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"I know who killed her," Shane said.
He couldn't. He'd never seen Magnus, as far as Claire knew.... What could he be thinking?
There were no tears for Shane. There was no breakdown. He was nothing but ice and steel. She'd never seen him like this, not even when he'd been at his worst and most violent. This was . . . empty, and yet still full of something she couldn't really understand.
"Shane, what are you - " Michael kissed Eve's forehead and slowly stood up. He wiped the tears from his face. "You're in shock."
"Yeah," Shane said. He still had that distant, terrible flatness to his voice. "Yeah, probably. It's probably better than what's coming later."
"Bro - "
Shane tore his gaze from Claire's body and looked Michael in the eyes.
And Michael stepped back.
"Don't get in my way," he said. "I'll kill you. I'll kill anybody who gets between me and him."
Eve stumbled up to her feet, clinging to Michael's arm. "She's dead, Shane! God, this isn't about - "
"I mean it," he said. "Don't move her until I come back. And don't get in my way."
Shane, what are you doing? Claire shouted. She tried moving through him, but if he felt a chill, it didn't register. He was too cold inside for it to matter. Stop! Don't leave!
He went into the kitchen, pulled open a cabinet door, and took one of their black ready-bags that Eve kept stocked for any fang-related emergencies. Claire drifted after him, aching for him, wanting to stop him, but there was nothing at all she could do as she watched him unzip the bag, inventory the water bottles of silver nitrate, the stakes, the crossbows.
Michael followed, at a careful distance. "Shane, at least tell me where you're going. Please, bro. Please."
Shane zipped the bag, hefted the strap to his shoulder, and looked back at him. Those dark eyes - they were pits of utter blackness. "I'll be back," he said. "Don't let them take her away."
He headed for the front door. Michael came as far as the hallway, and Eve joined him; he put his arms around her, but they were both staring at Shane. He looked back, once, but didn't say anything else as he left.
Claire tried to follow him. The closed door didn't really matter, and she passed through the wood easily enough; the thick grain floated past her vision, disorientingly real, but then she came up against a barrier. It wasn't solid, more like . . . plastic. She pushed, and it stretched.
Then it broke as she pushed harder, and she drifted a little beyond the threshold.
There was a silver curtain of rain out there, and Shane had plunged out into it, hood up, running. She wanted to follow him, but the more she drifted from the doorway, the more - tenuous she felt. Stretched. Faded.
This is what Michael meant, about not being able to leave the house, she thought. When she'd first met Michael, he'd been a ghost, invisible during the daylight hours, physical at night.
Saved by the house.
It's the house, she thought. I'm like what Michael was. I have to stay inside.
It was harder getting back in, as if she'd been caught in some unseen undertow, but Claire managed to struggle through the barrier again, then drift through the door and back into the hall.
It was so quiet. Michael was still standing there, staring, and for a moment she thought he could actually see her . . . but he was just looking into the distance, a total blank stare.
"Where would he go?" he asked. "I don't understand what - "
Eve did. She was wiping her face with a towel now, but her eyes were red and the tears seemed to keep coming. "He's going to find Myrnin," she said. "Shane thinks he did it. Because he was the one who came after them in the first place."
Michael looked down at her, then back at the closed door. "God," he whispered. "He could be right."
No, Claire thought, appalled. Oh no.
Shane would kill Myrnin, or Myrnin would kill Shane, and it was all for nothing. Nothing.
Claire stood in the center of the black-and-white living room, a ghost in a ghostly landscape, and screamed. It came out of the very core of her, a bloody and horrible nightmare of a scream, full of anguish and despair.
Eve and Michael didn't seem to hear her. Not even then.
Claire collapsed to the floor, utterly drained.
Don't, she thought. Please don't.
Chapter Eleven
SHANE
Claire was gone, and the worst part was that I couldn't feel it. I stood there staring at her on the floor, at the peaceful way Michael had straightened her body and closed her eyes, at the silent, pale face and the soft, limp hands that would never touch me again, and I should have felt torn apart. I should have been crying, like Eve. Hell, even Michael.
But I couldn't. I couldn't feel.
Well, not that. What I could feel was a dull, crushing pressure, and one pure, vivid thing....
Rage.
I could see the marks on her throat, faint but there. The marks of fingers, just like the ones around my own neck. I'd survived, because she'd been there to save me.
But this time, I hadn't been there for her. No one had. He'd come in here, waited for her, grabbed her by the throat, and snapped her neck.
At least he hadn't choked her to death. At least he'd spared her that much.
There were only three vampires with easy access to our house: Michael was out, because he'd been in the car with me. Amelie . . . I couldn't see Amelie getting her own pale, strong hands dirty. No, it was the one who'd betrayed us already.
Myrnin.
I needed to do the things they expected me to do - get down there next to Claire, hold her, cry, let out all the awful pressure inside me . . . but not yet. Not yet.
No, first ... first I had to make sure someone paid for it.
I didn't think about anything else as I grabbed the vamp bag, checked it, and left the house. As the cold, cold rain hit me, I half expected something else to hit me, too - the real impact of what I'd just seen.
But the pressure inside me crowded out everything else except that harsh, desperate ache to avenge her.
I ran. I couldn't see through the rain well, and made some wrong turns, but by the time the downpour started to let up, I got my bearings and headed for the Day House a few blocks away. The water in the streets was rushing at curb level, every street a river; trash and debris were rolling along with the flood. These were the kind of gully washers that killed people in this part of the country; get caught in an arroyo out there in the desert and you could be swept for miles, body torn apart by a torrent that disappeared into the sand an hour later.
But not here. Not in town. Here, you'd just get your shoes and pants soaked through as you waded the currents.
The Day House appeared through the still-falling rain, a weird kind of deja vu; the Day House and Glass House looked almost exactly alike, except that Gramma Day kept hers in better repair, and there were warm golden lights shining in the windows.
Claire liked - had liked - the old lady. I stared at the deserted front porch for a moment, then turned and jogged down the high-fenced alley between the Day House and its closest neighbor. No lights here, and with the unnatural gloom of the storm, it felt more claustrophobic than usual. The rain had washed it clean, but not of the sense that someone, something, was watching. Waiting to pounce.
I didn't care. Let him pounce. I couldn't f**king wait.
If Myrnin was watching me, he let me get all the way to the shack. Claire had some way in that didn't involve the chained-up front door, but I didn't bother to look for it. A heavy kick knocked the thing right off its rotten hinges.
I unzipped the bag and found a heavy steel-cased flashlight, which I turned on. It lit the junked-up room, and I kicked a couple of boxes aside to uncover the staircase that led down. The first few steps were dusty, but then the concrete turned to a sleek, polished marble, and the tunnel widened out as I descended.
There were lights on in the lab, and I clicked off the flashlight by the time I was halfway down. I didn't bother to be stealthy. It wouldn't matter; if Myrnin was here, and God, I hoped he was, then he'd know I was coming.
He was packing.
There was a massive old trunk, and he was sorting through books - discarding some, dumping others in. The place was a mess, worse than it usually was; Claire would be - would have been - beside herself at the idea of cleaning it up.
Myrnin was standing there paying no attention at all to me as he scowled at the titles and spines of his precious books, but he knew I was there.
"To what do I owe this unexpected - well, I can't call it a pleasure, I suppose - " He kept talking, but it was just a smear of sound. I didn't hear the meaning.
