Daylighters

FOUR

Eve was, to put it mildly, pissed off, to the point that Claire thought for a second she was going to slug someone—probably Claire herself—and charge out the door. But she was also a Glass House resident, and she knew what Miranda was saying. She knew the danger.

“You’re not just making this up to keep me here?” she demanded, still standing at the back door with her backpack on her shoulder. Miranda shifted and looked scared, but Claire put a hand on her shoulder to keep her steady. “Oh, relax, kid, I’m not going to bite. She’s really serious? They might try to tear down our house?” That last was directed at Claire, and at Shane, standing on the other side of the room. Shane, arms folded, just shrugged.

“Can we afford to think she isn’t?” he asked. “Look, Claire was all ready to go. Crossbow packed and everything. But you know this is more important. This house—” He fell silent for a second, looking down at his feet. “This house is our home. And we have a responsibility to keep it safe, for Michael. If they’re coming back here, then we have to make sure they get a fight when they do. You know that’s true, Eve. We fight for each other, and we fight for this house. Against vampires, humans, anybody and everybody. That’s how it’s always been.”

Eve let out a long, slow breath, closed her eyes, and nodded. Her shoulders sagged, and she let the backpack slip off to clunk heavily on the floor. “Michael would never forgive me if I dragged you all off to rescue him and we came back to a smoking hole in the ground,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“You wouldn’t be Eve if you did,” Shane assured her. “C’mon, a little perimeter defense planning will cheer you right up, I promise. I’ll even let you hold the flamethrower.”

Claire turned to Miranda and said, “Do you think you’re strong enough now to go out again?”

Miranda nodded eagerly—so eagerly she was almost bouncing in place. “What do you want me to do?”

“I need you to do a little spy work for us,” Claire said. “Since you’re so good at being invisible. The Daylight Foundation seems to be behind all of this urban renewal we’ve got, so they’d be the ones to make a plan for demolition, too, wouldn’t they?”

“I guess.”

“Go to their headquarters and see if there’s something you can find that tells us when they plan to tear down the house.”

That made Miranda take a step back. “I can’t.”

“You just said—”

“I can’t!” Miranda shouted over her, and then her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “I’ve tried, okay? I can’t get close to it. It hurts, and I start—I start unraveling. It’s like—it’s like there’s no air in there. I can’t go in.”

She was shaking, just thinking about it, and Claire put her arm around the girl. Her skin felt cold under Claire’s palm, and she grabbed the afghan from the back of the couch to drape over Miranda’s shoulders. I’m trying to warm up a ghost. It did seem silly once she thought about it, but still, the kid was cold, and distressed.

“So, obviously, Miranda’s not going to be able to do our sleuthing for us,” Eve said. “Um, question. Aren’t we overreacting? Didn’t they just finish repainting our house? Why would they decide to tear it down after all that work?”

Miranda raised her hand slowly. “I know that one,” she said. “The people who were here, the ones who did all the painting and stuff . . . they were from the city council. The new mayor lady was with them. It was the Daylighters who got upset because I threw them out of the house when they tried to get inside. And it’s the Daylighters who want to tear the house down. Not the mayor. I think she likes the house.”

“So—we see the mayor,” Eve said. “Get her to stop Fallon.”

“Do you really think she can?” Shane asked. “I like Ramos, but this is Fallon we’re talking about. He wrangled the frickin’ vampires. The Daylighters were killing people in Boston; they won’t mess around here, either. If the mayor goes up against the Daylighters, she won’t live through her term.”

That was depressingly true, Claire thought. “We need to find out if they have real plans to tear down our house,” she said. “For Miranda’s sake, if nothing else—she can’t run. She can’t survive if the Glass House goes away.” That was a nightmare they all felt in their bones. They’d seen it happen to Michael when the house had caught on fire. He would have burned with it.

“I can go to City Hall,” Miranda offered. “Jenna could take me there. I could see if they’ve got anything on file. Maybe there’s a permit? They seem to like permits and things. They even had one to fix up the outside of the house.” By Jenna, she meant Jenna Clark—a newcomer to Morganville, once host of the reality show After Death. A genuine psychic, one who’d stirred the lingering ghosts of Morganville into solid activity with her arrival . . . and had ended up showing Miranda how to survive outside of the Glass House’s restrictions.

“Jenna didn’t leave town?” Claire felt oddly surprised by that; she’d thought that Jenna would have moved on after realizing the danger that Morganville constantly represented. She didn’t have to stay. “Why would she do that?”

“She kind of started dating this guy,” Miranda said. “Rad, the mechanic. And I think she liked it here. She bought a house and everything.”

“Then could you please go to Jenna and see if she’ll take you to City Hall? But be careful. Don’t get caught, whatever you do.” Miranda, after all, could turn invisible . . . but Jenna couldn’t. The plan had the added safety of Jenna driving, so there would be a quick escape handy in case something went wrong. And from Claire’s experience with Morganville, things did go wrong. Frequently.

