Текст книги "Fade Out"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

She cut back to the sound as Richard was saying, “. . . want to revisit the decision we made earlier, about Jason Rosser.”

“What about him?” Oliver asked irritably. “We’ve heard your arguments. Let’s move on.”

“You can’t execute him. He gave himself up. He tried to save the girl.”

“He did nottry to save Claire,” Amelie said. “He left her to die. Granted, he did turn himself in to the police and told us about his accomplice in these murders, but we must be clear: he is far from innocent, and his history tells us he can’t be trusted.”

“He’s still a kid,” Richard said, “and you can’t just arbitrarily decide to execute him. Not without a trial.”

“With a majority vote, we can,” Oliver said. “Two for, one against. I believe that is a majority. It won’t be a public event. He’ll just quietly—disappear.”

Eve’s mouth dropped open. She leaned forward, frantically searching the screen for a clue. “When was this? Michael? When did she record this?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought you should know. Your brother’s been sentenced to death.”

“Oliver—he didn’t even—he didn’t say anything.”

“Well,” Myrnin said, “I don’t suppose he felt it was necessary. I expect they were planning to arrange something quiet, perhaps an accident. Or suicide.”

Eve fell into the chair, and blindly reached out for Michael, who took her hand. “They can’t just kill him. Not like some—rat in a cage. Oh God, Michael . . .”

“I told you Detective Hess was here. He left right after we found that. He’s going straight to the jail to be sure Jason’s okay. He’ll put him in protective custody, okay? Don’t worry.”

She gave out a breathless, broken laugh.“Don’t worry? How do I not worry after you show me things like this?”

“Good point,” Shane said. “Michael, Kim bugged the council meeting. How could she possibly do that?”

“She couldn’t,” Myrnin said. “The human parts of town, yes, of course, but not the vampire parts. She has no excuse to be there, and she’d be caught if she’d gone anywhere near the official chambers. Or Amelie’s house.” He held up another black hard drive, which was clearly labeled in silver ink. “Or Oliver’s, for that matter.”

Claire caught her breath. “Your lab?”

“No. Oddly enough, nothing. But the evidence she has here is damning enough, I would say.”

“But nobody would believe it,” Eve said. “I mean, sure, she might get some off-brand cable station to air it, but everybody would think it was some kind of hoax.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Claire said. “Even if nobody does, tourists will come flocking to town, and how long do you think things will hold together once that happens?”

“I’d give it a week,” Myrnin said. He sounded quiet, and not at all amused. “This is our refuge, Claire. Our last safe place in this world. Don’t be fooled; we might be willing to compromise, but we are territorial. Kim has violated the deepest covenant of Morganville. She can’t survive this.”

“She didn’t do it alone; you said so yourself. It took a vampire to bug the council, let alone Amelie’s house.”

“And we will find them,” Myrnin said. “And we will destroy them. There are rules to Morganville, and Kim and this vampire have shattered them beyond all repair. Amelie must never know of this. I’m afraid what she would do.”

That seemed a strange left turn. “Why? We’re going to catch them, right? We’ve got the video.”

“Do we?” Myrnin looked at the array of hard drives. “You spoke of more than seventy cameras, but I see only sixty or so hard drives. What’s missing, Claire? You know Amelie. You know that her first concern is for her people. If she believes that we’ve been compromised here, she will cut our losses.”

“Losses being humans,” Shane said.

“She’d rather move us and destroy all evidence we were ever here. It’s always been her final option. You have no idea how many times she’s come close recently.”

Claire swallowed. “We can’t let her do that.”

“We cannot stop her,” Myrnin said. “Not even I can do that. But what we can do is remove the evidence.”

He crushed the hard drive he was holding into junk and dropped it to the floor, then moved on to the next, and the next.

Michael helped Eve out of the chair, picked it up, and smashed it into the editing station. He ripped out the hard drive from the video editing system and smashed it against the wall.

