Authors: Rachel Caine
“Oh, so it’s about access. In other words, if he lived two doors down and was walking around in his Joe Boxers…”
She elbowed him again, because this was not turning out to be an easy win of a conversation. He grunted a little, as if she’d hurt him (which she hadn’t, at all), and he put his arm around her shoulders. “Okay, I surrender,” he said. “No more cougar baiting. I won’t even go outside without a shirt on when I mow the lawn. But you have to make the same promise.”
“Not to go outside without a shirt? Sure.”
“No,” he said, and suddenly he was completely serious. “No flirting with older guys. Especially the really old ones.”
He meant Myrnin, her vampire boss, friend, mentor, and sometimes the bane of her existence. Crazy, wildly sentimental Myrnin, who seemed to like her more than was good for either of them.
And she sometimes hadn’t done a very good job of handling that, she had to admit.
“I promise,” she said. “No flirting.”
He sent her a sidelong look that was a little doubtful, but he nodded. “Thanks.”
Other than Mrs. Morgan’s bright orange bikini, it was an uneventful walk. Morganville wasn’t a huge place, and from Lot Street to the mayor’s office was about ten minutes at a stroll—in the current late-spring temperatures, just about enough time to really start to feel the burn of the sun beating down. Claire was a little grateful when Shane opened the door and she stepped into the cooler, darker space of the Morganville City Hall lobby. It had been rebuilt, mostly, but one thing about the vampires: they demanded high standards on their civic buildings. The place looked great, with new marble floors and columns and fancy-looking light fixtures overhead. Old-world elegance in the middle of Nowhere, Texas.
A round wooden information desk was situated in the center of the lobby, staffed by a good-looking lady probably only a few years out of college. The nameplate in front of her said she was Annabelle Lange. Looking up as Claire and Shane stopped in front of her, she gave them a warm, welcoming smile. She had chestnut brown hair worn long and glossy, and big blue eyes…entirely too pretty, and all her attention focused on Shane immediately.
This was worse than Mrs. Morgan by a whole lot. Annabelle wasn’t old. And she didn’t have to wear a Day-Glo bikini to get attention.
“We’re here to see the mayor,” Claire said before Annabelle could speak or ask Shane for his phone number. “Claire Danvers and—”
“Shane Collins,” Annabelle interrupted her, still smiling. “Yes, I know. Just a moment; I’ll see if Mayor Moses is available.”
She turned away and got on a telephone. While she was busy, Claire sent Shane a look—a significant one. He raised his eyebrows, clearly amused. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Totally not my fault.”
“Stop being so…”
“Charming? Attractive? Irresistible?”
“I’m going with arrogant.”
“Ow.” Before he could defend himself, the receptionist was back, all smiles and dimples.
“Mayor Moses is in a meeting, but she says she can work you in immediately after. If you’d like to go upstairs and wait in her office…”
“Thanks,” Shane said. And the girl actually did that lip-biting shorthand for
I’m available
and gave him the under-the-lashes look. Textbook. Claire couldn’t help but roll her eyes, not that she actually existed on Annabelle Lange’s planet at all.
Shane noticed, though. Definitely. He hustled Claire on, fast, to the elevators. “C’mon, that wasn’t worth all that effort at a reaction. She’s just…friendly.”
“If she were any friendlier, she’d be giving you a lap dance right now.”
“Wow. Who turned you into the Green-Eyed Monster? And don’t tell me you got bitten by a radioactive spider. There’s no superhero of jealousy.” When she didn’t reply before they reached the elevators, he punched the button, then turned toward her. It wasn’t just a casual kind of look; it was a level stare, very direct, and it caught Claire a little off guard. “Seriously. Are you really thinking I’m into Mrs. Morgan? Or what’s-her-name back there?”
“Annabelle,” Claire said, and wished she hadn’t remembered the girl’s name quite that fast. “No. But—”
“But what?” It wasn’t like Shane to be so serious. “You know I was just kidding about Mrs. Morgan, right? I wouldn’t go there. Or anywhere. I mean, I look at girls, because c’mon, that’s biology. But I love you.” He said it so matter-of-factly that it sent a shiver through her, deep down to her toes. When Shane was serious,
when he got that steady, calm look in his eyes, it made her hot and cold all over. She felt as if she were floating someplace very high, where the air was terribly thin but intoxicating.
