Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13)

Bitter Blood (The Morganville Vampires #13) Page 8

CLAIRE

It wasn't over, not by a long shot, but at least they were left alone to put up the rest of the posters; that didn't mean people weren't glaring at them, or saying mean things, but nobody actively tried to hurt them. Claire did wonder if Mrs. Ramos would be tearing down posters behind them-and if she'd approve of Oliver doing the same thing. Maybe they'd meet in the middle. That would be an interesting thing to witness.

By the time they'd stapled the last cardboard to a pole, in front of Morganville High ("Go Vipers!"), Claire was thoroughly worn out. This, she thought, had to be the worst day off ever.... They hadn't even stopped for much of a lunch, though they'd wolfed down some cookies between stops and had a couple of Cokes. Morganville wasn't a very big town, but they'd been down almost every street of it, and that was just about enough for one day in her opinion. She was going to voice it, but she didn't have to, because Shane gave her a look that told her he was just as tired, and said, "Can we skip the lab and go home?"

"Home," she said, and slipped her arm through his. The only weight now was the stapler dragging down her backpack (and the anti-vamp knife and extra stakes that she rarely left behind) but it still felt like a ton. Shane took it from her and slipped it on one shoulder, and she envied those muscles-and admired them, too. They felt so warm and firm beneath her fingers, and it made her a bit light-headed, never mind the exhaustion. "What do you think Monica's doing right now?"

"Bullying someone to make her a crappy Web site and some buttons?"

Claire groaned, because he was almost certainly right. "We created a monster."

"Wel , no. But we're enabling one."

By common unspoken consent, they avoided the street Common Grounds was on, which put them on a different, less traveled avenue; it was one that held some bad memories, Claire realized, and wished they'd risked Oliver's wrath one more time.

This was the street where Shane's house had once stood. There was nothing in the spot now except a bare, weed-choked lot, a cracked foundation, and the crumbling remains of what would have once been a fireplace. Even the mailbox, which had been leaning before, had given up the ghost and fal en to pieces of random, rusted metal.

"We don't-maybe we should-" She couldn't think how to say it, or even if she should, but Shane just kept walking, eyes fixed on the pavement ahead.

"It's okay," he said. She might have even believed him, a little, except for the slight hunch to his shoulders, and the way he'd lowered his head to let his shaggy hair veil his expression. "It's just an empty lot."

It wasn't. It was ful -ful of grief and anger, anguish and terror. She could almost feel it like needles on her skin, an irresistible urge to slow down, to stop, to look. She wondered if Shane felt it, too. Maybe he did. He wasn't walking quite as quickly as they approached the silent empty spot, which was choked with trash, scattered fire-blackened bricks, and the snarled bal s of tumbleweeds.

It was the spot where Shane's family home had once stood, before it had burned down, taking his sister away with it.

Just as they took their first steps in front of it, Shane stopped. Just...stopped, not moving at all, head still down, hands in his pockets. He slowly looked up, right into Claire's startled eyes, and said, "Did you hear that?"

She shook her head, confused. allshe heard was the normal, constant background noise of daily life-TV sets whispering from distant houses, radios in passing cars, the rattle of blown tumbleweeds against chain-link fences.

And then she heard something that sounded like a very soft, but clear, whisper. She couldn't have said what it meant, couldn't make out the word, but it didn't sound like distant conversation, or TV dialogue, or anything like that. It sounded very...specific. And very close.

"Maybe...a cat?" she guessed. It could have been a cat. But she didn't see anything as she glanced over the ruins of Shane's childhood. The only things still recognizable about it having been a home was the foundation-cracked in places, but still there where it wasn't hidden by weeds- and the jumbled outline of what must have once been a brick fireplace.

Shane didn't look toward the lot at all. He kept looking at her, and she saw his eyes widen just as she, too, heard what he was hearing. A voice. A clear girl's voice, very, very soft, saying, Shane.

His face drained completely of color, and Claire thought for a second he was going to hit the pavement, but he managed to hold on, somehow, and turned toward the lot to say, "Lyss?" He took a tentative step toward it, but stopped at the edge of the sidewalk. "Alyssa?"