Claire and Eve backed up against the wall, holding hands, as the two vampires systematically destroyed every bit of data storage in the place. It took a while, but they were thorough, and when the last piece of equipment was broken into random parts, Shane said, “I thought that would feel better, somehow.”

“We’re not finished,” Myrnin said. “We need to find every camera and destroy those, as well. And we mustfind Kim and force her to tell us who helped her. This is not negotiable. A vampire traitor is far too dangerous to live.”

* * *

Kim had kept records—a hard copy printout stuffed in a cabinet drawer next to the wrecked editing machine. It listed a total of seventy– fourcameras, all over Morganville. “She must have added a couple at the last minute. This is going to take hours,” Eve said. “We’ll have to split up, each take ten or so. Myrnin and Michael, you’ve got the Vamptown cameras. Claire, Shane, here you go. Knock yourselves out.”

“What about Kim?” Claire asked, taking the page of locations. “We still need to find her.”

“I will ask Ada to locate her,” Myrnin said.

“She can do that?” Claire asked, and then blinked. “Of course she can. Willshe do that?”

“Possibly. If she’s in a good mood, which is never certain, as you know. But I assure you, Ada is no longer angry at you, so don’t be worried about that.” Myrnin checked a gleaming gold pocket watch he kept in his vest pocket, some complicated dragon-shaped thing. “We must meet back before sunrise. Where?”

“Someplace deserted,” Claire said. “Much as I hate it, how about German’s? I don’t want anybody overhearing us.”

“Paranoid much?” Eve asked. “Yeah, me too. I’m never taking my clothes off again, I swear.”

“German’s it is,” Myrnin said. “You know the portal frequency. Be there before sunrise, and do try to avoid getting yourself killed, if at all possible.”

He led them out of the studio, out into the night. Michael took his car, heading off with his list of camera locations. At German’s, Myrnin stepped through the dark clown-mouth doorway and was gone on his own errands, leaving Shane, Eve, and Claire standing there in the dark, in a fragile circle of flashlight.

“So?” Eve prodded. “Fire it up, Teleport Girl. I want this over with.”

Claire checked the list. “Right. The first twenty are easy—all in common areas. Eve, I’ll send you and Shane to the alley behind Common Grounds. I’ll take the university.”

“Hey,” Shane said. “Wait a minute. I don’t want you out there alone.”

“University,” Claire reminded him. “Protected ground. Besides, I’m the one with the bracelet.” She flashed the gold at him, and he didn’t look happy, but he did look resigned. “Also, we’ve got no time to argue. Go.”

Shane looked back at her before he stepped through the portal, and Claire felt a moment’s sick fear that she’d never see him again. Morganville was a dangerous place. Every good-bye could be the last.

We’ll get through this.

She focused on the portal, shifted frequencies, and started on her camera-destroying mission.

She hoped Myrnin was right about Ada.

Four hours later, it was approaching sunrise, Claire was bone-tired, and she’d bagged all of the cameras on her list, including the one in the football team’s shower room, which was an interesting experience. Kim had clearly been combining business with personal pleasure. She took the portal back to the alley behind Common Grounds, intending to pick up Shane and Eve, but they were nowhere in sight. She called Shane’s cell, and heard it ringing, but it was distant and muffled.

She found him standing braced against the wall, holding Eve’s ankles as she stood on his shoulders to reach a camera set on top of the roof of a shed. “Got it!” Eve called, and nearly overbalanced. Shane staggered around, got his equilibrium again, and helped her down to the pavement. “We should totally join the circus.”

“One of us already looks like a clown.”

“Hi guys,” Claire said, and they both jumped and turned her way. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Shane hugged her. “How’d you do?”

“Twenty cameras. There was one missing. I think somebody found it and swiped it from the University Center. You?”

“That was the last one on the list,” he said. “Guess it’s time to see how Team Vampire did.”

Claire opened the portal to German’s Tire Plant, and stepped through, with Shane and Eve right behind her. The portal snapped shut as soon as they were inside, and Claire flipped on her flashlight.

“Um . . .” Eve turned on her light, as well. “Okay. Wrong number, Claire.”

