Bitter Blood

“You know, it’s your fault my life is such a hell, anyway, so spare me your little gestures!”

“So now you’re blaming us for your life falling apart, after a lifetime of earning it? Interesting.”

“My life was fine before you came here!” Monica spat.

Shane gave her a long, level look. “You know whose life wasn’t so fine? Pretty much everybody else’s. Including the vampires’, not that I’m counting that for a plus, but you get the idea.”

She ignored Shane. Oddly, because those two were almost always gasoline and a match. “I need an escort home,” she announced to the air somewhere between the two of them. “Tell me you’re going that way.”

Shane shrugged when Claire glanced at him. “Well, I guess we’d better. How can she be mayor if she’s dead in a ditch?”

“She just taunted you with the voice of your dead sister!”

“No,” Monica said.

“What?” Claire snapped; she was getting really angry now, angry enough to do or say something she couldn’t take back. And Shane, oddly, wasn’t.

“I didn’t do that,” Monica said, and met Shane’s eyes. “I wouldn’t do that. Dan and I were messing with their electronics, and we were planning to sneak over and make some rattling noises. But I swear, I didn’t pretend to be your sister.”

“She wouldn’t,” Shane said softly. “Not after Richard, anyway.” There was, Claire realized, some kind of understanding between the two of them now, something she didn’t quite get but could see; it wasn’t affection, and it sure wasn’t a crush, but a kind of mutual…caution. As if they understood each of them had a place that could be hurt, and neither was willing to go there anymore.

“Then what was that? Was it really—really—” She couldn’t finish the thought. She was feeling a little unstuck now, as if the world were bending around her…. She thought she’d seen enough of Morganville that something like that would never happen again.

“I don’t know,” Shane said, “but I intend to find out.”

Walking Monica home was just exactly as fun as Claire expected, which was not fun at all. She complained about having to walk in her heels (to which Shane, proving he was not totally off the Let’s Hate Monica bandwagon, suggested she mount her broom and fly home); she complained about the hot weather, and sweat ruining her outfit; she complained about the lack of cab service (Claire had to agree she had a point there—Morganville desperately needed cabs).

Claire had begun to tune her out by that point, since they were within sight of Monica’s luxury apartment complex (the only one in Morganville, in fact, with ten apartments that cost more than most of the town could even think about paying). Monica had sold the Morrell family home, which had mostly survived all the troubles of the past few years intact except for party damage, and made a tidy bank account to allow her to not work for at least a couple of years, though it probably wouldn’t last at the rate Monica blew through designer shoes.

And then Monica said, “I heard people talking around town today. Your friends ought to be watching their backs, ’cause the knives are out.”

That got Claire’s attention, fast. Shane’s, too. They both stopped walking, and Monica clomped on a few more steps before coming to a halt and saying, “What? Like you didn’t know?”

“What are you talking about?” Shane closed the distance toward her, fast. “What did you hear? Spill it!”

“Hey, hey, hold on!” She tried to back up, but she overbalanced on her precarious heels and almost went down; Shane grabbed her arm and steadied her, and didn’t let go. “Look, I don’t know why you’re so surprised and all! Let go!”

“Not until you answer the question. What about Michael and Eve?”

“Oh, come on. A vamp marrying a human gets the fanged ones all upset, and Eve made herself look like the ultimate fang-banger to all the humans by putting a ring on one, so what did you expect, exactly? Flowers and parades? This is Texas. We’re still figuring out how to spell tolerance.”

“I said, what do you know about it? Where? When? Who’s involved?”

“Let go, jerk!”

He didn’t say anything, but Claire was almost sure he squeezed, because Monica made a funny little sound and went very still. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, jackass, you win. It’s just general talk as far as I know, but some people are saying an example should be made. Michael and Eve are just handy targets standing in the middle of the war zone. Come to think of it, so’s your girlfriend, what with all her cozying up to Amelie.”

Shane let her go. “You’re one to talk.”

“Yeah, I am. I know what it’s like to think you’re secure and safe and all of a sudden be standing all alone. You think you and your friends are the only ones in the crosshairs? Do you have any idea how many people want to hurt me?”

Monica was more self-aware than Claire had ever given her credit for. She knew how things were—maybe better than Shane, surprisingly enough. She’d probably had to learn how to protect herself fast, once the town had stopped being cowed by her status as Self-Crowned Princess.

“Then you shouldn’t be pissing off the only ones who might listen to you when you scream for help,” Shane said. “Get me?”

Monica finally nodded, a little unwillingly. She shot a quick, unreadable look at Claire, and then turned and strode up the walk to her apartment. They watched as she produced a key (though where she’d kept it on that skintight dress was a mystery) and unlocked her door. Once she was inside, and the lights were on, Shane put his hands in his pockets and extended an elbow to Claire, who threaded her arm through his.

“You’re super nice to her, all of a sudden,” Claire said.

“Ha. If I was super nice to her, she wouldn’t have bruises on her arm right now,” he said. “But I’m willing to forget to hate her, every once in a while. She’s had it rough these past couple of years.”

“So have you.”

He flashed her a smile. “I never did have much, so having it rough came with the territory. I was conditioned for it. And you’re forgetting the most important thing that’s different.”

“You don’t have a fashion addiction to skintight clothes?”

“I have you,” he said, and the warmth in his voice took her breath away. She let go of his arm and crowded in close as they walked, and he hugged her close. It was awkward making progress that way, but it felt so sweet. “Okay, and I don’t have a fashion addiction. Valid point.”

“You don’t think she knows something about a plot to hurt Michael and Eve, do you? The way she said that back there…”

“I don’t know,” Shane said. “I don’t think she’d hide it; she’d really like teasing us with it, but she’d give it up. She’d want to, I think. It’s not as if she wants Michael dead, anyway. She always had a little bit of a thing for him.”

“And you,” Claire said, and elbowed him. “More than a little bit.”

“Ugh. Please don’t say that or I’ll lose my will to live.”

“I love you.” It came out of her spontaneously, and she felt a little jolt of adrenaline, then a little burst of fear right on the heels of it. There had been no reason to say it now, walking down the street, but it had just seemed… right. She was a little afraid that Shane would think it was clingy, or fake, but when she glanced over at him, she saw he was smiling—an easy, relaxed smile, uncomplicated and happy.

It wasn’t something she saw very often, and it made her feel glorious.

“I love you, too,” he said, and that felt like some kind of milestone to her, that they felt easy enough with each other to just say it whenever they wanted, without feeling awkward about it, or afraid.

We’re growing up, she thought. We’re growing up together.

He put his arm around her, and they walked close together, all the way home. The setting sun was lurid reds and golds, spilling into the vast and open sky, and it was as beautiful a thing as Claire had ever seen in Morganville.

Peaceful.

It was the last of that, though.