THREE
Claire wasn’t needed for the actual investigation. Myrnin wanted to do it himself…a fact that left her a little bit worried, not so much for him as for the people he was out to question (not very nice people, granted, if Frank Collins had decided they were worth losing). She left a message for Oliver, figuring that it was his problem now, and headed for home.
She expected to find everyone there, but when she unlocked the front door of the house on Lot Street, it sounded quiet. Way too quiet. They weren’t a studious bunch, her housemates. If Shane was home, there should have been game noise; if Eve, loud music. If both, shouting plus
Michael wasn’t home, either, because she didn’t hear guitar.
“Helllooooooooo,” she called, as she locked the door behind her in standard Morganville precautionary measure. “House ghost? Anybody?” Not that they had a house ghost anymore, but it always seemed polite to ask. Weirder things had happened.
Silence. Claire dumped her book bag on the couch, on top of a sweatshirt someone (Shane) had left balled up there, flopped down, and stretched out. She rarely had the house to herself; it felt nice. Strange, but nice. When nobody was moving around, she could hear something like a low, electric vibration from all over—walls, floors, ceiling. The life of the house.
Claire reached down and patted the wooden floor. “Good house. Nice house. We should do a repaint or something. Make you pretty again.”
She could have sworn that the house’s low hum cycled, like a very faint, approving purr.
After half an hour, she got up and checked the table and other likely spots for any sign of notes left behind, but there weren’t any hints about when she might expect anybody to show up. She was about to go upstairs to study when the flyer caught her eye. It had slipped off the kitchen table and was lying curled against the wall. She picked it up and smoothed it out.
The new martial arts gym. Not likely Eve was there, but for Shane, it was definitely a safe bet that was where he’d gone off to. Claire tapped the paper thoughtfully, then smiled.
“Why not?” she asked. The house didn’t answer or have any opinion one way or another. “I could use the exercise. And I’ve
She raced upstairs, changed into a pair of low-riding sweatpants and a faded T-shirt that advertised The Killers, and at the last second, added the gold Founder’s pin to her collar. It scratched, but better that than getting caught outside without Protection. After all, she hadn’t gotten martially arted
It was still light out, but fading fast toward twilight. Cold wind twirled the leaves in the gutters, and as she walked, Claire wished she’d thought to bring a sweater. A few cars passed her, some with blacked-out, vampire- friendly windows, but nobody paid her more than a glance that she could tell. The new gym was located in one of the less-trafficked parts of town, near a bunch of warehouses that had seen better days and businesses with long- ago-faded closed permanently signs in the windows. In all that industrial devastation, one neon sign still glowed, with a red-and-green dragon swishing its tail.
The storefront looked newly renovated, and Claire could swear she still smelled fresh paint. There were a lot of cars in the parking lot and lining the street. With surprise, Claire recognized Eve’s black hearse; she didn’t expect Eve to be a fan of sparring. Well, people probably wouldn’t have bet on her showing up, either.
There were no windows to look in through, so Claire pulled open the heavy metal door and walked into a large tiled area with a wooden counter. A buffed-up guy of postcollege age sat on a stool behind it, reading a magazine. He had a lot of tattoos, and a particularly sharp buzz cut. When he glanced up and saw her, his sandy eyebrows went up.
“Here for class?” he asked.
“Uh, maybe. I just want to check it out.”
“All right. You can do a pay-as-you-go for the first couple of visits, but after that, it’s a monthly fee, no refunds.” He shoved a clipboard at her, along with a pen. “Fill out the forms. It’s ten dollars.”
Ten was a lot for just checking it out, but Claire put her name on the papers, along with her address, phone number, medical history, and all the other stuff that was asked about exercise and mobility. Some of it seemed pretty intrusive. She handed it back, along with her faded ten-dollar bill, and got a sticky name tag to slap on her T-shirt. Then the bouncer—she couldn’t think of him as a receptionist—hit a hidden button, and a sharp, electronic buzz sounded.
“Push the wall, right there,” he said, pointing. She pushed, and it opened, cutting off the buzz. It swung shut behind her as she stepped through, and if it locked, she couldn’t hear it over the noise.
Amazing that she’d missed it on the other side of the barrier, because this gym was
Claire looked quickly around, and although she recognized some of those doing the straight exercise stuff, she didn’t see Shane or Eve among them. She edged around toward a stair-climber not in use and stepped on so she could get a better vantage point of the class in progress. Whoever had used it before her had set it to murderous levels; she had to back off on the resistance almost immediately, and so she almost missed Shane, who was sitting facing the mat at an angle.
She spotted him only because he got up and walked to the center of the mats. He wore his uniform well, she realized, like he’d done this before. Maybe he had. He had that look, the one she recognized from watching him fight, though those had been more down-and-dirty street things than martial arts bouts. He wasn’t looking at anything but the man facing him.
Shane was a pretty big guy for his age—broad shouldered, kind of tall. And he had at least a foot on the man facing him, who looked frozen at the age of about thirty.
They bowed to each other formally and settled back into some kind of stance, almost mirroring each other.
Shane kicked, high and fast. The vampire ducked and let Shane’s momentum spin him out of position, and with one economically placed, almost gentle push, sent him tumbling to the mats. Shane rolled and came up with his hands out, ready to defend, but the vampire was just standing there, watching him.
“Nice attack,” he said. “But I can move out of the way of a kick. You’d do much better to move in close, reduce my reaction time. It’s the only real chance you have, you see. You need to remember how much faster we can move, and how much more observant we are of things like shifts of weight and eye movements.”
Shane nodded, shaggy hair rippling around his hard, intent face, and took two quick, light steps in to close the distance. He struck as he did it, and even though he didn’t land the punch, he came closer. The vampire’s open hand stopped it less than an inch from his face.
He hadn’t flinched.
“You’re quick,” he said. “Very quick, and unless I miss my guess, very well accustomed to fighting all sorts of enemies. You’re young to be so angry, by the way. That can be either an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on who you’re fighting. And why.”
Shane fell back into a waiting stance and didn’t answer. The vampire gave him a little one-more-time signal, and Shane went for a punch…but it was a distraction, and this time, his kick actually hit the vampire in the side of his knee, forcing a shift in balance.
The vampire, without seeming to even think about it, spun and kicked Shane right off the mat. He tumbled across the wood floor and into the kneeling students like a ball into bowling pins. They scattered.
Claire gasped and gripped the stair-climber handles more tightly, resisting the urge to jump off and run to him. He was already rolling up to his feet—slower than last time, granted—and walked back to the mats. He put his right fist against his left palm, put feet together, and bowed.
The vampire bowed back. “Again,” he said. “I congratulate you on being the first to actually touch me. Now see if you can hurt me.” He bared his teeth in a savage little smile. “Come on, boy. Try.”
Shane settled into attack stance again, and then, very suddenly, it wasn’t all about the polite martial arts
