Текст книги "Fade Out"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

“Don’t you dare tell me I can’t go,” she said. “Don’t even, Shane. I’m on those videos, too. You knowI am.”

He put the plate down. “Michael went alone?”

“Mr. Vampire Superhero doesn’t need backup.” Well, that wasn’t quite fair. “He’s meeting Detective Hess there. But still.”

The kitchen door swung open, and Eve blazed back in, vivid in black and white, a mime on a mission. She tossed her keys in a nervous jingle of metal and said, “Weapons.”

Nobody argued that it would only be Kim they were going up against. Shane grabbed a black nylon bag from under the counter—in other towns, people might keep emergency supplies of food and water, maybe a medical kit, but in Morganville, their emergency readiness kit consisted of stakes and silver-coated knives. “Got it,” he said, and tossed it over one shoulder. “Claire—”

“Don’t even!”

He grinned and tossed her a second bag. “Silver nitrate and water in a Super Soaker,” he told her. “My own invention. Ought to be good at twenty feet, kind of like wasp spray.”

Oh. “You get me the nicest things.”

“Anybody can get jewelry. Posers.”

Eve rolled her eyes. “Let’s go, comedian.”

As she tossed the keys again, Shane grabbed them in midair. “I may be a comedian, but you look like a mime, anybody ever tell you that?”

He dashed for the door. Eve followed. Claire shouldered the nylon bag and prepared to shut the door of the house; as she did, she felt a wave of emotion sweep through her. The house, Michael’s house, was worried. It was almostalive, some of the time. Like now.

“It’ll be okay,” she told it, and patted the countertop. “He’ll be okay. We’llbe okay.”

The lights dimmed a little as she shut the door.

Eve’s car wouldn’t start.

“Um . . . this isn’t good,” Eve said as Shane cranked the engine again. There was a click, and nothing. “You’ve got to be kidding me. This is notthe time, stupid evil hunk of junk!” She slapped the dashboard, which had zero effect. “Come on, work!”

It was very dark outside—no streetlights on, and the moon and stars were veiled by thick, fast-moving clouds. In the glow of the dashboard, Shane and Eve looked worried. Shane pulled the old-fashioned lever under the dash, and the hood of the car popped up with a thick clunkof metal. “Stay inside,” he said. “I’m going to take a look.”

“Because you’ve got guy parts, you’re automatically a better mechanic than me? I don’t thinkso,” Eve said, and bailed out of the passenger side. Shane banged the back of his head against the seat.

“Seriously,” he said. “Why is it always so hard with her?”

“She’s worried,” Claire said.

“We’re all worried. Youstay in the car.”

“ Idon’t know anything about cars. I will.”

“Finally, a girl with some sense.” He leaned over the seat to kiss her, then got out to join Eve as she hauled the giant, heavy hood of the car upward. From that point on, Claire had a limited view of what was going on—the hood, the dark night outside, some lights glowing in nearby houses. . . .

A car turned the corner, and its headlights swept color over darkness, lighting up the Glass House in all its decaying Victorian glory, then the sun-faded picket fence, the spring crop of weeds along the curb. . . .

And then came a group of vampires out of the darkness, heading for Shane and Eve. One of them was Morley, the skanky homeless dude from the cemetery. She supposed the others were his friends; they didn’t look as polished and well-groomed as most of the other vamps seemed to be. These looked hungry, mean, and dirty.

Claire lunged across the big bench seat from the back and slammed her hand down on the horn. It was as loud as a foghorn, and she heard a sharp bang as either Eve or Shane hit their head on the hood of the car as they straightened up.

“Guys!” she yelled. “Trouble!”

Shane, one hand held to the top of his head, opened the back door and pulled her out. “Door,” he said. “Get back inside. The car thing isn’t happening.”

Claire didn’t argue. She dug her front door key out of her jeans pocket as she ran, banged open the front gate, and skidded to a halt in front of the door. The porch light flickered on.

“Thanks,” she told the house absently, jammed the key into the lock, and opened the door.

