Bitter Blood

CLAIRE

Getting out of Founder's Square wasn't quite as bad as getting in, but with Michael staggering and only really able to stand halfway through, Claire was worried that Henrik, or someone else with similar feelings, would step out to finish the job Amelie and Oliver had started. He was hurt...maybe not in terms of the obvious wounds, but she was convinced that the blood that still stained his face near his nose and ears was a sign of some kind of internal hemorrhage. She had no idea what to do for him, but vampires could heal from most things without help.

Stil , he probably was going to need blood, and she didn't want to be the only source standing nearby if a sudden craving came down hard. She'd seen that happen, and the aftermath. It might not ruin their friendship, unless he actually kil ed her, but it would make things very awkward around the dinner table.

"Can you drive?" she asked him anxiously as they arrived at the garage level. She kept a hand on his arm, though he was moving under his own power now; he hadn't said much at all, but now he nodded. "Are you okay?"

"No," he said. His voice sounded hoarse, as if he'd been screaming. "Not yet. Wil be."

"You probably need a drink." She said it the matter-of-fact way she'd heard Eve phrase it, and he seemed relieved that he didn't have to bring it up. "I don't mind waiting in the car if you want to stop at the blood bank. Michael...I'm sorry. I didn't think it would go so..." Wrong. Violent. Crazy.

But Shane somehow had intuited that, or he wouldn't have insisted on someone else going with her. Someone strong enough to fight off Oliver and Amelie...or who'd be wil ing to try.

If I'd had the machine finished, I could have used it. Canceled out her power. Maybe it would have worked. Maybe it would have even canceled out Oliver's influence on Amelie, made her go back to the old Founder, the one Claire sorely missed.

And maybe it would have only made things worse.

It humbled her to think how much danger Michael had put himself in, for her. And it showed just how much danger there was for allof them. Hannah had been right after all. There wasn't any point in trying.

In the car, finally, Claire felt safe enough to broach the subject she'd been frantically turning over in her mind during the long walk. "What's happened to Amelie? She wasn't like this. Could the draug have, I don't know, infected her? Done something to her?"

"Maybe," Michael said. He coughed, and it was a wet sound. Claire cringed. "Maybe it's got something to do with Oliver; he has the ability to influence people. She always kept him at a distance before. Now it's as though they're channeling Sid and Nancy."

"Who?"

Michael groaned. "It's sad how much you don't know about music, Claire. Sid Vicious? The Sex Pistols?"

"Oh, him."

"You have no idea who I'm talking about, do you?"

She smiled a little. "Not the least little bit."

"Remind me to play you some songs later. But anyway, if Myrnin said things were spinning out of control, he's not wrong. Amelie doesn't use that power she just pulled out on me, not unless things are really critical. Never just for her own personal amusement." He shuddered, and finally said, in a quiet voice, "She could have kil ed me, Claire. At least the part of me that isn't pure vampire. She could have made me into-I don't know, her meat puppet or something. She's got power like nobody else."

Claire swal owed, suddenly and sharply uneasy again. "But she didn't do it."

"This time," he said. "What if she decides that's the only way to make me obey the way she wants? I don't want to live like that, if she crushes everything in me that's me. Promise me, you and Shane, you'l ...take care of it. If it happens."

"It won't."

"Promise."

"God, Michael!"

He was silent for a second, then said, "I'l ask Shane." Because they both knew Shane would understand that request, probably far too well. And that he'd say yes.

"It's not going to happen," Claire said. "No way in hel , Michael. We won't let it happen."

He didn't tel her that it probably wouldn't be a thing she could control, but she already knew it anyway. She just felt better, and more in control, for saying it.

The drive to the blood bank was quiet, and Claire faced toward the blacked-out passenger window. In the aftermath of allthe adrenaline, she felt numb, and exhausted, and-weirdly enough-really hungry. Michael went inside the back of the blood bank, through the vamps-only entrance, and came back with a smal handheld cooler, which he handed her. She put it on the floor between her feet. "Blood supply's running low," he said.

"They'l be sending out the Bloodmobile to col ect tomorrow. Is Shane paid up?"

"Is he ever?" Claire rolled her eyes. "I'l get him in voluntarily in the morning. I'll donate, too." Claire, by Amelie's decree, had historically been free of the responsibility of giving blood, which was the tax humans paid in Morganville from age eighteen up; she'd been underage before, but even now that she was legal, she didn't have to contribute. She still did, mainly because the hospitals, not the vampires, were the ones that ran short in an emergency. Shane had pointedly not been excluded from the tax rol s. Probably because of how much trouble he'd historically been in, in Morganville.

