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"You," she said between heaves for breath, "are a total ass, Col ins. You enjoyed that."
"Absolutely," he said, and grinned, but the grin faded fast. "No bul , Monica: you're not bad, you've got strength, but you've never been pushed. Fighting the vamps isn't like taking Jimmy's lunch money in fourth grade. You need to be fast, fearless, and accurate, and you need to understand that there's no giving up, because if they even smel it on you, you're done."
"I can do it," she said. But she said it flat on the floor. "I'm not quitting."
"Good," he said. "Because the opportunity to hit you is pretty much every Morganville kid's dream job. Oh, and you're paying me."
"I'm what?" She lifted her head from the canvas and stared at him, and Claire had to choke back a laugh at the look on Monica's face.
"Paying," he said. "For training. What, you thought I'd do this for free? Are we friends?"
"Fine," she said, and dropped her head again. "How much?"
"Twenty an hour."
"You're kidding me. You make about seven an hour on your best day!"
"That's when I'm doing honest labor, like cleaning sewers. Working with you means charging a premium."
She wearily lifted a hand and flipped him off, but said, "Okay, fine. Twenty an hour."
"Twenty-five now that you were rude about it."
Monica sent him a filthy glare, rolled over, and limped slowly off to the showers. Shane watched her go with a smile of pure satisfaction. "Gold,"
he said. "Pure gold."
Claire kissed him. "Don't gloat too hard," she said. "She's going to get better."
"I know. But I can enjoy it while she's not."
Claire took off after Monica for the locker room.
She found the other girl stripping off her workout clothes and examining in the ful -length mirror the discolored places that were going to form bruises. Claire immediately felt a surge of awkwardness and didn't know where to look; Monica had an almost perfect body, sculpted and waxed and tanned. Claire flashed back to her awkward early-admission high schoollyears, where showering with the pretty girls had been an exercise in merciless mockery.
But she wasn't even on Monica's radar, except as a second pair of eyes. "Hey," Monica said, without even focusing on her. "Do you think this is going to leave a mark?" She pointed to a red area on her ribs, just under her left breast.
"Probably."
"Dammit. I was going to go to the pool. Now I have to wear a one-piece." She made it sound like a burka. "So, pre-school, did you follow me in here to confess your g*y love, or what?"
"What? No. And never you."
"Oh yeah? You got a girl-crush on someone else?"
Claire smiled. "Wel , I lost my heart to Aliyah back there when she put you on the floor...."
"Bite me, Danvers. I need a shower." Monica grabbed her soap, shampoo, razor, and a towel, and headed for the open tiled area. Claire fol owed at a distance and sat out of the range of splashing on the teak bench. "Seriously, are you stalking me? Because you're not doing it right."
"I need to talk to you."
"It's not mutual."
Monica turned the spray on and stepped into the steaming water. Claire waited until she'd foamed up her hair, rinsed it, put in the conditioner, and propped her leg up on the step to run the razor over it before she tried again. "I have a proposition for you."
"Again with the girl love."
"I want you to run for mayor."
Monica jerked, yelped, and blood trickled down her leg. She hissed, rinsed it off, and glared at Claire. "Not funny."
"Not meant to be," Claire said. "I'm really serious. People like familiar names, and there's no name for mayor more familiar than Morrel . Your grandfather was the mayor, your dad, your brother...."
"Look, much as I'd like to be thought of as political royalty, that's not how it works. People have to actually like you to vote for you. I'm not stupid enough to believe they do." But she was listening while she soaped her leg again and shaved. Claire had known she would, because there was nothing Monica craved more than power and popular acceptance-and those things came standard with the plaque on the mayor's door.
"I think I can make it work," Claire said. "We could put up signs asking people to write you in on the bal ot. You've got people who owe you favors, right? And the vamps would like it. They think you're easy to control."
"Hey!"
"I said they think you are. But you wouldn't be here working with Shane if you were allthat easy, would you?" Claire cocked her head. "Missed a spot."
"Would you just get to the point?"
"Morganville needs a new Captain Obvious," she said. "And Morganville needs a new mayor the vamps would approve. You could be both."
"What, like a secret identity?" Monica laughed, but it was a dry, bitter sound. "You're such an idiot."
"Shane is already teaching you how to fight," Claire pointed out. "You already know how to target people you don't like. Why not do it for the sake of the town for a change? Captain Obvious has always been kind of a bully, just a bully on the side of the humans."
Monica had nothing to say to that. She simply frowned as she rinsed the last of the soap from her right leg, did the left, and then cleared the conditioner out of her hair. When she shut off the water, Claire threw her the towel. Monica dried off and wrapped up, and finally shrugged. "It'd never work," she said.
"Maybe not," Claire said, "but you owe me. And you're going to run for office."
Monica studied herself in the mirror, then smiled as she met Claire's eyes. "Wel ," she said, "I would make an awesome mayor. I'm very photogenic."
"Yeah," Claire agreed, straight-faced. "Because that's what really counts."
Shane didn't take it well .
"Monica," he kept saying, allthe way home. "Wait, let's back up. We're going to campaign for Monica. For mayor."
"Yes," Claire said. "I'm sorry, why is this so hard to understand?"
"Did you trip in the shower and hit your head or something? Monica Morrell. I'm pretty sure we still hate her. Let me check my notes-yep, still hate her."
"Wel ," Claire said, "you're taking money to teach her to fight, so you sort of don't hate hate her anymore. And I'm not sure I do, either. She's just sort of annoyingly pathetic now that she doesn't have her position and her posse."
"And you want to turn around and give her back, let's see, a position, with a title and a salary, and the power to make the life of everybody in this town a living hel ? She's not that sad a case."
"Shane, I'm serious about this. We need to get someone on the Elders' Council the vampires can't control, and someone who's human, and someone people might vote for. She's a Morrel . She'd get the sympathy vote because of her brother."
He scrubbed his face with both hands as she unlocked the front door of the Glass House. "Such a bad idea," he said. "In so, so many ways. Tell me we're not actually helping her."
"Wel , I did kind of promise to make signs."
She expected him to kick about that, too, but instead, he got a slow, evil smile on his face and said, "Oh please. allow me."
"Shane-"
"Trust me."
She didn't.
And sure enough, two hours later, she heard Eve's outraged scream coming from downstairs. She rushed into the living room and saw Shane holding...a poster. It was a vivid neon blue thing that read, in block letters, WHY VOTE FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS?VOTE MORRELL!, and it had the saintliest picture of Monica that she'd ever, ever seen beneath it. Honestly, it couldn't have looked more angelic if Shane had Photoshopped a halo on it.
It also had one of those bright yel ow cal out stars in the corner that read ENDORSED BY CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!HUMAN APPROVED!, plus a copy of the write-in bal ot with Monica's name written boldly in marker.
It was simultaneously the funniest thing Claire had ever seen, and the most appal ing.
Eve couldn't seem to think of anything to say. She just stared...first at the poster, then at Shane, then back to the poster, as if she couldn't imagine a world in which this had happened. Finally, she said, "I really, really hope this is a joke. If it isn't, Monica's going to killyou. And then she'l wrap you in that poster and bury you."
