Glass Houses

The two boys looked at Claire. “What?” she asked. “Oh, by the way, I’m fine, thanks for asking. Got chased by some vampires. Business as usual.”

“Told you not to go,” Shane said, and shrugged. “So, who’s going to get Miranda to leave?”

They kept looking at her, and Claire finally understood that somehow, it had become her job. Probably because she was new, and didn’t know Miranda, and she was a girl. Michael was too polite to ask her to go. Shane—she couldn’t tell what Shane felt about Miranda, except that he wanted her the hell out of the house.

“Fine,” Claire said. “I’ll go.”

“That girl’s smart,” Shane said without smiling, to Michael, as she started up the steps.

“Yep,” Michael agreed. “I like that about her.”

The bedroom doors were all closed except for Eve’s, which was casting a flickering light out onto the polished wood floor. Claire smelled the bright flare of matches. They were lighting candles.

Oh, she really didn’t want to do this. Maybe if she just kept walking, went to her room, and locked the door…?

She took a deep breath and looked around the doorway with a smile that felt totally forced. Eve was lighting the candles—and boy, she had a lot of them, sitting basically everywhere. Big tall black ones, purple ones, blue ones. Nothing in the pastel family. Her bed was black satin, and there was a pirate flag—skull and crossbones— hanging above it like a billowing headboard. Little Christmas lights strung everywhere—no, not Christmas lights after all. Halloween pumpkins and ghosts and skulls. Cheery and strange.

“Hey,” Eve said, not looking up from the black pillar candle she was lighting. “Come on in, Claire. I guess you haven’t really met Miranda exactly.”

Not unless screaming and fleeing counted. “Hi,” she said awkwardly. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. Miranda didn’t seem to notice or care, and her hands were up and in the air, petting some invisible cat or something. Weird. The longer that Claire was around the girl, the younger she looked —younger than Eve, for sure. Maybe even younger than Claire herself. Maybe it was all make-believe for her… except the bite. That was deadly serious stuff.

“Um…Eve? Can I talk to you for a sec?” Claire asked. Eve nodded, opened a black-painted dresser, and took out a black lacquer box. When opened, it had a bloodred interior. There was a black silk package inside, which, as Eve unwrapped it, proved to be a deck of cards.

Tarot cards.

Eve held them between her two palms for a few seconds, then cut the deck several times and handed it to Miranda. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and went out into the hall with Claire, closing the door behind her. Before Claire could say anything, Eve held up her hand. She wouldn’t meet Claire’s eyes. “The guys sent you up?” At Claire’s nod, she muttered, “Pansies, both of them. Fine. They want her out, right?”

“Um…yeah. I guess.” Claire rocked uncomfortably back and forth. “She is a little…weird.”

“Miranda’s—yeah, she’s weird. But she’s also kind of gifted,” Eve said. “She sees things. Knows things. Shane ought to get that. She told him about the fire before—” Eve shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. If she came all the way over here in the dark, something’s wrong. I should try to find out what.”

“Well…can’t you just, you know, ask her?”

“Miranda’s a psychic,” she said. “It’s not that simple—she can’t just blurt it out. You have to work with her.”

“But—she can’t really see the future, right? You don’t believe that?” Because if you do, Claire thought, you’re crazier than I thought you were when I first met you.

Eve finally met her eyes. Angry. “Yes. Yes, I do believe that, and for a smart kid you’re pretty dumb if you don’t understand that science isn’t perfect. Things happen. Things that physics and math and crap that gets measured in a lab can’t explain. People aren’t just laws and rules, Claire. They’re…sparks. Sparks of something beautiful and huge. And some of the sparks glow brighter, like Miranda.” Eve looked away again, obviously uncomfortable now. But not half as uncomfortable as Claire felt, because this was…wow. Space cadet city. “You guys just leave us alone for a little while. It’ll be fine.”

She went back into the room and shut the door. It wasn’t quite a slam. Claire swallowed hard, feeling hot all over and wishing she hadn’t let the boys push her into that, and slowly went back down the stairs. Michael and Shane were sitting on the couch and playing a video game with open beers on the table in front of them. Elbowing each other as their on-screen cars raced around turns.

“Not exactly legal,” she said, and sat down on the steps. “The beer. Nobody here’s twenty-one.”

Michael and Shane clicked bottles. Honestly, it was juvenile. “Here’s to crime,” Shane said, and tipped his up. “Hey, it was a birthday present. Two six-packs. We’re only one down, so give us a break. Morganville’s got the highest alcoholics per capita of any place in the world, I’ll bet.”

Michael put the game on pause. “Is she leaving yet?”

“No.”

“If she starts trying to tell me I’m going to meet a tall dark stranger, I’m leaving,” Shane said. “I mean, the kid’s a head case, and I don’t want to be mean, but jeez. She really believes this stuff. And she’s got Eve half-convinced, too.”

There was no half about it, but Claire wasn’t going to say that. She just sat there, trying not to think too hard about anything…about her plans to get Shane free of his agreement, which had seemed really good back in the coffee shop and not so solid now. About the dull-knife scrape of pain in her back. About the desperation in Eve’s eyes. Eve was scared. And Claire didn’t know how to help that, because she was scared half to death herself.

“She was looking at the secret room,” Claire said. “When she was standing down here. She was staring right at it.”

Michael and Shane looked at her. Two sets of eyes, both guilty and startled. And one by one, they shrugged and went for the beer. “Coincidence,” Michael said.

“Total coincidence,” Shane agreed.

“Eve said that Miranda had some kind of vision about you, Shane, when—”

“Not that again! Look, she said she had a vision of the house on fire, but she didn’t say that until later, and even if she did, fat lot of good it did.” Shane’s jaw was tight. A muscle fluttered in it. He punched a button to release the game from pause, and road noise poured out of the television speakers, closing out any chance of conversation on the subject.

Claire sighed. “I’m going to bed.”

But she didn’t. She was tired, and aching, and jittery…but her brain was way too busy picking over things. She finally nudged Shane over on the couch and sat next to him as he and Michael played, and played, and played….

“Claire. Wake up.” She blinked and realized that her head was on Shane’s shoulder, and Michael was nowhere to be seen. Her first thought was, Oh my God, am I drooling? Her second was that she hadn’t realized she was so close to him, snuggled in.

Her third was that although Michael’s part of the couch was empty, Shane hadn’t moved away. And he was watching her with warm, friendly eyes.

Oh. Oh, wow, that was nice.

Embarrassment flooded in a second later and made her pull away. Shane cleared his throat and scooted over. “You should probably get some sleep,” he said. “You’re beat.”

“Yeah,” she said. “What time is it?”

“Three a.m. Michael’s making a snack. You want anything?”

“Um…no. Thanks.” She slid off the couch and then stood there like an idiot, unwilling to leave because he was still smiling and…she liked it. “Who won?”

“Which game?”

“Oh. I guess I was asleep for a while.”

“Don’t worry. We didn’t let the zombies get you.” This time, his smile was positively wicked. Claire felt it like a hot blanket all over her skin. “If you want to stay up, you can help me kick his ass.”

There were not one but three empty beer bottles on the table in front of Shane. And three where Michael had