Bitter Blood

Michael finally appeared behind her. He was dressed, kind of; his shirt was unbuttoned, though he was doing it up as quickly as he could. “Eve’s right,” he said, and he wasn’t kidding at all. “We need to talk, guys.”

“No, we don’t,” Shane said. “Just text me or something next time. We could go grab a burger or a movie or —”

Michael shook his head and walked inside the parlor. Eve followed him. Shane sent Claire a look that had a little bit of alarm in it, and finally shrugged. “Guess we’re talking,” he said. “Whether we want to or not.”

Michael and Eve hadn’t taken seats, when the two of them came in; they were standing with their hands clasped, for solidarity, apparently.

“Uh-oh,” Shane murmured, and then put on a cheerful smile. “So, Mikey, what up? Because this looks like more than just a ‘how was your day’ kind of discussion.”

“We needed to talk about something,” Eve said. She looked nervous, and—for Eve—she’d dressed super plainly, just a black shirt and jeans, not a single skull or shiny thing in evidence, except for the subtle glimmer of her wedding ring. “Sorry, guys. Sit down.”

“You first,” Shane said as Claire dumped her backpack with a heavy clunk by the wall. Michael exchanged a look with Eve, and then sat beside her on the old velvet sofa, while Claire settled in the armchair and Shane leaned on the top of it, his hand on her shoulder. “If we’re playing guessing games, I’m going to go with—you’re pregnant. Wait, can you be? I mean, can the two of you…?”

Eve flinched and avoided looking at the two of them. “That’s not it,” she said, and bit her lip. She twisted her wedding ring in agitation, and then finally said, “We’ve been talking about getting our own place, guys. Not because we don’t love you, we do, but—”

“But we need our own space,” Michael said. “I know it seems weird, but for us to feel really together, married, we need to get some time to ourselves, and you know how it is here; we’re all in one another’s business here.”

“And there’s only one bathroom,” Eve said mournfully. “I really need a bathroom.”

Claire had suspected it was coming, but that didn’t make it feel any better. She instinctively reached up for Shane’s hand, and his fingers closing over hers made her feel a little steadier. She’d gotten so used to the idea of the four of them together, always together, that hearing Michael talk about moving stirred up feelings she’d thought she’d outgrown…feelings that hadn’t been on her radar since she’d first walked in the door of the Glass House.

She suddenly felt vulnerable, alone, and rejected. She felt homesick, even though she was home, because home wasn’t the way she’d left it this morning.

“We want you to be happy,” Claire managed to say. Her voice sounded small and a little hurt, and she didn’t mean it that way, not at all. “But you can’t move out—it’s your house, Michael. I mean, it’s the Glass House. And you two are…Glass. We’re not.”

“Screw that,” Shane said immediately. “Sure, I want you two crazy kids to be happy, but you’re talking about busting up something that’s good, really good, and I don’t like it, and I’m not going to be all noble and pretend I do. Together, we’re strong—you’ve said that yourself, Michael. Now all of a sudden you want more privacy? Dude, that’s about as logical as Let’s split up in a horror movie!”

Michael gave him a look as he finished buttoning his shirt. “I think it’s pretty obvious privacy’s an issue.”

“Not if you don’t decide to get crazy in a room without a locking door. Or, you know, a door.”

“It’s just that we were waiting on you guys, and we were nervous, and…it just happened,” Eve said. “And we’re married. We have the right to get crazy if we want to. Anywhere. At any time.”

“Okay, I get that,” Shane said. “Hell, I’d like a little spontaneous sexytime, too, but is it worth putting us all in danger? Because Morganville ain’t safe, guys. You know that. You go out of this house, or make us leave it, and something is going to happen. Something bad.”

“Have you taken up Miranda’s fortune-telling?” Eve asked. “I could say something about crystal balls….”