“No,” Claire said. “That can’t happen. I mean, it’s the right frequency. I don’t know what happened, but we shouldbe at German’s.”

“Well, we’re not,” Shane said, and shone his light around. They were in an underground tunnel. It was damp and dark and it smelled really foul—much worse than most of the vampire highway tunnels under Morganville. This one didn’t look like it had been used for a road, either. “Wrong turn.”

Eve said, in an entirely different voice, “ Reallywrong turn.” She pointed off down the tunnel, and Claire saw shapes moving in the darkness. Pale skin. Shining red eyes. “Oh man. Dial us out, please.”

The only problem was that the portal system refused to pick up. They were locked out.

Claire looked at Shane and Eve and shook her head. Her heart was pounding a mile a minute, and she could see the light trembling from the force of her pulse beats. “We’re stuck,” she said.

Shane dropped the bag he was carrying, unzipped it, and passed weapons to Eve, then took out a wicked-lethal crossbow with silver-tipped bolts. “Somebody up there doesn’t like you, Claire.”

Claire primed the Super Soaker. “It’s Ada,” she said. “This time, I’m not letting Myrnin talk me out of it.”

* * *

The vampires—well, vampirelike things, sort of like Myrnin’s experimental attempts to turn humans back in his crazy days—hurled themselves out of the darkness with high-pitched, batlike squeals. Claire resisted the urge to scream, and let loose with the water gun. A blast caught three of them in midleap, and they shrieked even louder, hit the ground, rolled, and kept rolling. She could see the ghostly blue flare of flames around them as the silver ate into their exposed skin—which was most of it, because these things were more like tunnel rats than anything approaching human. Giant undead tunnel rats.

Only in Morganville . . .

Shane aimed and fired, taking one of them out just as it was preparing to leap, and reloaded with an ease that told Claire he’d been practicing. Eve had a handful of what looked like darts—regulation darts, the kind you threw at a target in a bar. She was dead-on accurate with them, too, as soon as any tunnel rat came within ten feet of her.

By the time Claire was starting to worry about her water reservoir, and Shane was running low on crossbow bolts, the attacking forces were running. “Let’s go,” Eve said, tossing another dart that landed in the ass of a retreating vampire. “Ooooh, trip twenty!”

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” Shane said. “Darts? When did you come up with that?”

“I was playing with your electroplating thingy. After I did all my jewelry, I started in on pointy things.” Eve held out a dart for inspection. It had—of course—a skull on the fletching. “Sweet, right?”

“Cute. Time to run now.”

Claire slung the Super Soaker around her back and ran up the hill, chasing Shane, who was, as always, faster—the result of longer legs, not really dedicated practice. Shane only ran when someone chased him; he was more of a weights kind of guy.

The fact that the tunnel tilted uphill was a good sign—it was basically an entrance ramp, which meant they’d come up to ground level soon enough. Then Claire could figure out where they were, how to find a working portal, and get back to the business at hand—find Kim, beat Kim like a taiko drum to find out who her vampire coconspirator was, and then hit Ada’s RESET button.

Simple.

Except, of course, it wasn’t.

Shane slowed, and Claire almost crashed into him. He dashed over to the side of the tunnel, hugging the wall, and Claire and Eve piled in next to him. “What?” Eve asked around breathless pants. She wasn’t much for running, either.

“Someone’s coming,” Shane said. “Shhhh.”

Eve choked and strangled on a cough, and muttered, “Got to cut down on the cigarettes.”

“You don’t smoke,” Claire whispered.

“Then I’m completely screwed.”

Shane whirled toward them and put hands over both their mouths. His face looked fierce. They nodded.

It was dark where they were, but not dark enough. A shape appeared ahead of them, coming down the tunnel . . . then another. Then more. Six—no, ten. Claire lost all will to snark, and she was pretty sure, from Eve’s wide-eyed look, that she felt the same. They’d done pretty well against the tunnel rats, but these were realvampires.

Hunters.