Michael sighed. "Do you mind if I...?"

Claire opened the cooler and took out one of the blood bags. It was slightly warm, and heavy, and she tried to pretend it was a bag of colored water, one of those prop things they used in television shows.

But she still looked away when he bit into it.

It took only about a minute for him to drain it dry, and he looked around for a place to put the empty, then let her take it and return it to the cooler.

"Sorry," he said. His apology sounded genuine. "I know that's probably not what you needed to see right now."

"Al eating is gross," Claire said, "but we allhave to do it. Anyway, I'm starving. Is Chico's still open?"

"You know if I get you Chico's, I have to get it for the house, right?"

"I'l pitch in."

Chico's Tacos was a relative newcomer to town, opened by a Morganville resident who'd taken a liking to something he'd tasted out of town in El Paso: delicious rolled tacos, soaked and floating in hot sauce, then topped with shredded cheese. Messy, yeah. Unhealthy, probably. But in taco terms, it was crack. Extra orders were mandatory.

Michael handled drive-through duties, forking over cash and receiving allof the goodies to hand off to Claire. It was still new for them to count five housemates; Miranda was only half-time, in that during the day she was insubstantial, but at night she was very much flesh and blood, able to walk around, talk, do chores, eat dinner.... It made very little sense to Claire, but the Glass House (like allthe remaining Founder Houses original to the town) was capable of doing things that her science couldn't explain, no matter how far out of shape she stretched the boundaries.

When Michael had been kil ed within its wal s, drained by Oliver, the house had preserved him-saved him, literally, like a file, only as a ghost.

The Glass home was more powerful at night than during the day, so at night it could create a real flesh-and-blood form he could use to have half a life...but when dawn came, it melted away. It wasn't real, exactly, though Michael had said he could feel, eat, drink, do everything as if it were real, between dusk and dawn.

But to make that half-life truly permanent, he'd had to make a deal with Amelie and become fully vampire.

Miranda seemed to have inherited the same pluses and minuses. And she had no wish to become a vampire. In life, Miranda had been a lost little girl, cursed with a psychic gift that was as much creepy as it was informative; she'd been shunned allher life by most of the town, and even Eve -her best friend, maybe-hadn't been able to handle her some of the time.

Ghost-Miranda was blooming into a happy young lady, now that she no longer had the psychic powers and was able to have real friends. So Miranda got tacos, too.

"What are we going to tel Shane about what happened? Or Eve?" Claire asked as the familiar crunch of the car's wheels on gravel signaled they'd arrived home.

Michael parked, kil ed the engine, and spent a moment in thought before he said, "We're going to tel them everything. Anything else wouldn't be fair. And it could put them in a lot of danger if they think Amelie's still somehow got our backs."

It would upset Eve, and it would anger Shane, but he was right; keeping them in the dark was a sure path to disaster. You could protect people from harm, but not from knowing.

"Wel ," Claire said, "at least we have tacos. Everything goes better with tacos."

And the tacos did help. Even Shane, who met them at the door and glared at the cooler in Michael's hand, brightened up at the sight of the grease- stained paper bags Claire held. "You really know the way to a man's heart," he said, and grabbed them out of her hands.

"Between the ribs and angle up?" she said, and gave him a sweet, fast kiss when he looked shocked. "Hey, it's your joke. Don't blame me if I remember it."

"And you look like such a nice girl."

"Fine, if you're not into it, I'll just take those tacos back...."

It devolved into keep-away with taco bags, which Shane of course would have won by virtue of sheer size and agility, except that Miranda sneaked up behind him and stole a couple by surprise, which sent him yel ing in pursuit as she dashed off through the kitchen and into the living room. And then Eve was into it, and Claire had to fight to hang on to the two bags she had left.

In the end, it allsomehow made it to the dining table. Eve broke out thick paper plates and forks and spoons, and Michael and Shane organized the drinks while Claire and Miranda put little taco boats at each of their place settings. It was allreally warm and sweet and home, and Claire made sure as they were eating that Miranda got a couple of extra tacos that normally Shane would have grabbed as they passed. He pouted, but in a cute way.

It was when they were finishing up that Shane said, faux-casually, "So I guess everything went okay today?"