Shane.

It was very clear, and it did not sound like a real person's voice-there was something eerie and cold and distant about it. Claire remembered the draug, the vampires' enemies who lurked in water and lured with song; this held something of that quality to it-something just not right. She grabbed Shane's sleeve as he started to step onto the lot's dirt. "No," she said. "Don't."

He stared at the tumbled wreckage of his house, and said, "I have to. She's here, Claire. It's Alyssa."

His sister, Claire knew, had died in the fire that had wrecked this house-and he hadn't been able to save her. It was the first, and maybe the biggest, trauma in a life that had since had way too many.

She didn't even try to argue that it was impossible for his sister to be here, talking to him. There were far crazier things in Morganville than that.

Ghosts? Those were no more unusual than drunken frat boys on a Friday night.

But she was scared. Very scared. Because there was a vast difference between ghosts who manifested themselves in the Founder Houses- like the Glass House, in which they lived-and one who could talk from thin air, powered by nothing at all. The first kind she could explain, theoretically at least. This?

Not so much.

"I have to do this," Shane said again, and pulled free of her. He stepped into the weeds, into what had once been the carefully tended front lawn of a relatively stable family, and walked steadily forward. The broken remains of a sidewalk were hidden under those weeds, Claire realized; it was buckled and broken into raw chunks, but it was recognizable when she looked for it. Shane kept going forward, then stopped and said, "This used to be the front door."

Claire devoutly did not want to do it, but she couldn't leave him alone, not here, not like this. So she stepped forward, and instantly felt a chill close in over her-something that didn't want her here. The pins-and-needles feeling swept over her again, and she almost stopped and backed up...but she wasn't going to let it stop her.

Shane needed her.

She slipped her hand into his, and he squeezed it hard. His face was set, jawline tight, and whatever he was looking at, it was not the rubble in front of them. "She died upstairs," Shane said. "Lyss? Can you hear me?"

"I really don't know if this is a good-" Claire caught her breath as the pins and needles poked again, deeply. Painfully. She could almost see the tiny little stab marks on her arms, the beads of blood, though she knew there was no physical damage at all.

"Lyss?" Shane stepped forward, over the nonexistent threshold, into what would have been the house. "Alyssa-"

He got an answer. Shane. It was a sigh, ful of something Claire couldn't really comprehend-maybe a sadness, maybe longing, maybe something darker. You came back.

He sucked in a deep, shaking breath, and let go of Claire's hand to reach forward, into empty air. "Oh God, Lyss, I thought-how can you still be -"

Always here, the whisper said. So much sadness; Claire could hear it now. The resentment she felt was that of a baby sister hating that someone else had taken her brother from her; it might be dangerous, but it was understandable, and the sadness brought a lump into Claire's throat. Can't go. Help.

"I can't," Shane whispered. "I can't help you. I couldn't then and I can't now, Lyss.... I don't know how, okay? I don't know what you need!"

Home.

There were tears shining in his eyes now, and he was shaking. "I can't," he said again. "Home's gone, Lyss. You have to-you have to move on. I have."

No.

There was a wisp of movement at the edge of Claire's vision, and then she felt a shove, a distinct shove, that made her take a step back toward the sidewalk. When she tried to move toward Shane again, the pins and needles came back, but it felt more like a pinch now, sudden and vicious. She hissed and grabbed her arm, and this time when she looked down, she saw she had a red mark, just as if someone had physically hurt her.

Alyssa really didn't care for the idea that her brother had found a girlfriend, and Claire found herself skipping backward, pushed and bul ied back allthe way to the sidewalk.

Shane stayed where he was. "Please, can I-can I see you?"

There was that faint hint of movement again, mists at the corners of her vision, and Claire thought that for a second she saw a ghostly shadow appear against the still -standing bricks of the fireplace...but it was gone in seconds, blown away.

Please help me, Alyssa's whisper said. Shane, help me.

"I don't know how!"

Don't leave me alone.

