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Amelie wanted it that way.
Claire sat down on the steps of the high school for a few long minutes, shivering in the cold wind, not much warmed by the bright sun in a cloudless sky. The street outside the school looked empty - a few cars making their way around Morganville, but not much else going on.
She heard the door behind her open, and Hannah Moses clumped down in her heavy boots and offered Claire a big, elegant hand. Claire took it and stood. "Amelie's taking care of him?" she asked. Hannah nodded. "Michael went with?"
"He'll see you later," Hannah said. "Important thing is to get you out of here. I need you to help me get your parents on that bus."
"Bishop's going to find out," she said. "You know that, right? He's going to find out what you're doing."
Hannah nodded. "That's why we're doing it fast, girlfriend. So let's move."
Mom and Dad were having an argument; Claire could hear it from where she and Hannah stood on the front porch of their house, ringing the doorbell. Claire felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Her parents didn't fight very often, but when they did, it was usually over something important.
The shouty blur of voices broke off, and about ten seconds later, the door whipped open. Claire's mom stood there, color burning high in her cheeks. She looked stricken when she caught sight of Claire, very obviously a guilty-looking earwitness to the fighting, but she rallied and gave a bright smile and gestured them both inside.
"Sheriff Hannah Moses, ma'am," Hannah said without waiting for introductions. "I don't think we've met in person before. I've known your daughter for a while now. She's good people."
She offered her hand, and Claire's mother took it for a quick shake as her eyes darted anxiously from Claire to Hannah, then back. "Is there some kind of problem, Sheriff Moses?"
"Hannah, please." Hannah really was turning on the charm, and she had an awful lot of it. "May I talk with you and your husband at the same time? This concerns both of you."
With only a single, worried look over her shoulder, her mother led the way down the long hallway and into the living room area. Same floor plan as the Glass House, but so wrenchingly different, especially now. Claire got mental whiplash from expecting to see the familiar battered couch and Michael's guitar and the cheerful stacks of books against the wall; instead, her mother's ruthlessly efficient housekeeping had made this room magazine-feature-ready, everything carefully aligned and straightened.
The only thing that wasn't ready for the photo shoot was Claire's father, who sat in one of the leather armchairs, face flushed. He had a stubborn set to his jaw, and an angry fire in his eyes that Claire hadn't seen in, well, forever. Still, he got to his feet and shook hands with Hannah, politely gesturing her to the couch while Claire's mom sank down on the other end, with Claire left to take the middle seat. Normally, her mom would have been fluttering around offering coffee and cookies and sandwiches, but not this time. She just took the other armchair and looked worried.
Hannah said, "Let's put all our cards on the table. There's a town emergency. Mr. and Mrs. Danvers, you are going to need to come with us. Pack a bag for a few nights, take whatever you need that you can't live without. I can give you about fifteen minutes."
That was . . . blunt. Claire blinked. She expected a flood of questions from her parents, but she was surprised by the silence.
Claire's parents looked at each other, and then her father nodded. "Good," he said. "I've wanted to do this for a while. Claire, go with your mother and pack. I'll be up in a second."
"Um . . ." Claire cleared her throat and tried not to look as awkward as she felt. "I'm not going, Dad."
They both looked at her as if she'd spoken in Chinese. "Of course you are," her mom said. "You're not staying here alone. Not with what we know about how dangerous it is."
"I'm sorry, but you know just enough about Morganville to get yourselves in trouble," Hannah said. "This really isn't up for discussion. You have to pack, and you have to go. And Claire can't come with you, at least not yet."
One thing about Hannah: when she said something like that, she clearly meant it. In the silence that fell, Claire felt the weight of both her parents' stares directly on her, so she looked down at her clasped hands instead. "I can't," she said. "It's complicated."
"No, it's not," her dad said, with a steely undertone in his voice she couldn't remember hearing before. "It's absolutely simple. I'm your father, you're under eighteen, and you're coming with us. I'm sorry, Chief Moses, but she's too young to be here on her own."
"Dad, you sent me here on my own!" Claire said.
"Why do you think we were fighting, Claire?" her mom replied. "Your father was just reminding me that I was the one who thought sending you to a school close by, just to get some experience with it, would be a good idea. He wanted you to go straight to MIT, although how we were going to pay for that, I really don't have any - "
Dad interrupted her. "We're not going to start this up again. Claire, we were wrong to let you go off on your own here in the first place, no matter how safe we thought it would be. And we're fixing that now. You're coming with us, and things will be better once we're out of this town."
Claire's hands formed into fists as frustration boiled up inside her. "Are you listening to me? It's too late for all that stuff! I can't go with you!"
She should have guessed that they'd make the wrong assumptions . . . and, in a way, the right one. "It's the boy, isn't it?" Claire's mother said. "Shane?"
"What? No!" Claire blurted out a denial that, even to her own ears, sounded lame and guilty. "No, not really. It's something else. Like I said, it's complicated."
"Oh my God . . . Claire, are you pregnant?"
"Mom!" She knew she looked as mortified as she felt, especially with Hannah looking on.
"Honey, has that boy taken advantage of you?" Her father was charging full speed down the wrong path; he even stood up to make it more dramatic. "Well?"
Claire stared at him, openmouthed, unable to even try to speak. She knew she should lie, but she just couldn't find the words.
In the ringing silence, her father said, "I want him arrested."
Hannah asked, "On what charge, sir?"
"Are you kidding? He had sex with my underage daughter!" He gave Claire a look that was partly angry, partly wounded, and all over dangerous. "Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong, Claire."
"It . . . wasn't like that!"
Her dad transferred his glare over to Hannah. "You see? I'll swear out a complaint if I need to."
Hannah looked perfectly comfortable. "Sir, there's no complaint to be sworn out here. Fact is, Claire is seventeen years old, which by Texas law makes her able to give consent on her own. Shane's only a year older than she is. There's no laws being broken here, beyond maybe the law of good sense, which I think you'll admit is often a casualty of our teen years. This is a family matter, not a matter for the police."
Her father looked shocked, then even angrier. "That's insane! It has to be illegal!"
"Well, it's not, sir, and it has nothing to do with why I'm telling you Claire needs to stay in Morganville. That has to do with the vampires." Hannah had deftly moved the whole thing off the subject of Shane and sex, for which Claire was spine-meltingly grateful. "I'm telling you this for your own good, and for Claire's own good: she stays here. She won't be unprotected; I promise you that. We're committed to keeping her safe."
"Who's we?" Claire's dad wasn't giving up without a fight.
"Everybody who counts," Hannah said, and raised her eyebrows. "Time's a-wastin', Mr. Danvers. We really can't debate this. You need to go right now. Please go pack."
In the end, they did. Claire went to help her mother, reluctantly; she didn't want the subject to come back to her and Shane, but it did as soon as the door was closed. At least her father wasn't in the room. God, that had been awkward.
"Honey." Claire paused in the act of dragging a suitcase out from under her parents' bed, took one look at the serious expression on her mother's face, and kept on with what she was doing. "Honey, I really don't like your getting involved with that boy - that man. And it's not appropriate for you to be living in that house with him. I just can't allow that."
