Bitter Blood

“Who?”

Michael groaned. “It’s sad how much you don’t know about music, Claire. Sid Vicious? The Sex Pistols?”

“Oh, him.”

“You have no idea who I’m talking about, do you?”

She smiled a little. “Not the least little bit.”

“Remind me to play you some songs later. But anyway, if Myrnin said things were spinning out of control, he’s not wrong. Amelie doesn’t use that power she just pulled out on me, not unless things are really critical. Never just for her own personal amusement.” He shuddered, and finally said, in a quiet voice, “She could have killed me, Claire. At least the part of me that isn’t pure vampire. She could have made me into—I don’t know, her meat puppet or something. She’s got power like nobody else.”

Claire swallowed, suddenly and sharply uneasy again. “But she didn’t do it.”

“This time,” he said. “What if she decides that’s the only way to make me obey the way she wants? I don’t want to live like that, if she crushes everything in me that’s me. Promise me, you and Shane, you’ll…take care of it. If it happens.”

“It won’t.”

“Promise.”

“God, Michael!”

He was silent for a second, then said, “I’ll ask Shane.” Because they both knew Shane would understand that request, probably far too well.

And that he’d say yes.

“It’s not going to happen,” Claire said. “No way in hell, Michael. We won’t let it happen.”

He didn’t tell her that it probably wouldn’t be a thing she could control, but she already knew it anyway. She just felt better, and more in control, for saying it.

The drive to the blood bank was quiet, and Claire faced toward the blacked-out passenger window. In the aftermath of all the adrenaline, she felt numb, and exhausted, and—weirdly enough—really hungry. Michael went inside the back of the blood bank, through the vamps-only entrance, and came back with a small handheld cooler, which he handed her. She put it on the floor between her feet. “Blood supply’s running low,” he said. “They’ll be sending out the Bloodmobile to collect tomorrow. Is Shane paid up?”

“Is he ever?” Claire rolled her eyes. “I’ll get him in voluntarily in the morning. I’ll donate, too.” Claire, by Amelie’s decree, had historically been free of the responsibility of giving blood, which was the tax humans paid in Morganville from age eighteen up; she’d been underage before, but even now that she was legal, she didn’t have to contribute. She still did, mainly because the hospitals, not the vampires, were the ones that ran short in an emergency.

Shane had pointedly not been excluded from the tax rolls. Probably because of how much trouble he’d historically been in, in Morganville.

Michael sighed. “Do you mind if I…?”

Claire opened the cooler and took out one of the blood bags. It was slightly warm, and heavy, and she tried to pretend it was a bag of colored water, one of those prop things they used in television shows.

But she still looked away when he bit into it.

It took only about a minute for him to drain it dry, and he looked around for a place to put the empty, then let her take it and return it to the cooler. “Sorry,” he said. His apology sounded genuine. “I know that’s probably not what you needed to see right now.”

“All eating is gross,” Claire said, “but we all have to do it. Anyway, I’m starving. Is Chico’s still open?”

“You know if I get you Chico’s, I have to get it for the house, right?”

“I’ll pitch in.”

Chico’s Tacos was a relative newcomer to town, opened by a Morganville resident who’d taken a liking to something he’d tasted out of town in El Paso: delicious rolled tacos, soaked and floating in hot sauce, then topped with shredded cheese. Messy, yeah. Unhealthy, probably. But in taco terms, it was crack. Extra orders were mandatory.

Michael handled drive-through duties, forking over cash and receiving all of the goodies to hand off to Claire. It was still new for them to count five housemates; Miranda was only half-time, in that during the day she was insubstantial, but at night she was very much flesh and blood, able to walk around, talk, do chores, eat dinner…. It made very little sense to Claire, but the Glass House (like all the remaining Founder Houses original to the town) was capable of doing things that her science couldn’t explain, no matter how far out of shape she stretched the boundaries.

When Michael had been killed within its walls, drained by Oliver, the house had preserved him—saved him, literally, like a file, only as a ghost. The Glass home was more powerful at night than during the day, so at night it could create a real flesh-and-blood form he could use to have half a life…but when dawn came, it melted away. It wasn’t real, exactly, though Michael had said he could feel, eat, drink, do everything as if it were real, between dusk and dawn.

But to make that half-life truly permanent, he’d had to make a deal with Amelie and become fully vampire.

Miranda seemed to have inherited the same pluses and minuses. And she had no wish to become a vampire. In life, Miranda had been a lost little girl, cursed with a psychic gift that was as much creepy as it was informative; she’d been shunned all her life by most of the town, and even Eve—her best friend, maybe—hadn’t been able to handle her some of the time.

Ghost-Miranda was blooming into a happy young lady, now that she no longer had the psychic powers and was able to have real friends. So Miranda got tacos, too.

“What are we going to tell Shane about what happened? Or Eve?” Claire asked as the familiar crunch of the car’s wheels on gravel signaled they’d arrived home.

Michael parked, killed the engine, and spent a moment in thought before he said, “We’re going to tell them everything. Anything else wouldn’t be fair. And it could put them in a lot of danger if they think Amelie’s still somehow got our backs.”

It would upset Eve, and it would anger Shane, but he was right; keeping them in the dark was a sure path to disaster. You could protect people from harm, but not from knowing.

“Well,” Claire said, “at least we have tacos. Everything goes better with tacos.”

And the tacos did help. Even Shane, who met them at the door and glared at the cooler in Michael’s hand, brightened up at the sight of the grease-stained paper bags Claire held. “You really know the way to a man’s heart,” he said, and grabbed them out of her hands.

“Between the ribs and angle up?” she said, and gave him a sweet, fast kiss when he looked shocked. “Hey, it’s your joke. Don’t blame me if I remember it.”

“And you look like such a nice girl.”

“Fine, if you’re not into it, I’ll just take those tacos back….”

It devolved into keep-away with taco bags, which Shane of course would have won by virtue of sheer size and agility, except that Miranda sneaked up behind him and stole a couple by surprise, which sent him yelling in pursuit as she dashed off through the kitchen and into the living room. And then Eve was into it, and Claire had to fight to hang on to the two bags she had left.

In the end, it all somehow made it to the dining table. Eve broke out thick paper plates and forks and spoons, and Michael and Shane organized the drinks while Claire and Miranda put little taco boats at each of their place settings. It was all really warm and sweet and home, and Claire made sure as they were eating that Miranda got a couple of extra tacos that normally Shane would have grabbed as they passed. He pouted, but in a cute way.

It was when they were finishing up that Shane said, faux-casually, “So I guess everything went okay today?”

Miranda licked the last of the hot sauce out of the bottom of the paper boat and raised her eyebrows. “What happened today? I never get to know anything.” She was still physically a frail little thing, and Claire supposed that the girl’s delicate, breakable look would never change now; ghosts didn’t age, and no matter how many tacos she ate or Coca-Colas she guzzled, she’d never grow an inch or gain a pound. That was something a lot of girls dreamed