Miranda nodded. She’d gone, in those few moments, from a scared girl to a bravely confident young woman. It made Claire sad that she would never see Miranda truly grow up, that the girl was stuck at the age she was now, unable to move either forward into death or backward into human form. But at least she was conscious and—at least mostly—alive, even if her life came with strings and restrictions. And for the first time in her life, Miranda seemed . . . happy. Stressed, at the moment, but happy to be wanted, worthwhile, and part of the Glass House gang.

Putting her at risk should have been a harder decision, and Claire felt guilty about it, but she also knew it had to be done. Claire had been in danger regularly, from the first day she set foot inside these walls; it was part of what it meant to live here. Part of being with people who cared enough to take risks.

“Can you get to Jenna’s on your own?” Claire asked.

“I think so.”

“Okay, then go. We’re going to start making sure the house is safe while you’re gone.”

“Good,” Miranda said, “because I love the house. I love you guys, too.” She looked directly at Claire when she said it, and Claire hugged her, hard. The girl felt cool and bony, but very real.

“Be safe,” she said. “Come back soon. I’ll call Jenna to let her know you’re on your way.”

Eve hugged the girl, too. Shane didn’t, but Miranda was shy around him, and always had been. She just nodded, and he nodded back in that laconic tough-guy way, and then she was just . . . gone. Dissolved into the air.

Unsettling, no matter how many times they’d seen it happen.

Claire picked up the house phone—it still worked, even though she didn’t imagine any of them had bothered with bills for a while now—and dialed Jenna’s cell, which they’d scrawled on the wall next to the phone in grease marker. It was a messy version of a contact list, but it worked in a pinch. She filled the other woman in when she picked up, and Jenna seemed happy to help out.

She hung up the phone and turned to the other two. “Well?” she asked. “What now?”

“Land mines in the flower beds?” Shane asked. “Also, we could replace that picket fence with razor wire. Maybe electrified.”

“Be serious.”

“Why do you think I’m not?”

Claire rolled her eyes and looked at Eve. “How about you?”

“What’s the easiest way to bring down a house like this?” Eve asked. It was a surprisingly practical question—and a chilling one when Claire thought more about it.

“Fire,” she said. It had been tried before. The Glass House was old wood, and however alive it had become, however self-aware, it couldn’t control how flammable it was. Not for long, anyway. The old wooden structure, the bones of it, was its weakest link. “If they don’t want to have a whole construction crew out here to demo the place, they’ll just set it on fire. Arson.”

Eve nodded. “We can spray fire retardant on the house. Don’t know where we’d get it, though.”

“Rad has some,” Shane said, in a much more serious tone than before. When they looked at him, he shrugged. “Dude likes to set himself on fire. He’s training to be a stuntman since he gave up his mixed martial arts dreams.”

“I knew that guy was insane,” Eve said. “Okay, then, we hijack Rad’s stash. What else do we need?”

“Fire extinguishers,” Claire said. “That should help with the whole arson risk. I’m not sure how we defend against a bulldozer, though, if they decide to knock the whole house down.” She held up a finger as Shane opened his mouth. “Do not say flamethrowers, or anything to do with dynamite.” He closed it without speaking.

“We need to know what exactly they’re planning to do,” Eve said, and took in a deep breath. “I’ll go to the Daylight Foundation.”

“How do you plan on finding anything out there? With the power of your awesomeness?” Shane asked. “I’m not making light of your awesomeness. But it lacks the stopping power of, say, a .357.”

“Not all of us need weapons,” Eve said. “Some of us have charm.”

It was the way she said it that made Claire’s skin go tight and prickly, and she leveled a stare at her best friend. “No,” she said. “You’re not even.”

“Not even what?”

“Going to run off with some crazy plan to—what? Make Fallon tell you what he’s going to do with the Glass House?”

“Why not? He thinks I’m a hysterical little girl. He treats me like I’m a china doll,” Eve said. She’d taken one of the sharpened chopsticks out of her hair and was restlessly scraping the wood of the table with it. Half of her sloppy hairdo came down. “You think I can’t charm it out of him, and make him let Michael go at the same time?”

“I think you’ll get yourself killed,” Shane said quietly. “Or worse.”

“What’s worse?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “But these guys are the worst kind of bastards—the smooth kind. The ones who seem like they’re nice and polite and kind and doing it all for the right reasons. The ones who make you feel like the villain for not going along with it. And I don’t know what Fallon’s really capable of doing. Do you?”

He was right, and it was sobering. Eve frowned, but she didn’t argue. She just yanked the other chopstick out, twisted her hair back into shape, and stabbed the sticks through it again to hold it up. Mostly. The frown stayed, and from the flinty look in her eyes, the subject was closed. She wouldn’t debate it, but she also wasn’t going to change her mind.

