looked white and even, perfectly normal. “Of course he’s lonely,’” she said. “Samuel is the youngest. No one older trusts him; no one younger exists. He has no ties to the vampire community, save me, and no ties left to the human world. He is more alone than anyone you will ever meet, Claire.’”
“You say that like you…want him that way. Alone, I mean.’”
“I do,’” Amelie said calmly. “My reasons are my own. However, it is an interesting experiment, to see how someone so alone will react. Samuel has been intriguing; most vampires would have simply turned brutal and un- caring, but he continues to seek comfort. Friendship. He is unusual, I think.’”
“You’re experimenting on him!’” Claire said.
Amelie’s platinum eyebrows slowly rose to form perfect arches over her cold, amused eyes. “Clever of you to think such a thing, but attend: a rat who knows it is running a maze is no longer a useful subject. So you will keep your counsel, and you will keep your distance from dear sweet Samuel. Now. Why did you come to me today?’”
“Why did I…?’” Claire cleared her throat. “I think maybe there’s been a mistake. I was, you know, looking for a bathroom.’”
Amelie stared at her for a frozen second, and then she threw back her head and laughed. It was a full, living sound, warm and full of unexpected joy, and when it passed, Claire could see the traces of it still on her face and in her eyes. Making her look almost…human. “A bathroom,’” she repeated, and shook her head. “Child, I have been told many things, but that may yet prove the most amusing. If you wish a bathroom, please, go through that door. You will find all that you require.’” Her smile faded. “But I think you came to ask me something more.’”
“I didn’t come here at all! I was going to the Morganville Historical Society….’”
“I am the Morganville Historical Society,’” Amelie said. “What do you wish to know?’”
Claire liked books. Books didn’t talk back. They didn’t sit there in their fancy throne chairs and look all queeny and imposing and terrifying, and they didn’t have fangs and bodyguards. Books were fine. “Um…I just wanted to look something up…?’”
Amelie was already losing patience. “Just tell me, girl. Quickly. I am not without duties.’”
Claire cleared her throat nervously, coughed, and said, “I wanted to find out about Eve’s brother, Jason. Jason Rosser.’”
“Done,’” Amelie said, and although she didn’t seem to do anything, not even lift a finger, the side door opened and her cute but deathly pale assistant leaned in. “The Rosser family file,’” she told him. He nodded and was gone. “You would have wasted your time,’” Amelie said to Claire. “There are no personnel files of any kind in the Historical Society building. It is purely for show, and the information there is inaccurate, at best. If you want to know the true history of things, little one, come to someone who has lived it.’”
“But that’s just perspective,’” Claire said. “Not fact.’”
“All fact is perspective. Ah, thank you, Henry.’” Amelie accepted a folder from her assistant, who silently left again. She flipped it open, studied what was inside, and then handed it over to Claire. “An unexceptional family. Curious that it produced young Eve and her brother.’”
It was their whole lives reduced to dry entries in longhand on paper. Dates of births, details of school records…there were handwritten reports from the vampire Brandon, who gave them Protection. Even those were dry.
And then not so dry, because between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, Eve changed. Big-time. The school photograph at fifteen was of a pretty, fragile-looking girl dressed in conservative clothes—something even Claire would have worn.
Eve’s photograph at sixteen was Goth City. She’d dyed her dark hair a flat glossy black, whited her face, raccooned her eyes, and generally adopted a ’tude. By seventeen she’d started getting piercings—one showed in the tongue she stuck out at the camera.
By eighteen, she looked pensive and defiant, and then the photographs stopped, except for some that looked like surveillance photos of Eve in Common Grounds, pulling espresso shots and chatting with customers.
Eve with Oliver.
You’re supposed to be looking up Jason, Claire reminded herself, and flipped the page.
Jason was just the same, only younger; about the time that Eve had turned Goth, so had Jason, although on him it looked less like a fashion choice and more like a serious turn to the dark side. Eve always had a light of humor and mischief in her eyes; Jason had no light in his eyes at all. He looked skinny, strong, and dangerous.
And Claire realized with an icy start that she’d seen him before…. He’d been on the street, staring at her just before she’d gone into Common Grounds and talked to Sam.
Jason Rosser knew who she was.
“Jason likes knives, as I recall,’” Amelie said. “He sometimes fancies himself a vampire. I should be quite careful of him, were I you. He is not likely to be as…polite as my own people.’”
Claire shivered and flipped pages, speed-reading through Jason’s not-very-impressive academic life, and then the police reports.
Eve had been the witness who’d turned him in. She’d seen him abduct this girl and drive away with her—a girl who was later found wandering the streets bleeding from a stab wound. The girl refused to testify, but Eve had gone on record. And Jason had gone away.
The file showed he’d been released from prison the day before yesterday at nine in the morning. Plenty of time for him to have grabbed Karla Gast on campus and…
Out with the bad thoughts, Claire. In with the good.
She flipped pages and looked at Eve’s mother and dad. They looked…normal. Kind of grim, maybe, but with a son like Jason, that probably wasn’t too strange. Still, they didn’t look like the kind of parents who’d just toss their daughter out on her ear and never write or call or visit.
Claire closed the file and slid it back across the desk to Amelie, who put it in a wooden out-box at the corner of her desk. “Did you find what you wished to know?’” Amelie asked.
“I don’t know.’”
“What a wise thing to say,’” Amelie said, and nodded once, like a queen to a subject. “You may go now. Use the door that brought you.’”
“Um…thanks. Bye.’” Which sounded like a dumbass thing to say to someone a billion years old, who controlled the town and everything in it, but Amelie seemed to accept it fine. Claire grabbed her backpack and hurried through the polished wood door…
…into a bathroom. With lots of floral wallpaper and really yak-worthy frilly doll-skirt toilet paper covers.
Reality whiplash.
Claire dropped her backpack and yanked open the door again.
It was the hallway. She looked right, then left. The room even smelled different—talcum powder and old-lady perfume. No trace of Amelie, her silent servants, or the room where they’d been.
“Science fiction,’” Claire said, deeply unhappy, and—feeling strangely guilty—flushed the toilet before trudging back the way she’d come. The house was warm, but the heat outside was like a slap from a microwaved towel.
Oh, she was so going to figure that trick out. She couldn’t stand the idea of it being, well, magic. Sure, vampires she could accept…grudgingly…and the whole mind-control thing. But not instantaneous transportation. Nope.
Lisa was sitting next to Gramma on the porch swing now, sipping lemonade. There was an extra one gathering beads of sweat on the small table next to her, and she nodded Claire to it without speaking.
“Thanks,’” Claire said, and took a deep, thirsty gulp. It was good—maybe too sweet, but refreshing. She drained it fast and held on to the cool glass, wondering if it was bad manners to crunch the ice cubes. “How long have you lived here?’”
“Gramma’s been in this house all her life,’” Lisa said, and gently rubbed her grandmother’s back. “Right, Gramma?’”
“Born here,’” the old woman said proudly. “Gonna die here, too, when I’m good and ready.’”
“That’s the spirit.’” Lisa poured Claire another glass of lemonade from a half-empty pitcher. “I find anything missing in Gramma’s house, college girl, and you can’t hide from me in Morganville. You feel me?’”
“Lisa!’” Gramma scolded. “I’m so sorry, honey. My granddaughter never learned proper manners.’” She smacked Lisa on the hand and gave her the parental glare. “This nice girl here, she never would steal from an old lady. Now, would you, honey?’”