Claire suddenly didn't like where this was going. Maybe she'd seen too many Japanese horror movies, and maybe it was just a tingle of warning from generations of superstitious ancestors, but suddenly she knew that what Alyssa wanted was not to be saved, but for Shane to join her.

In death.

She didn't know what Shane might have done, because just as she came to that breath-stopping conclusion, she caught sight of a shiny black van pul ing around the corner. For a second she didn't connect it to anything in particular, and then she recognized the logo on the van's door.

Great. "Shane-we've got company," she said. "Ghost-hunting company."

"What?" Shane turned and looked at her blankly, then at where she pointed. Not only had the ghost hunters arrived, but the two hosts-Angel and Jenna-were already out and walking toward them. Jenna had something in her hands that looked like an electronic metering device; it was making strange, weird noises like a frequency tuner. Angel had what looked like a tape recorder. And behind them, following with a bulky handheld camera on his shoulder, was Tyler.

"-Activity," Jenna was saying in an intense voice. "Definitely some significant signs here. I got a huge spike from the van, and it's even bigger now. Whatever's out here, it's definitely worth checking into."

"Where?" Angel sounded tired and more than a little irritated. "We've had a lot of false alarms already. If I didn't know better, I'd think the local residents were trying to screw us up-oh, hel o. Look, it's the kids from the courthouse. Where's your pretty friend?"

Claire didn't know which to take offense at more-the implication that she wasn't pretty, or that Monica might be considered a friend. She was saved from answering by Shane, who walked up to her and kept walking until he was blocking the path to the vacant lot completely. "Get lost," he said flatly. "I'm not in the mood."

"Excuse me?" Jenna said, and tried to move around him. He got in her way. "Hey! This isn't private property. It's a public sidewalk! We are fully within our rights to be here."

While she and Shane were facing off, Claire heard Angel mutter to Tyler, "Make sure you're getting allthis. It's great stuff. We can use it in the teasers. The town that didn't want to know."

"You," Shane said, and pointed past Angel, at Tyler and the camera. "Turn it off. Now."

"Can't do that, bro. We're working here," Tyler said. "Relax. Just let us do our job."

"Do it somewhere else. You don't do it here."

"Why?" Jenna was staring at him intently, and past him, at the empty lot. She held out her meter gadget, and Claire could hear the tones it gave off. She didn't need to be an expert in ghostology to know it was pinging like mad. "Something you don't want us to see, perhaps?"

"Just back the hel off, lady. I mean it-"

"We'l see about this," Angel said, and pulled out a cel phone. Theatrically, of course. "We do have a permit to film direct from the mayor's office!"

"Let's see it," Shane said. "Go ahead; cal somebody. I'll wait." He stared Angel down until the other man put the phone away. "Yeah. Thought so.

Look, just do us alla favor, okay? Cal it a day, get in your van, and head to some other town where they don't mind your making fun of dead people, all right?"

"That's not what we're doing!" Jenna said sharply. "I'm very committed to trying to locate those who are lost and stuck, and finding a way to bring them some peace. How dare you say-"

"I don't know-because you arrange allthis crap for ratings, advertisers, and money? Maybe that?" Shane stepped forward, and he was using al his size and attitude this time. "Just go. Get off this street."

The device that Jenna was holding gave a sudden shril alarm; she jerked in surprise and stared at it, then turned it to Angel. Tyler angled in to get a close-up of the meter.

"What?" Shane snapped.

"We got a huge electromagnetic spike," Jenna said. "It's coming from that vacant lot behind you. I've never seen anything like it-"

Shane. It was a very clear, cold, longing whisper, and it came from right behind them. And it just froze everyone right in place. Claire had a vivid, clear snapshot of them: Tyler, mouth open behind his camera; Angel, stunned silent; Jenna, eyes wide.

And Shane.

Shane's lips parted, but he didn't speak. His face had gone blank and pale, and he actually took a long step backward, pul ing Claire with him. She didn't mind. That voice had a scary, otherworldly quality that didn't sound human.