“I know,” she whispered, and stepped closer to him. “That’s why I’m jealous.”
“You know that doesn’t make sense, right?”
“It does. Because now I have so much more to lose, and more every time you kiss me. I think about losing you, and it hurts.”
He smiled. It occurred to her that Shane didn’t smile much with other people, only with her, and certainly not
that
way. It was so…hot, having that all to herself. “You’re not losing me,” he said. “I straight-out promise that.”
Whatever else he was going to say—she would have managed to think about it in the ringing, happy silence of the afterglow—was interrupted by the soft bell of the elevator. Shane offered his arm, and she took it, feeling stupid and a little bit giggly, and let him escort her into the elevator.
As soon as the doors slid shut, Shane pushed the button for the third floor (it had a boldly lettered
MAYOR’S OFFICE
sign on it) and then backed her up against the wall, bent his head, and kissed her for real. A lot. Deeply. His lips felt soft and damp and sweet and more than a little too hot for being in public, and she made a protesting little sound that was half a warning that the door was going to open
any second
. The other half of her was begging him to completely disregard the warning and just keep going…but then he pulled back, took in a deep breath, and stepped away as the doors opened.
He was still smiling, and she couldn’t stop staring at him. In profile, those lips were just…yeah. Delicious.
“Claire,” he said, and gave her an after-you gesture.
“Oh,” she said brilliantly, and pulled her head together with an effort. “Right. Thanks.”
The warm spell of the elevator was broken, because as she and Shane stepped out into the hallway, a door slammed hard down the hall, and a tall girl in a short skirt and designer heels came striding around the corner. The season’s color was hot pink, and she was practically glowing in the dark with it…the skirt, the shoes, the nail polish, the lipstick.
The lips took a particularly bitter curl when Monica Morrell spotted the two of them. Her steps slowed for a second, and then she tossed her glossy hair over her shoulders and kept coming. “Somebody call security—vagrants are getting in again,” she said. “Oh, never mind. It’s just
you
. Here visiting your parole officer, Shane?”
It sounded classically Monica, Mean Girl, Deluxe Edition, but there was something different about her, Claire thought. Monica’s heart didn’t seem quite in it anymore. She looked a little pale under her must-have spray tan, and despite the up-to-the-minute makeup and clothes, she seemed a little lost. The world had finally and decisively knocked the props out from under Monica Morrell, and Claire wished she could have more satisfaction in that. She still felt the pulse of dull anger and resentment, sure; that was pretty much hardwired inside, after the years of abuse Monica had heaped on her since she’d arrived.
But, knowing what she knew, there was not nearly enough delicious revenge to be had in seeing Monica off-balance.
“Monica,” Shane said. Nothing else. He watched her the way you’d watch a potentially hostile pit bull, ready for anything, but he wasn’t reacting to her jibe. Monica didn’t return the greeting.
“Nice dress,” Claire said. She meant that. The hot pink looked particularly good on Monica, and she’d obviously taken a lot of time with the whole look.
Monica punched the elevator button, since the doors had already
shut, and said, “That’s it?
Nice dress?
You’re not even going to ask me if I mugged a dead hooker for it or something? Lame, Danvers. You need to step up your efforts if you want to make an impression.”
“How are you?” Claire asked. Shane made a sound of protest in the back of his throat, a low warning she disregarded; maybe this was useless, trying to be empathetic with Monica, but it wasn’t really in Claire’s nature not to try.
“How am I?” Monica sounded puzzled, and for a moment, she looked directly at Claire. Her eyes were expertly made up, but under the covering layers they looked tired and a little puffy. “My brother’s dead, and you jackasses just stood there and let it happen. That’s how I am.”
“Monica—” Shane’s voice was gentler than Claire expected. “You know that’s not what happened.”
“Do I?” Monica smiled slightly, her eyes never leaving Claire’s. “I know what people
tell
me happened.”
“You were talking to Hannah,” Claire guessed. “Didn’t she tell you…”
“None of your business what we talked about,” Monica interrupted. The elevator dinged for her, and she stepped inside as it opened. “I don’t believe
any
of you. Why should I? You’ve all hated me since forever. As far as I’m concerned, you all thought this was payback. Guess what? Payback’s a bitch. And so am I.”
