Bitter Blood

Shane argued the finer points of how the weapons array worked, and which would be a smarter choice with which to attack some kind of fortified position. It was confusing, and she still felt weird and sick. Downing a glass of milk helped settle her stomach, though, and she was just rinsing out the glass when the doorbell rang. The ring was followed up by knocking.

Michael had gotten up from the sofa, but Shane, still locked in his game world, was not paying much attention to anything else. Claire came out of the kitchen and met Eve coming down the stairs.

“Mail call?” Eve guessed.

“Not unless the postal service is starting night runs,” Michael said. “I’ll get it.” The unspoken implication of that was that if it was something bad, he’d at least have a decent shot at fighting it. He went down the hall and opened the door. Beyond it, the sunset was burning the horizon a bright orange, but it wasn’t quite evening yet.

“Who is it?” Claire asked, and craned to look.

“Can’t tell,” Eve said. “Oh, wait—it’s—” She didn’t finish the sentence. She broke free and raced down the hall.

Claire, instantly scared and imagining all kinds of mayhem, pelted after her. She almost immediately skidded to a halt in the suddenly crowded hallway; Shane had somehow managed to cut in front of both her and Eve. Being shortest sucked; she couldn’t see over Eve’s shoulder, never mind Shane’s broad back.

But she heard a frantic, female voice say, “Close it—please close it, fast!”

Miranda’s voice. But Mir was gone—disappeared out in the darkness. Dissolved into mist.

And now, apparently, she was back.

And, from the sound of it, very, very scared.

Eve turned, ran into Claire, and shooed her backward; Claire took several steps down the hall, and the party spilled out after her and into the living area. Between Shane and Michael came—yes!—Miranda, but a different one than before. This Miranda was translucently pale as a glass copy of herself, and she seemed terrified.

Everybody was trying to talk at once, except her. Ghost-Girl leaned up against a handy wall (why didn’t she fall through?) and closed her eyes as if she were exhausted (could ghosts even get tired?). Eve finally got the upper hand, conversationally speaking. “What happened to you? Where did you go?”

“Away,” Miranda said faintly. “So tired. Need energy.” But the fact she was visible at all, before sunset, was odd and impressive. “I feel better here.” She was looking better, too—already taking on a bit more form and substance. It wasn’t a real body, but it had faint traces of color in it now. “They were after me. I had to keep running, find a safe place.”

“Who was?” Shane asked. She’d just said the magic words to make him really pay attention. “Vamps? Why would vamps want a ghost?”

“She’s not a ghost all the time,” Michael said. “Remember, when she has a body, it comes complete with blood. Just like mine did. And since she can’t be killed…”

“Oh, right,” Eve said faintly, and her eyes widened. “They could keep her and keep, ah, draining her dry….”

“Not the vampires,” Miranda said. “I can handle the vampires. It’s the rest of them. They won’t leave me alone. They keep—” She was interrupted by another doorbell chime, followed by knocking. “Don’t!” she said, and grabbed at Michael’s sleeve, but her hand swiped through him. “Don’t answer it yet—not yet!”

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’m just going to look. Relax. You’re safe now.” He pointed to Shane. “Stay with them.”

“You suck!” Shane called after him as Michael went back to the door. Underneath, though, he was taking it seriously. Miranda wasn’t the most reliable source of information, but Shane never underestimated a warning. “If it’s Jason out there, no problem. If it’s somebody worse, I don’t know if Michael can hold his own.”

“Then we’ll handle it if it gets by him,” Claire said, and surprisingly, she meant it. Between the four of them, nothing was going to overwhelm them. Not like it used to.

She thought that right up until the freaking ghost-army arrived.

The first indication she had that something was very, very wrong was Michael’s outcry; he wasn’t that kind of boy, generally, much less that kind of vampire. It was surprise, and definite worry—the kind of cry you made when you found a spider on a doorknob, or a snake in the toilet. A that-shouldn’t-happen kind of sound.

Claire exchanged a look with Shane, and Miranda said, wearily, “I’m sorry I brought them here, but it was the only place I could think of that might keep them out. Maybe…maybe the house won’t let them in.”

But it turned out that the house did.

The first ghost to drift past—no, through—Michael was an old man, no one Claire recognized. He was just barely a visible shape, more a trick of the eyes than an actual presence; she saw him better in her peripheral vision than straight on. He walked down their hallway in a zombielike state, staring straight ahead. Shane backed up, but then stood his ground and tried to wave the phantom off. It ignored him and flowed around him like smoke over glass, and Shane shuddered and moved away, fast. “Okay, that was—unpleasant.”

And there were more. Lots more. Some were just shadows, ominous and strange; some were almost-visible people. Claire only caught a glimpse of them because Michael let only a couple of them inside before he stepped back and slammed and locked the door…and that, surprisingly, worked. No more came inside.

But the ones already in were bad enough. One was an almost-visible man, but Claire couldn’t make out his face as he moved toward them, until suddenly a trick of the light and shadows came together and showed her it was Richard Morrell, Monica’s dead brother. She gasped and grabbed Eve’s arm, and Eve nodded as she bit her lip. Richard slowed and looked at them, and Claire saw his mouth open and close, but he couldn’t seem to speak. After a few seconds, he flowed on, heading for…

For Miranda, who was retreating from the oncoming old man, and Richard following behind. She looked miserably terrified. “Make them stop,” she said, and looked at Michael. “Michael, make them stop! ”

“I don’t know how!” he said. It was ominous and eerie how the old man had zeroed in on Miranda, as if the little girl were the last cupcake left in the world and he had a sweet tooth. “What do they want?”

“Me!” She looked more real now, and she’d taken on a faint blush of color in her face and clothes. Miranda, in fact, looked way more real than any of the other ghosts. “They want me!”

“Shane…?” Claire looked for him, but he wasn’t beside her. That was surprising, but then she saw him, and she knew, with a sickening sense of horror, why.

He was standing motionless a few feet away, facing a ghost—a small ghost in the shape of a girl barely into her teens, with her hair in two long braids.

Claire knew immediately who it was he was staring at, even before she heard the small, pallid voice whisper, “Shane.”

“Lyss,” he said. There was a world of emotion in that name—pain, guilt, longing, love, horror. “Oh, my God, Lyss.”

She reached out for him, and Shane raised his hand.

“No!” Miranda yelled. “No, don’t touch her! You can’t touch her. Don’t you know anything?” She scrambled around the barrier of the sofa, playing keep-away with the shambling old man who was still chasing her. Richard was stalking her, too, now, but at a distance, as if he were irresistibly drawn toward her but didn’t want to be. It was more of a slow circling. Like a shark, Claire thought, and shuddered.

She took Miranda at her very urgent word, and launched herself at Shane, slapping his hand away as he tried to touch his dead sister. He let out a harsh sound of surprise, and she saw his hand clench into a fist, but it relaxed almost immediately, and he pulled in a deep breath.

“Don’t,” Claire said. “Please don’t.”

Alyssa was still holding out her ghostly hand, but she wasn’t trying to come at Shane. She was just waiting. Maybe—whatever Miranda was afraid of, maybe it had to be his decision to touch her, and it wouldn’t count if Alyssa touched him first.

Though what would happen if he did do it was an entirely different question, and Claire really didn’t want to