Glass Houses

Chapter 10

S he was too wired to sleep, and besides, her back hurt, and she couldn’t stand the thought of waiting even one more night to get started. Brandon hadn’t seemed like the kind of guy to wait for his revenge, and Shane—Shane wasn’t the kind of guy to not hold up his end of a deal, either.

If he’s stupid enough to want to get bitten, fine, but he’s not using me for an excuse.

Shane hadn’t come out of his room all night. She hadn’t heard a thing when she’d listened—carefully—at his door. Eve had mimed headphones and turning up an invisible stereo. Claire could understand that; she’d spent lots of hours trying to blow out her own eardrums to avoid the world.

Eve lent her a laptop—a retro thing, big and black and clunky, with a biohazard-symbol sticker on the front. When Claire plugged it into the broadband connection and booted it up, the desktop graphic was a cartoon Grim Reaper holding a road sign instead of a scythe—a road sign that read MORGANVILLE, with an arrow pointing down.

Claire clicked on a couple of folders—guiltily, but she was curious—and found they were full of poetry. Eve liked death, or at least, she liked to write about it. Florid romantic stuff, all angst and blood and moonlit marble… and then Claire noticed the dates. The last of the poetry had been done three years ago. Eve would have been, what, fifteen? She’d been starry-eyed about vampires back then, but something had changed. No poetry at all for the past three years…

Eve walked in the open door. “Working okay?” she asked. Claire jumped, guilty, and gave her the thumbs-up as she clicked open the Internet connection. “Okay, I called my cousin in Illinois. She’s going to let us use her PayPal account, but I have to send her cash, like, tomorrow. Here’s the account.” She handed over a slip of paper. “We’re not going to get her killed, right?”

“Nope. I’m not buying much from any one place. A lot of people buy leather and tools and stuff. And paper— how old is this book supposed to be?”

“Old.”

“Was it on vellum?”

“Is that paper?”

“Vellum is the oldest kind of paper they used in books,” Claire said. “It’s sheepskin.”

“Oh. I guess that, then. It’s really old.”

Vellum would be hard. You could get it, but it was easy to trace. But it wasn’t any good being freak smart if you couldn’t get around things like that…. Oh, yeah, she needed to think about using somebody else to do the research, too. Too dangerous having tracks that led right back here to the Glass House…

Claire went to work. She didn’t even notice Eve going and shutting the door behind her.

For four days, Claire studied. Four solid days. Eve brought her up soup and bread and sandwiches, and Shane dropped by once or twice to tell her she was crazy and he wanted her to stay the hell out of his business; Claire didn’t pay any attention. She got like that when she was completely inside of something. She heard him, and she said something back, but no way was she listening. Like her parents, Shane eventually gave up and went away.

Michael came to her room just a little before dawn. That one surprised her long enough to drag her out of her trance for a while. “How’s it going?” he asked.

“Mission Save Shane? Yeah, it’s going,” she said. “I have to work the long way around. No traces. Don’t worry—even if the vamps get angry, they won’t be able to prove we did anything but bring them what we thought they were looking for.”

Michael looked pleased, but worried. He worried a lot. She supposed that being trapped the way he was, that was really all he could do—fight anything that got inside to hurt them, and worry about everything else. Frustrating, she guessed.

“Hey,” she said, “when does Eve go to work?”

“Four o’clock.”

“But that’s—”

“The night shift. I know. She’s safe enough there, though, and I don’t think any vamp is stupid enough to try to get in the way of that damn car. It’s like being run over by a Hummer. I made her promise that Oliver would walk her to the car, and Shane’s going to get her from the sidewalk inside.”

Claire nodded. “I’m going with her.”

“To the coffee shop? Why?”

“Because it’s anonymous,” she said. “Every college student in there has a laptop, and the place has free wireless. If I’m careful, they won’t be able to trace who’s looking up how to fake-age a book.”

He gave her an exasperated look. On him, it looked cute. God. She was still noticing. She really needed to stop that, but hey. Sweet sixteen and never been kissed…

“I don’t like Eve out there at night. You’re definitely not going.”

“If I do it here, everybody could be in danger. Including Eve.”

Oh, low blow—she saw his eyes shift, but he toughed it out. “So your answer is that I let you go out there, risk your life, sit in a coffee shop with Brandon, and pretend like that’s safer? Claire. In no way does that equal safer.”

“Safer than the vampires deciding that everybody in this house deliberately set out to cheat them out of the thing they want most,” Claire said. “We’re not playing, are we? I mean, I can stop if you want, but we don’t have anything else we can trade for Shane’s deal. Nothing big enough. I’d let Brandon—you know—but somehow I don’t think—”

“Over my—” Michael stopped and laughed. “I was going to say, ‘Over my dead body,’ but—”

Claire winced.

“No,” he said.

“You’re not my dad,” she pointed out, and all of a sudden…remembered.

Shane, at the hospital, when she’d been drugged up, had said, They called your parents. Also, she distinctly remembered the words freaked out.

Oh, crap!

“Dad,” she said aloud. “Oh no…um, I need to use the phone. Can I?”

“Calling your parents? Sure. Long distance—”

“Yeah, I know. I pay for it. Thanks.”

She picked up the cordless phone and dialed her home number. It rang five times, then flipped over to the machine. “Hello, you’ve reached Les and Katharine Danvers and their daughter, Claire. Leave us a message!” It was her mom’s bright, businesslike voice. When the beep sounded, Claire had a second of blind panic. Maybe they were just out shopping. Or…

“Hi, Mom and Dad, it’s Claire. I just wanted to—um—say hi. I should have called you, I guess. That lab accident thing, that was nothing, really. I don’t want you to be worried about me—everything’s just fine. Really.”

Michael, leaning against the doorframe, was making funny faces at her. That seemed like Shane’s job, somehow. She stuck her tongue out at him.

“I just—I just wanted to say that. Love you. Bye.”

She hung up. Michael said, “You ought to get them to come and take you home.”

“And leave you guys in this mess? You’re in it because of me. Shane’s in it because of me. Now that Monica knows he’s back…”

“Oh, believe me, I’m not underestimating how much trouble we’re in, but you can still go. And you should. I’m going to try to convince Shane to get out, too. Eve—Eve won’t go, but she should.”

“But—” That leaves you alone, she thought. Really alone. There was no getting out for Michael. Not ever.

Michael looked up and out the window, where the sky was gradually washing from midnight blue to a paler