Monica looked…alone, Claire thought, as the doors slid closed on her. Alone and a little scared. She’d always been insulated from the real world—first by her father, the former mayor of Morganville, and by her faithful mean-girl companions. Her brother, Richard, hadn’t coddled her, but he’d protected her, too, when he thought it was necessary. Now that Richard was gone, killed by the savage draug, she had…well, nothing. Her power
was pretty much gone, and with it, her friends. She was just another pretty girl now, and one thing Monica wasn’t used to being…was ordinary.
“I thought she’d be less…”
“Bitchy?” Shane supplied. “Yeah, good luck. She’s not the reforming type.”
Claire elbowed him. “Like you? Because as I remember it, you were all bad-boy slacker bad attitude when I met you. So you’ve what, forgiven her? That’s not like you, Shane.”
Shane shrugged, a slow roll of his shoulders seeming to be more about getting rid of tension than expressing an emotion. “Could have been wrong about some things she did before,” he said. “Doesn’t mean she isn’t a waste of general air space, though.”
Well, he was right about that, and since Monica was gone, there was no point in spending time discussing her, anyway. They had an appointment, and when they rounded the corner toward the mayor’s office, they found the door open, with the receptionist at her desk.
“Yes?” The receptionist here, unlike the one downstairs, was all business…matronly, chilly, with X-ray blue eyes that scanned the two of them up and down and rendered a verdict of
not very important.
“Can I help you?”
“We’re here to see Mayor Moses,” Claire said. “Uh—Claire Danvers and Shane Collins. We called up.”
“Have a seat.” The receptionist went back to her computer screen, completely uninterested in them even before they moved to the waiting area. It was comfortable enough, but the magazines were ages old, and within a few seconds Claire found herself itching to do something, so she pulled out her phone and began scrolling through texts and e-mails. There weren’t very many, but then her circle of tech-savvy friends wasn’t very large. Most of the vampire
residents of Morganville hadn’t mastered the knack and didn’t want to ever try. Most of the humans were too wary of network monitoring to commit much to pixels.
However, Eve had linked her to a funny cat video, which was a nice break from the usual vampire-related mayhem. Claire watched it twice while Shane flipped through a decade-old
Sports Illustrated
before the receptionist finally said, “The mayor will—” She was probably going to frostily pronounce that the mayor would see them now, but she was interrupted by the door opening to the mayor’s inner office, and Hannah Moses herself stepping out.
“Claire, Shane, come in,” she said, and cut a glance at her assistant. “We’re not that formal here.”
The receptionist’s mouth tightened into a lemon-sucking pucker, and she stabbed at the keys on her computer as if she intended to sink her fingerprints into them.
Mayor Moses—that sounded so strange, honestly—closed the door behind the two of them and said, “Sorry about Olive. She’s inherited from two previous administrations. So. What was so urgent?” She indicated the two chairs sitting across from her desk as she took her own seat and leaned forward, elbows on the smooth wood surface. There was something elegant and composed about her, and something intimidating, too…. Hannah was a tall woman, angular, with skin the color of very dark chocolate. She was attractive, and somehow the scar (a souvenir of Afghanistan and her military career) just worked to make her more interesting. She’d changed her hair; the neat cornrows were gone now, and she’d shaved it close to her head in a way that made her look like a beautiful, scary piece of sculpture.
She’d exchanged her police uniform for sharply tailored jackets and pants, but the look was still somehow official…even to
the Morganville pin in her lapel. She might not have a gun anymore, but she still looked completely competent and dangerous.
“Here,” Shane said, and handed over his ID card. “What the hell is up with these things?”
He certainly wasn’t wasting any time.
Hannah glanced at it and handed it back without a smile. “Don’t like your picture?”
“C’mon, Hannah.”
“There are certain…compromises I’ve had to make,” she said. “And no, I’m not happy about them. But carrying ID cards isn’t going to kill you.”
“Hunting licenses might,” Claire said. “Michael’s letter said they were back in force. Each vampire can kill one human a year, free and clear. Did you know that?”
That got her a sharp, unreadable look from the mayor, and after a moment, Hannah said, “I’m aware of it. And working on it. We have a special session this afternoon to discuss it.”