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And directly ahead, Amelie.
At the front of the church, surrounded by a blizzard of flowers of all colors, was a shiny black coffin with silver trim. The lid was closed. The discreet sound of organ music got louder, and the whispering buzz of the crowd in the church quieted as the door opened off to the side, and Father Joe came out, dressed in a blinding white cassock and a purple stole. He mounted the steps and looked out at the crowd with quiet authority. For a young priest, he had a lot of presence, but then Claire expected he'd have to, to serve a Morganville congregation that was composed equally of vampires and humans.
"We come to celebrate a life," he said. "The life of Samuel Glass, a son of Morganville."
Claire's eyes blurred under a wash of tears. She couldn't imagine Sam would have wanted to be remembered any other way, really. She barely heard the rest of what Father Joe said about Sam - she found that she was watching Amelie, or at least the very still back of Amelie's head. Not a hair out of place, not a whisper of motion.
So quiet.
And then, suddenly, Amelie was getting up, in absolute silence, and walking up the steps. She stopped not at the podium, but at the coffin, and opened the hinged cover. It clicked into place, and Amelie stayed there for a moment, staring down at Sam's face.
Then she turned and faced the hundreds of people gathered in the church.
"I met Samuel Glass here in this church," Amelie said. Her tone was soft, but it carried. No one moved. No one coughed. As far as Claire could tell, no one breathed. "He came here to demand - demand - that I right some wrong he imagined I had done. He was like an angel with a flaming sword, full of fury and righteousness, with absolutely no fear of the consequences. No fear of me." She smiled, but there was something broken in it. "I think I fell in love with him in that moment, when he was so angry with me. I fell in love with his fearlessness first, and then I realized that it was more than mere courage. It was a conviction that life must be made fair. That we must be better. And for a time . . . for a time I think we were."
She paused, and looked again at Sam's pale, still face.
"But I was weak," she said. "Weak and afraid. And I let him slip away from me, because I didn't have his courage, or his conviction. This moment, this loss, is my fault. Sam gave himself, again, to save lives. To save me. And I have never deserved it."
There were tears running down her cheeks now, and her voice was trembling. Claire couldn't breathe because of the weight of emotion in her chest.
"Someone else recently demanded that I change the rules of Morganville," Amelie continued. "Just as Sam demanded it fifty years ago, and continued to demand it of me at every opportunity."
Claire realized, with a shock, that Amelie was talking about her. As if what she'd said was somehow brave.
Amelie reached up and pulled pins from her hair, one after another. Her icy crown of pale hair began to unravel and fall loose around her shoulders.
"I have decided," she said, "that changes must be made. Changes will be made. Sam earned the right for humans to stand as equals in this town, and it will be done. It will be painful, it will be dangerous for us all, but it will be done. In Sam's memory, I make it so."
She leaned over, and very gently, placed a kiss on Sam's lips, then closed the coffin. No one spoke as she walked away, down the steps and out through the side door. Oliver and a few of the other vampires exchanged silent looks, then moved to follow her.
Father Joe spoke over the rising tide of whispers. "Let us pray."
Claire clasped her hands and looked down. Next to her, Shane was doing the same, but he whispered, "Am I crazy, or did we just win?"
"No," Claire whispered back. "But I think we just got a chance to."
Four weeks later.
"Chaos, disorder, mayhem," Shane said. "Situation normal in Morganville." He took a drink of his coffee and pushed the other one across to Claire.
Common Grounds was holding a grand reopening, with half-priced coffee, and the place was packed. Everybody loved a bargain. It wasn't exactly normal for the two of them to be sitting in Oliver's territory like this; Claire never thought Shane would do it voluntarily, but the lure of cheap caffeine proved powerful.
He'd further surprised her by exchanging some semi-civil words with Oliver himself as he'd claimed the coffee. Speaking of which . . . "What did Oliver say to you?" Claire asked.
Shane shrugged.
"I asked Oliver if they'd found my father, but he was his usual douchey self. Told me to forget about my dad. I don't know if that means they found him, they killed him, or they just don't care. Dammit, I just want someone to tell me."
Claire looked up at him, struck into silence. I need to tell him, she thought. I really do.
She just couldn't quite think of the words.
Life was getting back to normal in Morganville. Amelie had declared an absolute ban on hunting. The blood banks had reopened, and the people of Morganville had been given a choice - start over, or start running. Plenty had taken the second option. Claire figured that half the town had decided to seize the chance to leave . . . but she also knew that some of them would come back. After all, some of their families had never been out of town at all. It was a whole new world out there. For some, it would be too much.
Common Grounds had renovated in record time, and was open to students once more. Oliver was behind the bar, wearing his nice-guy face and pulling espresso shots like nothing had ever changed.
The bronze statue of Bishop was gone from the university. In fact, all traces of Bishop were gone. Claire didn't know where Fran?ois and Ysandre had ended up, but Myrnin assured her, with a perfectly straight face, that she didn't want to know. Sometimes, she was content to be ignorant. Not often, true. But sometimes.
Shane, however, needed to know about his father. Frank Collins, as far as Claire knew, had just vanished into thin air. If Amelie knew, she wasn't saying.
This was a moment that Claire actually had wanted to avoid, in a way. She'd put it off as long as she could, but Shane was getting more aggressive about asking people if there was any sign of Frank Collins in Morganville, and she really couldn't put it off any longer.
"I have something to tell you about that," she said, and cleared her throat. "Your dad - I . . . I saw him."
He froze, coffee cup halfway to his lips. "When?"
"A while ago." She didn't want to be too specific. She hated that she'd hidden it from him for so long. "He . . . ah . . . he could have killed me, but he didn't. He said to tell you that . . . that he loved you. And he was sorry."
Shane blinked at her, as if he couldn't quite believe what she was saying. "Where did you see him?"
"In the cells where the sick vampires were being kept. He's not there anymore. I looked. He's just . . . gone." She swallowed hard. "I didn't want to tell you, but I think . . . I think he was going to kill himself, Shane."
Something changed inside of Shane for a long second - she didn't recognize the look in his eyes or on his face. And then she did. It was his dad's look, the one that came before he lashed out at someone.
Shane closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and bowed his head. She didn't dare move for a few seconds, then carefully reached out and put her hand on the table, just a few inches from his.
His fingers twined with hers.
"Dammit," he whispered. "No, I'm not mad. I just feel . . . I guess I feel relieved. I wanted to know. Nobody would talk to me."
"I should have said something," she said. "I know. I'm so sorry. I just didn't know how. But I didn't want you to hear it from Oliver or something, because that would just . . . bite."
"No kidding." He took another deep breath, then raised his head. His dark eyes were glittering with un-shed tears, but he blinked them back. "He wouldn't have wanted to go on like that. He made a choice. I guess that's something."
She nodded. "That's something."
She'd ripped off the bandage, and now at least he could start healing.
It was the same everywhere. Healing. All over Morganville, burned buildings were being demolished and rebuilt. City Hall, destroyed by a tornado, was getting a municipal makeover, with plenty of marble and fancy new furniture. All of the surviving Founder Houses - even the Glass House - were getting repaired and repainted. The ones that hadn't survived were being rebuilt from the ground up.