Miranda licked the last of the hot sauce out of the bottom of the paper boat and raised her eyebrows. "What happened today? I never get to know anything." She was still physically a frail little thing, and Claire supposed that the girl's delicate, breakable look would never change now; ghosts didn't age, and no matter how many tacos she ate or Coca-Colas she guzzled, she'd never grow an inch or gain a pound. That was something a lot of girls dreamed of, Claire thought. Of course, those girls probably never thought about having to live their eternity trapped inside one house, living half a life, not even being able to shop or see a movie that wasn't brought in, or go out to eat...or date.

Miranda was never, ever going to date. That was probably the saddest thing of all. She probably hadn't ever even been kissed. Not once. And what was worse, she was living in a house with two couples.

Yeah. Living hel , Claire decided, and she elbowed Shane and gave Miranda the last taco. It seemed the least she could do.

Then she realized that Michael hadn't even started answering the question. Somehow, Claire had expected him to take the lead on it, but since he hadn't, suddenly everyone was staring at her, waiting.

Claire cleared her throat, took a drink of water, and said, "I guess I'll just get it over with. Hannah can't help about getting rid of the ID cards, or the hunting licenses. She's being thrown out of office. Oliver's a jerk. Amelie's turned into a Vampire with a capital V, and she nearly kil ed Michael to prove how badass she is now. Does that cover it, Michael?"

"Pretty much," he said.

That...didn't go over as well as she'd hoped. For a second, nobody said a word, and then everyone was trying to talk at once. Michael tried to put some kind of polish on what she'd said, but there was no changing the truth of it. Eve was sharply demanding to know what was meant by nearly killed. Shane was cursing and saying that he'd known it would be like this.

Even Miranda was timidly asking something that was lost in the general chaos.

"One at a time," Claire finally yel ed, and that surprised them enough that they allfel silent. Surprisingly, it was Miranda who plunged ahead first. "Are you feeling all right?" she asked Michael, and there was an edge of anxiety in her voice that surprised Claire...and then, didn't. After all, Miranda had never been kissed, and Michael couldn't help being a girl magnet. Claire felt a little relieved, really, because at least the girl didn't moon about Shane. Not that Shane would have noticed, or cared, but still.

Eve, on the other hand, seemed to ignore Miranda altogether; her gaze focused wholly on Michael's face. Her dark eyes were huge, and she'd gripped his left hand tightly with her right.

"I'm okay," he said, not to Miranda, but to Eve, and brought her hand to his lips to kiss it. "Claire might have been exaggerating a little."

"Not much," Claire muttered, but she ate a bite of taco and didn't object any louder.

"She's right, though," Michael continued. "Definitely, there's something wrong with Amelie and how she's handling things. It's not the Founder we've known; this is more the way Bishop acted. Maybe it's something to do with her near miss with the draug."

"Or maybe it's just that Oliver's in her pocket allthe time," Shane said. "I'm saying pocket because there's a deceased minor present, but by pocket I mean pants."

Claire smacked him under the table on the side of the leg, hard, but she didn't disagree with the substance-just the presentation. "Oliver's a bad boyfriend," she agreed. "And she's listening to him way too much. That's why he's getting rid of Hannah; he doesn't want any disagreements on the Elders' Council. He just wants some rubber-stamping human body sitting at the table, to keep people in line by pretending they still have a voice."

"Can we go back to the issue of Michael nearly being kil ed?" Eve said. "Because I'm really not okay with that. What happened?"

"I didn't agree with Amelie on something." Michael shrugged. "It's not the first time, right? Eve, seriously, don't fuss."

Eve gazed at him a moment longer, then shifted her attention to Shane. "You buying this no-big-deal crap?"

"Nope."

"Then what are we going to do about it?"

"Oh, I don't know. Kil 'em all; feed their carcasses to chickens? Hel , Eve, what can we do? We got by this long because we're lucky and we've had the right vampires on our side. Now the same vamps are on the other side of the line. What've we got going for us?"

"Wel , we're allsmart, strong, and fashion forward," Eve said. "Except for you."

He saluted her with a fork ful of dripping taco and shoveled it into his mouth. "You forgot handsome," he said. "Plus thoughtful, kind, brave..."

"Shane, the closest you ever got to the Boy Scouts was when that whole troop of them beat you up in fourth grade," Eve shot back.

"Be fair-they were Brownies, and those girls were soccer-trained. Mean kickers." Shane took a sip of his drink and changed the subject. "We don't have a lot of things counting up in our favor right now, do we? No offense, Mike. You know I love you and Eve, but you two getting married hasn't made life around here any easier; most people avoid us, the pro-human side hates us, the pro-vampire side hates us, too. Now we don't have the Ice Queen on our side, either. Strategically, I guess our whole position boils down to this sucks."