Shane was at the foot of the steps, but he’d stopped, looking back.

Eve was trapped between the car and the house, and she was surrounded by vampires. Claire gasped, and saw that neither Shane nor Eve had had time to grab the weapons bag out of the car.

She still had hers.

Morley lunged forward, slamming Eve against the rounded fender of her car, and Eve’s scream of panic split the night. Shane rushed toward her, pulling a stake from his jacket, but it wasn’t going to help. There were six of them, all with vampire strength.

He’d get himself killed.

Claire zipped open the bag and pulled out the big plastic Super Soaker. It was a totally absurd color of neon, and it was heavy with a full load of water.

God, please work. Please work.

Claire moved forward at a run, and pressed the trigger. A shockingly thick spray shot out, hit the sidewalk, and splashed; she quickly angled it up, over the fence, and sprayed it in an arc across Shane’s back, the vampires turning to meet him, Morley, Eve.

Where it hit exposed vampire skin, the solution of silver powder and water lit them up like Christmas trees. The bony woman with long dark hair heading for Shane broke off with a yelp, slapped at her burning face, and then gaped at the burns on her hands as the solution began to eat away at her flesh.

Claire pumped the toy gun again, building up pressure, and put it to her shoulder as she came to a flat-footed stop. “Back off!” she yelled. “Everybody just stop! You, let her go!” That last was directed at Morley, who had Eve by the shoulder and was holding her in front of him. He was wearing a filthy old raincoat, and it had protected him from the spray; she could see a livid burn spreading across his cheek, but nothing that would really hurt him.

Shane backed up next to Claire, breathing hard. She aimed the Super Soaker directly at Morley and Eve. “Let her go,” she repeated. “We didn’t do anything to you.”

“Nothing personal,” Morley said. “We’re starving, love. And you’re so juicy.”

“Ewww,” Eve said faintly. “Has anybody ever told you that you smell like tombstones?”

He glanced at her and smiled. “You’re the first,” he assured her. “Which is a bit charming. I’m Morley. And you are . . . ? Ah yes. Amelie’s friend. I remember you from the cemetery. Sam Glass’s grave.”

“Nice to meet you. Don’t eat me, ’kay?”

He laughed and combed her hair back from her pale face. “You’re cute. I might have to turn you and keep you as a pet.”

“Hey!” Claire said sharply, and took a step forward. “Didn’t you hear me? Let her go!She’s under Amelie’s protection!”

“I see no bracelet.” Morley grabbed Eve’s arm and lifted it to the dim light, turning it this way and that. “No, definitely nothing there.” He kissed the back of her hand, then extended his fangs and prepared to munch out on the pale veins at her wrist.

Eve twisted and punched him in the mouth.

Morley stumbled backward against the car, and Claire triggered the sprayer, coating him in silver spray. This time, he screamed and flapped his arms and lunged away from Eve, toward the darkness. Claire sprayed the rest of his crew again as they followed, waking howls of pain and anger.

Shane dashed forward, vaulted the gate, and helped Eve stand up from where Morley had shoved her. “That went well,” he said. His voice was shaking. “No fang marks, right?”

“Lucky me,” Eve said, and laughed wildly. “Get the weapons bag. I can’t believeyou left it in the car; what was that? What town did yougrow up in?”

“I was trying to help you fix the car!”

“Bozo.” She hugged him, hard, and smacked him on the back of the head; then she took a deep breath as Shane left her to retrieve the black nylon bag out of the car. “And you.”

Claire lowered the Super Soaker. “What? What did I do?”

“Saved my life? Redefined awesome in our time?”

“Oh. Okay.” She felt a smile bloom from deep inside, and for a moment, it was all good.

Really good.

“Ladies,” Shane said, and slammed the car door. “Let’s have the champagne inside, okay? And talk about who pulled the wires in the engine, and how we’re planning to back Michael up with no wheels?”

He had a point. Claire covered their retreat with the Super Soaker, feeling kind of like a neon-gunned Rambo, and Eve slammed and locked the door, then put her back to the wood and breathed a deep sigh of relief.