Angel almost dropped his recorder, but he gained his composure and moved in to the camera to get a close-up. "Did you hear that?" he asked Tyler, then turned to Jenna. "That was no EVP. That was a voice."

"Someone's messing with us," Jenna said in annoyance. "Cut, Tyler."

"I don't think so," he said. "Rol ing. Keep going."

"Tyler!"

"Rol ing, Jenna, keep rol ing!"

"I'm tel ing you, the locals are having us on. We'l probably find some kind of EM transmitter out here, and some giggling high schooler with a megaphone...."

"Rolling!"

"Okay, okay, it's digital. At least you're not wasting film...." She took in a deep breath and said, in her tense ghost-hunting voice, "We may have gotten an actual spirit contact! I can't even begin to describe how incredibly rare this is!"

"Can you speak to us again?" Angel said, and if possible, he got even more pompous. "You said a name. Can you say it again?"

Nothing.

"I think it said shame," Jenna said. "Is it a shame you're gone? Are you ashamed of something?"

"Oh, for the love of-" Claire couldn't bite back her exasperation. "Come on. We have to go, now." She very deliberately didn't use his name.

They didn't seem bright enough to make the connection, but even so...

"That's Alyssa," Shane said. "I'm tel ing you, it's her. My sister is right there."

Dammit. well , there went her entire nothing to see here, move along plan.

"No such thing as ghosts," she said, and pointedly looked at the camera. Shane, recovering from the shock, finally got back on script enough to nod. "I think someone's messing with you. really. You need to just-chalk it up to locals being stupid."

"Or," Shane said, "you could poke around in the dark. That's fun. There might be fewer annoying visitors if you tried it."

"Excuse me?" Jenna said. "Are you threatening us?"

"No, just making an observation. I mean, wandering around in the dark isn't a good idea, lady. Ask anybody." He shrugged. "Meth. It's a cancer around here. So I've heard, anyway."

"Oh," she said, and seemed to take it seriously for the first time. "It is a problem in a lot of places. I should have thought of that. Guys, maybe we should pack it in until later."

"But we heard that," Angel protested. "We should at least do EVP in the vacant lot, just in case!"

Shane started to object, but Claire tugged at his arm, urgently. Let them, she mouthed, and he finally shrugged and stepped out of the way. "Knock yourself out," he said. "Try not to get bitten by any rattlesnakes or anything."

"Snakes?" Tyler suddenly sounded very, very nervous.

"Or, you know, scorpions," Claire said cheerfully. "And tarantulas. We have those. Oh, and black widows and brown recluse spiders-they love it out here. You'l find them allover the place. If you get bitten, just be sure to, you know, cal 911. They can most always save you."

"Most always," Shane echoed.

They walked on, leaving the three visitors-no longer quite so eager to delve in-debating the risks. As they did, Shane pulled out his phone. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Texting Michael," he said. "He needs to get to somebody in the vamp hierarchy and get these idiots off the street before this becomes really, really public and a big PR problem...." He paused and looked up. "Oh hel . Twice in one day? Who did I piss off upstairs to make that happen?"

He meant that Monica Morrel had just crossed their path, again. She was standing against the side of a big, trashy-looking van, tongue wrestling her current boy admirer, just around the corner from where Shane's home had once been. Like most of Monica's boyfriends, her current beau was a big side of beef, sporty, with an IQ of about room temperature, and she was climbing him like ivy up a tree.

"Excuse me, Dan," Shane said as they got closer. "I think you got something on you-oh, hey, Monica. Didn't see you there."

She broke off the kiss to glare at him. "Freak."

"Any particular reason you're hanging out here, exactly? Not your usual territory. I don't see any stores within credit-card distance."

Her boyfriend-Dan, apparently-looked like a varsity footbal jock; he had the muscles, the bulk, and the jarhead hairstyle. Monica tended to attract the big-but-dumb ones, and this one, from the questioning look he sent toward them, seemed to run to type. "She said this was the right place," he said, "to set up the-"

"Shut up," Monica said.

"Set up the what?" Shane asked. "Would you maybe be planning to mess with our ghost-hunting friends?"