Claire sighed. “Much as I love listening to you two snipe at each other all day, we have actual problems to solve. I’m going to get fire extinguishers, and when I get back, Shane, you can go get the fire retardant stuff from Rad. Eve—” She hesitated, then shook her head. “Whatever you plan to do, I know we can’t stop you. But be careful. We’re one 911 text away, and don’t you hesitate to yell for help if it starts looking the least bit weird.”

“I know,” Eve said. She lifted the backpack to her shoulder. “I will.”

Shane couldn’t resist the dig. “I thought you said not all of us needed weapons.”

“I don’t need them,” Eve said. “But I’m not crazy, either. Banzai, bitches.”

She slammed the door behind her, and Claire sucked in a deep breath as she locked eyes with Shane.

“Guess there’s no chance of going back to bed,” he said. “Because being in bed this morning? That was really nice.” It sounded plaintive. She absolutely agreed with that.

She went to him and kissed him—and it felt sweet and warm-verging-on-hot, and even a little desperate. “Later,” she promised him. “I’ll go get the fire extinguishers. It shouldn’t take too long, so please try not to get into any trouble until I get back.”

“There are times when I wish you were slightly less practical, do you know that?”

“God,” she sighed. “Me, too.”

Splitting off from Shane and Eve felt weird. Eve had taken the hearse, which left Claire suddenly worried about how she was going to haul a buttload of fire extinguishers back from Morganville’s local knockoff version of a Home Depot. But then Shane, at the last minute, dashed off and came back with a set of car keys and a note. “Here,” he said. “Go see Rad. He’s got my time-share car at his lot. Tell him I’ll be by later for the other stuff, so he can get it all together.”

“You’re sure he’ll actually give me your car?”

“Don’t let him bullshit you into thinking I owe him money. I don’t. The agreement is I get the car when I want it, and he drives it when I don’t. It’s how I worked off all the extra stuff he put into it. But be careful. It’s a whole lot of car, little lady.”

“Funny,” she said, in a tone that indicated it was not, and kissed him quickly on her way out the door.

She jogged part of the way, just to enjoy the exercise, and the strange fact that people were out on their lawns, waving hello, smiling and cheerful. Morganville had always been exciting, but she couldn’t say it had always been friendly, and this made an unexpectedly nice change. When she stopped, out of breath, she ended up talking to the postal worker delivering mail, and a couple of passing strangers.

Just like a normal town. Which was so not normal.

I’m going to ruin it, she thought, and that horrible feeling swept through her again, that awful knowledge that even if what she was doing felt right, it might be very wrong. But she couldn’t just . . . do nothing.

Maybe there was no right side, but she knew one thing: letting the Daylighters win had to be the worse of two bad choices.

It didn’t take long to arrive at Rad’s motorcycle shop, which also doubled as a mechanic’s shop. The bikes he sold were generally tricked out and customized, though he had a few consumer base models for variety, and in the back he had a line of cars in various stages of disrepair, and a few that he kept under dust covers.

One of those, Claire knew, was Shane’s. His time-share, as he liked to call it. She recognized the shape under the canvas cover.

Rad was sitting behind his battered desk in the office, feet up, sunglasses on. He was a massive guy, tattooed and bare-armed to show them off, and with the glasses blocking out his eyes he looked the exact opposite of all the friendly faces she’d seen coming here. Old Morganville in the flesh. He gave her a nod, put his boots on the floor, and said, “Hey, Claire. Long time no see around here.”

“Not that long.”

“Seems that way.” He shrugged. “Lot’s changed since you left town, and that’s a fact.”

“Not around your lot so much.”

“I see what you did there, with the wordplay,” he said and crossed his arms. “I never liked the damn vampires, and I’m glad to see ’em gone. I never made any secret of that. The new administration seems like it’s got it going on.” He was, she felt, trying to find out where she stood. She didn’t have the inclination to debate it, or the time.

“I just came to pick up Shane’s car,” she said. “He gave me the keys.”

“He still—”

“He also said to tell you he doesn’t owe you anything, so don’t try it.”

She handed over the note, and he read it; his teeth showed briefly, and they were surprisingly straight and clean. “Yeah, okay, can’t blame a guy for trying to make a buck. Got about a half a tank left, so it’s good to go. I’ll take the cover off for you.”

“Shane’ll be by later,” she said. “He, ah, needs to borrow fire retardant from you. Well, not borrow so much as maybe use it all up. But we’ll pay you back.”

“Oh, that sounds just great. Can’t wait to have that conversation. You know, every time I have anything to do with you guys, I end up in a fight somewhere down the line, and I’m really trying to cut down. Anger management and all that crap. Hey, I got a girlfriend now and she doesn’t like it when I get into trouble.”

