Hannah ignored her. She walked to Shane, grabbed his arm—the correct one—and looked at the scar. “Dammit,” she said. “Come with me, all of you.”

She led them into her office, where she slammed and locked the door behind them.

“I just—,” Shane began, but then she held up one finger to stop him, went behind her desk, and opened a drawer. She flipped some kind of switch, then nodded. “What is that, spy crap?” Shane asked.

“Spy crap,” she affirmed, and sat down in the wheeled office chair. “I knew you’d been bitten, but in the press of everything else, it slipped my mind. I’m sorry. What kind of aftereffects are you feeling?”

“Hang on a minute. Who the hell is trying to listen in on you? All the vamps are back there not shopping at the mall,” Eve said. “Unless . . . you don’t trust your shiny new boss. I think he is your new boss, right? Fallon the Fanatic?”

Hannah didn’t answer that. She just fixed Shane with that steady look and waited until he said, “The bite’s feeling pretty weird, actually. Not so bad when I left Morganville, but it flared up on the road, and got worse when I came home. It started small, sort of like an ache in my arm, but then I started feeling this . . . urge.”

“An urge to hunt vampires. Fight them. Kill them,” Hannah said. “Which is why you left the mall so suddenly. You couldn’t control it anymore.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It felt like something was taking me over, and I didn’t like it. Still don’t. Look, I’m not saying I’m some vampire groupie or anything, but I don’t hate hate them, not like I used to do. Not like my dad did.” It was unusual, Claire thought, for Shane to look like this—helpless. Lost. “I just don’t know what I’m doing. I only know I don’t want to.”

“Hannah . . .” Claire sank down in one of the visitor chairs and leaned forward, staring at the chief. “Please tell us what’s going on. Please. We need to know.”

Hannah looked away, as if she was composing herself for a moment, and then she nodded. “The Daylight Foundation has been conducting research for a long time,” she said. “It’s an old organization, very old, though they’ve only recently come out of hiding. They conducted cutting-edge genetics experiments; some worked, some didn’t. Some ended up creating things they found useful.”

“Like the devil dogs,” Shane said. “Like the one that bit me that night.”

“The dogs were part of Fallon’s advance team,” Hannah said. “He’d seen an opening, with Oliver’s exile from Morganville. He thought there was enough unrest, given what had just happened, to depose Amelie from her position. And he was right, damn him. He was dead right.”

“But—I thought you were—” Eve pointed to the Daylighters pin on Hannah’s collar.

For answer, Hannah unbuttoned the crisply starched sleeve of her uniform shirt and rolled it up, revealing a jagged bite mark that looked every bit as inflamed and angry as the one Shane had been hiding. “Some of us don’t have a choice,” she said. “Either I’m his hunting dog or I’m his dog handler. He keeps the instincts in check with a medication he gives me. Without that, I’m just another one of the pack.” She nodded at Shane as she refastened her sleeve buttons. “Like you, kid.”

“Wait a second, I’m not part of any—”

“No?” Hannah cocked her head at him. “Only because Fallon hasn’t bothered to make use of you yet. He hasn’t needed to. But he will, Shane. He certainly did me, and others.”

“How many others?” Eve asked. “And what do you mean, exactly, about him making use of them? Because if there’s anything I hate more than vamp mind control, it’s mind control by somebody who isn’t a vamp.”

Hannah’s dark eyes flashed toward her, suddenly hot with anger that had, Claire realized, been simmering under the surface the whole time. “You’ve got no idea,” she said. “I just got my life back from one vampire’s mind games, and now to have this son of a bitch doing this. . . . You think I don’t hate it? Don’t want to rip his head off? Fact is, I can’t. I can’t even raise a hand to him. It’s part of the—the programming.” The woman was generally so controlled that it took Claire aback, seeing her lose it even that small amount. There was a tremendous tide of rage under that surface of calm. Rage and frustration.

“How many?” Shane asked. “In the pack?”

“Six,” Hannah said. “Including you and me. I don’t know if we were just unlucky, or if somehow those dogs of his were programmed to target specific individuals. I’d like to think he picked us because . . . because we’re the ones most capable of fighting him, as humans.”

