Bitter Blood

“I’m going to need the rest of the recordings,” Michael said to Tyler. “Sorry, man.”

“We don’t have anything else,” Tyler said. “You just broke the crap out of our whole show.”

Shane looked at Michael, eyebrows raised, and Michael shook his head. “Lying his ass off,” he said. Heartbeat, Claire thought. He could hear them. He might not be able to always tell when one individual was lying, but it was easier for him if there were three people all in on the same falsehood. More people meant more data, like a triangulation of the truth.

And most likely, all three of the ghost hunters knew Tyler had backups.

“I read people really well,” he said. It was an obvious lie, but he didn’t give Tyler time to argue. “All right, all three of you, out the door. If you want me to take your whole van apart next, I’ll be happy to do that, too.”

“Or, you know, punch you,” Shane said cheerfully. “This is Texas. We have the right to do that when you break into our house.”

He left it to Eve to say, “Or worse,” in a voice so low and dark, it qualified as Goth all by itself.

Jenna shot to her feet. “Fine. If you want to doom this little girl to an eternity of pain and torment, you’re doing exactly the right things. You’re not prepared for what’s going to happen to her. I am!”

Maybe that was kind of true; it was very hard to tell. But in any case, Claire was fed up with half-truths and aggression, especially when her head was pounding so very hard. “Just get out,” she said wearily. “She’s our responsibility. We’ll take care of her. If she’s right, you’ve done enough damage already around here.”

That was when Jenna turned and focused on her, really focused, and Claire saw something familiar in her cool, pale eyes. It was the same distant look she’d seen so often in Miranda…here and not here at the same time. “You dreamed it,” she said. “It’s true. I see…water. A hole. A silver cross in a circle. Someone’s trying to reach you.”

“Yeah, yeah, save the Vegas act, lady,” Shane said, and pushed her forward toward the door. Angel and Tyler were already making their way out ahead of her. “If we want professional help, we’ll call the Ghostbusters. At least they have matching uniforms. Ciao.”

Miranda followed them, looking anxious. “Claire,” she said, and caught her arm. “Claire! It’s dark out there.”

“It’s okay. They have a van,” she said. She wasn’t feeling particularly charitable toward the After Death team just now. If Michael was right—and she honestly figured he was—then Jenna’s interest in stirring up the dead had brought back Shane’s sister, and that, that was unforgivable. “They’ll be fine. Don’t worry about them.”

“The ghosts know what she is. They’ll follow her, eating little bits of her. She won’t feel it at first, but then she’ll get tired and sick, and they could kill her, Claire. Worse: they could get strong enough to do other things. Dangerous things. She’s really powerful.”

“I think she’s full of it,” Claire said, but now that her anger was fading a bit, she ran what Jenna had said to her through her head. Water. Hole. Silver cross in a circle. That fit with her dream about the hole in the ground, and the water around her legs. Someone is trying to reach you. “I think she was just making it up, Mir. Listen, you stay here. We’re going to make sure they leave, okay?”

Miranda shuddered. “I can’t go out there again.”

Even so soon after sunset it was dark outside, darker than Claire had expected; the orange bands on the horizon were already fading, being painted over by shades of purple and blue. The biggest, bravest stars had already made appearances overhead, but there was no moon, not yet.

The After Death van was parked on the street, two houses down; they’d probably had trouble finding the place. Claire remembered seeing them checking maps. They’d probably been looking for the Glass House already. Ugh. To think she’d thought Angel was kind of greasily charming in the beginning. Now, she never wanted to see him again.

There was no sign of the mass of ghosts she’d seen before when they’d been in the house, which seemed weird; she could feel something out here, an uneasy sensation on the back of her neck, a phantom whisper on the wind. On instinct, Claire stepped back over the threshold into the house, and as she did, she saw the mists come into focus again. All the ghosts crowded now around Jenna as she headed for the van.

Inside the house, the ghosts were visible. Out there, in the real world, there was nothing.

Shane was already down the steps, and Claire hurried down to join him. “They’re leaving too easily,” he said. “Didn’t it seem to you like they just let that thing with the memory card go too fast?”

“What choice did they have?” she asked. “Michael had it and broke it before they could do much.”

“Yeah, but…” Shane shook his head. “I expected more drama out of them. They’re on TV. It’s kind of what they do for a living.”

“The camera was off.”

“For people like them, the camera’s never off….” His eyes suddenly widened, and he dashed forward to take the camera out of Tyler’s hands. Tyler resisted, yelling for help, and suddenly it was a tangle of guys—Angel, Tyler, Shane, and Michael, all wrestling for control of the thing. Not too surprisingly, given the players, Michael won and tossed it to Shane.

“You wanted this?” he asked.

“Hey, you can’t do that!” Tyler shouted. “That’s expensive pro equipment, man! I’ll sue your ass!”

Shane jogged back up the steps and held it under the porch light. “Dammit,” he said. “Michael—you got the memory card, but this thing was broadcasting straight on broadband, too. The memory card was just backup. They’ve rigged it so it can record without the light coming on.”

Michael rounded on Tyler, whose face had gone pale. “Where did it broadcast to?”

“Dude, you’re wrong. Yeah, sure it’s got the capability, but I didn’t even switch it on—”

“That’s a lie,” Michael said, and grabbed him by the collar. “Tell me another one; go ahead.”

“Let him go.” Jenna’s voice was cool, calm, and focused, and they all looked at her. Michael let go of Tyler, because Jenna was holding a gun. It was something semiautomatic; Claire couldn’t tell the caliber, but it didn’t really matter. Michael wouldn’t be scared of it, but getting holes put in him and healing up would be just as damning, if not more so, than what they already had recorded on Miranda. So he held his hands up and stepped back.

“That’s not going to look so good on camera,” Michael said. “Better rethink it.”

“I’m just defending my friends from some scary people,” Jenna said, “and besides, by the magic of editing, they’ll never see I was armed, anyway. Now let’s all just calm down, okay? This doesn’t have to get any crazier.” She jerked her head at Tyler. “Get the camera and get your ass to the van. We have editing to do.”

“We could stream it live,” Angel suggested.

“Don’t be stupid, Angel; you don’t waste a revelation like this on a couple of thousand people who stumble over it on the Web. This is a major TV event, maybe even pay-per-view. We’re going to tease the hell out of it for weeks before we put a single frame of it out. Tyler!” She raised her voice to a whip crack, and the camera monkey scrambled up the steps and took the recorder out of Shane’s unresisting hands. “You don’t know what you’ve got here. Or what’s coming. You’re going to need us, trust me. Miranda needs us. This whole town is going to be famous.”

She was probably going to say more, but she never got the chance, because a dark-clothed figure came out of the shadows behind the trees, and before Claire could draw a breath, the figure knocked Jenna out of the way, spinning her to the ground. The gun tumbled away, lost in the sparse, weedy grass.

The intruder showed a flash of a pale face, red eyes, a young woman’s crimson smile, and in a heartbeat more, she had hold of her target.

Not Jenna, after all.

Angel. The vampire clapped a hand over his mouth when he tried to speak and said, “Hush, now, pretty. What will all the neighbors think if you make a fuss?”

Tyler mumbled out a curse, and ran for the van. He made it as far as the fence before another vampire ghosted out in front of him.

Jason.

Eve’s brother looked just as demented as he had earlier, and Claire shuddered at the smile he turned first on Tyler, and then on his sister. “Hey, Eve. You don’t write, you don’t call…but at least you brought us dinner. That’s nice.”

“No!” Eve dashed forward and put herself between Tyler and Jason. “No, Jase. What the hell are you doing?