"Aren't you?" she shot back. "Yeah. We've got this thing in the van, totally guaranteed to screw up their-what is it?"

"Screw up their shit," Dan said, earnestly. "You know, their monitoring shit. It's going to play Black Sabbath backward and really freak 'em out. I read it on the Internet."

"Jesus, Dan," Shane said. He almost sounded impressed. "You are just...landmark stupid, aren't you? Has Guinness cal ed yet about that world record?"

Dan growled and came at him, and that was of course a mistake; Shane balanced lightly on the bal s of his feet, avoided his rush, dodged back toward the van, and as Dan lined up to rush him again, sidestepped like a matador and sent Dan crashing like a bul et headfirst into the metal. Dan didn't go down, but he definitely thought about it. He leaned heavily on the metal and stared blankly into the distance for a minute. His forehead had a vivid red mark on it, and Shane said, "You probably ought to get some ice on that, man."

"Yeah," Dan said. "Yeah, thanks, bro." He didn't dare come after Shane again, so he turned on Monica with a glare. "Wel ? Bril iant plan, Mayor. What else you got?"

"Oh, Dan, don't be like that-"

"Play your own stupid pranks for a change."

Monica gave him a searing glare of disappointment, and he shrugged and got in the van. In seconds, it fired up and drove away in a belch of smoke.

Leaving Monica behind. She shot Claire a look of fury mixed with outrage. "I was trying to help get those jackasses out of town. Being proactive and allmayorlike! What the hel were you two doing? Auditioning for starring roles in their stupid show?"

They'd attracted attention, of course. It wasn't from surrounding houses, since no one bothered to look outside at mysterious fighting in the streets for entirely sensible reasons, but from the team from After Death that had come charging over with cameras, microphones, and gadgets. Angel immediately fixed his model's smile straight on Monica. "Are these two bothering you, lovely lady?"

"Please," Claire muttered, but it was too late; Monica was batting her eyes and putting on her best wounded-butterfly act as she crowded up next to her newly arrived knight in shining leather shoes.

"Oh yes," she breathed. "Did you see? He beat up my boyfriend!"

"Cal the police," Angel ordered Tyler, who was still recording, but Tyler was distracted by Jenna, who was whacking her electronic meter device in obvious irritation.

"Hey, hey, hey, it's technology, not a drum!" he said, and took it from her. "What? What's wrong with it?"

"I had a strong signal!" she said. "It was there, I swear it was, but it just vanished about thirty seconds ago. I think they scared it off."

"You were reading something wrong."

"I saw it! It was maxed out in that vacant lot-I'm tel ing you...."

"Oh-um, that was my boyfriend," Monica said, and brought the overlapping chaos to a dead halt. "He had the van that just took off? He was broadcasting a signal to make you think it was some kind of ghost. He thought it was kind of funny."

Angel was looking at Monica with a heartbroken expression. "Why would you do that?"

"It was Dan, not-"

"Why do teenagers do anything?" Jenna snapped. She stepped into Monica's space, looking for the world as if she was feeling just as strong an impulse to slap the girl as Claire was. "Get lost, before I cal the cops."

"It's not against the law!"

"You're right. Get lost before I do something that is against the law, like putting my fist in your face."

"Hey!" Monica stepped into Jenna's space now, cheeks flushing a bright, hectic pink. "Do you know who I am?"

"Last year's high school queen bee who's no longer relevant but still thinks she is?" Jenna shot back, and Claire's eyes widened at the accuracy of the thrust. So did Monica's. "Look, sweetie, I've seen a dozen one-stoplight towns just like this, and there's always somebody just like you who thinks you're...wel , somebody."

Monica opened her mouth to reply, but didn't. She was remembering that she was, in fact, nobody, at least by her own standards; she was just another bully now, with nothing to back it up. She didn't even have her best friends to enable her. Even her Cro-Magnon boyfriend had bailed on her at the first sign of trouble.

And it hurt. In that moment, though she shouldn't have, Claire felt a little twinge of sympathy.