Shane swallowed hard. “Yeah, I’ll do my best to take it as a compliment,” he said. “But how do I handle this? What do I do?”

“Stay away from vampires,” she said. “Which ought to be pretty easy to do, now that they’re in the enclave—and yes, I hate using that word. But if you feel a surge of what you felt back there, you’ll know he’s activated you for a hunt. Once that happens . . . once that happens, you won’t be yourself.”

“What do you mean, ‘won’t be himself’?” Claire asked, but Hannah just shook her head and changed the subject.

“Eve, I’m keeping an eye on Michael, I promise you that. I am trying to make sure they all stay safe. Right now, the best way to do that is to keep them confined and compliant.”

“Are you still Captain Obvious?” Eve asked. “Which side are you on? Because I don’t get you, Hannah. I really don’t.”

“Captain Obvious won,” Hannah said. “That’s the problem—none of us really thought about what we’d do if we managed to defeat the vampires and take control. We never thought about what we would do with them—what kind of future they’d have. So in a certain sense, I no longer get myself anymore.” She seemed sad about it, and angry, and there was a moment of silence before she continued. “Now, all of you, please go home. Shane, there’s nothing that can be done about what you’re feeling, but if you find yourself struggling, just—stay as far from any vampires as you can. That will help.”

Shane leaned on her desktop and looked her straight in the eye this time. “Why does he need a pack of people pre-programmed to hunt down vampires, Hannah?”

“For strays,” she said. “Not all the vampires are going to stay in the mall. Eventually, they’ll get out, and he will need to track them down. That’s where you—where we—come in.”

That was the end of the meeting. She crossed to the door, opened it, and there didn’t seem to be any choice but to leave, with Officer Friendly scowling at them from the outer office. The receptionist ignored them with stubborn intensity as she answered more calls . . . and then they were out in the hall, and Shane was restlessly rubbing his arm and looking more disturbed than ever.

“Did that help?” Claire asked him. He shook his head.

Eve said, “At least we know he’s not the only crazy one in town. Come on, Dog Soldier. Let’s go.”

They spent about an hour cruising Morganville, noting the changes. A lot of it was cosmetic—buildings painted, roads repaired. But there were also new places going up all over town, and it was Shane who pointed out the Daylighters symbol that was cropping up on nearly all the business signs or store windows. As if they were proudly saying, No vampires allowed.

But oddest of all were the people. So many Morganville natives out and about, walking, chatting, taking their kids to the small municipal park. Shopping. It looked so damn normal that it gave Claire the creeps, because their body language was completely different now. It wasn’t the Morganville she’d gotten so used to seeing; that much was certain. Where before, people had walked with a kind of guarded, reflexive awareness of what was around them, these folks were almost giddy about not looking paranoid. Oblivious. Safe.

It was an improvement, she knew that; people felt happy and safe—their smiles just radiated it. But then why do I feel so bad? Claire was afraid that maybe she just didn’t want change, even change for the better. But that wasn’t it; she’d rolled with a lot of changes in Morganville thus far.

This was something deeper, and more disturbing.

They just want the vampires gone. They don’t care how it happens. So all those happy smiles, they were the smiles of the winners of a very long, slow, quiet war. The dead weren’t around to bother their consciences. Whatever Fallon did, he would do offstage, in the dark, and they’d never have to confront any of it.

Claire knew it wasn’t maybe rational to want to save the vampires; after all, they’d been the bogeymen under Morganville’s bed for generations, and they’d been responsible for so many bad things. But individual vampires had been responsible. Wasn’t blaming an entire group for the acts of a few wrong?

Does that make me the villain now? She wondered that with a chill, left out from the smiles, the warmth, the camaraderie. The all-human, all-new Morganville. Am I the one who’s going to be responsible for ruining everything for these people?

She found herself holding Shane’s hand as they drove around. His skin still felt hot, and she wondered if maybe Hannah was wrong—if his bite could be infected, not just . . . engineered that way. Maybe he just needed antibiotics. They ended up facing supernatural weirdness so often, it was easy to forget that plain old bacteria could screw up a person just as much.

When she proposed that they stop in at the hospital, though, he rejected that out of hand. “Not worth it,” he said. “I’m okay, Claire. Really.” He wasn’t. But she didn’t push him, because she knew it wouldn’t help.

