“Really don’t.”
“If you don’t know, you don’t want to know, trust me.”
“It could not
possibly
be as bad as the Pavel story.”
He sighed. “It’s just that I’m not going to stand there while he lies to her. I’m trying to be all nonviolent and shit. And I want to punch him, and he knows it, and out here is better right now until I get myself together.”
Wow. That was a
lot
of communication going on in a ten-second look. So much for guys not talking; they just did it way, way differently. “Wait… . He was
lying
?”
“I’m not saying he doesn’t love her. He does. But—” Shane was silent for a moment. “But there’s something else, too.” He shrugged. “Look, it’s between them, okay? We have to let them work it out.”
“No, it’s
not
between them—she’s my best friend! I can’t let her walk into this if he’s not really
serious
!”
“She knows,” Shane said. “Girls know, deep down.”
She did, Claire realized. Eve had been focused on all the
stuff
, the party plans, the invitations, all that, instead of facing her own fears. She already knew something was wrong, and she didn’t know how to fix it. “Well—she can’t go through with it. She just can’t.”
“Hang on—half an hour ago you were saying how the vamps couldn’t tear apart true love.”
“If it
is
. But what if it’s not, Shane? What if they’re making some awful, awful mistake and they’re both afraid to admit it?”
He put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against him, turning her face to bury it in the heavy fabric of his blue jean jacket. It was chilly out here, even in the sun, and she was grateful for the warmth of his body. The feel of his fingers stroking through her hair made some tense, anxious part of her slowly relax inside. “You can’t fix everything,” he told her. “Sometimes you’ve just got to let it fix itself, or wreck itself.”
“Was it Gloriana?” she asked. Her voice was muffled, but she knew he could hear and understand. “Do you think she got to Michael?”
At the sound of the female vampire’s name, Shane’s muscles tightened, then deliberately loosened; it wasn’t quite a flinch, but it definitely was close. Gloriana had been a horrible, manipulative, deceptive (beautiful) witch of a vamp who’d wanted … well, human playthings. She had definitely gotten to Shane, who’d become her toy soldier; she’d seduced the part of him that loved to fight.
She’d treated Michael differently. Still a toy, but a completely different kind.
“Maybe she did get to him,” Shane acknowledged quietly. “Yeah, at least a little. She could do that, make you feel—anything she wanted. It’s tough to deal with it, but at least Glory’s gone in that not-coming-back way. Eve’s still here.”
“Is that enough?”
He didn’t answer her, and Claire thought, miserably, that there really was no answer—none that the two of them could get to, anyway. He was right.
It was Eve and Michael’s engagement, and Eve and Michael’s problem.
If they could admit they actually had one.
The shadows got longer, and the wind got colder, and eventually not even Shane’s body heat could keep Claire from freezing, so they went back inside. It was quiet, but not silent; as Claire poured herself a glass of water and grabbed an apple from the bowl on the table, she heard the creak of footsteps overhead. It had to be Eve, because from the living room drifted the quiet, contemplative sound of Michael’s guitar.
Talk about “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,”
Claire thought. That was the saddest thing she’d ever heard.
Shane gave her a quick, sweet kiss and went into the living room. She stayed where she was, eating her apple, listening to the quiet, low buzz of their voices over the music (Michael was still playing), and wondering if she ought to go upstairs and see if Eve wanted to spill it out. It was a friend’s duty, right? But Claire felt angry at Michael right now, righteously angry, and she wasn’t sure that wouldn’t boil over and complicate everything even more.
She eased over to the kitchen door and cracked it open. Shane would be kicking Michael’s ass, at least verbally; she just knew it.
But he wasn’t. They weren’t talking about Eve or the engagement party at all.
Michael was saying, “… over it, man. If you want us to get back where we were, you have to let that crap go.”
There was a short silence, and then Shane said, “I hurt Claire. Hell, man, I hurt
you
. I wanted to kill every damn vampire in the entire world, including you, single-handed.” He paused for a second, and then said, very softly, “I was like my dad, only on steroids, and it felt
right
. I’m not sure that’s ever going away, Mike. That’s my problem. If deep down I’m an abusive, violent ass like my old man, how exactly do I pretend I don’t know that?”