“Does she like it when you set yourself on fire?”

He considered that. “Fair point. I guess I could give up the foam. What do you want it for?”

“I’d . . . rather not tell you. I promise, we’re not looking for a fight,” Claire said. “But people may be coming for us, and we have to fight back, don’t we?”

“Sure,” Rad agreed. “No crime in that. Some of my best fights were self-defense.” He flexed his muscles a little bit, but it wasn’t as if he was trying to show off, more like he was just remembering the good times. Claire supposed Rad would have a top ten list of his best fights. She’d actually be surprised if Shane didn’t, too, and if some of them didn’t match up with Rad’s list, only on opposite sides. “Okay, I’ll hold my grudges against Shane, not you. You’re too pretty, anyway. Let’s get you the car.”

He led her out to the back, which was a dry, cracked dirt lot with occasional struggling weeds poking up through the hard ground; the weeds looked as dry as the dirt they were breaking through. Most had burrs, so Claire was careful to avoid them as she helped Rad untie the canvas and fold it back in sharp, dust-raising snaps until it was a neat square that he tucked under his arm.

He stepped back to admire the car. “Love this damn beast,” he said. “Your boyfriend has damn good taste in wheels.”

It was a muscle car of some kind, all matte black, with murdered-out wheels and some shiny chrome here and there, just for emphasis. It did look powerful, and intimidating. Claire slid behind the wheel into the shiny leather seat and had to immediately rack it forward four notches so her feet could meet the pedals.

Pedals, not just plural, but triple. Gas, brake, and clutch. She’d had lessons in driving a stick shift, but that had been . . . a while ago. And she’d had her dad coaching her patiently through the process. Plus, that had been a nice, tame small car, not Shane’s Detroit-built monster.

She took a deep breath and went through the steps, just as she remembered them. She fumbled the shift from reverse to first, and winced at the grinding of gears; she saw Rad shake his head sadly from where he stood leaning against the wall. That stiffened her resolve, and she accelerated out fast, hitting second gear before she’d reached the end of the lot. She shifted hard enough to scratch rubber.

It felt good. So did seeing the surprised look on Rad’s face. She gave him a quick, jaunty little wave out the window, which was risky but worth it, and she was in third before she hit the end of the block, roaring through a green light and heading for Macom Hardware.

The parking lot was full, which was a very odd sight; she couldn’t remember ever seeing a business with that many customers in town, and yet there they were, whole families out in the daytime, pushing carts into the store, chatting on their cells, living a . . . normal life. She found a spot and shut off the low, growling engine, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to get out of the car just yet. She felt displaced, and sad. If she, Shane, and Eve succeeded in freeing the vampires, these same smiling, happy people would go back to being exactly what they were before—scared and anxious, afraid to leave their homes for anything but necessity, afraid to let their kids run and play. Afraid for a good reason.

How could she really want to bring that back?

But what other choice did she have?

It took her a good minute to get herself together, grab her wallet, and walk into the store. She got a shopping cart from the small remaining selection—of course it was the one with the wobbly left wheel—and headed for the back corner of the store, where she remembered seeing fire extinguishers. It wasn’t easy; Macom’s wasn’t built for heavy customer flow, and it was a little like playing one of those traffic games, where one block had to move for another to pass. Fifteen minutes and several apologies later, Claire finally spotted the red cylinders in the corner, and parked her cart as much out of the way as possible while she loaded them into it. There were six on display, and she took all of them. Next to them was a box of strange-looking oval things, but it had the words FIRE SUPPRESSION GRENADES on it, and that was something she thought Shane would love.

It wasn’t much of a line of defense, but it was pretty much all she could see, given the limited selection available, though on an impulse she grabbed boxes of preloaded rock salt rounds for their shotgun. Not that she wouldn’t shoot someone trying to burn their house down, but she’d rather not shoot them into the hospital, or the graveyard. These might be people she knew, people she cared about, and she couldn’t be their enemy.

Even if she was, at least for now, their villain.

Twenty minutes more to maneuver to the register and check out, and then another five to load everything in the car. Five more minutes of powering the Beast (that was what she decided to call Shane’s car) down the surprisingly busy streets toward the Glass House.

When she got there, Shane was sitting on the front porch in the sun-faded rocking chair that Eve had put out there, half as a joke because none of them were porch-sitting people—and he had a shotgun.

Two uniformed police officers were standing on the steps. The tall blond woman had her hand on her gun, but she hadn’t drawn it; her male partner, also tall, but skeletally thin, hadn’t bothered with his sidearm. He was leaning on the railing and trying to look casual.

In that, Claire supposed he was trying to match Shane, who had broken open the barrel of the shotgun, taken out the rounds, and was cleaning it. She smelled the gun oil as she parked the Beast in the driveway, and instead of unloading the car, she grabbed the box of rock salt shells and walked up the path. The female officer immediately pivoted to watch her with cool, analytical eyes and a blank expression, but she moved aside to let Claire come up the steps.

