Morganville Vampires 11: Last Breath (25 page)

He stretched out his hand across the table and took hers. He squeezed. “Sweetheart, she’s gone. I’m sorry.”

Eve sucked in a deep, uncontrolled breath in a gasp, and said miserably, “But I was
here
. I was upstairs, getting towels. I used the bathroom and I dried my hair and I—Michael, I was
here when it happened
!” She grabbed her mug and took a gulping drink; liquid slopped over messily on the table as she set it down. “This can’t be how it ends. I can’t deal. I really can’t.”

Michael looked up at her and said softly, “If you can’t, how do you think Shane feels?”

Eve shook her head. Her eyes were full of tears, again. “What are we going to
do
?”

“I don’t know.” He stared at her for a second, then seemed to come to a decision. “Eve, Amelie told me to report to Founder’s Square tomorrow night, and to bring you all with me. It was an order, not a request.”

“But—”

“The vampires are going to leave,” he said. “All of them. She’s handing over control of Morganville to the humans.”

“Wait—what?” Eve wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “What are you talking about? She can’t—The vampires can’t just
leave
. That’s insane!”

“I’m telling you what she said. The vampires are leaving, and they’re not coming back.”

“Why?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, it’s worse than Bishop, and that’s—about as bad as it gets.”

Eve finally connected the dots. “And—if the vampires are leaving—what about you?”

He waited for a breath, then shook his head. “They won’t let me take you with us,” he said. “So I’m staying.”

“But you’ll be alone if you stay—I mean,
all
of them are going?”

“All but me. That means no blood bank, no help, and nothing but a town full of pissed-off humans. I’ll be the one vampire left they can take it out on.” Michael tried to smile. “But I’m not leaving you, Eve. Whatever happens. Especially not after—I can’t lose you.”

She slid out of her chair and into his lap, and he cradled her close, and it was really sweet and sad and private, and Claire felt like a voyeur, suddenly.

She drifted away. Looking at her own body was horrifying; it seemed only more and more empty while the minutes passed and the cops took more pictures. They were getting ready to take her out, she saw; there were paramedics waiting with a stretcher.
Good,
she thought.
Maybe once the body’s gone, I can make them feel that I’m here.

“You can’t,” a voice said. It was a faint voice, soft and featureless, and it seemed to come out of the air around her. Claire looked around the room. The police detective was there, and the bored and waiting paramedics. Her own corpse. Nobody else. “You can’t make them feel you. You’re too weak, and however fond of you it may be, the house is not connected to you by blood.”

“And who are you?” Claire asked.

She saw a ripple out of the corner of her eye, like heat off a summer pavement, and turned that direction as a body formed out of thin air.

He was a nondescript little man, only a bit taller than she was, with thinning light-colored hair and a round face. He was wearing an old-fashioned vest and a high-collared white shirt, just like out of old Western movies. Some kind of banker or something.

“I’m Hiram Glass,” he said. “And this is my house.”

“
Your
house.”

He shrugged and crossed his arms. “Well, my bones are buried in the foundation, and my blood was mixed with the mortar. Yes, my house. And the house of my family.
You
were never meant to be here. It’s Claire, isn’t it?”

“I … Yes.” She was still unable to process the whole idea that there was a
dead man
in the basement. “What do you mean, I’m too weak?”

He smiled faintly. “You’ve got grit, but you’re not a Glass. Michael brought you in, and that makes you part of the family, but not of the blood. The house likes you, and it tried to save you, but it can only do so much. It won’t be like Michael. He had a chance at life, even after death, because he could draw on his connection with me. You don’t have one.”

“He never said anything about you,” Claire said. She would have remembered that, if Michael had actually mentioned an ancestral ghost showing up during his off-hours.

“Well, he couldn’t.” The ghost shrugged. “Seeing as how I never spoke to him. There was no need. He was getting along just fine. Not like you, screaming and waking the dead, if you’ll pardon the expression. Now, you just settle. You won’t be able to get their attention, only mine, and I assure you, you don’t want more of mine. You’re an intruder here.”

There was a slight dark edge to that last part. The edges of his image rippled, and Claire realized he was about to leave. “Wait!” She drifted closer to him. “Wait, please—what about at night? Michael said he was weaker in the day, stronger at night. Strong enough to actually have a real body. Can I—”

He was shaking his head now. “See that flesh and bone over there?” He pointed at her body, which was being lifted and put onto the stretcher. Claire had tried not to notice that. She felt a little sick, at least mentally—she couldn’t be nauseated without having a stomach. “You’re not a Glass. The house might have saved you, but that’s
all
it can do, without my cooperation. You have no way to manifest yourself, night or day.
This
is what you have, or will ever have. Be grateful I allow you to stay.
Quietly.
”

And even though she yelled at him to wait, again, Hiram Glass shivered like vibrating glass, and vanished in a grayscale ripple.

I’m trapped,
Claire realized with dawning horror.
Trapped alone. Just … observing.

A real, genuine ghost.

She couldn’t imagine how it could get any worse, really.

B
y the time the sun started to set, all the strangers were gone from the house. It was Michael, Shane, and Eve, and Claire, who hovered silently nearby—unseen and eternally separated.

Better if I’d died,
she thought miserably. She’d never felt more alone. More completely useless.

“We have to call,” Shane finally said in a voice as colorless and gray as Claire felt. She turned to see him holding his cell phone in both hands as he stared at the screen. “We have to tell her parents.”