The second Claire put the water gun down, Shane wrapped her in his arms and kissed her, really tender and sweet and a little bit desperate. Hot.

“Hey,” Eve said. “Michael, remember? What are we doing for transpo, cabbing it?”

There was exactly one taxicab in Morganville, and he didn’t work at night, so that wasn’t much of an option. They didn’t even bother to discuss it. “Well,” Claire said, very reluctantly, “there’s another way. But you won’t like it.”

“I’ll like it less than getting molested by a vampire in a flasher raincoat who smells like graveyards? Try me.”

“I could open a portal,” Claire said. “But I’ve never been to the radio station, so I can’t risk doing it blind. I have to go someplace close that I know. What’s around it?”

“Hang on a second,” Shane said, and dropped the weapons bag to the wood floor with a thump. “What about Ada? You said she was out for blood, right?”

“I said you wouldn’t like the idea.”

“So just to recap—Ada wants to kill you, and you’re going to walk through a portal she controls?”

“Well—”

“No, Claire. Next.”

“But—”

“Not happening.”

She sighed. “What if I get Myrnin to open it for us? He’s better at it. I don’t think she dares mess with him directly.”

“And tell Myrnin what’s happening? Bad idea. The dude is half crazy all the time.”

“So what’s yourbright idea?” Claire asked. Shane spread his hands out. “That’s what I thought.”

She pulled her cell phone out and checked the screen. Her battery was getting low; she hadn’t had a chance to charge it up recently, although that was Morganville Survival 101. She picked up the old-fashioned landline phone on the hall table and dialed Myrnin’s lab.

It rang, and rang, and rang, and finally, Myrnin picked up. “What?” he snapped. “I was in the middle of dinner.”

Claire was afraid to ask who that was. “I need help,” she said.

“Claire, you are my assistant. Not the other way around. Perhaps it would be helpful if I prepared an organizational chart you could keep on your person. Possibly tattooed on your arm.”

He wasin a mood. Claire bit her lip. “Please,” she said. “It’s a little favor.”

“Oh, all right. What?”

“You know the old radio station outside of town? KV—” Her mind blanked. She looked at Eve, who mouthed the answer. “KVVV. Could you open me a portal?”

“Hmmm,” he said. She heard the sound of liquid being poured in the background, and him swallowing it, and him smacking his lips. “Well, I suppose I could get you close, if not inside the building. Would that do?”

“Sure. Anything.”

“And why can you not do this yourself?”

“Ada . . . ?”

Myrnin was silent for a long few seconds. “She’s better,” he said. “I don’t know what got into the old girl. But I’ve had a talk with her, and really, she’s much better now. Much better.”

“That’s good.” It would be, if it were true, but Claire didn’t trust Myrnin’s judgment when it came to Ada. “Um, about that portal—”

“Yes, fine, coming right up. I will be there in a moment.”

“No, Myrnin—”

He hung up before she could explain that she didn’t actually need him to come along. Not that he was going to listen to her, anyway. Claire replaced the phone on its cradle.

“Crazy boss is coming,” Shane interpreted, just from the expression on her face. “Lovely. This ought to be fun.”

About five seconds later, Claire felt a psychic wave sweep through the house, so strong she was surprised neither Shane nor Eve seemed to feel it, and then a dark opening formed in the far wall of the living room, and Myrnin stepped over the threshold.

“I sowant his wardrobe,” Eve sighed. “Is that shallow, or just strange?”

“Don’t sell yourself short. It’s both,” Shane said, and cocked his head to take in Myrnin’s latest effort at blending in. It was . . . interesting. Claire couldn’t decide if it was some deliberate, unholy mix of Victorian lord and hippie, or just what had been on the floor of his closet.

He had on his bunny slippers.

These had fangs.

They all stared at them in silence for about a heartbeat, and then Shane said, “ Thatis impressively wicked. Crazy, but wicked.”

Myrnin frowned at him, then looked down at his shoes. He seemed genuinely surprised. “Oh. Those. I thought—well, they’re appropriate, I suppose.”