Morley stopped about twenty feet away, still facing straight ahead, and held up a hand to stop the group of vampires following him. Claire recognized some of them from earlier. Some of them were still healing from the burns left by her water gun.

“Look who’s come to visit,” he said, and turned his head in their direction at the side of the tunnel. “Claire and her friends. I wonder if they want to stay for dinner.”

Shane snapped the crossbow up and took aim on Morley. “Don’t even think about it.”

Morley stuck his hands in the pockets of his dirty raincoat. “I tremble in fear, boy. Obviously, in all my long life, no one has everthreatened me with a weapon before.” His tone changed, took on edges. “Put it down if you want to live.”

“Don’t,” Eve whispered.

Morley smiled. “The boy’s got two arrows left,” he said. “You have a handful of darts. Little Claire’s water weapon is almost empty. And by the way, I am aware of your strategic position. I hate to repeat myself, but I will: put down your weapons if you want to live.”

“No choice,” Shane said, and swallowed hard. He crouched down and put the crossbow on the concrete, then rose with his hands up.

I could get in one good spray, Claire thought, but she knew it was a terrible idea. She lifted the strap of the toy gun over her head and let it fall. It sounded empty.

“Shit,” Eve said, and threw down her darts. “All right. What now? You get all Nosferatuon our asses? If you make me a vampire, I’ll make you eat those fangs.”

Morley eyed her with a bit of a frown. “I believe you might,” he said. “But I’m not interested in converts. I’m much more interested in allies.”

“Allies,” Claire repeated. “You’ve tried to kill us a whole bunch.”

“That wasn’t about you,” he said. “The first time, you were simply with Amelie. The next, well, I was doing a favor for someone else. Another ally, as it happens.”

“What do you want?”

“We want freedom,” Morley said. “We want to live as God meant us to do. Is that such a terrible thing?”

There were a few vampires in his group that Claire recognized with a nasty jolt of surprise. “Jacob,” she said. “Jacob Goldman? Patience?” Two of Theo Goldman’s family—and Theo was the last vampire she’d expect to be in the middle of this. His kids, though . . . she really didn’t know them very well.

Jacob looked away. Patience, on the other hand, stared right back, and lifted her chin as if daring Claire to say anything else. From her last encounter with the Goldmans, Claire had been aware the younger generation was starting to hate the whole philosophy of their parents; it made sense that they’d found someone here in Morganville more like-minded.

“Amelie and Oliver are trying to make us into something we never were,” Patience said. “Tame tigers. Performing bears. Toothless lions. But we can’t be those things. Vampires are not caretakers of humanity. I’m sorry, but it will never be true, however much we wish it could be.”

“You’re not making much headway on this Let’s be friendsargument,” Eve said. “I’m just saying.”

Morley let out an impatient sigh, and looked back at the other vampires. “Surely you want us out of your town,” he said. “As much as we’d like to go. But Amelie won’t allow us to leave. We have only two choices: destroy Morganville, or destroy her. Destroying Morganville seems easier, in many ways.”

The light dawned. “You were working with Kim. She suggested the cameras, didn’t she?”

“It seemed a way to achieve what she wanted, and what we wanted,” he agreed. “The end of Morganville. The beginning of her career. Granted, spying is an unseemly way to go about it, but it’s probably less objectionable than murder.”

“Until the camera’s on you,” Eve shot back.

“A valid point.” Morley bowed slightly in her direction.

“You’re the one who put the cameras in Vamptown for her.”

“Me?” His thick eyebrows climbed into his tangled hair. “No. I’m hardly welcome there, you know. Nor are any of my people. I know nothing about how she managed that.”

“Then let us go find out who did.”

“You know, I don’t have to bargain with you. I could just distribute you among my followers as a treat if you’d prefer that.”

“No,” Jacob Goldman said. He and Patience exchanged a look that was more like a silent argument, and then he stepped forward. “Not her. Morley, if you hurt her, we walk away.”

“Patience?”

She sighed and shook her head. “The girl helped, before,” she said. “Theo wouldn’t want us to hurt her.”

