made the girl deeply uncomfortable. Miranda tried to get out of the chair they’d put her into. “I need to go home.”
“Whoa, whoa, you can barely stand up,” Eve said, and managed to get her settled again. “Claire, would you check on Michael? See if he’s okay?”
In other words, there were questions Shane and Eve were about to ask, personal questions. Claire nodded and went upstairs. The bathroom door was closed. She knocked softly.
“Michael?”
No answer. She tried the handle. Locked.
Claire turned at what sounded like footsteps down the hall, but she saw no one. She didn’t hear the door unlock, but when she looked back, the bathroom door was open, and Michael was standing about two inches away from her.
She stumbled backward. Instead of just washing up, he’d showered; his hair was damp and curling and darker than usual, and he was wearing a towel around his waist. There was a lot more of Michael on display than she was used to, and it was . . . impressive.
Claire backed away, all the way to the wall.
“Sorry,” he said. Not as if he really was. He sounded annoyed, stressed, and jittery. “She’s still here.” It wasn’t a question, but Claire nodded anyway. “She can’t stay. We need to get her out of here.”
“I don’t think she’s in any shape to go,” Claire offered. “She seemed pretty hysterical. Shane and Eve are —”
“I can still smell her blood,” Michael interrupted her. “I washed it off of me. I took off my clothes. I showered. None of that matters, I can still—she has to go. Now.”
“What’s wrong with you? I thought you’d—” She hesitated, then made a drinking motion.
“I did.” Michael rubbed his face with both hands. “Guess I burned it off tonight at the show. I’m hungry, Claire.”
It cost him a lot to say it. Claire gulped, and nodded. “Wait here.”
She went downstairs, past where Shane and Eve were still earnestly talking with Miranda, and into the kitchen. At the very back of the bottom shelf of the refrigerator sat some bottles that might have been full of beer, and weren’t. There were three of them. She grabbed one without looking too closely at it and made sure it was concealed against her side as she passed the little downstairs group. Nobody really looked her way; they were too intent on keeping their own secrets.
Michael was still waiting, leaning against the bathroom doorframe, arms folded. He straightened when he saw what she had in her hand. She gave it to him silently. Michael never took his eyes off her as he popped the cap with his thumbnail and lifted the cold bottle to his lips. The contents moved more like syrup than blood, and Claire almost gagged.
Michael did gag. But he swallowed it. And kept on drinking until the bottle was empty.
His blue eyes flushed hot red, and then cleared back to their normal color.
She saw something like horror go through him. “I didn’t just do that in front of you.”
“Uh—yeah. You did.” And there had definitely been some kind of challenge in it, too. Some kind of come-on, even. Which was beyond yuck and creepy, and yet . . .
And yet.
Michael wiped his lips with the back of his hand, looked down at the faint smear, and went back to the washbasin to rinse it off.
He stared into the mirror at himself for so long, Claire thought he’d forgotten she was there, and then he said, “Thanks.”
Claire tried to think of something not totally idiotic to say. “Pretty disgusting, isn’t it? When it’s cold?” That wasn’t it.
Luckily, Michael was relieved to have any kind of conversational lifeline, after that weird moment. “Yeah,” he said. “But it keeps the edge off. That’s what’s important.” He rinsed out the bottle carefully, then threw it away and took in a deep breath. “I’ll get dressed. Be there in a second.”
It was a dismissal, but a nice one, and Claire took it at face value this time, and went back to the living room.
Where Shane and Eve were standing together, heads cocked at identical angles, staring.
“What’s going on?” Claire whispered.
“Shhh,” both Shane and Eve hissed, eerily in unison.
Because Miranda was talking in a strange monotone voice, and she looked . . . dead. Unconscious. Only talking.
“I see the feast,” she was saying. “So much anger . . . so much lying. All dead, walking dead, falling down. It’s spreading. It’ll kill us all.”
Claire felt a hot snap of alarm. Walking dead, falling down. It’s spreading. Miranda had psychic episodes— Claire knew that. It was part of the reason Eve let her hang around from time to time. Sometimes her visions were fake, but a lot of the time, they were as serious as a heart attack, and Claire somehow knew this one was real.
She was talking about the disease infecting the vampires, and she was talking about it spreading to humans. No, that can’t happen. Can it? They hadn’t even really been able to pinpoint what the disease was, only what it did, and what it did was erode the vampires’ sanity, carving steadily until what was left was unable to function at all.
The first thing to go—for all the vampires of Morganville—had been the ability to reproduce. To create new vampires. Only Amelie still had the strength, and creating Michael had almost destroyed her.
It’s spreading. Claire thought of all the humans in Morganville, all the families, all the young people who’d been in the coffee shop tonight, and felt cold and unsteady.
It couldn’t be true.
“Feast,” Miranda said again. “You’re all fools, all fools—don’t let him trick you. It’s not just three—it’s more —”
“Who?” Eve sank down next to Miranda’s chair and put a hand on her shoulder. “Mir, who are you talking about?”
“Elder,” she said, and now there were tears leaking down Miranda’s pale cheeks. “Oh no. Oh no . . . they’re turning. They’re all so hungry, can’t stop them—”
Michael, who was coming down the steps, paused. He looked calm again, but worried. “What’s she talking about?”
“Shhh!” This time, all three of them shushed at the same time. Eve bent closer to Miranda. “Honey, are you talking about the vampires? What’s going to happen with the vampires?”
“Dying,” Miranda whispered. “So many dying. We think we’re safe but we’re not. They won’t listen— they won’t see us—” She restlessly turned the silver bracelet on her wrist and twisted in her chair. “He’s doing it. He’s making it happen.”
“Oliver?” Eve asked. Because Oliver was the only male vampire Elder on the town council.
But Miranda shook her head. She didn’t say another word, but she cried, cried so hard she shook herself out of her trance and clung to Eve like a thin little reed in the wind.
“Bishop,” Michael said. They all looked at him. “It’s not Oliver. She’s talking about Bishop. He’s going to try to destroy Morganville.”
Miranda ended up sleeping on the couch, and when Claire came downstairs the next morning, she found the girl huddled in a ball under mountains of blankets, still shivering but fast asleep. She looked even more frail. Her pale skin was translucent, and there were dark, exhausted circles around her eyes.
Claire felt sorry for her, but it was a distant kind of sorry—Miranda didn’t really invite a lot of devotion. She didn’t have any friends to speak of, or so Eve said; people tolerated her, but they didn’t exactly enjoy her company. That was hard on the kid, but Claire could understand it. Miranda was a mixture of denial and outright creepiness, and even in Morganville, she was going to have a hard time fitting in.
No wonder she defended the vampire who was feeding on her. He was probably the only one who really showed her any kind of affection.
Claire paused to tuck the blankets more firmly around the girl’s trembling frame before she went into the