“Wouldn’t want to be inappropriate,” Claire said. “You really didn’t have to come. I’m sorry.”

“I did, in fact. I tried to open the portal to the radio station, and I couldn’t do so.” Myrnin’s dark eyes were wide and gleaming, clearly fascinated. “Claire, do you know what this means?” He paced, the bunny slippers flopping their ears in a very distracting way. “Someone locked down the area. And it wasn’t me.”

“Who else could?”

“No one.”

“But—”

“Exactly!” He smacked his hands together in glee. “A mystery! Thank you for calling and imposing on me for a favor; this is very exciting stuff, you know. Chaos, mayhem, someone stealing a march against me—ah, I’ve missed it these past few months, haven’t you?”

“No,” they all said, exactly together. Claire took Shane’s hand and said, “Myrnin, who else could lock down areas of town and freeze out portals?”

“Amelie,” he said, “but it’s not her. There’s a certain signature to her work, and by the way, she’s been here recently, did you know? She reeks of pain these days. It’s most disturbing.”

“Dude, focus,” Eve said. “Who else?” She threw Claire a why-am-I-even-asking look, but Myrnin got hold of himself and nodded as he thought about it.

“There have been a total of six others in the history of Morganville,” he said. “But they’re all dead. All but you, Claire.”

They all looked at her. She blinked. “Well, Ididn’t do it!”

“Oh. Pity. Then I have no idea.”

She cleared her throat. “What about Ada?”

“Ada is not the boogeyman behind every shadow, my dear,” Myrnin said, and flopped himself down in Michael’s chair, taking hold of the acoustic guitar and picking out a surprisingly competent series of chords. “Ada does as she’s told. Unlike you, I might add, which is not an attractive quality in a lab assistant.”

“Could she do it?”

He stilled the strings with one hand, and looked up. His dark hair fell back from his pale face, and for a moment, he looked entirely serious. “Ada can do anything,” he said. “I don’t think even she understands that. But I find it highly unlikely—”

“You’re a vampire wearing bunny slippers with fangs. Highly unlikely kind of goes with the territory,” Eve said. “How close can you get us? To the radio station?”

“Why do you want to go there? It’s hardly safe for untagged blood donors to roam around out there after dark. Even Claire would be at risk, and she’s wearing the strongest protection available. I don’t advise it.” He put the guitar aside and steepled his fingers together. “But you’re not quite foolish enough to be doing it for the thrill, I think, so you do have a reason. Tell me.”

Claire exchanged a quick look with her friends, and then said, “Michael went alone out there. We need to help him.”

“Michael is a vampire. Vampires go out at night.” Myrnin shrugged and dusted a bit of fluff from his black velvet jacket, which was pretty elegant, if you were heading off to a costume party. “Why concern yourself, unless you think there will be trouble? Stop lying by omission, Claire. Tell me everything. Now.”

Eve shook her head, a tiny spasm that was probably involuntary. Even Shane looked like he thought it was a terminally bad idea. Claire said, “We can trust him. We have to trust him.”

“Oh, this sounds interesting,” Myrnin said, and leaned forward in Michael’s chair. “Please continue.”

She did. She even brought down one of the wireless cameras, showed it to him, and explained how it worked, which was a complete delight to his obsessively scientific side. “But this is amazing,” he said, turning the little device over in his nimble fingers. “This girl, she’s quite the enterprising little thing. How many of these, you say?”

“We think seventy-two.”

He lost his smile, focused on the object in his hand. “She can’t be doing it alone, then. There must be a larger purpose. A larger plan. Still, this Kim, she may be using it for her own purposes; have you thought about that?”

“We know she’s getting her own thing out of it,” Claire said. “But you’re saying . . . she didn’t come up with it in the first place?”

“Exactly.”

So, maybe Kim had been recruited to put cameras out, and then hijacked it for her own reality-show dream project . . . but that meant someone else was in charge.

Someone smart enough to not get caught. Or even suspected.