“The girl left you in a cell to die at Bishop’s hands!”

“That was my father’s mistake, not hers,” Jacob said. “I will do many things to get our freedom. I won’t do this.”

The tension was ramping up fast. Claire swallowed. “Then let’s make a deal,” Claire said. “We want Kim, and whatever video she turned over to you.”

Morley frowned at her. “In exchange for . . . ?”

“I’ll ask Amelie to let you all leave.”

“ Askingis an easy task; there’s no commitment required. Doingis accomplishment. So you will getAmelie to let us leave. Here is my incentive: if you don’t manage to secure her permission, your two friends here sign lifetime contracts to me.” Morley turned to Jacob and Patience, who nodded. “You see? Even they agree with that.”

“Oh hellno,” Eve said.

“And you are in a position to bargain . . . how?” Shane held out a hand toward Eve, trying to restrain her a little. “No lifetime contracts,” he said. “One pint a month, blood bank only. Ten percent of our income.”

“Hmmmmmm.” Morley dragged the sound out, still staring through half-lidded eyes. “Tempting. But you see, I can simply insist on a lifetime contract with none of your silly restrictions, or kill you right now.”

“You won’t,” Shane said. That made Morley’s eyes open wide.

“Why not? Jacob and Patience were quite specific—they’re concerned for Claire. Not for you, boy.”

“Because if you kill me and Eve, you’ll make her your enemy. This girl won’t stop until she sees you all pay.”

Claire had no idea whom he was talking about—she didn’t feel like that Claire at all, until she imagined Shane and Eve lying dead on the ground.

Then she understood. “I’d hunt you down,” she said quietly. “I’d use every resource I have to do it. And you know I’d win.”

Morley seemed impressed. “She is small, but I see your point, boy. Besides, she has the ear of Amelie, Oliver, and Myrnin; not a combination I would care to test. Very well. Limited contract, one year, one pint per month at the blood bank, ten percent of your income payable to me, in cash. I will not hunt, bite, or trade your contracts. But I insist on standard punishment clauses.”

“Hey,” Eve said. “Don’t I get a vote?”

“Absolutely,” Morley assured her. “Your thoughts?”

“I’d rather die,” she said flatly. Shane turned toward her, and from the look on his face, that was not at all what he’d expected her to say. “Don’t look at me like that. I told you, I’ll never sign a contract. Never. If Mor lock here wants to kill me, well, I can’t stop him. But I don’t have to die by inches, either, and that’s what this town does to us, Shane; it takes little pieces of us away until there’s nothing left and I won’t sign!” Eve’s eyes flooded with tears, but she wasn’t scared; she was angry. “So bite me, vampire. Get it over with. But it’s a one-time thrill.”

Morley shrugged. “And you, boy?”

Shane pulled in a deep breath. “No deals if Eve doesn’t buy in.”

Claire’s mouth tasted like ashes, and she was trying frantically to think of something, anythingto do. She tried to build a portal behind them, but the system bounced her back, wouldn’t let her so much as begin the process.

Ada.

She took Shane’s hand in hers. “You’ll have to kill me, too,” she said. “And you can’t. Not without consequences.”

Morley looked positively unhappy now. “This is getting far too complicated. Fine, then we do it this way. I give you the video you’re looking for, and if you don’t manage to secure Amelie’s permission within, let’s say, a month, your friends’ lives are forfeit. Yes?” When she hesitated, he bared his stained teeth. “It’s not a question, really. And my patience is wearing thin. In fact, it’s positively threadbare.”

“Yes,” Claire said.

He spit on his palm and held it out. They all just looked at him. “Well?” he demanded.

“I’m not shaking that,” Shane said. “You just spit on it.”

“It’s the way deals are sealed—” Morley made a sound of frustration and wiped his palm against his filthy clothes. “Perhaps not anymore. Better?”

“Not really,” Shane said.

Claire stepped forward and shook Morley’s hand. She’d done worse.

He turned, dirty raincoat flapping, and the other vampires fell in behind him. Jacob Goldman held back, staring at Claire. He looked unhappy and tormented.