"We've got Myrnin," Claire said. "He doesn't like how things are heading, either. He'l help."

"Oh yeah, because Myrnin's always reliable," Eve said. "Yes, Shane, I said it for you."

"Thanks for reading my mind."

"Thanks for making it so simple."

Shane threw a napkin at her, she deflected it into Miranda's lap, and Miranda threw it to Michael, who didn't even look up as he snatched the wadded-up paper out of the air and lobbed it to Claire.

Who missed, of course.

"Loser does the dishes," Michael said. "New rule."

"Awesome," Shane agreed, and then got less cheerful about it. "Wait-it's allpaper plates and stuff."

"Hey, you could have lost if you'd thought about it."

Miranda was the one who spoiled the moment by asking, in a very worried voice, "What are you going to do about stopping Amelie? I mean, if she's really dangerous now?"

Eve put her arm around the girl and hugged her. "Claire wil have an awesome plan, and we'l allmake it work. You'l see."

Yeah, Claire thought gloomily, as she gathered up the trash. No pressure.

She was mostly done when she found Miranda standing next to her, handing her stuff. Eve, Michael, and Shane had allmoved off, and the younger girl gave her a quick, crooked smile. "I don't mind," she said. "I like to help. Is it okay?"

"Sure," Claire said. "Thanks."

"I wanted to ask you something, actually. I heard Shane say something about those people who came to town. Those people with the TV show."

"Oh, right. Angel and Jenna." And Tyler, who did allthe work. "What about them?"

"You don't think they'l , ah, find anything, do you? What if they do? What if they get the word out on Morganville?"

"It won't happen," Claire said. "Even if they do find anything-which I really doubt-I don't think they'd be able to get it out of town. Why? Are you worried about their finding out about you?"

"Not-not really." Miranda looked oddly embarrassed. "I just-they must have met other ghosts before. I just wondered if maybe I could talk to them about it. About what's normal."

"I'm not sure there's any such thing as normal, when it comes to ghosts, especially around here," Claire said doubtfully. "Mir, you're not thinking of trying to get them over here, are you?"

"Wel , at night, they wouldn't see anything weird...."

"No. No, definitely no. What if Myrnin comes popping in through a portal in the wal , or some random vamp decides to drop in for a visit? How do we explain that? And Michael? They'd notice something strange about him, wouldn't they?"

"Oh," Miranda said. "Right. I hadn't thought about that. Okay, then. I just-I just wish I could make more friends."

Claire hip-bumped her and grinned. "We're not enough for you?"

She got a smile in response, but it wasn't a very certain one. "Sure," Miranda said softly, and walked away.

Oh dear.

That, Claire thought, might be a problem.

The blood bank in Morganville had odd hours-for instance, they'd instituted twenty-four-hour donations, which meant that Claire was able to shove Shane out of bed and into pants, shoes, and shirt at four a.m., and drag him, half asleep, into the place to drain a pint of blood before he was too awake to protest. She gave a second pint, just to make things even, and took him home to pile back into bed. He refused to go to his own, which was just pure stubbornness, and curled his warm, strong body next to her under the covers for another two hours until she had to rise to go to school. It might have been more sexy, except that he fel asleep within about five minutes, and she held out for only a few ticks more.

Seven a.m. came way too early, but Claire dragged herself yawning through the morning routine: shower, dress, sleepwalk to Common Grounds for a mocha. That was where she picked up the news that Mayor Hannah Moses was "stepping down for personal reasons" and that a write-in election would be held over the weekend.

The col ege students were, of course, oblivious to what that meant, but there was a stack of the flyers about it near the register, and Claire grabbed one. The press release was boring and dry, and there was a write-in form right on the bottom of the flyer, with instructions to drop it off at City Hal in the appropriate bal ot box.

Claire stuffed the flyer in her backpack, grabbed her coffee, and headed out for class. Luckily, she had a different schedule of professors today, ones she actually liked, and sailed through the morning high on caffeine and chal enging discussions on condensed-matter physics, which was the study of exactly how atoms combined and recombined to make liquids, solids, and states that, theoretically, hadn't been seen. Except she had seen them. Myrnin had invented them, and he used them as transportation hubs around the town. He cal ed them doors, whereas Claire called them portals, but it boiled down to one thing: traveling from here to there and skipping the in-between.

So she kind of had a head start on that concept, and calculations.

She had a break at noon, and went to the coffee shop on campus. It was Eve's day to work there, instead of at Common Grounds; she was a good-enough barista that she could work anywhere she wanted, and she liked to see different people on the other side of the counter. Plus, Eve always insisted, she liked these little weekly vacations away from Oliver's scowling.