Eve pulled the hearse up the drive and around to the back of the house, into their small, rickety shed/garage, which was not really big enough for it. Michael had remote-parked his vampmobile—provided by Morganville free of charge to all the vampires, in the until recently days—since Eve’s hearse had heavy vampire tinting on the back windows where he could shelter when he needed to. None of the rest of them could drive Michael’s car, anyway, because of the thick black windshield and windows, so for now, best they left it where it was, parked underground beneath Founder’s Square.

But not seeing Michael’s car here, wedged in beside Eve’s . . . it just seemed significant. And it made Claire shiver to think it might never be parked here again.

Coming in through the kitchen reminded her that they hadn’t properly cleaned up from the Great Spaghetti Disaster, but she didn’t care just now, and clearly, neither did Shane or Eve, who ignored the destruction on their way through. She followed. They both went upstairs. At the top, Eve opened the door of the room she now shared with Michael, looked in, and was still for a moment before she said, “I’m going to get online and see what I can find out.” Then she went in and quietly shut the door behind her.

Shane stood for a few seconds, his head down, and then said, “I need a shower. See you in a few, okay?”

“Okay,” Claire said. She wished he would have said something else, something more significant, but she also understood the need to be alone. Eve was walling herself off so she could both work through how she was feeling and do something productive. Shane . . . well, obviously, he needed to think, too.

And all of them needed showers, that was true. Self-evidently, aromatically true.

She went to her bedroom and sat down on the bed. The familiar creak of the springs made her feel at home, but most of her stuff was still stuck back in Cambridge. She would need to figure that out eventually, she supposed. Need to think how to get her clothes back, and her books, and all the photos she’d taken with her.

She hadn’t taken everything, at least; there were still a few pairs of underwear, a bra that had seen better days, a couple of pairs of jeans, and some older shirts. She assembled an outfit from the slim choices, then dug a pair of sheets out of the linen closet in the hall and put them on the bed—more for something to do than any intent to sleep.

When all that was done, she stretched out on the bed and listened to the sound of the shower running. When it stopped, she gathered up her things and waited at the door. Shane appeared there after a few minutes, wrapped in a towel that showed a blindingly gorgeous span of chest and shoulders, and rode low enough on his hips to make her helplessly fill in the rest of the information in a rush of memory. She pulled in a sharp, needy breath as he pushed his damp hair back from his face and gave her a smile. “What?” he asked.

“I—my turn.” She felt the color in her cheeks, and knew it was ridiculous, but she couldn’t help it. This . . . this felt like coming home, this sweet tension that suddenly pulled between them, a gravity that it was so easy to obey. Despite everything, all the insanity and fear and general weirdness of Morganville, they had this, and it was torturously beautiful.

He cleared his throat and moved out of the way for her—but not far enough that they didn’t brush against each other as they passed. “See you when you get out?” He made it a question.

“Maybe.” She raised her eyebrows, and saw the answering spark in his eyes.

“You’re killing me.”

“You deserve it, don’t you?”

That got her a pants-melting smile. “Most likely.”

She shut the door on him and leaned against it, suddenly and wonderfully short of breath, and it took her a moment before she could push away, put down her clothes, and start stripping for the shower.

It was still warm and steamy when she got in, and she used Eve’s herb-scented shampoo and body wash, then—with all appropriate mental prayers for forgiveness—borrowed Eve’s razor, too, because the state of her legs and underarms was especially bad. The water began to run cold by the time she was done, so she rinsed her hair and scrubbed soap off quickly, then ducked, shivering, out into the cooler air.

After drying herself off, she combed her wet hair back and contemplated the pile of sad clothing she’d brought in with her.

Then she wrapped the towel around her body and carried the stack back into her bedroom instead of putting it on.

It didn’t really surprise her to find Shane there, sitting on the edge of the bed and still in his own towel. But it did feel good. Really, really good. She put her things on the bare top of the dresser and pretended not to notice him as she put the clothes away again.

“Really?” he said. “That’s what you’re going with in this situation? Ignore me?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “At least until I do this.”

She walked over and shut the door, and locked it, just in case . . . Well, just in case. Then she turned, leaned against it, and looked at him.