“Don’t need a psychic friend to tell me it’s nasty out there and bound to get worse. Michael, you’re on Team Vampire. Are you saying you don’t think it’s going toxic with Amelie and Oliver in charge?”

Michael didn’t try to answer that one, because he couldn’t; they’d all agreed on it already.

Eve jumped in, instead. “We could get a house in the vampire quarter,” she said. “Free. It’s part of Michael’s citizenship in town. It wouldn’t be a problem except—”

“Except that you’d be living in Vamp Central, and the only thing with a pulse in a couple of square blocks, surrounded by people who think of you as an attractively shaped plasma container?” Shane asked. “Problem. Oh, another problem: Mikey, you said yourself that being around us, meaning all of us, helped you cope with your instincts. Now you’re talking about isolating yourselves with a bunch of also-deads. Not smart, man. It’ll make you more vamp, and it’ll put Eve in more danger, too.”

“I never said we were moving to the vampire quarter,” Michael said. “Eve was just pointing out we could, not that we would. We could find something else, something close. The old Profit place is still for sale down the street. Amelie gave me a bequest, so I’ve got money to put down.”

“Michael…We are not moving into that pit,” Eve said. It sounded like an old argument. “It smells like cat urine and old-man clothes, and it’s so ancient, it makes this place look like the house of the future. I don’t think it has phone lines, never mind Internet. Might as well live in a cardboard box.”

“Always an option,” Shane said cheerfully. “And you’d have a huge bathroom. Like, the entire world.”

“Ugh, gross.”

“It’s what you pay me for.”

“Remind me to give you a negative raise.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Michael interrupted, and shut them both down, hard. “Besides, it’s not just the four of us anymore. It’s Miranda.”

The conversation came to a sudden and vivid halt, and they all waited to see what would happen. It was night; that meant Miranda had physical form.

But it didn’t necessarily mean she could hear everything.

Claire lowered her voice to an instinctive, fierce whisper. “Hey! Don’t be that way!”

“Look, I’m not saying I don’t have sympathy for her; I do, a lot. I used to be her,” Michael whispered back. “I know what it feels like being trapped in here. It drives you half crazy, and the only way you can survive it, the only way, is to be around people who think of you as…normal. But she doesn’t have that. We know what she is. We know she’s around all the time, and that means she tiptoes around us, and we tiptoe around her, and—it’s just not good, okay? It’s not.”

“So, what do you want me to do?” Miranda asked. They all flinched and turned. She hadn’t been there before, but now she’d appeared in the doorway to the hall, just like the spooky ghost she sometimes was. Claire was almost sure it was deliberate. “Leave?”

“You can’t,” Michael said. He did it gently, but there wasn’t any doubt in it, either. “Mir, you knew when you came here that last time”—when she’d been killed here, he meant—“that there’d never be a way to leave again. The house saved you, and protects you, but you have to stay inside.”

“Just because you did?” Miranda said. There was something different about her now, Claire realized; she was wearing a definitely not-Miranda outfit. No dowdy oversized dresses this time, or cheap fraying sweaters; she was wearing a skintight black sheer shirt with a black skull printed on it, and beneath that, a red scoop-neck that somehow managed to give her cleavage—just the suggestion, but still. For Miranda, that was…quite a change. “I’m not you, Michael.”

“Maybe not, but do you have to become Eve?” Shane asked. “Because I’m pretty sure you raided her closet.”

“I bought those for her!” Eve protested. “And anyway, she looks cute in them.”

She did. Miranda had also gathered her hair up in two thick ponytails on either side of her head, and used a little of Eve’s eyeliner. It was a little Goth, but not full-on, either. It suited her.

“It’s me, isn’t it?” Miranda said, ignoring both Eve and Shane this time. She was totally fixed on Michael, her eyes steady and wide. “It’s about me, being here all the time. You feel like you can’t hide from me. Well, that’s true. You can’t. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is, and you know it better than anyone. You can’t just…turn off, like some kind of light. You’re here, and you’re bored.”