“You really should tell Oliver,” Myrnin said. “I know he’s not the most pleasant of allies, but he is effective in the right circumstances. Rather like one of those nuclear bombs.”

“If we tell Oliver, Kim’s dead,” Eve said. “She may be an epic bitch, but I don’t want her executed, either.”

“Valid,” Myrnin agreed. “However, if this goes wrong, she’s dead in any case. I will come along. You need an adult chaperone.”

“Once again, bunny slippers,” Shane said. “I’m just pointing that out.”

“I suppose they would get dirty. I’ll be right back.” Myrnin jumped out of the chair and dashed for the portal. It snapped shut behind him with a flare of energy.

“Do you think—”

Before Shane could finish the question, the portal opened again, and Myrnin hopped out on one foot, pulling on serious pirate boots, the knee-high kind with the cuff of leather. He finished tugging the left one on and did a runway pose for Claire. “Better?”

“Um . . . yeah. I guess.” He now looked like a demented version of that pirate captain from the rum bottles.

“Then let’s go.”

As he turned to concentrate on the portal, Eve tugged on Claire’s shirt.

“What?”

“Ask him where he got the boots.”

“ Youask.” Personally, Claire wanted the vampire bunny slippers.

12

The closest Myrnin could get them was a few blocks away. Claire was glad, actually, that he hadn’t warned her where they were going; she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to step through if he had.

German’s Tire Plant had closed at least thirty years ago, and the gigantic, multi-story facility was basically one big gold mine of creepy. Claire had been in it exactly twice before, and neither visit held pleasant memories—and those had been daytime excursions. At night, the terror level went way, way up.

The only reason she knew they were at German’s Tire Plant was that the weapons bag Shane had brought contained flashlights, and one of the first things Claire’s lit up was the spooky clown face graffitied around a big open maw of a doorway. She’d never forget that stupid clown face. Ever.

“Oh man,” Shane breathed. He wasn’t fond of this place, either.

“Buck up,” Eve said. “At least you didn’t get locked in a freezer here like next month’s entrée. I did.”

Myrnin, blue-white in the flashlight beams, looked offended. “Young lady, I put you there for safekeeping. If I had meant to eat you, I would have.”

“That’s comforting,” Eve said. And then, under her breath, “Not.”

“This way.” Myrnin put out his hand to shield his eyes from their flashlights, and picked his way around a pile of tottering, empty beer cans left by adventurous high schoolers, a stained, torn mattress, and some empty crates. “Someone’s been here.”

“No kidding?”

“I mean, recently,” he said. “Not humans. Vampires. Many of them.” He sounded a little puzzled. “Not my creatures, either. They all died, you know. The ones I turned.”

Back in his crazy (crazier?) days, Myrnin had experimented on some hapless victims, trying to turn them into vampires but failing as his illness took hold. The results hadn’t been pretty—more like zombies than vampires, and not focused on anything but killing. Claire wondered how they’d died, and decided she really didn’t want to know. Myrnin was a scientist. He was used to putting down lab animals at the end of a test.

“Are these vampires hanging around now?” Shane asked. He had a stake in his left hand, and a silver-coated knife in the other—a steak knife he’d used a car battery and a fish tank full of chemicals to electroplate. Stinky, but cheap and effective. “Because a heads-up would be nice.”

“No, they’re gone.” Myrnin continued to hesitate, though. “I wonder. . . .”

“Wonder later. Move now,” Eve said. She sounded nervous, and she kept shining the light around erratically, reacting to every rustle in the dark. There were a lot of those. Rats, birds, bats—the place was full of wildlife. Claire kept her own light trained on the path ahead of her, making sure she didn’t trip or cut herself on rusty juts of metal as Myrnin led the way. Shane’s warmth behind her felt good. So did the weight of the Super Soaker in her arms.

