Bitter Blood

dress? You’re not even going to ask me if I mugged a dead hooker for it or something? Lame, Danvers. You need to step up your efforts if you want to make an impression.”

“How are you?” Claire asked. Shane made a sound of protest in the back of his throat, a low warning she disregarded; maybe this was useless, trying to be empathetic with Monica, but it wasn’t really in Claire’s nature not to try.

“How am I?” Monica sounded puzzled, and for a moment, she looked directly at Claire. Her eyes were expertly made up, but under the covering layers they looked tired and a little puffy. “My brother’s dead, and you jackasses just stood there and let it happen. That’s how I am.”

“Monica—” Shane’s voice was gentler than Claire expected. “You know that’s not what happened.”

“Do I?” Monica smiled slightly, her eyes never leaving Claire’s. “I know what people tell me happened.”

“You were talking to Hannah,” Claire guessed. “Didn’t she tell you…”

“None of your business what we talked about,” Monica interrupted. The elevator dinged for her, and she stepped inside as it opened. “I don’t believe any of you. Why should I? You’ve all hated me since forever. As far as I’m concerned, you all thought this was payback. Guess what? Payback’s a bitch. And so am I.”

Monica looked…alone, Claire thought, as the doors slid closed on her. Alone and a little scared. She’d always been insulated from the real world—first by her father, the former mayor of Morganville, and by her faithful mean- girl companions. Her brother, Richard, hadn’t coddled her, but he’d protected her, too, when he thought it was necessary. Now that Richard was gone, killed by the savage draug, she had…well, nothing. Her power was pretty much gone, and with it, her friends. She was just another pretty girl now, and one thing Monica wasn’t used to being…was ordinary.

“I thought she’d be less…”

“Bitchy?” Shane supplied. “Yeah, good luck. She’s not the reforming type.”

Claire elbowed him. “Like you? Because as I remember it, you were all bad-boy slacker bad attitude when I met you. So you’ve what, forgiven her? That’s not like you, Shane.”

Shane shrugged, a slow roll of his shoulders seeming to be more about getting rid of tension than expressing an emotion. “Could have been wrong about some things she did before,” he said. “Doesn’t mean she isn’t a waste of general air space, though.”

Well, he was right about that, and since Monica was gone, there was no point in spending time discussing her, anyway. They had an appointment, and when they rounded the corner toward the mayor’s office, they found the door open, with the receptionist at her desk.

“Yes?” The receptionist here, unlike the one downstairs, was all business…matronly, chilly, with X-ray blue eyes that scanned the two of them up and down and rendered a verdict of not very important. “Can I help you?”

“We’re here to see Mayor Moses,” Claire said. “Uh—Claire Danvers and Shane Collins. We called up.”

“Have a seat.” The receptionist went back to her computer screen, completely uninterested in them even before they moved to the waiting area. It was comfortable enough, but the magazines were ages old, and within a few seconds Claire found herself itching to do something, so she pulled out her phone and began scrolling through texts and e-mails. There weren’t very many, but then her circle of tech-savvy friends wasn’t very large. Most of the vampire residents of Morganville hadn’t mastered the knack and didn’t want to ever try. Most of the humans were too wary of network monitoring to commit much to pixels.

However, Eve had linked her to a funny cat video, which was a nice break from the usual vampire-related mayhem. Claire watched it twice while Shane flipped through a decade-old Sports Illustrated before the receptionist finally said, “The mayor will—” She was probably going to frostily pronounce that the mayor would see them now, but she was interrupted by the door opening to the mayor’s inner office, and Hannah Moses herself stepping out.

“Claire, Shane, come in,” she said, and cut a glance at her assistant. “We’re not that formal here.”

The receptionist’s mouth tightened into a lemon-sucking pucker, and she stabbed at the keys on her computer as if she intended to sink her fingerprints into them.

Mayor Moses—that sounded so strange, honestly—closed the door behind the two of them and said, “Sorry about Olive. She’s inherited from two previous administrations. So. What was so urgent?” She indicated the two chairs sitting across from her desk as she took her own seat and leaned forward, elbows on the smooth wood surface. There was something elegant and composed about her, and something intimidating, too…. Hannah was a tall woman, angular, with skin the color of very dark chocolate. She was attractive, and somehow the scar (a souvenir of Afghanistan and her military career) just worked to make her more interesting. She’d changed her hair; the neat cornrows were gone now, and she’d shaved it close to her head in a way that made her look like a beautiful, scary piece of sculpture.

She’d exchanged her police uniform for sharply tailored jackets and pants, but the look was still somehow official…even to the Morganville pin in her lapel. She might not have a gun anymore, but she still looked completely competent and dangerous.

“Here,” Shane said, and handed over his ID card. “What the hell is up with these things?”

He certainly wasn’t wasting any time.

Hannah glanced at it and handed it back without a smile. “Don’t like your picture?”

“C’mon, Hannah.”

“There are certain…compromises I’ve had to make,” she said. “And no, I’m not happy about them. But carrying ID cards isn’t going to kill you.”

“Hunting licenses might,” Claire said. “Michael’s letter said they were back in force. Each vampire can kill one human a year, free and clear. Did you know that?”

That got her a sharp, unreadable look from the mayor, and after a moment, Hannah said, “I’m aware of it. And working on it. We have a special session this afternoon to discuss it.”

“Discuss it?” Shane said. “We’re talking about licenses to murder, Hannah. How can you sign up for this?”

“I didn’t sign up for it. I was outvoted,” she said. “Oliver’s got…influence over Amelie now. In defeating the draug—which we had to do, for the safety of the human population—we also removed the only thing that vampires really feared. They certainly aren’t afraid of humans anymore.”

“They’d better be,” Shane said grimly. “We’ve never taken any of this lying down. That’s not going to change.”

“But—Amelie promised that things would change,” Claire said. “After we defeated her father, Bishop. She said humans would have an equal place in Morganville, that all this hunting would stop! You heard her.”

“I did. And now she’s changed her mind,” Hannah said. “Believe me, I tried to stop the whole thing, but Oliver’s in charge of the day-to-day business. He’s put two more vampires on the Elders’ Council, which makes it three to one if we vote along vampire versus human lines. In short, they can just ignore my votes.” She looked calm, mostly, but Claire noticed the tight muscles in her jaw, and the way she glanced away as if reliving a bad memory.

Claire followed her gaze and saw a lone cardboard moving box in the corner. Hannah hadn’t had the job very long, so it could have just been unpacking left to do…but from what she knew of her, Mayor Moses wasn’t one to just let things sit around undone.

“Hannah?”

The mayor focused on her, and for a second Claire thought she might talk about what was bothering her, but then she shook her head. “Never mind,” she said. “Claire, please take my advice. Drop this. There’s nothing you can do or say that will change her mind, and Amelie’s not the person you knew before. She’s not reasonable. And she’s not safe. If I could have put a stop to this, I would have; seven generations of my family come from Morganville, and I don’t want to see things go south any more than you do.”

“But—if we don’t talk to Amelie, what are we supposed to do to stop it?”

“I don’t know,” Hannah said. She seemed angry, and deeply troubled. “I just don’t know.”

At times like these, Claire was sharply reminded that Hannah wasn’t just some small-town sheriff upgraded to mayor. She had been a soldier, and she’d fought for her country. Hannah had taken up arms in Morganville before, and in a fight there wasn’t anybody Claire wanted at her back more (except Shane).