“You’re not him.” Michael kept playing, a slow and soothing tune, and his voice was quiet and deep. “Never were, never will be. You just hang on to that.” He paused a second, and Claire almost heard a smile in his voice. “You still want to kill me?”
“Sometimes, yeah.” Shane, on the other hand, sounded completely serious. “I love you, man, but … it takes time for all that stuff to go away. I don’t
want
to feel it.”
“I know, shithead.”
“If you break Eve’s heart, I
will
kill you.”
Michael stopped playing. “It’s complicated.”
“No, it’s not. Stop screwing around and commit.”
“Oh, so now
you’re
giving me relationship advice? You can’t commit to a cell phone contract, let alone—”
“I’m committed,” Shane interrupted. “To her. You know I am.”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “Yeah, I know that. And you know if you screw it up with Claire, I’ll rip your throat out and drink you like a juice box, so you’ve got some incentive.”
Shane laughed. “You know what? I do that, you’ve got permission. And you know how I feel about that whole drinking-me stuff.”
It was a nice moment—one of the best she’d heard between them for a while—and then it all fell apart because there was a knock at the back door, and Claire went to answer it, and standing on the steps was a vampire. Female, wearing a hooded black jacket and gloves, very chic but also very sun-blocking. Claire couldn’t really make her out beneath the giant dark glasses and the smothering garments, so she said, “Can I help you?”
“It’s Claire, isn’t it? Hello. You probably don’t remember me,” the woman said. She smiled, a little tentatively. “My name is Naomi. I met you the day that you freed us from confinement in the cells below town.”
For a few seconds Claire didn’t know what she was talking about, because that had happened a
long
time ago. Once she did remember, she blinked and involuntarily stepped back.
When she’d first come to Morganville, the vampires had been hiding a secret: they were sick, and getting sicker. That illness led first to forgetfulness, then to acting out, then to mindless violence … and finally to a motionless catatonia. The onset varied from one vampire to another; some were dangerously uncontrollable in weeks, and others were watching themselves slip slowly, day by day, year by year, toward the inevitable.
Naomi had been in the cells—one of the violent ones, confined for everybody’s safety. When the cure had been distributed, those vampires had gotten better, and returned to normal—for Morganville—lives. She’d thanked Claire, back then, and seemed nice enough, if disturbingly Vampire with a Capital V.
Naomi took silence as an invitation, and stepped over the threshold into the kitchen, sighing with relief. “Thank you,” she said. “I fear I don’t brave the sun as much as I ought to. Even at my age, one needs to build up a tolerance, but I’m not good at forcing myself to do unpleasant things.” She pulled off the glam glasses and pushed back her hood, and the face finally clicked into place for Claire. Lustrous, long blond hair, pretty, young. She looked a little like the much-loathed Gloriana, whom Claire and Shane had just been mutually hating, but Naomi was a very different person, and a very different kind of vampire—at least, from Claire’s memory of her.
She smiled politely at Claire and held out a slender hand. Claire took it and shook. Naomi’s felt cool and strong.
“Uh … it’s nice to see you,” Claire said, which was kind of a lie, because it was unsettling to see
any
vampire show up at your back door. “What can I do for you?”
“May we sit?” Naomi indicated the kitchen table with a very elegant gesture, and Claire couldn’t shake the idea that this girl—not much older physically than she herself was now—had grown up in a time when elegance and perfect manners were survival tools, especially for girls. Especially for
royal
girls.
“Sure,” Claire said, instantly marking herself as part of the unwashed rabble, definitely not throne-worthy, but she tried to sit down with at least a little bit of grace. “Can I get you any—well, anything?” They had a little extra type A in the refrigerator, not that it was Claire’s to offer, but she didn’t think Michael would mind. Then again, she felt weird about offering blood as if it were a cup of tea. There were limits to being social.