“Oh,” he said.

“So,” Claire said.

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re sitting on my bed.”

“Yes.”

“Wearing a towel.”

“Apparently so.”

“And . . . nothing else.”

“Why, do you have on long underwear under yours?”

“No.”

“Prove it.”

“You first.” She took a step closer and folded her arms.

“Why me?”

“You started it.” Another step forward. She didn’t consciously plan it, but it seemed like the world had tilted itself toward him. The floor was sloping. Not at all her fault, really, that she was moving in his direction. She could feel the air changing around her. Growing warmer.

“I think you actually started it, stalking me outside the bathroom door,” Shane said. He had that look in his half-closed eyes, that unmistakable, intent expression that made her skin feel too tight on her body, made all the heat snapping in the air between them draw in and down and glow golden inside her. “So you first, then.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said. One more step forward, one she didn’t consciously even take. Her knees were brushing his now, and it wasn’t possible for the brushing of knees to be sexy, was it, except it was, it was, and her heart was thundering inside her chest now, flooding her body with tingles and pulses like starlight. “I’ll help you take that off if you help me with mine.”

He pretended to consider it, but he wasn’t fooling her, not at all, not even a little. This was a game, one that was lazy on the surface and full of tension underneath. What was it Eve had said to her once? Restraint is the sexiest. At the time, Claire had thought she meant it in the ropes-and-handcuffs sense, but now she was starting to realize that it meant something else entirely.

It meant enjoying the anticipation.

Shane reached out and put his hands on the outside of her legs, just above the knee. Just about where the towel ended. Then he slowly slid them up to about mid-thigh, and she could feel the warm ghosts left by his palms. The rest of her shivered in response, and she bit her lip.

His eyes widened, and his smile took on a wicked slant. The room seemed so quiet, except for the soft rasp of their breathing, the whisper of the towels moving.

She reached out and tugged on the fabric around him, and at the same moment he closed his hands on the hem of her covering and pulled.

And then she was falling, falling, falling into his arms, into a bright and burning fire that only blazed hotter as their bare, damp skin met . . . and then their lips, in an explosion of need and want and desire.

And for a while, anyway, in the breathless brush of his skin on hers, in the deep and perfect whispers, she forgot about Morganville.

She forgot about everything.

Claire woke from a sleep so deep and contented that it was like floating on clouds. She became aware of the world around her gradually—the sunlight striping over her bare leg, and the rustle of leaves on the old post oak tree outside her bedroom window. She felt warm and heavy and perfectly home.

She turned her head, and saw Shane was still sleeping beside her, and she rolled toward him. He murmured something and put his arms around her, but it was more reflex than conscious action, at least until she kissed him. Then the mumbling became a low sound in the back of his throat, almost a purr, and his hand ran slowly down her spine, fingers brushing over each and every bump.

“Well,” he said, when there was space enough between them for words, “that’s a pretty nice start to a day. God, is it morning? How much morning?”

“Um . . . eight thirty of morning.”

“Breakfast?” He sounded hopeful. The whole world sounded hopeful, at least for the moment, and she laughed and kissed him again and sat up. The clothes she’d gathered to put on last night were in the drawer, so she got them out and put them on, glancing behind her as she zipped her jeans to see him noting the lack of his clothes on the floor. After a sigh, he picked up the towel, wrapped and tucked it, and kissed her on the way to the door. “Back in a minute.”

The locked door ruined his suave exit for a few seconds, but he managed, and Claire sat down on the bed to pull on her shoes. The good feeling was still there, bubbling and humming, but real life started bearing down, too. . . . And the shadows, though driven out by the morning sun, were slowly taking hold.

She ran a brush through her hair, which needed it badly, and dashed into the bathroom to scrub her face, brush her teeth, and take care of normal bathroom business. By the time she was done, Shane was in the hall, waiting, dressed in comfortably loose jeans and a Transformers tee about two washes away from dissolving into rags. “Eve’s downstairs,” he said, and there was something unhappy in his voice. “You’d better talk to her.”

That . . . didn’t sound so good, and Claire hurried down the steps even before he’d shut the bathroom door.

