AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The house was worried, and on guard. The solid Victorian furniture crouched hunched and deformed, nothing warm or welcoming about it. Even the lights seemed dimmed, and Claire could feel something, almost a presence - the way she'd been able to sometimes sense Michael when he'd been trapped in the house as a ghost. The fine hair on her arms stood on end, and her skin pebbled into gooseflesh.
Claire set the eggs and bacon down on the wooden table and backed away. Nobody had asked her, Eve, and Shane to take seats, although there were empty places at the table; she caught Eve's eye and retreated back to the kitchen, grateful to escape. Michael stayed by the table, putting food on plates. Serving. There was a tight, pale set to his face and a cold fear in his eyes, and God, if Michael was panicking, there was definitely reason for a total freak-out.
As soon as the kitchen door closed again, Shane grabbed her and Eve and hustled them to the farthest corner of the room. "Right," he whispered. "It's official - this is getting way more than creepy. Did you feel that?"
"Yeah," Eve breathed. "Wow. I think if the house had teeth, it'd be chomping down right now. You have to admit, that's cool."
"Cool isn't getting us anywhere. Claire?"
"What?" She stared at him blankly for a few long seconds, then said, "Oh. Right. Yeah. I'll call Amelie again." She dug the cell phone out of her pocket. It was new, and came with a few important numbers preloaded on it. One of them - the first on speed dial, in fact - was a contact number for Amelie, the Founder of Morganville.
The head vampire. Claire's boss, sort of. In Morganville, the technical term was Patron, but Claire had known from the beginning that it was just a more polite word for owner.
It rang - again - to voice mail. Claire left another hurried, half-desperate message to "come to the house, please, we need your help," and hung up. She looked mutely at Eve, who sighed and took the phone, then dialed another number.
"Yeah, hi," she said when she got someone on the line. "Let me talk to the boss." A longish pause, and Eve looked like she was steeling herself for something really unpleasant. "Oliver. It's Eve. Don't bother to tell me how nice it is to hear from me, because it's not, and this is business, so save the BS. Hold on."
Eve handed over the phone to Claire. Frowning, Claire mouthed, Are you sure? Eve made an emphatic thumb-and-little-finger phone gesture at her ear.
Claire reluctantly took the call.
"Oliver?" she asked. On the other end of the line, she heard a low, lazy chuckle.
"Well," he said. The owner of Common Grounds, the local coffee shop, had a warm voice - the kind that had made her think he was just an all-around nice guy when she'd first met him. "If it isn't little Claire. Eve didn't want to hear it, but I'll tell it to you - it's nice that you turn to me in your moment of need. It is a moment of need, I assume? And not an invitation to socialize?"
"Someone's here," she said as softly as she could. "In the house."
The warmth drained out of Oliver's voice, leaving a sharp annoyance. "Then call the police if you have a prowler. I'm not your security service. It's Michael's house. Michael can - "
"Michael can't do anything about it, and I don't think we should call the cops. This man, he says his name is Mr. Bishop. He wants to talk to Amelie, but I can't get her on the - "
Oliver cut her off. "Stay away from him," he said, and his voice had grown edges. "Do nothing. Say nothing. Tell your friends the same, especially Michael, yes? This is far beyond any of you. I will find Amelie. Do as he says, whatever he says, until we arrive."
And Oliver hung up on her. Claire blinked at the dead phone, shrugged, and looked at her friends. "He says do what we're doing," she said. "Take orders and wait for help."
"Fantastic advice," Shane said. "Remind me to stock a handy vampire-killing kit under the sink for times like these."
"We'll be okay," Eve said. "Claire's got the bracelet. " She grabbed Claire's wrist and lifted it to show the delicate glitter of the ID bracelet circling it - a bracelet that had Amelie's symbol on it, instead of a name. It identified her as property, someone who'd signed over life and limb and soul to a vampire in return for certain protections and considerations. She hadn't wanted to do it, but it had seemed like the only way, at the time, to ensure the safety of her friends. Especially Shane, who was already on the bad side of the vamps.
She knew that the bracelet could bring its own brand of hazard, but at least it obligated Amelie (and maybe even Oliver) to come to her defense against other vampires.
In theory.
Claire slipped the phone into her pocket. Shane took her hands in his and rubbed lightly over her knuckles, a gentle, soothing kind of motion that made her feel at least a little safe, just for a moment.
"We'll get through this," he said. When he tried to kiss her, though, he winced. She put a hand lightly on his stomach.
"You're hurting," she said.
"Only when I bend over. When did you get so short, anyway?"
"Five minutes ago." She rolled her eyes, playing along, but she was worried. According to the rules of Morganville, he was off-limits to vampires during his convalescence; the hospital bracelet still around his wrist, glowing white plastic with a big red cross on it, ensured that any passing bloodsucker would know he wasn't fair game.
If their visitors played by the rules. Which Mr. Bishop might not. He wasn't a Morganville vampire. He was something else.
Something worse.
"Shane, I'm serious. How bad is it?" she asked in a low whisper, just for Shane's ears. He ruffled her short hair, then kissed it.
"I'm cool," he said. "Takes more than a punk with a switchblade to put a Collins down. Count on it."
Unspoken was the fact that they were up against a hell of a lot more than that, and he knew it.
"Don't do anything dumb," she said. "Or I'll kill you myself."
"Ouch, girl. Whatever happened to unconditional love around here?"
"It got tired of visiting you in the hospital." She held his eyes for a long few seconds. "Whatever you're thinking about doing, don't. We have to wait. We have to."
"Yeah, all the vampires say so. Must be true." She hated hearing him say the word quite that way, with so much loathing; when he said it, she always thought of Michael, of the way that he suffered when Shane's hatred boiled out. Michael hadn't wanted to be a vampire, and he was trying as best he could to live with it.