She didn't look especially happy now, though, Claire thought, as she waited in line. As the guy ahead of her walked away with his coffee, Claire leaned her elbows on the counter and said, "Are you okay?" She put the back of her hand to Eve's forehead. "I think you must have a fever."

"What?" Eve looked tired under the makeup, as if she hadn't slept much. "What are you talking about?"

"Mr. Hottie McGorgeous just walking away. He was way into you, and you didn't even smile at him."

Eve held up her hand and tapped the ring on her finger. "Anti-flirting device," she said. "It works."

"Oh, come on-it wouldn't keep you from smiling!"

"I just wasn't feeling it." But that wasn't it, and Claire knew it. There was a piece of paper on the counter, turned facedown, but the water had soaked through in places, and she saw tombstones drawn on it. Before Eve could stop her, Claire reached over and took it.

They were the same four tombstones as on the flyers that kept appearing at the Glass House, only this one was more personal. It had an arrow pointing at Eve's grave, with the words, Soon, bitch written above it.

Eve shrugged. "It was on the counter when I got here for work."

"Sorry," Claire said. "People are asses."

"Mostly," Eve agreed. "Mocha, then?"

"Just hot cocoa." Claire took the flyer she'd grabbed at Common Grounds out of her bag and put it on the counter, avoiding the drips of spilled drinks. "Did you see this?"

Eve mixed the cocoa and read the paper at the same time, which was pretty impressive. "Write-in candidates. well , that's an easy one. They'll just pick whoever they want and write the bal ots the way they want them to come out. And we bother voting why?"

"We can't let that be the way things go," Claire said earnestly. "We have to get people together to demand a free and fair election, counted by humans."

"You have an impressive amount of crazy in that head. How exactly would you do that? Because I guarantee you, if you set up a Facebook page, they'l kil it before you can refresh the screen. And don't even think about Twitter."

It was true; the vampires had a headlock on the electronic communications in town, and that stumped Claire for a moment. "Old school," she said finally. "Captain Obvious is still around, right?" Captain Obvious was a little like the Spartacus of Morganville.... He was the guy in charge of organizing and leading the human resistance, in whatever form it took. Captain Obvious as an individual usually didn't last long, but a new one was always waiting in the wings.

"Wel , in theory, I guess," Eve said. "Last one ran for it before the barriers went back up around town. Last I heard, though, there was nobody in charge of the human underground anymore, so it's pretty much done for...not that it ever made any difference in the first place. Bunch of disorganized losers, mostly. well , except for that one time they saved our lives. But if he's still around, maybe he's the one sending us the die- already notices, so maybe not an asset."

Claire blinked and sipped the hot cocoa Eve handed her. Nobody was in line behind her, so she lingered at the counter. "The old Captain Obvious was outed, anyway. Everybody knew who he was. What if there was a new one? A secret one?"

"Sweetie, I'm pretty sure I'd have heard. I hear everything." But Claire wasn't listening now; her brain was firing off a chain of bril iant, random flashes, putting things together, planning-until Eve snapped fingers in front of her eyes and she realized Eve was saying something along the lines of Earth to whatever planet you're circling.

"Sorry," Claire said. She smiled slowly. "I think I've got it."

"Swine flu? The answer to cold fusion? An aneurysm?"

"How do we get vampires not to ignore the results of the election?"

"You can't."

"Unless the results are what they want to see," Claire said. "Then they'd just announce them, right? They wouldn't bother to fake anything."

"True." Eve was eyeing her doubtfully. Very doubtfully. "What the hel are you thinking, CB?"

"We write in someone who is exactly what they want: a human connected to an old Morganville family. But one who isn't afraid to get in the faces of the vamps."

"Okay, maybe we need to walk this backward, because you're not making any sense at all," Claire said, and held Eve's stare for long enough that she saw the light begin to-kind of dreadfully-dawn. "Shane?" her best friend said, and covered her ink blue lips with one pale hand. "You can't run Shane for mayor. Come on! Shane's the exact opposite of political!"

"I'm not talking about him," Claire interrupted. "But there's somebody else in this town who's perfectly qualified. And perfectly unqualified at the same time. And if anyone knows about causing chaos in this town, it's her."

Silence. Dead, utter silence. Eve blinked, blinked again, and finally said, "What?"

But Claire was already walking away, humming softly under her breath, feeling for the first time in months that she had something actually going the right way in Morganville.

Ironic, really.