"I'm running for mayor!" Monica ral ied enough to snap back. "So careful what you say, because my first official act would be running you three out of town on a rail!"

Jenna shrugged and glared at Angel, who was still looking gravely disappointed, and said, "Come on, let's retake that last bit over in the vacant lot. We can still save some of the footage." She set out at a rapid pace around the corner, heading for the vacant lot. After a hesitation, Tyler fol owed her.

Angel shrugged and said, "I'm sorry, but you see how it is. We have work to do." This time, there was no hand kissing, and not much flirting, either.

"Wait," Monica said as he started to walk off. "You're just going to leave me here? Alone? With them?"

Angel flashed her a perfect smile but kept walking. "I'm sure they'l see you get home safe."

"Oh yeah," Shane said. "On my to-do list, right after discovering Atlantis. Enjoy your walk, Princess Mayor." He put his arm around Claire and tipped her chin up to look into her eyes. "You okay? Not hurt?"

"No," she said. "You?"

"The only way Dan can actually hurt me is to try to have a conversation. He may be on the col ege footbal team, but trust me, he's just barely junior varsity on street fighting."

Monica looked from the departing television people back to the two of them, then at the empty street. Looking for some kind of third option, Claire thought. "You could just go it alone," Claire said, with a little too much sweetness. "I'm sure you'l be safe. After all, everybody knows who you are."

"Thanks to our posters," Shane put in.

"You know, it's your fault my life is such a hel , anyway, so spare me your little gestures!"

"So now you're blaming us for your life fal ing apart, after a lifetime of earning it? Interesting."

"My life was fine before you came here!" Monica spat.

Shane gave her a long, level look. "You know whose life wasn't so fine? Pretty much everybody else's. Including the vampires', not that I'm counting that for a plus, but you get the idea."

She ignored Shane. Oddly, because those two were almost always gasoline and a match. "I need an escort home," she announced to the air somewhere between the two of them. "Tel me you're going that way."

Shane shrugged when Claire glanced at him. "Wel , I guess we'd better. How can she be mayor if she's dead in a ditch?"

"She just taunted you with the voice of your dead sister!"

"No," Monica said.

"What?" Claire snapped; she was getting really angry now, angry enough to do or say something she couldn't take back. And Shane, oddly, wasn't.

"I didn't do that," Monica said, and met Shane's eyes. "I wouldn't do that. Dan and I were messing with their electronics, and we were planning to sneak over and make some rattling noises. But I swear, I didn't pretend to be your sister."

"She wouldn't," Shane said softly. "Not after Richard, anyway." There was, Claire realized, some kind of understanding between the two of them now, something she didn't quite get but could see; it wasn't affection, and it sure wasn't a crush, but a kind of mutual...caution. As if they understood each of them had a place that could be hurt, and neither was wil ing to go there anymore.

"Then what was that? Was it really-really-" She couldn't finish the thought. She was feeling a little unstuck now, as if the world were bending around her.... She thought she'd seen enough of Morganville that something like that would never happen again.

"I don't know," Shane said, "but I intend to find out."

Walking Monica home was just exactly as fun as Claire expected, which was not fun at all. She complained about having to walk in her heels (to which Shane, proving he was not totally off the Let's Hate Monica bandwagon, suggested she mount her broom and fly home); she complained about the hot weather, and sweat ruining her outfit; she complained about the lack of cab service (Claire had to agree she had a point there-Morganville desperately needed cabs).

Claire had begun to tune her out by that point, since they were within sight of Monica's luxury apartment complex (the only one in Morganville, in fact, with ten apartments that cost more than most of the town could even think about paying). Monica had sold the Morrel family home, which had mostly survived allthe troubles of the past few years intact except for party damage, and made a tidy bank account to allow her to not work for at least a couple of years, though it probably wouldn't last at the rate Monica blew through designer shoes.

And then Monica said, "I heard people talking around town today. Your friends ought to be watching their backs, 'cause the knives are out."

That got Claire's attention, fast. Shane's, too. They both stopped walking, and Monica clomped on a few more steps before coming to a halt and saying, "What? Like you didn't know?"

