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"Him? His name's Wil iam Batiste. We used to cal him Billy Bats. I think Monica might have kissed him once back in junior high. To be fair, she kissed most of the school who stood in one place long enough. Billy's kind of a hard-core resistance guy. Doesn't like the Morrel s from way back."
"I suppose not everybody can be a yes," Claire said.
"I think we're lucky if she gets the terror and apathy vote," Shane said. "We've still got another ten to put up this afternoon. You still up for it?"
"Sure," Claire said. "It's my free day, anyway. If you don't mind, though, could we stop in at the lab? Just to check on Myrnin?"
Shane wasn't enthusiastic, but he shrugged; he probably figured it was a smal price to pay, since he had her allday long. "We just need to be done before dark," he said. "I'm not that dedicated a campaign staffer. Especially for Monica."
The town seemed calm and back to normal, and the sounds of construction were everywhere-saws, grinders, hammers. It allsounded industrious and positive. There were more Protection signs visible, too; many shops were displaying them in the windows now, or at least at the counters, and she was seeing more Morganville residents wearing bracelets with their Protectors' symbols on them, too. Morganville was on its way back...but to what? Not the same town it had been before the draug. Maybe it was turning the clock allthe way back to what it had been in the beginning, with the vampires in iron control.
Not if we have anything to say about it, she thought, and helped Shane staple another poster to a telephone pole outside Common Grounds.
They stepped back to admire their work, and Claire became aware of someone standing in the shadow of the awning next to her. She hadn't felt him arrive, but suddenly Oliver was just...there.
He was a solid, daunting presence even though he was wearing what Claire thought of as his nice-hippie disguise-gray-threaded hair tied back in a ponytail, a dark T-shirt, and jeans under the long tie-dyed apron with the Common Grounds logo on it. He smel ed like coffee, a warm and welcoming kind of scent even though under it he was cold as marble.
He was staring at the poster with an oddly blank expression. "I see," he finally said. "You've alllost your minds."
"Nope," Shane said, and tossed the stapler up in the air in a fine display of both bravado and stupidity; he could have lost a finger to that thing if it had gone off. "Found our cal ing. We're activists. And hey, Monica takes a decent picture. That's allyou really need in a candidate, right?"
Shane got a ful -on glare for that one, and Claire felt the burn even from the edges of it. "Don't test me, boy," Oliver said, velvet-soft. "I'm no one you should play games with these days. I've been too gentle with you; I've let you and your friends run riot. No more. You'l take that down."
Shane raised his eyebrows. "Why?"
Because I said so was the obvious answer, but Oliver smiled thinly and said, "It's against code."
Their poster wasn't the only one on the pole; there were flyers for lost pets, missing persons, a new band playing (probably badly) at Common Grounds over the weekend, cheap insurance, babysitting.... Claire said, "You never had a problem with it before."
"And now I do." Oliver stepped out in the sunlight, even though his skin immediately began to turn a little pink where the glare touched it, and he began ripping things off the pole without any regard for splinters. His fingernails left gouges in the wood half an inch deep. He shredded Monica's poster in half with a casual swipe, dropped the pieces to the ground, and kicked them back toward Shane. "And now you're littering as well . Pick it up."
Shane didn't move. He didn't speak. He just stood there, stapler in his hand, and it looked...dangerous.
"Pick it up or I'll have you arrested," Oliver said. "Both of you. And no one wil be coming to baillyou out this time. If Eve tries, she'l join you."
"Michael-"
"I can handle Michael Glass." Oliver's words guil otined whatever Shane was going to say as he stepped back into the shadows. There was a faint wisp of smoke coming off his skin, but it stopped as soon as he was out of the sun, and the burn faded almost as quickly. On the other hand, the glow of his eyes was eerily specific. "Pick. It. Up."
Shane still didn't move, and Claire sensed, with fatal dismay, that he didn't intend to-so she did. She bent over and grabbed up the poster and the other shredded paper, walked over, and deposited it into the Common Grounds trash can next to the entry door. And it might have been okay, except that Oliver just had to purr, "Good girl," at her as if she were his personal pet, and Shane-
Shane punched him.
The vampire never saw it coming, because he was looking straight at Claire, enjoying his little moment of triumph; Shane's fist caught him on the side of the jaw, and the power behind it was massive enough that Oliver actually staggered before turning with supernatural litheness and springing on her boyfriend so fast, it was as if he'd been launched from a catapult. He slammed Shane back into the brick wal next to the window and pinned him there with an arm across his throat. When Shane tried to push him back, Oliver caught his hand and wrenched it hard to the side. Shane froze.
"Nothing's broken," Oliver said, "but it's half an inch away. So please, do that again, boy. I'll crush every bone you have, a handful at a time, and have you pleading for me to finish-"
He cut off abruptly because Claire made him shut up, by the simple expedient of putting the point of a thin-bladed silver knife against his back, just over where it needed to go to reach his heart. "Let go," she said. "I picked up the trash, just like you said. We're even."
They weren't, and she knew it without him even bothering to say it, but Oliver silently released Shane's hand. Claire stepped away, knife still drawn and ready, as Shane pushed Oliver back with a violent shove and picked up the stapler from where it had fal en on the pavement.
"You owe us for a poster," Shane said. "They cost me five bucks apiece. I'll expect a free drink in exchange."
"So wil I," Oliver said, "from the vein, the next time I catch either of you in less...visible circumstances." He showed teeth, and walked back into the coffee shop.
"I guess that means Monica can't count on his vote, either," Shane said. It sounded like a joke, but he was trembling, and clenching the stapler way too hard. He knew, as Claire did, that they'd just passed over some kind of line. Maybe permanently.
"Why?" she asked him, a little plaintively. "Why did you do that?"
"Nobody talks to you that way," he said. "Not even him."
He draped his arm around her shoulders, picked up the other signs, and they continued on to the next stop.
At the next stop Claire and Shane made to put up Monica's poster, they found someone else there before them stapling notices: a serious-looking older woman and a younger man, probably her son. He was about Shane's height, but thin as a whip. He nodded to Claire as if he knew her (and she didn't think they'd ever met), then fixed his gaze on Shane. "Hey, man," he said, and offered his hand. "What's up?"
"Nothing much. How are you?"
"Good, good. You remember my mom, Flora Ramos, right?"
"Mrs. Ramos, sure, I remember the burritos you used to make for Enrique in grade school," Shane said. "He used to trade them to me if I gave up my M&Ms. I always made the deal; that's how good they were."
"You gave away my burritos, 'Rique?" Mrs. Ramos said, and raised her eyebrows at her son. He spread his hands and shrugged.
"You gave 'em to me every day," he said. "So yeah."
"They were delicious," Shane said. "Hey, he made a profit. He used to cut them in half and trade each separately."
"Enrique."
"I was an entrepreneur, Mama." Enrique gave her a devastating grin. "What, you want my M&Ms now?" In answer, she handed him a smal letter- sized sheet of paper, and he held it against the telephone pole as she stapled it in place.
The flyer said, captain obvious for mayor, and it had a big question mark underneath the caption where a picture ought to go. The slogan said, vote human. That was all.
"What the hel ?" Shane asked, and pointed at the blank picture. "Mrs. Ramos, Captain Obvious left town. You can't ask people to vote for somebody who isn't even here."