“I wouldn’t have let him do it,” he said. “Not to any of you. But you understand why I have to do this? For myself, and Patience?”

“I understand,” Claire said. She didn’t, really, but it seemed to make him feel better.

Claire, Eve, and Shane picked up their weapons and followed them into the dark.

Morley’s hideout was a series of what looked like limestone caves, hollowed out into actual rooms, with doors and windows—a city, underground. Not fancy, but it was definitely livable, if you were sunlight averse. There were more vamps here, living rough, hiding out. Claire figured a lot of those who’d decided not to take sides during the Amelie and Bishop fight had fled down here, taken up with Morley’s crew.

“I guess this means you aren’t really homeless,” she said. Morley looked back at her as he opened up the ancient, cracked door of one of the rooms. “I’d still look into running water.” Because the place stank, bad. So did the vampires.

“We grew up in ages when running water meant streams and rivers,” he said. “We’ve never been overly comfortable with modern luxuries.”

“Like baths?”

“Oh, we had baths in the old days. We called them stews, and they caused diseases.” He shoved open the door and lit a row of candles set into a kind of shelf along the side of the room, which gave off just enough light to make Claire feel she could turn her own portable lamp off. “What you’re looking for is here, in the box.”

The box was a rickety-looking crate with rope handles. Inside were more hard drives—the ones that had been missing from the radio station—and some DVDs. One was labeled, in black Sharpie, MICHAEL & EVE. Claire choked a little at the sight of it. She frantically combed through the others, but there was nothing marked SHANE & CLAIRE.

“Don’t worry,” Shane said. “The lighting was terrible on ours, anyway.”

“Not funny.”

“I know.” He put his arm around her. “I know. Speaking of not funny, where’s Kim? I’d like to tell her just how much I appreciate all she did to make us stars.”

Morley nodded. “Follow me.”

Three doors down was a much smaller cave—more like a cell—and Morley combed through an ancient ring of ancient keys until he found one to fit the huge rusty lock. “I keep her here for her own safety,” he said. “You’ll see.”

He opened the door, and Kim cowered back from the wash of the flashlights—but not Kim. The face was the same, but all the Goth had been scrubbed off except the dyed hair. She was dirty, dressed in filthy clothes, and there was zero bad attitude left.

Claire had been prepared to let loose a flood of anger, but this was just . . . pathetic. “Kim?” No response. “Kim! What did you do to her?”

“Nothing. She doesn’t respond to her name,” Morley said. “It seems she’s lost her mind.”

“Bullshit,” Eve snapped. “She’s an actress.”

“I’ve seen rehearsals,” Morley responded. “She’s not that good.”

Eve shoved past him to crouch down next to Kim, who covered her face and tried to curl into a ball. “Hey!” Eve said, and shook her, hard. “Kim, snap out of it! It’s Eve! Look at me!”

Kim screamed, and Claire caught her breath at the sound of it; there was real terror in it, and pain, and horror. Eve let her hand fall away, and she leaned back against the nearest wall, frowning.

“What happened to her?” Shane asked. Morley shrugged.

“Something bad,” he said. “Something permanent, as far as I can tell. She crossed someone who didn’t take well to her initiative.”

“You said you keep her locked up for protection.”

He flashed Claire a dark smile. “Consider it locking up the wine cellar. The girl’s still a good vintage, if not a brilliant conversationalist.”

Ugh. “I need her,” Claire said. “I need to take her with me.”

Morley’s vampire followers didn’t seem especially happy about her act of kindness. “She’s got no family,” Patience said. “No one is going to miss her. No one was even looking for her.”

“We were.”

“To punish her! We will do that for you.”

Even Shane looked a little sick at that. “We’ll do our own punishing, thanks,” he said. “Humans, I mean. Not me, personally.”

Morley’s eyes narrowed, but he shrugged as if he didn’t really care. “Take her,” he said. “Take the black boxes she thought were so important. Take it all, and remember your promise, Claire: you have one month to secure Amelie’s permission for us to leave Morganville. If you don’t get it, I’ll be paying your friends a visit.”