“Thanks for letting me borrow the car,” she said, and leaned over to kiss Shane on the cheek as if the cops weren’t there. “I brought you a present.”

“Varmint rounds. Cool. Plenty of varmints around these days.” He opened the box, took some out, and began slotting them into the breech of the shotgun. Then he flipped it shut and racked a round, while staring at the cops. Well. That escalated fast.

“I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t get the memo—are we having problems here?” Claire smiled as winningly as she could at the male policeman. His name was Charlie, she remembered—Charlie Kentworth. “Officer Kentworth, how are you? Is there something wrong?”

“We just wanted to come in for a minute, but Mr. Collins here didn’t seem too keen on the idea,” Charlie said. “I thought we could have a nice civilized chat, but seems like I interrupted his weekly shotgun cleaning.”

“Well, you know, a man’s got to have routines,” Shane said. “Cheer up, Charlie, at least it’s only rock salt. It’ll only damage your dignity. Might not even break the skin.” The smiles they exchanged were pure challenge, and Claire resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It definitely wasn’t the time.

“Sorry, why did you want to come in? Not that we don’t love visitors, Officer Kentworth. Just that I only got back in town yesterday, and I’m still getting settled in.” She switched gears and looked at the woman with him. “I don’t think we’ve met before.” She offered her hand, but the police officer didn’t move to take it.

“Officer Halling,” the woman said.

“That’s your first name?” Shane asked. “Officer?”

“It is as far as you’re concerned.” The woman hadn’t taken her hand off the butt of her gun, and as she shifted position, Claire’s eyes were drawn to the flash of gold on her collar: the Daylight Foundation pin. “We’ve had a report that you keep illegal weapons in your home. We’d like your permission to conduct a search of the premises.”

“I thought that they issued warrants for things like that,” Shane said, and ran the oiled cloth he held over the shotgun as if he didn’t have a care in the world—and as if he didn’t, in fact, have things inside the house that would get him arrested. “I mean, they did when the bloodsuckers ran things around here. I’d think we’d have a little more due process with humans in charge, right?”

“Are you saying you won’t let us inside?” Officer Halling said. Her eyes were a peculiarly cold shade of storm blue, and although there was nothing to show it in her body language Claire had a premonition that she was really, really angry. There was no way to guess why. Maybe she was just an angry person, generally.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Shane said. “Michael Glass owns this house, and since he’s been put in your fancy new enclave, I guess I have to do what I think he’d want, which is say no. Claire?”

She nodded. “Come back with a warrant,” she said. “That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

“No,” Halling said. “It’s not. We’ll be back soon.”

“Well, you know where to find us,” Shane said, with a wildly sweet smile, as he put the shotgun casually on his shoulder. “Laters.”

“Sorry about the trouble,” Kentworth said, and Claire got the sense he was embarrassed by his partner’s antagonistic edge. “You two . . . I know it sounds like a cliché, but please don’t leave town.”

“Why would we? We’re Morganville residents. We live here,” Claire said.

Halling made a noise in the back of her throat that wasn’t quite a growl, and led the way back to the police cruiser. Shane sat in the rocker, looking for all the world as if he might fall asleep, he was so relaxed—at least until the cruiser turned the far corner.

Then he came up out of the rocker like someone had set it on fire. “You got the extinguishers?” he asked, setting the shotgun aside.

“In the car. What was all that about?”

“I have no idea, but I’m getting the strong idea that we’re just not wanted around here anymore, Claire. And I don’t know why, because we’re just so charming.”

“Well, you are,” she said, and kissed him lightly. “Come on, help me get it all inside.”

He carried an armload of the extinguishers, while she snagged the last couple and the box. They dumped the lot in the front parlor, raising a faint cloud of dust from the old cushions of the couch, and Claire waved it away, coughing.

“What—” Shane’s attention was riveted on the box she’d put down, and before she could even begin to answer, he was ripping into it, looking as thrilled as if it were magically Christmas. “Do you know what these are? Do you?”

“Some kind of weird grenades,” she said. “Don’t get too excited. I don’t think they explode or anything.”

“These are excellent. You arm them and throw them into the fire. If it isn’t too big, it’ll explode into a powder that puts the fire right out.” He grabbed her and kissed her. “You brought me grenades. You are officially the best girlfriend ever.”

“I’m the most worried girlfriend ever,” she said. “Because this is getting a little too crazy. The cops? Really? And you decided to clean the shotgun to, what, intimidate them?”

“C’mon, this is rural Texas. Shotguns are as normal as garden gnomes. Besides, that gun oil really stinks up the house.”

“So do your shoes, but I don’t see you leaving them outside.”