Myrnin threw open a metal door with a snap, shattering the lock and scattering links of the big chain that had secured it all over the pitted concrete outside. “There,” he said, and pointed as they gathered around him. The clouds thinned a little, allowing some diffuse moonlight to paint the ground with cool blue and silver, and a mile or so away sat a concrete block of a building, and a tall, skeletal metal tower. Big white letters on the tower said KV V; one of the Vs was long gone, and the other was tilting drunkenly to one side, not far from dropping off entirely to join its missing mate. The place looked deserted. Wind rattled over the flat landscape, whipping up dust and scattering trash, and made an eerie whistling sound through the metal of the tower.

“I don’t see Michael’s car.”

“One way to be sure,” Myrnin said. “Let’s go.”

The closer they came, the creepier the place was. Claire wasn’t a fan of blighted industrial buildings, and Morganville was full of them—the half-destroyed hospital, German’s Tire Plant, even the old City Hall had its decaying side.

This one looked so . . . grim. It was just a cinder block building, not very large, and the one window in front had been long ago broken out and boarded over. Someone had spray-painted KEEP OUT on the bricks, and part of it was heavily decorated in multicolored swirls of graffiti. Beer cans, cigarette butts, empty plastic bags—the usual stuff.

“I don’t see a way in,” Eve whispered.

“Why are you whispering?” Myrnin whispered back. “Vampires can hear us, anyway.”

“Is there a vampire in there?” Claire asked.

“I’m not psychic. I have no idea.”

“You could tell in the tire plant!”

He tapped his nose. “Five senses. Not six. It’s not so easy to sniff them out standing outside the building.” He gently moved the business end of her Super Soaker away from himself. “Please. I bathed already, and I’d rather not do it in the vampire equivalent of pepper spray.”

“Sorry.”

They made their way around the side of the building, closer to the tower, and there they found Michael’s dark sedan sitting in the shadows.

Empty.

“Michael?” Eve called. “Michael!”

“Hush,” Myrnin said sharply, and flashed supernatu rally fast across the open space to grab the knob of a door Claire could barely see. It sagged open, and he disappeared inside.

“Wait!” Claire blurted, and darted after him. She switched on the flashlight as soon as she reached the door, but all it showed her was an empty hallway, with peeling paint and a floor covered in mud from some old flood. “Myrnin, where are you?”

No answer. She yelped when Shane’s hand closed over her shoulder; then she pulled in a breath and nodded. Eve crowded in behind them.

Down the hallway was a dead end, with more hallways stretching left and right. The fading paint had some kind of mural on it, something West Texas-y with cows and cowboys, and the letters KVVVin big block capitals.

The whole place smelled like mold and dead animals. “This way,” Myrnin’s voice said quietly, and with a hum, electricity turned on in the hall. Some of the bulbs burned out with harsh, sizzling snaps, leaving parts of the space in darkness.

Claire followed the hall to the end, which took a right turn into a small studio with some kind of engineering board. The equipment looked ancient, but clean; somebody had been here—presumably Kim—and had taken care to put everything in working order. Microphones, a chair, a backdrop, lighting . . . everything in the studio needed for filming, including a small digital video camera on a tripod.

On the other side of the room was a complicated editing console, which had a bank of monitors set up. They obviously weren’t original to the setup—decades more modern than the soundboard—and Claire identified different components that had been Frankensteined into the system.

These included an array of fat black terabyte drives, all portable.

Michael was sitting at the console. “Michael!” Eve blurted, and threw herself on him; he stood up to catch her in his arms, and hugged her close. “You incredible jerk!”

He kissed her hair. “Yeah, I know.”

She smacked his arm. “Really. You are a jerk!”

“I get that.” He pushed her off a little, to look at her. “You’re okay?”

“No thanks to you. You had to go running off in the middle of the night and not even say boo . . .”

“I should have known you guys wouldn’t stay put.”

“Where’s Detective Hess?” Claire asked. “I thought you were meeting him here.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Where did he go?”

“I’ll tell you that in a minute.” Michael seemed preoccupied, as if he were trying to figure out how to tell them something they weren’t going to like at all. “This is Kim’s data vault. At least, most of it. Claire, that’s a router, right? I think this is her receiving station for the signals.”