"What are you talking about?" Shane closed the distance toward her, fast. "What did you hear? Spil it!"

"Hey, hey, hold on!" She tried to back up, but she overbalanced on her precarious heels and almost went down; Shane grabbed her arm and steadied her, and didn't let go. "Look, I don't know why you're so surprised and all! Let go!"

"Not untillyou answer the question. What about Michael and Eve?"

"Oh, come on. A vamp marrying a human gets the fanged ones allupset, and Eve made herself look like the ultimate fang-banger to allthe humans by putting a ring on one, so what did you expect, exactly? Flowers and parades? This is Texas. We're still figuring out how to spell tolerance."

"I said, what do you know about it? Where? When? Who's involved?"

"Let go, jerk!"

He didn't say anything, but Claire was almost sure he squeezed, because Monica made a funny little sound and went very still . "Okay," she said. "Okay, jackass, you win. It's just general talk as far as I know, but some people are saying an example should be made. Michael and Eve are just handy targets standing in the middle of the war zone. Come to think of it, so's your girlfriend, what with allher cozying up to Amelie."

Shane let her go. "You're one to talk."

"Yeah, I am. I know what it's like to think you're secure and safe and allof a sudden be standing allalone. You think you and your friends are the only ones in the crosshairs? Do you have any idea how many people want to hurt me?"

Monica was more self-aware than Claire had ever given her credit for. She knew how things were-maybe better than Shane, surprisingly enough. She'd probably had to learn how to protect herself fast, once the town had stopped being cowed by her status as Self-Crowned Princess.

"Then you shouldn't be pissing off the only ones who might listen to you when you scream for help," Shane said. "Get me?"

Monica finally nodded, a little unwil ingly. She shot a quick, unreadable look at Claire, and then turned and strode up the walk to her apartment.

They watched as she produced a key (though where she'd kept it on that skintight dress was a mystery) and unlocked her door. Once she was inside, and the lights were on, Shane put his hands in his pockets and extended an elbow to Claire, who threaded her arm through his.

"You're super nice to her, allof a sudden," Claire said.

"Ha. If I was super nice to her, she wouldn't have bruises on her arm right now," he said. "But I'm wil ing to forget to hate her, every once in a while. She's had it rough these past couple of years."

"So have you."

He flashed her a smile. "I never did have much, so having it rough came with the territory. I was conditioned for it. And you're forgetting the most important thing that's different."

"You don't have a fashion addiction to skintight clothes?"

"I have you," he said, and the warmth in his voice took her breath away. She let go of his arm and crowded in close as they walked, and he hugged her close. It was awkward making progress that way, but it felt so sweet. "Okay, and I don't have a fashion addiction. Valid point."

"You don't think she knows something about a plot to hurt Michael and Eve, do you? The way she said that back there..."

"I don't know," Shane said. "I don't think she'd hide it; she'd really like teasing us with it, but she'd give it up. She'd want to, I think. It's not as if she wants Michael dead, anyway. She always had a little bit of a thing for him."

"And you," Claire said, and elbowed him. "More than a little bit."

"Ugh. Please don't say that or I'll lose my wil to live."

"I love you." It came out of her spontaneously, and she felt a little jolt of adrenaline, then a little burst of fear right on the heels of it. There had been no reason to say it now, walking down the street, but it had just seemed...right. She was a little afraid that Shane would think it was clingy, or fake, but when she glanced over at him, she saw he was smiling-an easy, relaxed smile, uncomplicated and happy.

It wasn't something she saw very often, and it made her feel glorious.

"I love you, too," he said, and that felt like some kind of milestone to her, that they felt easy enough with each other to just say it whenever they wanted, without feeling awkward about it, or afraid.

We're growing up, she thought. We're growing up together.

He put his arm around her, and they walked close together, allthe way home. The setting sun was lurid reds and golds, spil ing into the vast and open sky, and it was as beautiful a thing as Claire had ever seen in Morganville.

Peaceful.

It was the last of that, though.