Kim was too scared to fight, but Shane took some strips of cloth and wrapped her wrists and ankles tight before slinging her over his shoulder. Eve took the box with the hard drives and DVDs.

Morley and his vampires stood in their way.

“One month,” he said. “Remember what I said.”

Then they parted ranks, and the three of them, carrying Kim, walked uphill toward the light at the end of the tunnel.

Ada was standing right at the very edge of the darkness, hands clasped before her, eyes like burned paper holes.

“I see you found her,” Ada said. “Good. I want her.”

“Why? Why did you bring us here?”

“Morley was supposed to kill you. I suppose one must do everything one’s self these days.”

Claire felt a sick wave of understanding flood over her. “You,” she said. “You would have known all about the cameras. You probably found out the first time Kim placed one.”

Ada smiled.

“You let her do it.”

“Oh no,” Ada said. “I helpedher do it. The girl told me she would use the video she’d collected to rid me of Amelie and Oliver, and I gave her access. I helped her place her cameras. But she was a liar. A cheat. A thief.” Ada’s image contorted, taking on a monster’s shape for a flicker, then smoothed back to her Victorian disguise. “She was going to cheat me out of my revenge and destroy Morganville altogether. I won’t have that. Unlike Morley and his rabble, I can’t simply leave. I amMorganville. I must survive.”

“You’re not Morganville,” Claire said. Kim, draped over Shane’s shoulder, had caught sight of Ada, and she was thrashing wildly, screaming. It was all Shane could do to hold on to her. “You’re just a science project. One that doesn’t work right.”

“I am the force that holds this lie of a town together,” Ada said, and glided closer, so close Claire could feel the cold chill generated by her image projection. “As far as Morganville is concerned, I am its goddess.”

“Word of advice,” Eve said. “It’s time for a change of religion.”

Ada’s image became distorted again, and she stretched out a hand. Claire controlled the natural impulse to flinch.

She’s not real. She’s just a ghost—Ada’s fingers touched her face. Not quite real, but almost.

Claire jumped back. “Outside!” she yelled. “Get outside!”

Ada smiled. “I’ll see you soon.”

They made it outside, into the faint hint of sunrise, without anyone jumping them again.

Claire flagged down a passing police cruiser and got them to take Kim, who shrieked and fought so hard they had to use a taser on her. Eve winced, and so did Shane.

Claire didn’t. She felt bad about it, but she just couldn’t bring herself to really feel sorry for Kim.

Karma, she thought. They’d end up putting her in a padded cell, and eventually maybe Kim would recover enough to function as a normal person. Maybe even a better one. Claire didn’t even resent that, so long as she never, ever had to talk to her again.

Ever.

By ten a.m. they were back at the Glass House, and Michael was waiting. “Where were you?” he demanded as soon as they opened the door. Claire said nothing; he was focused on Eve, anyway. “I’ve been calling; it went straight to voice mail.”

“I turned it off,” Eve said. “We were kind of being stealthy.”

“Since when do you turn off a phone?” Michael put his arms around her, and Eve relaxed against him, and for just a moment, it looked like everything was the same again.

Then Eve pulled free and walked away down the hall, head down.

Michael looked awful. “What do I have to do—?”

Shane slapped his shoulder as he passed. “Give her space,” he said. “It’s been a hard couple of days. Where’s Myrnin?”

“He never showed at the rendezvous,” Michael said. “I wasn’t really worried about him. More about you.”

“Yeah, about that—we kind of had to make a deal with Morley. You know, Graveyard Guy?”

“What kind of deal?”

“The kind where we don’t want to pay up,” Shane said. “Ask Claire.”

She shook her head, walking on. “Ask Shane,” she said. “I’m not done yet.”

“What?” Shane grabbed her wrist, pulling her to a stop. His face was tense and pale. “You can’t be serious. Not done with what? We’ve got the videos, the cameras, Kim. What else?”