“Did Eve text you that joke? Because it sounded like her.”

“She’s been tutoring me,” Claire said, and stood back from him a little, because being so close to him made it harder to be logical. He had that effect on her. “Do we need to put anything in the pantry room?” The pantry room was a hidden room just off the kitchen, behind shelves of ancient canned goods. It was basically just a dirt room, windowless, that had almost certainly been used for visiting vampires from time to time, or for even less savory things, but it was safe enough for storage.

“Now that you mention it, I have a bag full of stuff that might do well in there,” he agreed. “You know, my sparkly unicorn collection. They’d probably jail me on general principles for that.”

“I’m serious!”

“Me, too. I would never joke about sparkly unicorns.” He held up a hand to stop her from getting irritated. “Okay, yes, I will hide all the stuff that needs hiding. Give me fifteen minutes, and then I’ll head out to grab the stuff from Rad. Though, damn, grenades. Not sure we need much more than that. They might even make good offensive weapons.”

“But they only blow out powder, right?”

“If I throw it at somebody and yell ‘Grenade!’ I’m willing to bet they’d duck anyway. At the very least, it would be hilarious.”

“Until they shot you.”

“Well. Yeah. That might not be as funny.”

One more kiss, and Shane was off. It took him less than fifteen minutes to gather things into a giant duffel bag, which he dragged downstairs and into the kitchen. She heard him stashing it in the dirt pantry room, and went to double-check that he hadn’t left any telltale traces on the floor, but he’d swept up neatly, and if she hadn’t known about the secret room she’d never have guessed it was there.

Another minute and Shane was gone to get the fire retardant stuff from Rad. He sternly told her to lock up behind him—as if she ever forgot, in Morganville. The Beast roared off down the street, and a profound silence settled over the Glass House. It was rare that she was alone in the place; there was almost always someone else to talk to, or at least to be aware of in another room. But it seemed calm, quiet and peaceful.

“We’ll take care of you,” Claire said to the house, her face tilted up to the ceiling. She patted the wall. “Don’t worry. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

The air around her immediately warmed, as if she’d stepped into a patch of bright sunlight. It was the Glass House’s equivalent of a hug, and she smiled and picked up the first two fire extinguishers to carry them upstairs. She stationed one in Michael and Eve’s room and one in her own—opposite ends of the hall, and they could cover most anything from there. The rest were distributed downstairs, where she thought any kind of arson would probably start. Their enemies had once tried to burn the place down with well-placed Molotov cocktails, and now she made sure that no window was more than a few steps from a fire extinguisher.

Then she set the grenades out, scattering them around to be sure they were all within easy reach.

She was setting out the last few when she heard the crisp sound of a knock—loud, authoritative, nothing tentative about it. Definitely not Shane, and she wasn’t expecting any visitors.

Claire slipped one of the extinguisher grenades in her jacket pocket and went downstairs to check the peephole in the door.

Officer Kentworth was back. Officer Halling was with him, and so was a plainclothes man that Claire recognized as Detective Simonds. From everything she’d heard about him, he was a nice enough guy—and a good investigator. She wasn’t sure whether that last part was a good thing just now.

She opened the door and held on to it, blocking the entrance. “Officers?”

“Miss Danvers,” Detective Simonds said, and gave her a pleasant smile. “Mind if we come in?”

“No offense, sir, but I’d rather wait until my friends are back if you don’t mind.”

“No offense taken, but I’m sorry to say that was just a courtesy question.” He slipped a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “This is a warrant from a judge allowing us to search this house for illegal weapons.”

Well, it wasn’t unexpected, but it still felt bad. Claire swallowed hard, but she stepped back and opened the door wider for them. As the three cops walked in, she felt the temperature in the hallway start to chill down. So much for the warm hugs. The house was picking up on her uneasiness, and it had never liked uninvited guests.

“Kentworth, check upstairs,” Simonds said. “Halling, this floor and the basement. Miss Danvers, how about you make me a cup of coffee in the kitchen and we sit and talk a minute.”

“Sure,” she said. Her heart was pounding, and she hoped that she didn’t look as guilty as she felt. “Follow me.”

She led him through the living room and through the kitchen door, and wished she’d grabbed a hoodie to put on over what she was wearing because the house felt positively icy now. She could almost see her breath. Simonds, wearing a light jacket suitable for the hot sun of Morganville, was shivering. “Damn,” he said. “You sure like to keep it chilly in here. Your electric bills must be insane.”

“Not really,” she said. “I think the house is just really well insulated.” She turned on the coffeemaker and did all the little things necessary to make it go. They waited in silence while it wheezed and steamed and filled the carafe, and then she filled two mugs, put milk and sugar on the table, and dosed her own mug in silence.

