handed it back.
“Ysandre,” he said.
The book was written in English, but it was from the eighteenth century, and not easy to make out, considering the stains on the pages.
She was of a beauty so unusual and so marvelous that her grandfather was fascinated by the dazzling sight, and mistook her for an angel that God had sent to console him on his deathbed. The pure lines of her fine profile, her great black liquid eyes, her noble brow uncovered, her hair shining like the raven’s wing, her delicate mouth, the whole effect of this beautiful face on the mind of those who beheld her was that of a deep melancholy and sweetness, impressing itself once and for ever. Tall and slender, but without the excessive thinness of some young girls, her movements had that careless supple grace that recalls the waving of a flower stalk in the breeze.
“Oh,” Claire said, surprised. That was Ysandre; he was right. “She was—”
“A very famous murderess. She helped her husband and cousins kill a king shortly after her grandfather’s death. She was hanged, in the end, but that was after she’d been made a vampire. Lucky timing, for her.”
The book contained a gruesome account of the king’s murder, and a whole lot of others. Claire shivered and closed the book. “Why did you show me this?”
“I don’t want you to do what her grandfather did— underestimate her because she has the look of an angel. Ysandre has destroyed more lives than you can begin to imagine, starting with her own.” Myrnin’s eyes were dark and very, very serious. “If she wants Shane, let her have him. She’ll be done with him soon enough. Amelie won’t allow her to kill him.”
“I think she wants other things,” Claire said.
“Ah. Sexual, then. Or some version of it. Ysandre has always been a bit—odd.”
“How do I stop her?”
Myrnin slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. My only suggestion—which I’m quite certain you won’t like—is to let him deal with this in his own way. She’ll leave him alive, and largely intact, unless he resists her.”
“You’re right. I don’t like it.”
“Complain to the management, my dear.” His fit of seriousness passed off, like a cloud from the sun. “How about a game of chess, then?”
“How about we just analyze your blood, because you’ve only got a few more minutes before I have to put you back in your, ah, room?”
“Cell,” he corrected. “Perfectly all right to say so. And you work too hard for someone so young.”
She worked too hard, Claire thought in frustration, because somebody had to. Myrnin certainly didn’t.
By Thursday, the upcoming masked ball was the buzz of Morganville. Claire couldn’t avoid hearing about it. At the university coffee shop, that was inevitable; people said the weirdest, most private things right out in public, like there was some invisible privacy wall around them. She’d heard way too much about her fellow students’ sexual adventures over the past few weeks; apparently, it was mating season, now that everybody was settling in for the semester. Girls rated guys. Guys rated girls. Both wanted what they couldn’t have, or had what they didn’t really want.
But as Claire sipped her coffee and wrote out her physics essay on mechanics, heat, and fields—which didn’t have to do with auto shops, weather, or farming—she heard something that made her pen come to a stuttering stop on the page.
“—invitation,” someone was saying. The someone was sitting behind her. “Can you believe it! My God, I actually got one! They say there are only three hundred invitations being sent out, you know. It’s really going to be amazing. I was thinking of going as Marie Antoinette—what do you think?”
They had to be talking about the masked ball. Claire shifted in her chair. That didn’t help—she still couldn’t see who was speaking.
“Well, I think somebody might have actually known her, back in the day,” the other girl said. “So you might want to go with something safe, like Catwoman. I’ll bet none of them know Catwoman.”
“Catwoman’s good,” the first girl agreed. “Tight black leather is never out of style. I would look totally hot as Catwoman.”
Claire spilled her coffee, more or less deliberately, and jumped up to gather handfuls of napkins from the common dispenser at the creamer station. On the way back, she got a look at the two who were talking.
Gina and Jennifer, Monica’s ever-present friends. Only, this time, no Monica to be seen. Interesting.
Jennifer glared at her. “What are you looking at, klutz?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Claire said, deadpan. She wasn’t afraid of them, not anymore. “I wouldn’t go as Catwoman. Not with those thighs.”
“Oh, mee-yow.”
She gathered up books and coffee, and retreated to a table closer to the actual coffee bar. Eve was working. She looked perky today, bright-eyed and smiling; she had on red, and it totally worked for her. Goth, but somehow cheerful. She still grieved for her dad—Claire saw it in odd moments, when she thought nobody was watching—but Eve had pulled herself together, and was holding it together despite all the odds.
She had a break in the coffee line, so she flashed her coworker a hand signal of five—a five-minute break, Claire guessed as Eve stripped off the apron and ducked under the bar to slip into the chair opposite her.
“So,” she said, “I heard from Billy Harrison that his dad got an invitation to this ball thing, from Tamara—the vamp who owns all those warehouses on the north side, and runs the paper? And he said that vamps all over town are going, and taking humans as their—I don’t know, dates? That’s weird, right? That they’re all bringing humans?”
“It’s never happened before?”
“Not that I know of,” Eve said. “I asked around, but nobody’s seen anything like it. It’s become the hot-ticket event of the year.” Her smile dimmed slightly. “I guess Michael forgot to send me mine. My invitation. I should remind him.”
Claire felt a tight little knot tug inside. “He hasn’t asked you?”
“He will.”
“But . . . it’s the day after tomorrow, isn’t it?”
“He will. Besides, it’s not like I have to come up with some elaborate costume or anything. Have you seen my closet? Half of what I wear qualifies as dress-up. ” Eve glanced at her, then down. “You?”
“Nobody’s asking me to go.” Yeah, the bitterness was there in her voice. Claire couldn’t keep it out. “You know who Shane’s going with.”
“It’s not his fault. It’s hers. Ysandre.” Eve made a face. “What kind of a name is that, anyway?”
“French. Myrnin gave me a book about her,” Claire said. “I knew she was dangerous, but honestly, she’s worse than I thought. She might have started out just trying to get by, but she was a real player, back when politics was war.”
“What about the guy? François?” Eve rolled her eyes when she said his name, doing her best foo-foo French pronunciation. “He thinks he’s hotter than the surface of the sun. Who’s he taking?”
“No idea,” Claire said. “But—it’s not a date, you know. It’s—” She had no real idea what it was. “It’s something else.”
“Looks like a date, dresses like a date, dates like a date,” Eve said. “And I intend to be arm candy for Michael and protect him from all the big, bad social climbers out there looking to grab on to the newest vamp in town.”
“He’s not, though,” Claire said. “The newest. Not anymore. Bishop and his crew are newer than he is, at least in terms of novelty factor.”
Eve frowned. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess that’s true.”
A shadow fell across their table, but before they could look up, something hit the surface between them, and both Claire and Eve involuntarily focused on it.
It was one of the cream-colored invitations.
They looked up. Monica. She swept her perfect blond hair back over her shoulders, raised her eyebrows, and gave Eve a slow, evil smile.
“Too bad,” she said. “I guess your hottie boyfriend knows where his social bread is buttered, after all.”
Eve’s eyes widened. She turned the invitation around to read it, but even upside down, Claire saw the incriminating evidence.