“I thank you, it is most generous of you, but no, I am not hungry,” Naomi said. The way she sat, straight-backed and yet somehow perfectly at ease, made Claire feel sweaty and round-shouldered. “I am very pleased to see you again. I am told you are doing very well in your studies.” Her polite smile deepened a little, bringing out charming little dimples. “And that sounds as if I’m your terribly ancient maiden aunt. I am sorry. This is awkward, is it not?”
“A little bit,” Claire said, and couldn’t help but smile back. Naomi felt like a real person to her—someone who had lived a real life, and still remembered what it was like to have human feelings. “Things are going okay; thanks for asking. And you—how’s your sister?” She scrambled to remember the name, some kind of flower… . “ Violet?”
“I am gratified you remember. Violet is fine. She’s taken up the opportunities Morganville presents with an alarming amount of enthusiasm. She’s painting now.” Naomi rolled her eyes. “She’s not very good, but she’s
very
determined. It always irked her when we were children that she was forbidden to do anything but ladylike watercolors. Every time I see her these days, she looks as if she’s fallen face-first onto a paint palette.”
“When we met before, you said—I think you said you were Amelie’s sisters?” Meaning sisters to the town’s vampire Founder, Amelie the all-powerful. Claire, looking at Naomi, could believe it; there was something about the way she held her head, the posture, even the glossy, pale hair.
So she was a little surprised when Naomi shook her head. “Oh, no, we are not sisters in the sense that we were born in the same family,” she said. “Sisters in our second birth, if you will. We are both of the same generation turned by Bishop, and there are not so many of us left, so by tradition we look on each other as family. Violet is my true sister of my mortal life. Amelie is our sister of immortal life. I know it’s a bit confusing.”
“Oh.” Claire wasn’t very clear about the vampire concept of family…. Apparently they traced it through who had made them vampires in the first place, so Bishop had a lot of kids, some of whom were what Claire considered good—like Amelie—and most of whom were definitely not. It mattered, but Claire wasn’t really sure how much, or how it ranked against a human family relationship. Not enough to keep them from occasionally killing one another, but then, the same could be said for natural-born siblings. “I just wondered.”
“At the time I met you, I wasn’t used to speaking with mortals. It had been a very long time, and we were still … not as well as we could have been. But we’re much better now.” Naomi showed a full smile, and it was just a tiny bit unsettling.
My, what big teeth you have,
Claire thought. Not that Naomi had done anything wrong, not at all. She didn’t even show a hint of fang. “So of course, I first want to apologize for any possible discomfort I might have caused you during our initial meeting. None was intended, believe me.”
That was, in terms of what had gone on in Claire’s life, a
really
long time ago, and it struck her as oddly funny. She tried not to let it show. “No, really, it was fine. I’m fine.”
“Ah, you relieve me.” Naomi settled back in her chair, as if she really
was
relieved, which Claire sincerely doubted. “Now that I’m reassured on that point, I can proceed to my second. I came to pay a call on my youngest relative.”
Again, Claire went blank. “Um … excuse me?”
“Michael,” Naomi said. There was something that turned warm and even sweeter in her voice when she mentioned Michael’s name, and that wasn’t vampire at all…. That was something Claire understood completely. “I have been missing him.”
It was purely a girl-appreciating-a-hottie reaction.
And just like that, it all became crystal clear for Claire. There was, after all, a hidden vampire angle to what was going on with Eve and Michael…. He must have been seeing
Naomi
. On the side. Without telling anyone, or at least not discussing it in front of Claire and Shane, and Claire was pretty sure that Eve wouldn’t have been just
Oh, fine
about it if she’d really known.
The pretty blond reason for Michael’s erratic behavior was
sitting across the table and smiling at her
.
Claire stood up, all in one rushed motion. “I’ll go get him,” she said. She knew it sounded rude, and saw surprise on Naomi’s face, but she didn’t care, not at all. “Stay here.” And that was probably even ruder, that somebody with royal whatever blood was being told to stay in the kitchen like the help.
Good.
Claire burst through the kitchen door. She must have interrupted some intense guy talk, because both Michael and Shane stopped talking and straightened up the way people did when they felt guilty. Michael hushed his guitar strings with a flat palm.