Simonds sipped his black coffee, made a polite lie about how good it was, and added a splash of milk. He stirred for an inordinately long time, and he kept watching her. Not actively intimidating, like Halling, but very, very observant. “Let’s cut to the chase, Claire—may I call you Claire?” She nodded silently. “Morganville got a makeover while you were gone, no doubt about that. I know there are a lot of things different about it, and you’re probably not feeling too good about them right now. But I promise you, it’s all for the best. You believe me?”

“Not really,” she said, and took a careful sip from her own mug. “I don’t trust Mr. Fallon, and I don’t trust the Daylight Foundation, either.”

“Why not?” he asked. Interesting that he wasn’t wearing a pin, she thought, but he might have taken it off just to lull her into a false sense of security. “I honestly want to know, Claire. I’m not just shining you on.”

“Because I’ve seen what they’re capable of doing,” she said. “The problem with fighting monsters is that you can become a monster by convincing yourself anything goes. Evil for evil. I’ve seen it, sir. I’ve seen them murder people for their own beliefs. And I won’t be a part of that.”

He looked thoughtful, and grave, and they sat in silence for a moment before he shook his head. “I can’t speak to that,” he said. “But I can tell you that from the moment the Daylight Foundation arrived in Morganville, they had a plan, and they did nothing but help those in need. You say they’re willing to kill, but they didn’t even kill the vampires—in fact, Mr. Fallon went out of his way to ensure that they were treated well. Maybe you’ve seen bad things they’ve done, but I’ve seen things too—good things. I can walk down these streets in peace. That has to count for something.”

“It does,” she admitted. “But there are a few hundred vampires trapped in that mall on the edge of town, and they can’t stay there forever. What do you think the Daylighters intend to do with them long term?”

“Fallon says he’s going to make sure they’re safe, and I believe him,” Simonds said. “Look, I worked with some vampires, and they were good people—okay, blood drinkers, but they never hurt anybody. In fact, the ones I worked with sometimes put their lives on the line to save regular people. I know vampires aren’t just monsters; they can be good or bad, just like us. But fact is, they’re not natural, and a good percentage of them don’t have any kind of conscience. You can’t argue with that.”

She couldn’t. She knew a lot of the vamps were dangerous; some were outright awful and needed to be locked up forever. Some were self-interested to a sociopathic degree, and many of them wouldn’t see much wrong with killing someone who was in their way. Vampires didn’t become vampires by being squeamish . . . or selfless.

But that didn’t mean they deserved death. And she suspected—no, really, she knew—that ultimately that was the answer Fallon had. Death. Ridding the world of vampires forever—and everything supernatural, like the Founder Houses. Like Miranda.

“You want some more coffee?” Claire asked. He’d drained his cup quickly. Simonds nodded, his expression still and unreadable. He had a nice face, long and thin, with a smooth dark chocolate skin tone and warm brown eyes, and under other circumstances he might have been a friend.

But not now.

She filled his mug again, and realized that she’d been avoiding looking at the kitchen pantry. That was probably the kind of giveaway he was watching for, she thought, so she put the coffeepot back on the burner, walked to the pantry, opened it, and got out another bag of coffee beans. She put it up in the cabinet above the coffeemaker.

“How old is this house?” he asked her. She could hear rummaging upstairs now—Kentworth, going through her bedroom. Claire felt an angry flush in her cheeks, and sat down hard in her chair to clutch her coffee mug. She didn’t like the idea of someone pawing through her things, meager as they might be. And ridiculously, she hated the idea of him seeing the still-messy bed where she and Shane had spent the night. That felt really intrusive and creepy. “This is one of the Founder Houses, right?”

“One of the original thirteen,” she said. “I think only a few of them are still left now.”

“Beautiful place,” he said. “All original construction?”

She immediately felt as if a trap was looming, and covered her pause with a sip of coffee. “No idea,” she said with a smile. “I haven’t been here that long, you know.” She knew that people tended to underestimate her—she was small, and young, and could look very innocent when she wanted to . . . and Simonds didn’t know her very well.

But she could tell that he wasn’t buying it, and as he opened his mouth to ask her something else, probably something a lot more intrusive, he was interrupted by Halling’s sharp voice on the other side of the kitchen door. “Detective! Better come see this!”

He got to his feet fast, the friendly surface of him immediately gone; what was left was all serious business. He pointed at her. “Stay here,” he said, and shoved through the door to join Officer Halling. There was muffled conversation. Claire tried to listen, but she couldn’t quite make anything out . . . and then she heard his footsteps coming back and she retreated fast, to stand next to the kitchen table.

Simonds shoved the door open and gestured for her to join him. She didn’t like the grim look on his face—not at all.

Halling had found something in the basement. As Simonds led the way down the narrow steps into the chilly concrete room where they kept the washer and dryer and the dust-shrouded shelves of storage from generations back, Claire’s mind raced. What could they have forgotten? Shane and Eve were both known to stash things and forget them; what if Shane had overlooked a cache of weapons he’d meant to hide? That wouldn’t be good.

