Bitter Blood

“Hell, girl, if it had been me, he’d be dead on the floor right now, because I wouldn’t have missed. Make my day. Tell me he’s hurting.”

“Oh yeah, he’s definitely hurting,” she said. “And I don’t think he was behind Pennyfeather last night. But there’s something weird about him, Shane.”

“When isn’t he weird?”

“No, I mean—” She couldn’t put her finger on it, really. “Did Eve tell you what happened this morning?”

“What?” Shane instantly sounded on guard again, braced for the bad news. “What now? Damn, hang on…” He retreated from what sounded like a car being crushed in the background, until he found a relatively calm space. “Go on.”

“Oliver fired her from Common Grounds. I guess he got kind of pissed when she accused him of trying to kill her. You know Eve. It probably wasn’t subtle.”

“Might have involved trying to hit him with something, like an espresso machine,” Shane agreed. “She’s home, but she’s not talking. Went straight to her room. She had that look, like she was going to cry, so I didn’t get in her way.”

“Coward.”

“Crying, so yeah. Are you on your way home?”

“Yes,” she said. “I need to make a stop, though. See you in about an hour.”

Shane knew her way too well. “You’re going to see Myrnin, aren’t you? Claire—”

“I need to see what he’s doing,” she said quickly. “He was strange the last time I saw him.”

Her boyfriend mumbled something that might have been He’s always strange, but he mostly kept his dissatisfaction to himself. “Say hi to my dad while you’re there. You know, the brain in the jar? Frankenstein? That guy.”

“You could come and—”

“No,” Shane said flatly. There was a second’s pause, as if he’d surprised himself by the vehemence of his reply, and when he spoke again it was in a softer tone. “Be careful out there. If you want me to come along…”

“To Myrnin’s lab? That’s just asking for trouble and you know it. I can manage. I’ve got resources.” And silver-coated stakes, in her backpack. She had resolved to never leave home without them, after the events of last night. “If I’m not home before dark, though—”

“Yep, rescue has been calendared. Got it,” he said. “Love you.”

She heard the effort it took him to say it—not because he didn’t mean it, but because boys just didn’t like admitting it over the phone. He even lowered his voice, in case someone—Michael?—could overhear him.

Honestly.

“Love you, too,” she said. “Watch out for Eve, will you? There’s something funny about all this. I think Pennyfeather really did come for her, not for any of the rest of us. I think there’s something going on in vampireland that has to do with her and Michael.”

“Copy that,” he said. “Collins out.” He made a kissing sound into the phone before he hung up, which was way more embarrassing than saying Love you, but probably amused him more, and she smiled so much on her walk to Myrnin’s lab that her face hurt—especially around the cut.

The street that held the entrance to Myrnin’s lair—she always thought of it as a lair, as much as a lab—was a pretty much normal Morganville residential neighborhood; more run-down than some, better than others. The houses were mostly cheaply built clapboard, thrown up forty or fifty years ago, though there were a few standouts. Two houses had burned down or been otherwise trashed during the recent draug invasion, and those were busy with swarms of hard-hatted workers scrambling over piles of bricks, lumber, and tile. The skeletons of new houses were up already. Claire wondered what it might be like to move into a new place, one that had never had anyone else in it, one that was fresh and unhaunted. That would be odd, probably. She’d gotten so used to houses with history.

At the end of the street loomed the old Day House. It was a Founder House, built almost exactly like the Glass House where Claire lived; it had been freshly painted a blinding white, and the trim had been done in a dark blue. As always, there was a rocking chair on the porch. Claire expected to see Gramma Day’s ancient little form there, rocking and knitting, but instead, the woman sitting there was tall, long-legged, and she wasn’t knitting.

She was cleaning a gun.

Claire veered off from the alleyway that was the entrance to the lab, and paused respectfully at the gate that blocked the Day House sidewalk. “Hi, Hannah,” she said.

Hannah Moses looked up, and the sunlight threw the scar on her face into sharp relief; it was hard to read her expression, but she said, “Howdy, Claire. Come on up.”

Claire unfastened the gate and came up the steps to the porch. There was another chair sitting across from the rocking chair, and a low table in between where Hannah had laid out the parts of her weapon with straight-line military precision.

“Grab a seat,” Hannah said, and blew dust off the part that she held in her hand. She examined it critically, buffed it with a cloth, and put it down in its place on the table. “Where you headed, Claire?”

“Myrnin.”

“Ah.” Hannah’s gaze fastened on the cut on her cheek. “Something interesting happen?”

“Depends on how you feel about Oliver, I guess. Someone all in black tried to shoot a silver arrow into his heart.”

Hannah paused in the act of sliding a piece onto the frame of the handgun. “Tried,” she repeated. “I assume, not successfully?”

“It was pretty close.”

“I can see that. Apparently, whoever tried didn’t much care if you were in the way.”

“Cared enough to miss, I guess.”

Hannah nodded and went back to reassembling her gun with graceful, practiced efficiency. It took a breathtakingly short period of time, and then she loaded the weapon, chambered a round, and checked the safety before laying it back on the table. “Claire, we both know I’m sidelined by the vampires, and I won’t have much opportunity to help in an official capacity. So I want you to do something for me.”

“Sure!”

“I want you to leave Morganville.”

Claire fell silent, watching her. “I can’t just run away.”

“Yes, you can. You always could have done it.”

“Okay, then, I won’t do it. My grades—”

“You can’t use a good grade if they’re carving it on your tombstone. Pack up and get out. Go find your folks, get them to pack up, and go somewhere else. Far away. An island, if you can manage it. But get the hell away from the vampires, and keep away.”

“But you’re staying?”

“Yes,” Hannah agreed, “I’m staying. This house has been in my family for seven generations. My grandmother’s too old to go, and they’ve still got my cousin locked up somewhere in their dungeons, if she’s not dead and drained. I was like you. I wanted all this peace and love and cooperation to work, but it’s not going to happen. The vampires are ripping up the agreements. That ain’t on us. It’s on them.”

When Claire didn’t speak, Hannah shook her head, leaned over, and picked up the weapon. She seated it in a holster under her arm. “There’s a war coming,” she said. “A real war. There’s not going to be any room for people like you standing in the middle, trying to make peace. I’m trying to save your life.”

“You always wanted peace.”

“I did. But when you can’t have peace, there’s only one thing you can aim for, Claire, and that’s winning the war the best and maybe the bloodiest way you can.”

“I don’t want to believe it. There has to be a way to make Amelie listen, to stop all this—”

“It’s too late,” Hannah said. “She set up the cage in Founder’s Square again. It’s a clear message. Cross the vampires, and you’ll burn. Everything you worked for, everything I worked for, is going away. You pick a side, or you go. Nothing else to do.”

Claire cleared her throat. “How’s your grandmother?”

“Ancient,” Hannah said, “but she’s been that way as long as I can remember. She’s a hundred and two years old this year. I’ll give her your respects.”