She found Eve in the kitchen, standing at the sink, gulping down the last of a gigantic cup of coffee from a black mug with red skulls on it. Eve had gone full Goth today: black cargo pants; heavy, thick-soled boots; a tight dark red shirt with bright red crossbones over the heart, like a pirate’s badge. A thick choker of chain links, shining with silver plate. Equally thick silver bracelets on both wrists. She’d put reddish streaks in her black hair and twisted it back into a bun, into which she’d thrust silver chopsticks—although they were rather pointier than normal chopsticks. Her makeup was more like a mask—rice-powder pale, with vivid red eye shadow and plenty of liner.

She had a heavy backpack leaning next to her feet.

“So let me guess. . . . You’re going jogging?” Claire said, and opened the cabinets to pull out her own coffee mug. It was one Shane had found for her, with strange little aliens on it. She edged past Eve to take the coffeepot from the burner, and poured. Then she held the remainder out silently, and Eve just as silently extended her cup. It filled her cup only a quarter of the way. Claire put her cup aside and tackled the coffeemaker, trying to seem as normal and domestic as possible. “You look awesomely Gothic today.”

Eve nodded.

“Going somewhere?”

“I’m going to the mall,” she said. “And I’m going to get Michael out.”

Claire filled the water reservoir, replaced the filter, and spooned in more ground coffee. “I see you’ve totally thought out your plan, which obviously involves getting the support of your best friends before tearing out to get yourself killed.”

Eve gave her a scorching look, made all the more effective by the war paint. “I’m not taking any more crap from the Daylighters. We tried talking it out. Talking got me five minutes of face time with my own husband, who doesn’t deserve any of this. I’m done with the subtle approach. This time I’m not taking no for an answer—and don’t try to talk me out of it, Claire, because you don’t know how this feels. We just got Michael out of a cage back in Cambridge, and now he’s—he’s just in a bigger cage, held by the same people who want to hurt him. I can’t stand it, and I won’t stand it.”

The passion in her voice, and the determination, was scary. Claire swallowed hard and tried to concentrate on what she was doing with her hands—swing the door shut with the coffee, put the pot back in place, press the brew control—and it did help slow her down and keep her voice rational as she replied, “I didn’t say you had to, did I? I just said you should involve us.”

“So you can talk me out of it?”

“So I can make sure you don’t die, Eve. Because Michael doesn’t deserve having to deal with that, does he? He doesn’t deserve to see you hurt, or killed, because of him. You know he’d tell you the same thing: be smart, and be careful. Pick the battle you can win.” She held Eve’s stare, hard as it was. “Tell me if I’m wrong.”

She knew she wasn’t, and so did Eve, who changed course. “Look, I’m not some fragile flower everybody has to shelter all the time. I may not be as much of a total-destruction mayhem machine as Shane, but I can wreak havoc when I want.” She paused for a second, distracted. “Why is it you can only wreak havoc, anyway? Why not, I don’t know, world peace?”

“Good question.”

Eve shook a finger at her. “Don’t you try to throw me off, CB. My point is, I’m strong even if I’m on my own.”

“I know. But you have to admit, we’re all much stronger if we stick together.” Claire risked a quick grin. “Besides, why should you have all the fun?”

“If by fun you mean total war, you might have a point. It is a little selfish not to share. Because I intend to unleash hell if anybody even thinks of telling me that Michael can’t walk out of there,” Eve said.

She drained the quarter cup of coffee, and Claire noticed she was drinking it black. That, for Eve, was kind of a danger sign; her coffee preferences varied by her mood, and black was her hard-core extreme. Claire added cream and sugar to her own, stirred, and blew on it to cool it before tasting. Anything to kill a little more time.

“What about the rest of them?” Claire asked. “Amelie. Myrnin. Even Oliver. Do they deserve to be trapped in there with shock collars on their necks? God, you saw the place. That’s not a prison, it’s—it’s a holding pen.”

Eve stopped, eyes widening. “Holding pen for what?”

“God. I don’t even want to guess. The Daylighters want vampires dead, right? Abominations against nature, and all that. They’ve never made any secret of it, never mind what Fallon says about it. He’s the face guy, the one who makes everybody feel better about herding people into enclaves.”

