“That is such emotional blackmail!” Monica spat. Behind her, Gina and Jennifer looked at each other, took a few quiet steps back, and mounted the stairs to board the bus, leaving Monica on her own. “Seriously, Richard. I can’t believe you’re sending me away like this!”
“Believe it. You’re getting on, and getting out of here. Now. I need you to be safe.” He hugged her, but she stiff-armed him with an angry glare, and turned and boarded without another word. She slumped into the seat behind Jennifer and Gina, next to her mother, and folded her arms in silent protest.
Richard breathed a sigh of relief, then turned to Claire’s parents. “Please,” he said. “We need to get these buses moving.”
Claire’s father shook his head.
“Dad,” Claire said, and tugged on his arm. “Dad, come on.”
He still hesitated, staring at Hannah, then Richard, then Claire. Still shaking his head in mute refusal.
“Dad, you have to go! Now!” Claire practically shouted. She felt sick inside, worried for them and relieved to think they’d be safe, finally, somewhere outside of Morganville. Somewhere none of this could touch them. “Mom, please. Just make him go! I don’t want you here; you’re just in the way!”
She said it in desperation, and she saw it hurt her parents a little. She’d said worse to them over the years; she’d had her share of
Now, she knew she didn’t, but in this case, she knew more than they did.
Frustrating, because they’d never see it that way.
“Don’t you talk to us like that, Claire!” her mother snapped. Her dad put a hand on her shoulder and patted, and she took a deep breath.
“All right,” Dad said, “I can see you’re not going to come without a fight, and I can see your friends here aren’t going to help us.” He paused, and Claire swallowed hard at the look in his eyes as he locked stares with Hannah, then Richard. “If anything happens to our daughter—”
“Sir,” Richard said. “If you don’t get on the bus, something is going to happen to all of us, and it’s going to be very, very bad. Please. Just go.”
“You need to do it for your daughter,” Hannah added. “I think you both know that, deep down. So you let me worry about taking care of Claire. You two get on the bus. I promise you, this will be over soon.”
It was a sad sort of farewell, full of tears (from Mom and Claire) and the kind of too-strong hug that meant Claire’s father felt just as choked up, but wasn’t willing to show it. Her mother smoothed her hair, just like she’d done since Claire was a little girl, and kissed her gently on the cheek.
“You be good,” she said, and looked deep into Claire’s eyes. “We’re going to talk about things later.”
She meant about Shane, of course. Claire sighed and nodded, and hugged her one last time. She watched them walk up the stairs and onto the bus.
Her parents took a seat near the front, with her mom next to the window. Claire gave a sad little wave, and her mom waved back. Mom was still crying. Dad looked off into the distance, jaw set tight, and didn’t wave back.
The bus closed its doors with a final hiss and pulled away from the deserted warehouse that served as a dropoff point for the departures. Three police cars fell in behind it, driven by people Hannah had handpicked.
Claire shivered, even though she was standing in the sun.
The bus looked so vulnerable.
“Cold?” A jacket settled around her shoulders. It smelled like Shane. “What did I miss?”
She turned, and there he was, wearing an old gray T-shirt and jeans. His leather jacket felt like a hug around her body, but it wasn’t enough; she dived into the warmth of his arms, and they clung together for a moment. He kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay,” he said. “They’ll be okay.”
“No, it’s not okay,” she said, muffled against his chest. “It’s just not.”
He didn’t argue. After a moment, she turned her head, and together they watched the caravan stream away toward the Morganville city limits.
“Why is it,” she asked in a plaintive little voice, “that I can fight vampires and risk death and they can accept that, but they can’t accept that I’m a woman, with my own life?”
Shane thought about that for a second; she could see him trying to work it out through the framework of his own admittedly weird childhood. “Must be a girl thing?”
“Yeah, must be.”
“So I’m guessing you told them.”
“Um . . . not on purpose. I didn’t expect them to be so . . . angry about it.”
“You’re their little girl,” Shane said. “You know, when I think about it, I’d feel the same way about my own daughter.”
“You would?” There was something deliciously warm about the fact that he wasn’t afraid to say that to her. “So,” she said, with an effort at being casual that was probably all too obvious. “You want to have a daughter, then?”
He kissed the top of her head. “Hit the brakes, girl.”
But he didn’t sound angry about it, or nervous. Just—as was usual with Shane—focused on what was in front of them right now. A sense of calm was slowly spreading through her, sinking deeper with every breath. It felt better when she was with him. Everything felt better.
Shane asked, “What about the Goldmans? Were they on the bus, too?”
“I didn’t see the Goldmans,” Claire said. “Hannah?”
Hannah Moses was still standing nearby, signing papers on a clipboard that another uniformed Morganville cop had handed her. She glanced toward the two of them. “Couldn’t get to them,” she said. “Myrnin was going to arrange that, but we’ve got no way to get them out of Bishop’s control right now. The clock’s running, and it’s only a matter of minutes before Bishop finds out what we just did, if he hasn’t already.”
Richard Morrell’s phone rang. He unclipped it from his belt and checked the number, then flipped it open and walked away to talk for a moment. Claire watched him pace, shoulders hunched, as he had his conversation. When he folded up the phone and came back, his face was tense. “He knows,” he said. “Bishop’s calling a town hall meeting for tonight at Founder’s Square. Everybody must attend. Nobody stays home.”
“Oh, come on. You can’t get everybody in town to a meeting. What if they don’t get the message? What if they just don’t want to do it?” Claire asked. Even in Morganville, making people stick to rules—whatever the rules were—was like herding cats.
Richard and Hannah exchanged a look. “Bishop’s not one for taking excuses,” she said. “If he says everybody has to be at the meeting, he’ll make it open season on anybody who isn’t there. That’s his style.”
Richard was already nodding his agreement. “We need to get word out. Knock on every door, every business. Lock off the campus and keep the students out of this. We’ve got six hours before sundown. Let’s not waste one minute.”
Shane was drafted into helping a whole crowd of people load supplies into the warehouse—food, water, clothing, radios, survival-type stuff. Claire wasn’t sure why, and she didn’t think she really wanted to know; the atmosphere was quiet, purposeful, but tense. Nobody asked questions. Not now.
The first of Bishop’s vampires showed up about two hours later, driving slowly past the perimeter in one of the city-issued cars with tinted windows. Hannah’s strike team stopped the car, and Claire was surprised to see them fling a blanket over the vampire as he was dragged out of the shelter into the sun, and hauled off to be confined under cover.
“Most of Bishop’s people are really Amelie’s,” Hannah explained. “Amelie would like us to keep them alive, if we can. She can turn them back, once Bishop’s gone. Call it temporary insanity—not a killing kind of offense, even for vampires. We just need to keep them out of commission, that’s all.”
Well, that sounded deceptively easy to Claire’s ears; she didn’t think Bishop’s converts—even the unwilling ones—would be all that eager to be put on the bench. Still, Hannah seemed to know what she was doing. Hopefully. “So that’s the plan: we just grab every vamp who comes looking?”
“Not quite.” Hannah gave her a slight smile. “You do know I’m not telling you the plan, right?”
Right, Claire was still on the wrong side. She glared down at her much-faded tattoo, which was still moving under her skin, but weakly, like the last flutters of a failing butterfly. It itched. “I wish this thing would just