He didn’t dial, not immediately. He just sat there as if he couldn’t remember how to work the phone.

“Maybe Hannah’s calling them,” Eve said. “Maybe we should let her handle it—I mean, the police, they know how—”

“It’s my responsibility.” That was Michael, who stood up and took the phone out of Shane’s hands. “I’m the one who let her stay here. I’m the one who told them I’d keep her safe.” He sounded hoarse, but steady, and before Shane could object, he brought up the address book and hit a key. Shane slumped. Claire couldn’t tell if he felt relieved, or just defeated.

But Michael frowned, checked the phone, and dialed again. Then a third time. “It’s not going through,” he said. “I’m getting a circuits-busy message. Hang on. I’m going to call Oliver.” He did, then hung up. “Circuits busy.”

Eve stood and picked up the house’s old landline phone, big and clunky, hardwired into the wall. Claire could hear the discordant tones from where she drifted a few feet away. “This one’s out, too,” Eve said. “What’s going on?”

“Check the Internet,” Michael said, and Eve went upstairs. She was gone only a moment before she came down again.

“Out,” she said. “No connection. They’ve cut us off.”

“They?” Shane asked blankly. “They, who?”

Michael took out his own cell and tried it, then shook his head. “It’s not just you—it’s me as well, and mine’s on the vampire system. Cell phones, landlines, and Internet—it’s all down.”

“Why would they do that?”

“At a guess, they’re getting ready to leave Morganville, and they don’t want anyone to be making plans for trouble,” Michael said. He dropped his useless cell phone on the table. “It’s probably wrong that I feel relieved right now.”

They all froze as a knock came at the front door. After a silent exchange of looks, Michael went to answer it, and Claire went with him, just because it was something to do.

Outside the door was a vampire policeman, dressed in a big raincoat, and his police cap protected by a rain bonnet. It was still pouring, Claire saw. The yard outside was a sea of muddy water. “You need to bring your charges to the meeting tomorrow night, Mr. Glass,” he said. “We’re going house to house to remind everyone, and we’ll be checking all buildings tomorrow to ensure full compliance. Everyone at Founder’s Square at dusk tomorrow.”

“What if we don’t want to go?” Michael asked. “Our friend died today.”

The cop gave him a long look, and said, “Nobody stays away. I’m sorry for your loss, but if you don’t show, we’ll come and get you. Orders of the Founder.”

He tapped the front of his hat with a finger in an abbreviated salute, and walked away, heading for the next house.

“This is not good,” Michael murmured. “Not good at all.”

Claire had to agree with him, for all the use it was; she didn’t want them to leave the house. Especially, she didn’t want them to leave her alone. What if they never came back? What if she was trapped here all alone with just Hiram Glass for company, forever? That seemed selfish, but she was terrified at the very thought.

Michael shut the door and locked it, and stayed there a moment, head down. Then he whispered, very quietly, “Claire, if you
are
here, please tell us. Please. God, I hope you are, because I’m scared. I’m scared for all of us.”

Michael
was scared. God.

That made her even more panicked.

Think,
she ordered herself. Clearly, she couldn’t expect any help from the head ghost of the Glass House, who was actually kind of an ass; she was going to have to find a way out of this herself. As she thought about it, she drifted back down the hall, into the living room, past the couch where Shane and Eve sat together, silently holding hands … and then to the spot where her body had fallen.
Come on,
she told herself.
Think.

She felt a warm surge of power condense around her, like an insubstantial hug. The house. Hiram had said the house liked her; clearly, the house and Hiram had different opinions. It was trying to tell her something.

It shoved her a little, pushing her toward the wall.

But if it was, what did it hurt to try?

Claire focused on the blank wall—on the textured paint, on the gray color, on every flaw and imperfection.

She sensed a flicker of power, almost a sense of surprise, and then the portal responded.

And when it gradually misted open, she smiled, just a little, even though nobody could really see it.

She looked around. Eve was facing away, and Michael was still in the other room. Shane sat slumped on the couch, facing the silent TV. Nobody was looking at the portal, which was too bad, because at least they’d know
something
was odd.

This may not work,
she told herself.
You may not come out of this.

But really … would it matter? She was already gone, as far as those she loved were concerned.

If the physics of the portals had been complicated before, she’d be
years
working out how the potential energy of a dead soul could possibly travel through wormholes.
Well, if nothing else, it’ll keep me occupied with calculations for as long as I live.

And then Claire, ghost of a dead girl, stepped through the portal and was lost in the dark.

 

 

She opened her eyes, and she was in Myrnin’s lab. It was deserted, and it was
trashed
…. Someone had scattered books everywhere, ripped some up, and an entire lab table had been thrown all the way across the room, smashing the marble top into pieces.

So, pretty normal, then.

“Frank!” she said. She felt thinner here, almost fading, and realized that she was still connected to the house, through the portal. If the portal failed …

… She’d be gone along with it.

“Frank Collins! Can you hear me?”

She felt a sudden buzz of power, and Frank’s image formed in front of her, one grayscale pixel at a time. He blinked. “Anybody there?”

Oh. He couldn’t see her. Great. “Frank, can you hear me?” She yelled it, loud as she could, and Frank’s image flickered, as if interference had ripped it apart for a moment.

“Jesus, Claire, turn it down,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Right here!” She was so happy to be communicating she felt like kissing him—only that wouldn’t work, on so many levels. “I’m right here, in front of you. I’m sort of—”