She needed to stop this—for Shane, for Michael, for the safety of the Glass House. Besides, she wasn’t alone if she ran toward the center of the danger . . .
Because Eve was already there.
Claire kept to the shadows on the way to the edge of town. She remembered the way, at least, and if nothing else the constant walking she’d done at MIT over the past few weeks had prepared her for the relatively short distances of hiking Morganville. There was no problem with lurking in the darkness these days, no vampires ready to strike at least. Though she had no idea where Myrnin was now, or if Amelie had actually managed to fight her way free of the Glass House. If she had, then Shane would be . . .
Would be hunting Amelie.
That thought crushed her heart. Shane had always, deep inside, loathed the vampires; he’d willingly signed up to find a way to deliver Morganville from their clutches when he’d been with his dad’s crew. But Claire thought that he’d come to accept them, a little—particularly Michael. Having your best friend grow fangs was guaranteed to cause a serious reevaluation of your prejudices.
But it seemed as if the hate had always been thrust upon him, that it wasn’t something he’d chosen for himself—and this was no different. She didn’t want to see Shane like that, lost to bloodlust and rage and violence. He was better than that.
They were all better than that.
Claire stopped at a small, neglected water fountain in one of the few parks along the way, and washed off again, trying to get any trace of Amelie’s blood off of her. She wasn’t sure how good Shane’s senses would be outside, but she suspected that when Fallon created hunting dogs, he did an expert job of it. And as much as she wanted to be with Shane, she never wanted to see him like that again.
The cold, cutting wind felt much worse once she’d dampened her clothes, and she thought grimly that she was bound to come down sick after this—if she survived.
The worst she endured on the way to the Daylight Foundation, though, was the chill, and an attack of a couple of wandering tumbleweeds that—as tumbleweeds did—blew straight for her even when she tried to avoid them. The tiny burrs on the rounded plants made them hard to pry out of her jeans and left itchy places on her fingers where they pierced skin. The tumbleweeds also had a tendency to come blowing across in packs, so she had to play dodge-the-weeds more frequently than she liked . . . and then she saw the glow of a neon sign ahead as she turned the corner. This part of town was still mostly under construction, though the sites lay silent now, workers all gone home and tools left abandoned for the night. The smells of new wood and dust mingled, and made her suppress a sneeze as she paused at the intersection. To her left, a neon sign two stories in the air glowed orange and bright yellow.
The stylized image of the sunrise, worn by the Daylighters as a pin.
Claire moved carefully, but she saw no one, again. There were a few cars still in the parking lot, and as she got closer she spotted Eve’s distinctive black hearse with its elaborate chrome. At first, Claire felt a surge of relief, because it meant that Eve was still here, somewhere, . . . but then she realized that if Fallon had decided to dump her in with the vampires at the mall, he’d hardly have troubled to move her car yet. So the presence of the hearse really didn’t mean anything at all, except that Eve had parked it there. It wasn’t an indicator of where she was.
Claire needed to get inside to find her, and to find a way to get to Fallon.
Doubts had settled in on the walk, and she was trying to ignore them. Eve had come here with the exact same mission—to stop Fallon. How far had she gotten?
She wished that Myrnin hadn’t gone off with Jenna. She needed him now, more than ever.
The first step—the only step—was to try to find out what was happening inside the Daylight Foundation. If Eve was still there, she had an ally. If she wasn’t, that was one more incentive for Claire to find Fallon and end this, once and for all.
She heard a howl in the distance, long and eerie, and that decided her.
Sometimes the safest place to be was right in the heart of the enemy.
The front door was impossible; there were still lights on in the lobby, and as she positioned herself at the right angle, she could see that a jacketed security guard was sitting behind the desk where the receptionist had been earlier. No sign of Eve, or Fallon, for that matter. Claire went around the building to the side and found windows—all locked. The offices were darkened, though. She wondered about alarms, and went all the way around the perimeter, just in case.
Good thing she did, because she found that one of the windows at the back had been left open. Not much, just a crack, but enough to reassure her that it wasn’t alarmed. She found a rusty piece of rebar on the ground nearby and used it to lever the window up. It must have been stuck, which was why it hadn’t been closed in the first place, and she was afraid she’d shatter it, but it finally came loose and slid upward.
Even fully open, it wasn’t a big opening, and she had to shimmy through carefully. Her hips barely scraped through, and she tumbled head over heels into a dimly lit storage area full of racks of books and bottles. It all looked boringly normal, actually. There was nothing sinister about toilet paper and cleaning sprays, and even the books were all about how to make yourself a better person. This was the public face of the Daylight Foundation. The private face was, of course, that dismal mall and those vampires in their so-called enclave, waiting for—for what?
Extinction.
Claire tried the supply closet door. It opened from the inside—a safety precaution against getting locked in, she supposed—but when she tried the outer handle it didn’t move, so she found a piece of tape and secured the lock so it didn’t engage. She and Eve might need a fast way out. Hopefully not, but smart people planned for contingencies along the way.
The hallways were silent, just as normal and boring as the supply closet had been—carpeted, blank, peppered with wooden doors and nameplates. It still smelled of fresh paint. Hannah Moses had her own office, and Claire felt a tingle of alarm when she saw it, but luckily it was after hours; the door was locked, and no lights showed beneath. How did that work, exactly? Did the chief of police have to actually split her time between working for the city and working for Fallon, or was it—at least on paper—more of a volunteer kind of thing? Hannah didn’t have a choice, no more than Shane had, but Claire supposed Fallon would want to make it look aboveboard. At least for now.
She was halfway to the lobby when she heard the sound of voices. At the intersection of another hallway she turned right, following the sound, because one of the voices was Eve’s. She recognized the tones easily, but the words were smeared and indistinct.
There was only one door on that hallway, and it was at the end.
Fallon’s office.
Claire moved closer, trying to hear what they were saying, but she caught only random words. Michael’s name was mentioned—not a surprise—but what worried her was the way Eve was talking. It sounded . . . relaxed. Calm. Almost drowsy. Had he done something to her? Drugged her?
She was about three steps from the door when she heard Fallon’s voice very clearly. He’d moved closer on the other side, and he said, “I know it seems strange to you, but I do admire you, you know. I admire your audacity in coming here. I admire the strength of your conviction that there’s something of the young man you loved left buried inside the monster. Maybe there is, because he’s so very young. I hope so, for your sake.”
“You have to let him go,” Eve said. “I’ll kill you if you don’t.” The words were fierce, but not the voice. She sounded almost on the verge of the giggles. “You drugged me. You drugged my water. That was mean.”
“I didn’t want to harm you, Eve,” he said. “You’re what I’m fighting for—humanity. You simply can’t accept the truth. That’s not your fault, but it is dangerous, both to you and to me. You and your friend Claire, you’re not like the rest. You see vampires as humans with a problem—but that’s wrong, very wrong. There’s nothing human left in them.”
“Michael’s still Michael.”
“You’re wrong about that. I see that I have no choice but to prove it to you, Eve. You’re a remarkable young lady, you know—I’ve never seen anyone stand quite so firm on a relationship with a vampire before. It makes me