“She’s using the tower to amplify the signals,” Claire said. “Did you find—?” She didn’t want to get more specific than that. Michael shook his head, and her heart fell. “What about the other ones?”

“She’s been a busy girl,” Michael said. “There are video files there from City Hall, Common Grounds, spots all over town. It will take hours, maybe weeks, to look at everything, but she’s done a rough cut.” He hit some controls, then pointed at the central monitor. “This is the raw file.”

After some old-fashioned leader signals, there was a shot of the Morganville town limits sign, creaking in the wind . . . and then, in special effects, the word Vampiresappeared in bloody streaks right below the sign.

“Subtle.” Eve snorted. “She’s got a future in Hollywood.”

Kim’s voice came on, breathlessly narrating. “Welcome to Morganville, the town with bite. If you’ve ever driven across the barren landscape of West Texas, you may wonder why people live out here in the middle of nowhere. Well, wonder no more. It’s because they can’t live anywhere else without people knowing what they are.”

The visuals cut to a montage of Morganville daily life—normal, boring stuff.

And then a night-vision shot of a vampire—Morley, Claire realized with a shock—sucking the blood out of someone’s neck. It was an extreme close-up. His eyes were like silver coins, and the blood looked black.

Cut to Eve, working the counter at the coffee shop in all her Goth glory. Eve sucked in a quick breath, but said nothing. More shots of Morganville, some handheld. Claire saw footage of students, and remembered Kim running around the campus with her digital camera, asking people stupid questions.

It was in there, and so was Claire, saying, “I have two words for you, and the second one is off.Fill in the blank.”

Claire covered her mouth with both hands. God, she looked so angry.And kind of bitchy.

It got worse, with the voice-over. “Even the normal people of Morganville aren’t so normal. Take my friends who live in this house.”

A shot of the Glass House, full daylight. Then some kind of hidden-camera thing of Kim knocking on the door, Eve answering.

A shot of Shane. One of Michael.

“Living in a town full of terror doesn’t mean you can’t find true love—or at least, real sex.”

The video morphed into Claire and Shane in his bedroom.

Oh God no . . .

Claire felt sick and hot and breathless, full of horror at seeing herself there on that screen. She stumbled away and almost threw herself into Shane’s arms. He, lips parted, was staring at the picture, looking just as horrified as she felt. But he couldn’t look away, while she simply couldn’t watch.

“Goodness,” Myrnin said quietly. “I don’t think I should be watching this. I don’t think I’m old enough.”

“Turn it off,” Shane said. “Michael.”

Instead of turning it off, Michael hit FAST FORWARD. He slowed it down as the scene changed. More Kim voyeur porn, this time Michael and Eve. No voice-over. Claire couldn’t imagine what she was intending to say, but it couldn’t have been good.

“I’ll kill her,” Eve said. It sounded calm, but it really wasn’t. “Why are you showing me this?”

Michael looked at her, and Claire’s stomach did a little flip at the grimness in his expression. “Sit down,” he said, and wheeled the chair closer to Eve. She looked at it, then at him, frowning. “Trust me.”

She did, still frowning, as the scene changed on-screen.

It was some dark-paneled room, with a big wooden round table, an ornate flower arrangement in the middle. Of the several people around the table, Claire recognized three immediately, with a shock. “Amelie,” she blurted. Amelie clearly had no idea she was being filmed; the camera was high up, at an angle, but it caught their faces clearly. Next to her at the table was Richard Morrell, the mayor, neat and handsome in a dark suit. At his right sat Oliver, looking—as usual—angry. Several other people around the table were talking at once, arguing, and finally Oliver slammed his hand down on the wood with so much force it silenced them all.

Then came Kim’s voice-over. “Morganville is ruled by a town council, but one not like any other. Nobody elects these people. That’s Amelie, Founder of Morganville. She’s more than a thousand years old, and she’s a ruthless killer. Oliver’s not much younger, and he’s even meaner. The mayor, Richard Morrell, he’s new, but his family has ruled the humans of Morganville for a hundred years. Richard’s the only human on the council. And he gets outvoted . . . constantly.”