“They’ve got plenty of support, too,” Eve pointed out. “I think that now that the vamps have been shuffled offstage, nobody’s going to think much about what happens to them, as long as they don’t have to watch it happen. Even then, I’m not sure that most of them wouldn’t simply justify the hell out of it.”

Claire shivered. Eve was right about that. Human nature was all about shifting blame . . . and responsibility. How else could you explain concentration camps and genocide and all the awful things people did to each other every day? They just carried on with life and pretended that the evil didn’t exist, as long as it was happening out of their direct view.

Morganville’s human population wasn’t any different. Didn’t really matter if something was right, as long as it was of material benefit and it happened to someone they hated.

“You think they’ll kill them?” Claire asked.

“Don’t you?” Eve took a larger gulp of her coffee. “Screw that. I’m not going to be a bystander, wringing my hands. I’m doing something. Right now. You guys can jump in, or stay out. Either way.”

“Hang on, didn’t I say we were coming?” Claire said. “You know Shane would never avoid a good fight, and I’m not going to turn my back on this, either. But let’s be smart about it, okay? That means thinking through it. Calmly.”

“I’m so done with calm,” Eve said. She dumped the rest of her coffee in the sink, put the cup down with a clatter, and hauled the backpack up to rest on her shoulder. “Diplomacy is your crack, Claire. It isn’t mine. I’m more of a straight-ahead kind of girl, and right now, I’m going right into their faces. With my fist.”

Claire sighed. She chugged the rest of her coffee, even though it was too hot and too bitter, and rinsed the cups. The spaghetti dinner remains were still crusted up on plates, and she dumped those all in and ran hot water with a spray of soap. Just in case they didn’t die and might need something to eat off of later.

“Let me get my stuff,” she said. “Don’t go without me.”

“Five minutes,” Eve said. “Then I’m out.”

“Promise.”

Claire took the stairs two at a time, and ran into Shane sitting at the top; he’d clearly been listening. They exchanged a look, and he grabbed her hand. “I want to help,” he said. “I do, you know that. But if I go back there . . . Shit, Claire, I don’t know what would happen. No, actually, the problem is that I do know exactly what would happen, and it wouldn’t help either one of you.”

She bent and kissed him, very lightly. “Then stay here,” she said. “But I have to go with her and try to stop her from doing something crazy. You know I do.”

“Can’t we just knock her over the head and dump her in a closet until she cools off?” His jaw was tight, his dark eyes fierce, but he wasn’t angry with her. It was all directed inward, at his own problems. “I feel crap useless right now, you know? And sick of being somebody else’s butt-puppet.”

“Seriously? Butt-puppet?”

“Seems appropriate.”

“Then fix it,” she said. “Shane, I know you. You’re smart. Think how you can use this, not let it use you.”

He laughed a little, and it sounded raw, but real. “You’re way too good for me, you know that?”

She put his hand against her cheek and smiled. “I know. Got to go gear up—” She realized, too late, that all her gear was gone. Even her backpack was missing now, because it had been towed away by the cops with the vans. “Um . . . right. I assume you’ve got some good stuff tucked away?”

“Me?” Shane stood up in one smooth, fluid movement, and for a moment she felt that gravitational shift again, pulling her in. “You know me. I’m a Boy Scout. Always prepared.”

“Show me your goodies, then,” Claire said, and caught herself in a laugh. “By which I mean—”

“I know what you mean,” he said, and leaned in very close to whisper in her ear. “Though if you’ve got a few minutes—”

She shivered, tempted in some utterly instinct-driven part of her, but she shook her head. “Later,” she said, just as softly. “Why are we whispering?”

“Because it turns you on?”

“Oh, and it doesn’t you? Because that’s a little obvious.”

He cleared his throat and stepped back, held his hands palm out in surrender, and said, in a normal tone of voice, “Okay, then, armory it is. Buzz killer.”

She smacked him on the arm, which of course did absolutely nothing except hurt her own palm, and followed him down the hallway to his room.

“Wow,” she said as he swung the door open. “I thought you moved out when you followed me.”

“I did,” he said. “This is what I didn’t take with me.”