And then she spotted what Halling had found. It wasn’t weapons.

There was a dead body on the floor of their basement.

It was one of the mall cops that had let them in to see Michael. There was a knife sticking out of his chest, a silver-coated one—and it looked familiar. They had lots of those around the house; Shane silver-plated everything for use as anti-vamp weapons.

Claire stopped on the steps and grabbed for the handrail; she felt light-headed, and suddenly needed to sit down and just breathe. It seemed impossible. It was impossible. How in the hell had this man gotten here, gotten in, been killed? She hadn’t done it, and she knew Shane and Eve hadn’t. Couldn’t have.

“He wasn’t killed here. There’s not enough blood,” Halling said, crouching down next to the corpse. The man’s eyes were open and covered with a gray film, and he looked unreal, like a department store dummy. “He’d been dead a few hours, at most.”

“Find out how long he’s been missing,” Simonds said. “And make sure the other guards on the vampires at the mall are still safe. Go!”

Halling headed for the stairs, and Claire scrambled out of the way as the officer’s long legs pushed past. She felt sick and weightless, as if she were falling into an endless black hole. What the hell was going on?

She took out her phone as Simonds moved to inspect the body, and quietly texted Shane not to come home. He sent back a question mark. She replied with an exclamation point, and then quickly put the phone away before Simonds caught sight of it.

“Do you know this man?” he asked her. She shook her head.

“I’ve seen him,” she said. “I saw him at the mall, where they were keeping the vampires. But I don’t know him.”

“Any explanation for why he’d be dead in your basement, Miss Danvers?”

She could only shake her head again. She didn’t have any idea what else to say. Simonds sighed, stood up, and took out his cell phone to make a call. He requested additional units, and a forensic kit—Morganville wasn’t big enough to have an actual forensic team—and then looked up at her. He seemed sorry, she thought. But not very.

“Stand up,” he told her. “Come down to the floor.”

She did stand up, but in that moment she realized that if she let him arrest her, she’d have no chance at all to clear herself. Fallon might well have arranged this—a plot to put them all behind bars and get them out of his way.

She couldn’t take that chance.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She reached in her pocket and brought out the round shape in her pocket. She yanked the pull ring and tossed the thing down the stairs toward where he stood. “Grenade!”

Shane was right. Nobody waited to see what happened when they heard that word.

She dashed up the steps, and hit the door at the top just as there was a muffled whump below. She looked down to see a cloud of thick white powder spreading over everything, as if she’d thrown a giant bag of flour. Simonds, who’d taken cover at the far end of the basement in a crouch behind an old freezer, coughed and fanned the air as the stuff settled on him.

He was okay.

“Danvers!” he yelled, and drew his pistol from under his coat as he swiped at his face to clear his eyes. “Stop where you are!”

She was committed now, and she ran.

The house slammed and locked the basement door for her; she headed toward the front door, but heard footsteps ahead—one of the other cops. It didn’t really matter which anymore; either one would probably shoot her as a fleeing suspect.

She crashed through the kitchen door, heading straight for the back entrance; it flew open ahead of her, and she felt a giant shove at her back as if the house itself was pushing her out.

She felt the bullet pass by her before she actually heard the shot. It was a tiny shock wave beside her waist, close enough that it left her feeling scorched.

The door slammed behind her and locked tight before the officer—whichever one it was—could draw a bead for a second shot.

She tumbled down the steps and rolled to her feet, then ran for the back fence. She knew it was wobbly at the corner, and she shoved it out, then squeezed through into the narrow, dirty alley. A lady watering plants in another yard gaped at her, and asked her something in a sharp, urgent voice, but Claire didn’t pause.

She just ran.

She made it as far as the end of the alley before a police cruiser blocked her off with a burst of flashing lights and a sharp blare of siren. Claire skidded to a halt, backpedaled, and turned to flee the other way, but it was cut off, too.

A dusty Detective Simonds was squeezing through the hole in the fence, and he had his gun aimed right at her. “Stop,” he said. “Claire, don’t make this ugly. You’ve got nowhere to go.”

He was right. It could only go wrong now.

She put her hands up.

“Walk to the fence. Lean against it, hands above your head.”

She thought she was going to be sick, but she did it, and he at least warned her before he put his hands on her and began patting her down for any weapons. She answered his questions about concealed weapons and sharp objects without really noting what she said; her mind was racing in a blinding blur, and she thought she was probably just a couple of breaths away from passing out. He read her some rights, and she numbly agreed that she understood.

Then he took her wrists down from the prickly wooden fence and clicked on handcuffs, and she caught her breath on a sob.

But I didn’t do anything.

Shane would have warned her that for people who lived in the Glass House, that hardly ever mattered.