What he hadn’t taken was pretty much a complete room, right down to the twisted sheets still on the bed. Clothes in the closet. Much-abused cross-trainers and heavy work boots piled in the corner. Shane went to a chest in the corner and pulled open the first drawer.

“Have at it,” he said. “See, want, take.”

Shane was a slob in his room—seriously—but in the way he kept and stored his weapons, he was meticulous. The top drawer held silver things—chains, jewelry, weapons. Claire took a silver-coated dagger, chains for her throat and wrists, and skipped the rest. He closed that drawer and went down one, revealing a selection of guns that, even given that they lived in Texas, was probably excessive. She shook her head. He raised his eyebrows, but went down another drawer.

Crossbow. She liked that. It was one of the small, light ones, easy to aim and with surprising power, and she grabbed the bolts that went with it.

“Can I interest you in an honest-to-God army flak jacket?” he asked, and kicked the bottom drawer. “Guaranteed effective, but it’d probably be way too big for you. Plus, it’s not exactly easy to get up if you go down. Sort of the overturned-turtle problem. Matching helmet, though, so at least you look cool while you’re flopping around helplessly getting murderated.”

She shook her head. He stepped forward, took her head between his big, warm hands, and tilted her chin up so that their eyes met. “You need to figure out how to stop her from doing this, you know?”

“I know,” she said. “I’d just rather be fully armed while I do it. In case.”

He kissed her, very gently. “I’ve got your back. Way back, obviously. Just—don’t ask me to go too close to the vamps right now, okay? Including Michael. I don’t want to hurt him.” He meant that, she knew it—for all that had happened between them, all the strangeness, he and Michael were at heart brothers and best friends, and always would be.

Without Shane, Claire knew that stopping Eve—not to mention protecting her—would be severely challenging; Eve was a madwoman when she was determined about something, and she was never more determined about anything than about Michael.

They were going to need help. Without Hannah on their side, and with the vampires out of reach, Claire tried to imagine who might be willing and able to jump . . . and failed, at least until she felt a small shiver of air press by her and was reminded of something.

“Shane,” she said, “have you seen Miranda since we got back?”

The Glass House was complicated. It wasn’t just a house, and hadn’t been for a long time. It had a certain power to it, a certain sentience that Claire couldn’t explain, except that it must have come from what Myrnin did to the town to make it safe for the vampires. The thirteen original Founder Houses had all been linked—a kind of active transportation and defensive network that Claire couldn’t define, still, as anything but magical. Few of those remained now, but the Glass House was the first, and still the strongest. It had the capability of doing crazy stuff, but the most striking was that it could choose to save people who died within its walls. Michael, at first. Then Claire, briefly. And most recently, teen psychic Miranda, who had sacrificed herself so that Claire could live.

But Miranda, already psychic before her death, had powers that the rest of them didn’t have; her abilities allowed her to go outside of the walls of the house, and sustain herself in real human form out there, too. But she still lived here—was trapped here, in a very real sense, because she couldn’t stay away indefinitely.

Shane was shaking his head. “No. Haven’t seen the kid, which is weird. Should have thought about her earlier, but she just kind of keeps to herself.”

“I think she might be useful,” Claire said. “And besides, she’s probably lonely, don’t you think?”

“Lonely isn’t the worst problem someone in Morganville can have. But check the third floor. She made that her space up there after you left.”

The third floor didn’t exist. Shane was referring to a secret room in the attic—one with a hidden door off the main second-floor hall. A room Claire hadn’t been in for some time . . . but it made sense that Miranda would find it cozy. After all, she could, when she wanted, ghost in and out without making any sound at all—and it was a cool, if creepy, place. Just the thing for a teen who was more than a little creepy herself at the best of times.

“Be right back,” she said, and went to the area of the wall outside his room where the secret door was concealed. She knew how to open it, and after a couple of false starts, she got the paneling to move. It creaked, of course. That was almost certainly required. “Miranda? Mir, are you there?”

A light shone at the top of the steep, narrow steps leading up. As the door swung shut behind her, Claire ascended, and as she got to the top she came out into a room she hardly recognized. The Victorian furniture was still in place, and all the stained-glass heavy lamps, but the walls had been covered over with posters—movies, bands, games (and most of it Claire wouldn’t be ashamed to have on her own walls). The old rugs had been rolled up and put away, and the floor was a shining, polished brown now. There was a brand-new table on the far side of the room, with a flat-screen TV hooked up to a game console. And an antique chest that Claire thought must have been dragged out of storage in the attic; it was open, and clothes spilled out of it, mostly dark in color and old in style.

Miranda was on the couch, hands folded on her stomach as she stared up at the ceiling. She was a small, thin girl, dressed in black that echoed Eve’s clothing choices. And to be honest, she looked more dead than alive.

Claire frowned and stopped where she was. “Miranda? Are you okay?”

“Go away,” Miranda said.

That wasn’t normal. “You’re not okay.”

Miranda cracked one eye to stare at her. “I’m bored. Do you know what’s going on?”

“Um . . . I’m not sure. There are a lot of things that could fit that definition.”

“Here! In Morganville!” Miranda sat up and swung her legs down to glare full force. “They rounded up the vampires and put them in a prison. Did you know? Where have you been? Everybody took off and left me and I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t even know if I was supposed to do anything at all!”

“I’m sorry,” Claire said. She sat down next to Miranda and put her arm around the girl; Mir felt solid, warm, alive, and well. She wasn’t, of course, but she could seem eerily real within the Glass House. “I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to abandon you. It’s just—things happened.”

“They happened here, too. It’s like people just—went crazy, you know? First the vampires just . . . I don’t know, it was like they just surrendered, and then Morganville changed. It wasn’t safe out there anymore for me. These people, these Daylight people, they—they scare me.” Miranda shivered harder, and Claire rubbed her arm in a futile attempt to make her feel better. “I’m scared to leave the house. It all feels so wrong out there. It’s so quiet.”

“Well, we’re back,” Claire said. “And trust me, it’s not going to be quiet much longer. Have you been up here the whole time?”

“Mostly,” Miranda said. “The Daylighters tried to come inside while you were gone. I kept them out, and then Father Joe from the church came to warn me. He told me to stay off the streets. They were hunting down anything that wasn’t strictly, completely human—that’s where the vampires went. I can vanish, but he was worried they might still be able to get to me.” She shook her head. “Claire, when they were in the house—I heard one of them say that if they wanted to really cleanse the town, they needed to destroy all the Founder Houses. There was an argument, but it sounded like he was winning when they left. Do you think they’d do that? Try to destroy us?”

If the Daylighters really wanted to get rid of all of the non-human, supernatural elements of Morganville, then they were going to have to go after the Founder Houses. Claire was a little surprised she hadn’t already thought about it. The house could defend against most intruders, but it couldn’t defend itself against fire, or wrecking crews. And that made her feel frantic, deep down inside. No, you won’t, she thought fiercely. You won’t destroy our home.

“When did Father Joe come to see you?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell.” Miranda, it was true, didn’t pay much attention to days and nights, and certainly not if she’d been hiding out here in Amelie’s safe room with no windows or clocks. “A few days, maybe?”

“When did they come into the house to search it?” Claire asked. “Please, think!”

“Yesterday,” Miranda said. “Yesterday early. I felt the sun coming up.” As ghosts did. Their lives were tied to sunrises and sunsets.

“Why didn’t you come down and tell us?”

Miranda looked away, and her voice got very small. “Because you left me,” she said. “You all left me here. Alone.”

It was hard to remember sometimes how young she was, until she said something like that. “You were sulking.”

“No, I wasn’t!”

“Mir.”

Her shoulders rose and fell, just a little. “Maybe.”

“Miranda, if the Daylighters decide to tear the house down . . .”

“I go with it,” Miranda said, and met Claire’s eyes again. “You think I don’t know that? But the vampires aren’t here to help you do anything now. How are you going to stop them?”

“I don’t know yet, but we will,” Claire said. She heard the strength in her voice, and it surprised her. “We will, and that means you, too. No more sulking. We’re going to need your help.”

Miranda nodded. “Just tell me what I can do.”

“We’re having a house meeting downstairs, right now. And I guess we have to tell Eve her suicide mission’s off, if she wants to have a house to come back to later.”

“She’s not going to be happy,” Miranda observed.

Man, was she right about that.